People have recognised that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is communal and unconstitutional, and that the CAA + all India National Register of Citizens (NRC) threatens to turn Muslim citizens into infiltrators� and non-Muslim citizens into refugees.�
In many places, the internet is banned, road and rail traffic restricted, Section 144 imposed all over India, students and other protestors brutally thrashed, shot at, blinded, maimed, even killed.
The peoples movement against CAA and all-India NRC aims to protect Indias Constitution, democracy, and unity.
Now, under pressure from protests all over India and the world, the Modi-Shah Government in a desperate bid to save the CAA, is lying about the CAA and NRC, and also lying about the protests.
The Government is lying to you.
Most of the media is lying to you.
You have a right to know the truth.
Read on to bust the Governments lies, and know the facts.
What is Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)?
The CAA amends the Citizenship Act 1955, to allow non-Muslim (i.e Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, Christian) immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who have entered India before 31 December 2014 a faster route to become Indian citizens, in 6 years rather than 12 years.
How many such immigrants are there in India now? What is their status now?
According to an Intelligence Bureau (IB) statement at a Parliamentary Committee hearing on the CAB in 2016, there are 31,313 non-Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who entered India before December 2014.
In 2011, the UPA Government notified a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in a letter dated 29.12.11, under which any refugee could apply for Long Term Visa (LTV). Those who get LTVs can obtain PAN card, Aadhaar card, driving licences, and even buy property.
Between 2011-2014, UPA granted LTVs to 14,726 (most of them Hindus) from neighbouring countries. Between 2011-2018, some 30,000 persons got LTVs. (See India relaxes rules for long-term visa holders, to grant Pakistani minorities more rights, India Today, 17 July, 2018).
So in short most of the proposed beneficiaries of CAA can and have already got Long Term Visas to stay and earn in India, get PAN cards, Aadhaar cards, driving licences, and buy a house for their family.
Under the Citizenship Act 1955, could immigrants from neighbouring countries get Indian citizenship?
Yes. Under CA 1955, any foreigner of any category could apply for and get Indian citizenship through the Naturalization (Section 6 of the Citizenship Act) or through Registration (Section 5 of the Citizenship Act).
So, if immigrants/refugees can get protection through Long Term Visas already, and apply for citizenship, why is the Government insisting on CAA?
The CAAs only notable feature is that discriminates among refugees based on religion, and offers non-Muslim refugees/immigrants a route to achieve citizenship and voter status via the Naturalization route within 6 years rather than 12 years.
In preparation for the CAA, the Modi-Shah Government amended the LTV rules to create a new category of persons eligible for LTVs through a Gazette of India notification in September 2015. The amended rules allow those from minority communities in Bangladesh and Pakistan such as Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, who have entered into India on or before 31st December, 2014,� with or without valid documents, or with documents that have expired, to get LTVs. In other words, the Modi-Shah Government brought the LTV rules in line with the Citizenship Amendment Bill which they had drafted. (see https://mha.gov.in/PDF_Other/AnnexVI_01022018.pdf)
Note that non-Muslim refugees/immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who entered India before 2014 already have PAN cards, Aadhaar cards, driving licenses and the right to buy property. What CAA gives them extra, is the right to vote, which they are eligible for within 6 years of living in India rather than 12 years. For Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, or Ahmadiyas and Hazaras from Pakistan or Afghanistan and other refugees/immigrants like Taslima Nasreen from Bangladesh, there is no fast-track route for citizenship and voting rights under CAA.
So, the CAAs only distinguishing feature is its communal character.
Why does BJP want to hurry up the process of giving non-Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan citizenship and voting rights, and deny Rohingya, Tamil, Ahmadiya, Hazara and Muslim political refugees the same chance?
BJP is insisting on CAA for three reasons.
