The EconomistDecember 14th 2019 431W
hen amit shah, India’s home minis-
ter, proposed his bill in parliament
on December 9th, he framed it as an act of
mercy. Henceforth, he promised, people
who have fled persecution in neighbouring
countries and taken refuge in India would
be granted quicker access to citizenship.
His Citizenship (Amendment) Bill would
right the historic wrong of India’s Partition
in 1947, when—as he disingenuously put
it—the rival Congress party had agreed to
split the country along religious lines.
The bill passed handily in the Lok Sabha
or lower house of parliament, where Mr
Shah’s Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) holds
absolute sway. But India did not greet his
tweaks to citizenship rules with joy. In the
northeastern states of Assam and Tripura,
violent protests prompted curfews, sus-
pension of internet and train services and
deployment of army units. Hundreds of
prominent intellectuals signed an angry
petition, while in parliament’s upperhouse speaker after speaker rose to lambast
the bill, calling it an attack on India’s con-
stitution, or on its national soul, that
would make the country like Nazi Germany
or, worse, Pakistan. When the bill did pass
into law on December 11th, it was by only a
21-vote majority in the 245-seat house.
For most of the participants, the cause
of all this passion was not the few words
that Mr Shah has added to India’s 1955 citi-
zenship law. It was the ones he left out. The
new law applies solely to immigrants fromthree countries, Afghanistan, Bangladesh
and Pakistan. And while it specifically ac-
cepts adherents of six religions, it does not
include Muslims.
That is problematic for several reasons.
By injecting religious credentials into con-
siderations of citizenship, it subtly chal-
lenges the secularism enshrined in India’s
constitution. Opponents of the bjp see this
as a deliberate tactic towards the Hindu-
nationalist goal of redefining India as a
Hindu state, reducing the 200m-strong, 14-
centuries-old Muslim community to a ten-
uous and dependent status. By rejecting
proposed amendments that would have
widened the bill’s scope to include people
of all religions, from more neighbouring
countries, Mr Shah made clear that the in-
tention is indeed to make India a refuge
principally for Hindus (the other religions
mentioned in the law together make up
just 5% of India’s population), even as it re-
jects Rohingyas from Myanmar, Uighurs
from China or members of the Ahmadi sect
that is branded heretical in Pakistan.
In parliament, Mr Shah vigorously de-
nied that his bill was discriminatory. On
the campaign trail, however, he has
sounded a different tune. Speaking this
month in Jharkhand, a rural state where
voting for the local assembly is under way,
he ridiculed the concerns expressed by the
Congress party’s leader, Rahul Gandhi. “Ra-IndiaA slap for Muslims
NEW DELHI
A new citizenship law flouts the constitution and triggers communal strifeAsia
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