CAA Bill: Are we correcting mistakes done during partition
CAA Bill: Are we correcting mistakes done during partition
Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019
The CAA is a humane law. The new law is for migrants, not citizens. Residents of the Northeast and Muslims have no reason to worry. The prime minister spoke at a rally in Assam about “atonement” for the of Partition. His exact words: “If the children of Ma Bharati are in trouble, isn’t it the duty of India to take care of them? Is the color of the passport more important than the colour of blood? Don’t those separated by Partition have a connection with Ma Bharati? There were mistakes done during Partition and this Bill will correct them.”
The great writer Saadat Hasan Manto’s story, Toba Tek Singh, underlined the senselessness of Partition and the enormity of human suffering thereafter. Manto would have seen the Citizenship (Amendment Bill), 2019, as a way of correcting a historical mistake. However, some vested interests are spreading misinformation, which has resulted in protests in some places.
President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 that has now become an Act. Economic Times takes a look at the contentious issues it raises, and whom the Bill benefits.
What the Bill proposes?
According to the Bill, members of the Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Zoroastrian communities who have come from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh till December 31, 2014 and facing religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship. It also relaxes the provisions for “Citizenship by naturalisation”. The law reduces duration of residency from existing 11 years to just five years for people belonging to the same six religions and three countries.
Who all does it cover?
The Act covers six communities namely Hindu, Sikh, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christian migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. As per the Citizenship Act of 1955, an illegal immigrants cannot get citizenship in India. An illegal migrant is defined as people who either entered the country without proper documents, or stayed on beyond the permitted time. In 2015 the government made changes to the passport and foreigner’s acts to allow non-Muslim refugees from these countries to stay back in India even if they entered the country without valid papers.
Government brought CAA to correct historical injustice: PM Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the government has brought the Citizenship Amendment Act to correct “historical injustice” and to fulfil the BJP’s “old promise” to religious minorities living in neighboring countries.
The PM’s version of atonement for the “mistakes of Partition” is quite different. It lies in the Citizenship Bill. If welcoming Hindus from Bangladesh with citizenship amounts to righting the wrongs of Partition, then the “mistake of Partition” must lie in the decision to stay back, made by those who believed the promises of leaders.
Taken to its logical end, this reasoning would mean that all Hindus and Muslims should have chosen to migrate to the country of their religion. Partition should have seen a full exchange of religious populations. But this religious cleansing would have gone against the basic premise on which independent India was envisaged, by those who fought for its freedom. India was not imagined as a land for Hindus alone.
Bringing this exchange of populations to fruition today, by granting citizenship to Bangladeshi Hindus, but throwing out the “Alia, Malia, Jamalia who kept entering from Pakistan”, and constantly telling Muslims to go to Pakistan, is not atonement for the mistake of Partition. It’s validating its basic premise.
So, it becomes imperative for everyone to understand that the Act only extends citizenship, but doesn’t snatch anyone’s citizenship.