1) Because the BJP sees this particular segment of people, especially Hindus from Bangladesh, as a vote bank in Assam and West Bengal. Assam Finance Minister and prominent BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma, in an interview to an Assam-based TV channel GPlus in January 2019, explained that, CAB will allow us to retain 17 seats in Assam for the next 10 years. If you exclude 10,000 Bengali Hindu votes, then such seats will go to UMF or UDF. We are on the verge of losing several seats. If we dont bring CAB, immediately 17 seats will go. These people who entered Assam before 31 December 2014, they are already there, you are not going to physically remove them. What concession you are allowing them? You are allowing them to vote. By giving that concession, you are keeping 17 seats with you for the time being.�
2) Even more importantly for the BJP and RSS, CAA weakens the secular character of the Indian Constitution by granting citizenship based on religious identity. Under the pre-CAA laws, any refugee or immigrant could apply for citizenship and the government would reject or grant the request based on an assessment of each individual application. The CAA, for the first time, links Indian citizenship to religion, and therefore punctures the Indian Constitution to allow secularism to leak out of it.
3) The third reason is that by the combined process of NRC and CAA, the Modi-Shah regime wants to strip Muslims of citizenship. Amit Shahs election campaign speeches in West Bengal in April and May 2019 make this clear. In a rally at Kalimpong in Darjeeling district (West Bengal), Amit Shah said, Hamne hamare ghoshna patra mein wada kiya hain ki dobara Narendra Modi ki sarkar baan ne ke bad deshbhar ke andar NRC banaya jaye ga. Aur ek ek ghuspetiyon ke chun chun kar nikalne ka kaam eh BJP sarkar karega. Aur jitne bhi Hindu, Buddh sharanarthi aye hain sare ko dhund dhund kar Bharat ki nagarikta dene ka kaam bhi BJP sarkar karne wali hain. (We have made a promise in our manifesto that after the Narendra Modi government is formed at the Centre for the second time, we will implement NRC across the country and will weed out out every single infiltrator from the country. The BJP government will also seek out and grant Indian citizenship to every Hindu and Buddhist refugee across the country.� (Indian Express, April 12, 2019)
In another rally at Raiganj in North Dinajpur (West Bengal), Shah said, Illegal migrants are like termites and we will single out every Bangladeshi infiltrator in West Bengal and throw them out. We will give citizenship to all Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain refugees.� (Indian Express, April 12, 2019)
In another rally on Bongaon in West Bengal, Shah made it clear that the CAA is meant to be a safety net� for non-Muslims who get left out of the all-India NRC list: First we will pass the Citizenship Amendment bill and ensure that all the refugees from the neighbouring nations get the Indian citizenship. After that NRC will be made and we will detect and deport every infiltrator from our motherland.�
Should we not help refugees? I heard that the population of non-Muslims in Pakistan declined from 23% to 3% - surely we should help such persons?
During the debate on the Citizenship Amendment Bill in Parliament, Amit Shah claimed that population of religious minorities in Pakistan has declined from 23% in 1947 to 3.7% in 2011, thanks to ethnic cleansing. This is a lie. He said in Hindi: 1947 main Pakistan ke andar alpasankhyakon ki aabadi 23 pratishat thi, aur 2011 main wog ghat kar 3.7 pratishat ho gayi. Bangladesh main 1947 main aplsankhyakon ki aabadi 22 pratishat thi aur 2011 main wo kam ho kar 7.8 pratishat ho gayi. Kahan gaye ye log? Ya toh unka dharm parivartan hua. Ya wo maar diye gaye, ya bhaga diye gaye, ya Bharat aa gaye.�
A fact check found that:
1) Population of non-Muslims was never 23 per cent of Pakistan's total population.
2) Even in undivided Pakistan (i.e before Bangladesh was formed), the share of non-Muslim population never even touched the 15 per cent mark. (The highest was 14.2 per cent in 1951.)
3) When it comes to today's Pakistan (i.e. erstwhile West Pakistan), non-Muslims comprised 3.44 per cent of the region's population in 1951.
4) Census data show that share of non-Muslims in Pakistan has hovered around 3.5 per cent over the decades.� (No, Pakistan's non-Muslim population didn't decline from 23% to 3.7% as BJP claims, India Today, 12 December 2019)
Should India help refugees? Of course. But we should not distinguish between refugees based on religion.
