Are Muslims Indian Citizens?

Since December 4th, 2019, India has seen the spread of large-scale protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) implemented by the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). The Act was passed by Indian Congress as of December 12th and amends the Citizenship Act of 1995, which prevents ‘illegal’ immigrants (those who cannot provide enough documentation) from gaining Indian citizenship yet offers amnesty for non-Muslim illegal immigrants fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. For members of six religious’ communities – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians – the bill also hastens their access to Indian citizenship, since it amends the law that individuals of these groups will have to work or live in India for 11 years. Now, they only need to have lived or worked in India for 6 before being eligible for an application to gain Indian citizenship. The NRC (National Register of Citizens) has been proposed alongside the CAA, which is a register of individuals who are classified as Indian citizens who can verify, they arrived in India before 24th March 1971. At the time of the debate, this had not been enacted.

Last Saturday, King’s Indian Political Society decided to let our students’ voices be a part of this conversation by debating whether the CAA and NRC were anti-Muslim. Speakers for the motion (Proposition) were Udit Mahalingam, Suhail Bhat and Priyadeep Dasmunshi, and those against the motion (Opposition) were Anunay Chowdhary, Vatsav Soni and Rijul Verma, with Vidisha Madan chairing the debate.

The audience were allowed to ask questions at the end as well as vote on two award-titles ‘Best Speaker’ and ‘Best Rebuttal’. The use of Hindi was also permitted, but regional languages were not.

 Presidents Rhea Kher (KCL Indian Political Society) and Madhav Setia (KCL Political Economy) delivered a moving Welcome Address, discussing the society’s expansion and ending on the sentiment of ‘hoping this revolution continues’.

The Opposition began by clarifying their stance, noting that they did ‘not represent the BJP’ and wanted to ‘narrow the scope of debate’ to the topic at hand, its proposed ‘Anti-Muslim’ nature. Their arguments were, overall, grounded in pieces of legislation and read at surface level with little reference to experiences of those specific groups targeted by the bill. Specifically, Mr. Chowdhary referred multiple times to an amendment made by the government in 2011 which allowed ‘anyone to gain citizenship’ in India, with fellow speaker Mr. Verma claiming the CAA is a ‘very inclusive policy’.

At times, their reasoning was confusing to disentangle from one another as there was much internal conflict between speakers themselves. Arguments from their opening statements carried over into their rebuttals, repeatedly classifying India as a ‘modern liberal democracy’ and that the act provided ‘positive discrimination’. Mr. Soni went as far as to separate himself physically from his teammates towards the end of the debate, taking what appeared to be a nonaligned rather than wholly oppositional stance. The bill is ‘unnecessary’ and ‘anti-Indian rather than anti-Muslim and anti-Hindu’, he claimed, centralising the debate towards the ‘1.9 million undocumented immigrants’ currently residing in India. In other words, the bill was on attack on those undocumented individuals rather than simply Muslims.

The Proposition grounded their arguments in more implicit socio-political elements of Indian society, such as the ‘poor documentation culture’ which prevented many low-caste citizens from providing the documents necessary to gain (or re-gain) citizenship or the fact that many documents in poorer areas may have been affected by natural disasters, again causing similar issues. Not only did this act as a direct challenge to the Opposition’s argument concerning undocumented individuals, but also foregrounded the notion that ‘2 million undocumented individuals are currently in detention camps’, and that many of those were from those majority-Muslim countries excluded from the CAA.

Indeed, the very political foundation of the Indian political system and BJP politicians were brought into question: if religion is used as a means to justify partition and the founding of modern-day India itself, surely this contradicts its secular nature? and, surely this notion of implicit exclusion challenges the basis of the CAA as a piece of legislation? Credibility was scrutinised on the basis of India being a constitutional democracy rather than a parliamentary one, and so, the dangers of a single-majority party passing such a bill.

Mr. Dasmunshi, despite his disruptive nature, provided a highly informative analogy for discussing the issue, comparing the new system to having 3 pathways to Indian citizenship of economy, business and first class.

After which, the debate became quite heated with Mr. Chowdhary personally attacking Mr. Damunshi, stating ‘this is what you can expect from a political sciences student’. 

Audience questions scrutinised the empathy of claims on either side, specifically drawing attention to the fact that none of the Opposition speakers were Muslim, whilst Mr. Bhat from the Proposition identified himself as such.

Thus, the debate boiled down to the Proposition presenting the bill as ‘fascist’, whilst the Opposition contended it was part of the motions of a ‘neo-liberal democratic society’, arguing ‘just because the system is not working, the idea behind it is not bad’, and that we should not believe ‘sensationalist claims’ about detention camps.

‘Best Speaker’ was awarded to Mr. Soni. ‘Best Rebuttal’ was awarded to Mr. Dasumunshi. Congratulations to them both on deserved victories.

I will leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide whose argument resonated most strongly with you. But based on this debate and the current state of India, I personally feel that in the words of President Madhav Setia, we should let the revolution continue.

• CAA
• debate
• india