If you don’t believe that politics is now more global than ever, just take a look at what’s happening in India and the rest of the world. In the UK, immigration is a big issue. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak worries that the Conservative Party’s base will drift away because of his government’s inability to restrict the number of immigrants entering the UK.
In the US, the one issue that the Right-wing Republican will never give up on is also immigration. Ever since Donald Trump vowed to build a border wall and have Mexico pay for it, his base continues to regard immigration as the key issue. (For the record, Trump did not build much of a wall during his four years in office, Mexico did not pay for it, and the flood of immigrants continues.)
For years, we thought that these were Western concerns. When attacks on immigration were launched by British and American politicians, we felt that we were the targets. After all, immigrants from the subcontinent were often the subjects of such campaigns, and under David Cameron, Britain actually deployed deportation vans to encourage immigrants to go back to where they came from.
But now, as bizarre as this sounds, it looks like immigration could be a key issue in our own general election. Of course, we don’t admit that ours is a debate about immigration. Instead, we talk about the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act). But at its core, the debate is about distinguishing between various kinds of immigrants and discouraging some while welcoming others, which is pretty much what all the Western debates are about.
Also read: A legal breakdown of the BJP’s four controversial arguments in defence of CAA
Immigration vs CAA
We base our distinctions between immigrants we welcome and those who are unwelcome on religion. In the West, they use race. That’s about the only significant difference. Otherwise, it is the same old Right vs Left battle in a new arena.
The CAA is projected as a means of helping Hindus in our neighbourhood. Taken at face value, there is a certain power to this idea. The stated purpose is as follows: Hindus and those from other non-Islamic religions face appalling discrimination in our neighbourhood. In Afghanistan, the Taliban openly discriminates against Hindus. In Bangladesh, some Hindus say they are constantly being made to feel like they have no place in the country. In Pakistan, there are stories of atrocities against Hindus every day.
Where are these people to go? If India, the country with the largest Hindu population in the world, sent them away, then it would be an act of callous indifference at best and exceptional cruelty at worst.
The CAA aims to give these people Indian citizenship so they can make new lives in India, free from discrimination.
When you listen to this argument, it is hard to deny that the CAA makes sense. The problem — as always with immigration debates everywhere in the world — lies in the subtext.
In the UK, for a very long time, the subtext has been race, if not racism. In the 1950s, the British welcomed Indians, Pakistanis, and West Indians and let them find jobs running the country’s infrastructure: trains, buses, hospitals, and the like. By the 1960s, as more and more brown people began turning up on previously lilly-white streets, there was a public backlash. It was led by such racists as Enoch Powell, but even the Labour Party, which had long opposed caps on immigration, changed its policy.
The Brits found a peculiarly British method of restricting the entry of black and brown people into the UK while allowing South Africans, Australians, and other white people to move to Britain. They invented a category called ‘patrials’. If even one of your grandparents was born in the UK, then you had the right of residence. As most of the hapless West Indians looking to find new lives in Britain could not meet this criterion, the door was slammed in their faces. Australians, white South Africans, etc, however, had no such problem.
In the US, the debate has been more explicitly about race. Almost all of Donald Trump’s attacks are on Hispanics, on people from Central and South America (‘some bad hombres’ as he called them) who want to live in the US. He is not at all agitated about white people who want to move to America. He turned against Muslims as well, demanding that no Muslim be allowed to enter the US. This is unconstitutional, so when Trump became President, bans were imposed on people from certain countries that just happened to be Muslim-dominated.
Also read: If Modi-Shah succeed in CAA-NRC project, these consequences will alter Indian society
CAA’s salient feature
The problem with our CAA is that it might also, according to some legal experts, be unconstitutional. One of the founding principles of our republic has always been that it does not discriminate on the grounds of religion. (But it allows religious personal laws, so yes, this is complicated). The CAA, on the other hand, is specifically religion-focused. It makes it easier for people from every one of the subcontinent’s religions to obtain Indian citizenship—except for Muslims. Not only is this discriminatory, but it is meant to be discriminatory. The very basis of the law is to keep Muslims out.
The CAA’s defenders say that this is logical: the people it wants to help are fleeing discrimination in Muslim-majority countries. So it is absurd to also include Muslims in the Act. And yes, it is true that non-Muslims in the neighbourhood do face discrimination.
But then, so do Muslims. Sometimes it comes from people who follow other religions: the Rohingyas in Myanmar are Muslims who face terrible persecution. And in some Islamic nations, minority Muslim sects are also persecuted. Why deny them refuge? Only because they are Muslims?
The short answer is: yes.
The CAA has two agendas, one open and humanitarian, the other less open but equally important. Most Hindus and Sikhs will accept that if members of their communities are being persecuted in, say, Afghanistan, it is right for India to offer them a new home. So that agenda is not really controversial.
But there is another agenda at play. In many parts of India, especially those that border Muslim-majority countries like Bangladesh, there is anger about (mostly illegal) immigration from these countries. As there is no discrimination against Muslims in, say, Bangladesh, the migrants have come to India in search of economic opportunities. (Rather like the Indians who have emigrated to the UK and the US.)
The government knows that there is public resentment (from Hindus, mostly) and therefore, political support for anyone who acts (or is seen to act) against illegal Muslim migrants. There is certainly little support for those who want to allow other Muslim migrants (say, the Rohingyas) to settle in India.
One subtext to the CAA is that it draws a distinction between Muslim migrants and Hindus from neighbouring countries. If the government broadens the scope of the Act to include Muslims, the CAA becomes politically unpopular and, therefore, pointless. Hence the blatant exclusion of Muslims from the CAA’s provisions.
Could this have been done more cleverly? After all, the British successfully passed racist immigration and citizenship Acts aimed at keeping brown and black people out. It abandoned the principle of free entry for Commonwealth citizens (mostly people of colour) while allowing free entry to EU citizens (mostly white). But so cunningly was it done that it could not be challenged on the grounds that it was racist.
Could the BJP government have done the same with the CAA?
I doubt it. Unless the Act specifically excludes Muslims, it does not meet its political purpose. And yet, such exclusions raise serious constitutional questions. So there will be a legal battle over this. It will be waged for months until some conclusion is reached.
By then, however, the Lok Sabha election will be over. And the BJP will have won the political battle.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)