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ahmadiyas and Hazaras face persecution though we see them as Muslim.� Rohingyas of Myanmar, Uighur Muslims of China, Tamils of Sri Lanka, are all oppressed people in our neighbourhood.
But when Partition happened, did Muslims not choose a separate nation, Pakistan? Congress accepted Partition then. If Pakistan is a Muslim nation should India not be a Hindu nation? Should Muslims not go to Pakistan?
This is what Amit Shah said in Parliament to defend CAA. But this is a lie. The two-nation theory (the theory that Hindus and Muslims are separate nations and cannot coexist) was first proposed by Savarkar, of the Hindu Mahasabha, in his 1923 manifesto, Hindutva - 26 years before Jinnah and the Muslim League did.
Later, at the 19th Session of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937, three years before Jinnah proposed the two-nation theory, Savarkar said:
There are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India, several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so. These were well meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. �India can not be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main : the Hindus and the Moslems, in India.�
- V. D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya : Hindu Rashtra Darshan, vol.6, Maharashtra Prantik Hindusabha, Poona, 1963, p.296.
The Congress did not accept the two-nation theory though they had to concede to the formation of Pakistan. India was thus formed as a secular nation with a secular Constitution, in which Muslims, Christians, Sikhs etc would have the same status as Hindus. Muslims who live in India today made a choice not to go to Pakistan, and to embrace India as their motherland.
The RSS never participated in the freedom struggle but it did participate fully in the large-scale communal violence during the Partition.
Narayan Bhaskar Khare of the Hindu Mahasabha was made prime minister of Alwar on April 18, 1947, as well as adviser to the state of Bharatpur. He presided over a large scale massacre of Meo Muslims, a distinctive Rajput Muslim community with a number of Hindu or Rajput practices.
A historian has noted: In July 1947, Alwar hosted a Hindu Mahasabha conference for the princely states. Soon, a small arms factory was set up in Alwar by Khare and another one in Bharatpur.
On June 18, 1947, there was a large-scale flight of Meos from Bharatpur to Alwar, and within Alwar to other tehsils. Mayaram has quoted a captain in the Alwar state army on the safaya (cleansing) as the killings were euphemistically termed, and shuddhi, (forced) conversions:
I was ADC to HH Tej Singh. We were with the RSS. It had been ordered to clear the state of Muslims. I was sent on special duty to Tijara. ��. I went ahead and posted the force on a hill ..� In the valley below were 10,000 Meos. We killed every man, all of them.�
Thereafter, in village after village, the army, accompanied by a shuddh squad, compelled Meos, if they wished to live, to eat a piece of pork and convert from Islam. The last battle was at Naugaonwa, a large Meo stronghold. We butchered them.� As the Meos fled, they were killed at every place: It took us more than two months, July, August, to clear the whole bloody area.�
Khare rejoiced: As a result, today there is not a single Muslim in the whole of the Alwar State� In this way, the Meo problem in the State which was troubling the State for several centuries has been solved at least for the time being.�
This is the same language as Hitler calling the genocide of Jews a Final Solution.�
When interviewed for the oral histories of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Khare exulted that RSS Moonje leader was pleased at this pogrom:
But Moonje was damn pleased with what I did to the Muslims of Alwar�. He called me to Nasik and embraced me�.More than anything else, what I did in Alwar and the way I broke the back of Muslims there pleased Dr Moonje immensely.�
Gandhi went to Mewat and persuaded 100,000 Meos to return to Alwar and Bharatpur. Nevertheless, census records show how the Muslim population which had been 26.2% of Alwar in 1941 and 19.2% of Bharatpur, dropped after the pogroms, conversions and flight, to 6% in both states. About two-thirds of their land was taken away.� (See Alwar's Long History of Hindutva Casts a Shadow Even Today, Kannan Srinivasan, The Wire, 29 January 2018. This piece quotes extensively from work by the historian Shail Mayaram)
Today the RSS and the BJP want another bloody Partition of India, more communal violence. Like the British Raj which the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha never opposed, the BJP today wants to divide and rule us.
