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India braces for protests over citizenship bill excluding Muslims
North-east India gripped by protests over citizenship bill excluding Muslims
(about 8 hours later)
Lower house passes bill, drawing outcry amid claims prime minister Narendra Modi is seeking to sideline the faith
Student groups organise 11-hour shutdown after bill is passed in lower house
India’s lower house has passed controversial legislationthat will grant citizenship to religious minorities from neighbouring countries, but not Muslims, amid raucous scenes in parliament and protests in the country’s north-east.
Hundreds of demonstrators closed down streets in north-east India on Tuesday amid protests over legislation that would give citizenship to persecuted Hindus and other religious minorities from Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who entered the country illegally.
The citizenship amendment bill provides that Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians fleeing persecution in Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan can be granted citizenship.
The citizenship amendment bill was passed by a majority vote in India’s lower house after midnight and still needs to be passed by the upper house before becoming law.
It comfortably passed the lower house with 311 votes in favour and 80 against just after midnight on Tuesday. The legislation seeks to amend the Citizenship Act of 1955, which prohibits illegal migrants from applying for Indian citizenship.
The protests included an 11-hour shutdown which began at 5am. It was coordinated by the North East Students Organisation, an association of student groups from across India’s eight north-eastern states. They oppose the bill out of concern that more migrants will move to the border region and dilute the culture and political sway of indigenous tribal people.
“This bill is in line with India’s centuries-old ethos of assimilation and belief in humanitarian values,” the prime minister, Narendra Modi, tweeted, adding that he was “delighted” about its passage.
The bill will exclude Muslims and many see it as part of a push by the Nationalist Hindu prime minister, Narendra Modi, to marginalise India’s Islamic minority of 200 million people.
But to Muslim organisations, rights groups and others the bill is part of Modi’s push to marginalise India’s Islamic minority of 200 million people.
Samujjal Bhattacharya, a leader of the All Assam students’ union, said: “The north-east is already hit by large scale illegal influx from Bangladesh and now the government is trying to provide citizenship to a whole lot of migrant Hindus and others. How can you grant citizenship on the basis of religion?”
On Monday 100 scientists and scholars at institutions in India and abroad published a joint letter expressing their “dismay” at the legislation, saying the constitution called for members of all faiths to be treated equally. Modi’s “proposed bill would mark a radical break with this history and would be inconsistent with the basic structure of the constitution”.
Protesters blocked traffic across the state of Assam, including in the capital, Gauhati, by burning tyres and sitting on roads. Shops and businesses closed and several vehicles were vandalised.
The letter said such a careful exclusion of Muslims would “greatly strain” India’s pluralism.
The protesters have burned effigies of leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party including Modi, the home minister, Amit Shah, and Assam’s chief minister, Sarbananda Sonowal.
Prominent political groups opposing the bill called for a complete shutdown across all the states in the north-east on Tuesday.
Bhaskar Mahanta, Assam’s police chief, said that several protesters had been detained or arrested, but the situation was under control.
The home minister Amit Shah denied the claim of marginalisation, saying: “This is a bill to give rights, not to take them away from anybody.”
The bill was first introduced by the Modi government earlier this year, but stalled in the upper house because of wide-scale protests in India’s north-east.
Modi’s government had tried to shepherd the legislation through parliament during its first term in power, but it failed in the upper house where Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) and its allies lack a majority.
After sweeping to victory in the April-May national elections, the BJP is now more confident it can push the bill through both chambers.
During a lengthy debate marked by angry exchanges, the opposition Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor said the bill “infringes upon the principle of equality before law” guaranteed to all persons including non-citizens.
Under Modi several cities perceived to have Islamic-sounding names have been renamed, while some school textbooks have been altered to downplay Muslims’ contributions to India.
In August his administration rescinded the partial autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, and split it into two.
The government has defended the bill, saying it was aimed at flushing out infiltrators, and that Muslims did not face persecution in the three neighbouring countries.
“I say this again and again that this bill has nothing to do with the Muslims in this country. The Muslims in this country will be able to live here with dignity, are living here, and will continue to do so,” Shah said. “What are we doing now? We are giving the minority their rights.”
Shah has recently also proposed a “national register of citizens” that would see “each and every infiltrator identified and expelled” from India by 2024.
The citizenship bill has led to protests in India’s north-eastern states, where residents are unhappy about an influx of Hindus from neighbouring Bangladesh.
In Guwahati in Assam state protesters set fire to tyres while tribal groups staged protests in Tripura.
