Just days ahead of the announcement of general elections, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on March 11 notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024 that would enable the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed by the Parliament in 2019.
The CAA is going to grant citizenship to 6 religious minorities persecuted in neighboring Islamic countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, who have taken refuge in India before Dec 31 2014 and have stayed for at least one year continuously before application.
These communities are: Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis. As we all know, all these communities have been severely persecuted in the above countries, and their population has dwindled over the decades. The rules state that the applicants will have to provide six types of documents and specify “date of entry” in India. The list of permissible documents include birth certificate, tenancy records, identity papers, any licence, school or educational certificate issued by a government authority in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Act was passed on December 11, 2019, receiving assent from the President on December 12 the same year. The MHA had earlier notified that the Act will come into force from January 10, 2020. Since the rules were not framed yet, the Act could not be implemented.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah twitted (Posted on X),
“These rules will now enable minorities persecuted on religious grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to acquire citizenship in our nation. With this notification PM Shri @narendramodi Ji has delivered on another commitment and realised the promise of the makers of our constitution to the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians living in those countries.”
India is not a party to UN convention on refugees and is a sovereign country that can decide on which refugees to take in and whom to grant citizenship to. To date, no government in India granted any constitutional rights to these refugees – no matter what their religion.
The CAA is clearly not anti-Muslim and definitely not against Indian Muslims. The poor among Indian Muslims and other communities will actually benefit from this as millions of illegal Muslims entering India from Bangladesh and Myanmar won’t be able to take up citizenship and gain access to the same Government benefits, resources, organizations, Madrasas, and other NGO programs.
Indians have to be cautious against the massive disinformation campaign being done to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about CAA affecting Indian citizens’ rights. It only strengthens Indian rights and India itself.
With respect to some persecuted Muslim sects in Islamic countries around India, they have about few dozen other Islamic countries to support them, many of them much richer and more resourceful than India. They also have rich, powerful western democracies to help them.
Western countries and rich islamic countries without helping and giving refuge to these persecuted Islamic sects in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh are claiming that India with a per capita of 3000 USD is Anti-Muslim and doing religious persecution for not giving citizenship rights to these refugees.
The worst part is countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, which, after persecuting these minority Muslim sects and driving them out, do propaganda against India for not giving them citizenship. Some misguided Indians due to misinformation and propaganda, are supporting the same narrative.