Hand-picking refugees

ALL refugees are equal but some are more equal than others. With this Orwellian premise, the NDA government has pushed ahead with the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. The proposed legislation seeks to provide Indian citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis who arrived in this country on or before December 31, 2014, fleeing religious persecution in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan—all Muslim-majority nations. Such persons will not be treated as illegal immigrants even if they don’t possess any document, provided they have completed five years of residence in India. The affected communities as well as the ‘erring’ countries have been chosen carefully. The Bill leaves no room to accommodate Muslim refugees such as Myanmar’s Rohingya population.

Home Minister Amit Shah has declared that the Bill will give ‘relief and constitutional respect’ to the minorities who have suffered in neighbouring countries. One hasn’t heard him speak with similar passion about India’s minorities. The government wants the world to believe that its heart bleeds for refugees, but the pick-and-choose policy is clearly in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. According to this definitive document, everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the declaration, without any discrimination on any ground. It also states that ‘no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs.’

Offering or denying citizenship on the basis of religion is fraught with dangerous consequences. This divisive and disruptive step is against the spirit of the Constitution. Virtually no effort has been made to build political consensus on a move that has pan-India ramifications and can endanger communal harmony. Considering its own record on the protection of minorities, the government should be wary of taking the moral high ground. The Home Minister has claimed that had India not been divided on religious lines in 1947, there would have been no need for this Bill. Widening the divide between communities in order to rectify the Partition blunder is not only self-contradictory but also self-defeating.

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