G.G. Parekh, Neeraj Jain

Being a citizen is the supremest identity that a person has; in contrast, being declared non-citizen (or a foreigner) effectively means the person becomes stateless, which condemns him/her to civil death—a person becomes deprived of almost all his civil rights. The Indian Constitution granted citizenship by birth to all people; after 1987, exceptions were introduced, and the citizenship status of the parents also became important.

 

Secularism is one of the foundations of the Indian republic. Hence, religion was never the basis of citizenship. Citizenship rules in India were equalising—whatever be the religion, caste, community, gender or social status of a person, all had equal citizenship.

 

Now, this is being completely overturned by the Modi government. Using brute majority, it has got the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to pass the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) within just three days. The CAA, together with the National Register of Citizens, strikes at the very roots of secularism in India.

 

This subversion of the Constitution by the BJP is not surprising. The BJP is only implementing one of the key agendas of the RSS, its parent organisation—the RSS does not believe in secularism and secular nationalism and instead believes in religious nationalism.

 

On December 13, soon after the President of India gave his assent to the CAA, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a powerful statement that criticised India’s new citizenship law. The UN said that not only does this law violate India’s obligations to conventions, treaties and compacts that it has signed at the global level, but also that it is in violation of its own Constitution.

 

People are not taking this assault on the fundamental values of the Indian Constitution lying down. From Assam to Delhi and Kerala, people, especially the students and youth, are out on the streets, protesting in tens of thousands.

 

Journalist Prem Shankar Jha writes that it is only the second time since Independence that virtually the entire political opposition has joined in the defence of the two core values of the Indian state: secularism and equality before the law. Seven state governments—Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Kerala, West Bengal and Bihar—have announced that they will not implement the CAA. Chief Minister Baghel of Chhattisgarh has declared that if the NRC is implemented, then he will not to sign it. In Tamil Nadu, the opposition DMK is leading protests against the law, and they are likely to spread because the 3,04,000 Tamil refugees who have been living as stateless citizens in India for as long as 36 years have not been included in the Act. In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena is vacillating—it had voted for the Bill in the Lok Sabha, but boycotted the voting in the Rajya Sabha; and now, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has come out with a strong statement condemning police action on Jamia Millia students, comparing it to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

 

The BJP, as is only to be expected, is painting these protests in communal colours. This is being led from the front by the Prime Minister himself. Speaking at a rally in Jharkhand, in a speech which was relayed all over the country on TV, he stated, “Bhaiyo aur beheno, you can tell who the rioters are by the clothes they are wearing.” While Modi has made oblique remarks against Muslims in recent years, this is probably the first time the head of government in a democratic country has directly pointed fingers at a single community so blatantly. Home Minister Amit Shah has been even more openly communal in his statements criticising the protests—in a latest statement, he challenged those opposing the CAA to say publicly that they are ready to welcome ‘all Muslims to India’. BJP-friendly media and BJP social media have also been ridiculing these protests as  ‘Muslim’ and ‘anti-Hindu’, including through the circulation of fake or misleading videos. It is also no coincidence that the police was particularly ruthless against student protests at two major universities—Jamia Millia Islamia (New Delhi) and Aligarh Muslim University (Aligarh), both historically Muslim universities.

 

Indians have seen through this venal grand scheme of the BJP–RSS and are unitedly coming out to fight this assault on our country’s founding principles. For the present, these protests are continuing, growing and spreading.

 

But while all of this is heartening, it is not enough.

 

We not only need to fight this assault on our Consitutional fabric, we need to combine it with fighting against the other nefarious agenda of the Modi Government—the naked implementation of neoliberal policies that is resulting in the corporatisation of the entire economy. The entire wealth of the country, including our mineral wealth, our navratna public sector corporations and even our financial institutions, is being transferred to the hands of giant foreign and domestic corporations, which are controlled by some of the richest people of the world. Even the tax money collected by the government is being transferred to the coffers of these richie rich, under all kinds of guises. Simultaneously, the government has been squeezing its welfare expenditures on the poor, which have pushed our public health, education, ration, nutrition and pension systems into deep crisis. For the first time since independence, job creation in the economy has come to a complete standstill, pushing unemployment to record levels.

 

This is the real agenda of the Modi Government and the BJP-RSS combine ruling the country. Its push for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ is only a cover—to delude the people into supporting it during elections, while it implements policies to impoverish the people and plunder public wealth and transfer it to the coffers of the country’s corporate elite, policies which have transformed India into one of the most unequal countries in the world. During just the first four years of the Modi regime, the number of billionaires in the country has more than doubled—from 56 in 2014 to 119 in 2018; the corporate houses have been able to indulge in such wanton profiteering that the wealth of the country’s billionaires increased by more than 35% in just one year (2017 to 2018).

 

We need to realise this real agenda of the Modi Government. We need to see through its schemes of dividing the country along communal lines, and build a united movement of all the people of the country across religion–caste–gender, and challenge the neoliberal model of development being implemented in the country. We need to come together and fight for a new India, which will genuinely uphold Constitutional values of secularism and equality and fraternity, and at the same time, which will ensure the implementation of the economic policies enshrined in the Directive Principles of the Constitution: that call upon the State to direct its policy towards securing adequate means of livelihood for all citizens, wherein the conditions of work are such that all citizens can enjoy a decent standard of living and have full enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural opportunities.