What is NRC?
PM Modi and Amit Shah have on multiple occasions claimed that the NRC is a tool to identify and evict illegal immigrants.� PM Modi himself said this in his interview with Times Now in April 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffGW_keVL9A). Amit Shah, of course, said so on multiple occasions, some of which we have cited above.
In the face of protests, the BJP now says CAA will not affect citizens.� The issue here is: an all-India NRC will put the citizenship of every Indian in doubt! According to NRC, who is a citizen�? Who is an illegal immigrant�? The Government has as yet not clarified the criteria for these. But since the Assam NRC has already been conducted, it can give us a clue about what the all-India NRC will be like.
What was the Assam NRC experience?
According to the Assam NRC, only those people would be recognised as citizens who could show documents proving that
1) their ancestors entered India before 1971
2) they are are descended from those same ancestors
Naturally, showing documents to this effect was hugely difficult, especially for the poor, for women, for transgender people, for Dalits, for adivasis, for migrant labourers, and for people from vulnerable communities.
As a result, more than 19 lakh people have been left out of the Assam NRC list. These 19 lakh are not illegal immigrants� - they are Indians who lack documents linking them with ancestors. So the Assam NRC has resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis and tragedy. Moreover, no one is satisfied with the Assam NRC final list least of all the BJP. This painful process involving so much suffering has failed to separate milk and water�, failed to give any clarity or closure on who is an Indian and who is an illegal immigrant.� When the Assam NRC experience has ended in such a disaster, in spite of being conducted under Supreme Court supervision, why conduct it in the whole of India?
What would the cut-off date for an all-India NRC be?
The cut-off date for Assam was March 24, 1971 because of a special provision created by the Assam Accord, allowing people who entered Assam before the creation of Bangladesh on that date in 1971, to be considered citizens. The corresponding date for the rest of the country is July 19, 1948.
So would the cut-off date for an all-India NRC be July 19, 1948?
That is not clear. The Modi-Shah Government has been vague about the exact dates and details.
But we do know that while rejecting the Assam NRC final list, the central government and the Assam BJP leadership did state that the all-India NRC exercise would mean that a fresh NRC would be conducted in Assam also; that there must be one nation, one cut-off date�; and this all India cut-off date would be either 1971 or some year prior to 1971, such as 1966, 1961 or 1951.
A news report notes that Sources in the Union home ministry said the cut-off date for Assam NRC could be preponed from 1971 � the existing cut-off year in the recently concluded NRC. There can't be two separate mechanisms in one country. If all-India NRC happens then the same cut-off date, same process will be for Assam also, a government official said.� (Will 1971 Remain Cut-off for Assam? Centre Mulls Advancing Year Before Rolling Out Pan-India NRC, CNN News18, 21 November 2019)
Another report reported that the BJP Government in Assam wants the Centre to reject the final National Register of Citizens published on 31 August 2019, and to follow the same cut-off date (1951 instead of 1971) applicable to the rest of the country� for drawing up the Register afresh. (Assam final NRC boomerangs, The Telegraph, 21 November 2019)
But has the Central Government not clarified all-India NRC will not require documents like Assam NRC did?
In the wake of massive protests all over India, the Union Government released an unsigned clarification� in the form of a Q&A on the CAA and NRC (https://pibindia.wordpress.com/2019/12/20/q-a-on-nrc-national-register-of-citizens/).
In this clarification, the Government has claimed that there is absolutely no compulsion to submit any document by/of the parents� in the NRC, and proof of ones own birth will do. However, they keep an escape route open by adding that a decision is yet to be taken on the acceptable documents�!
The Government clarification� is lying. As a journalist noted in a fact-check, Currently, Indian law is based on citizenship less by birth and more by blood. Even if a person is born in India after December 3, 2004, she will only have Indian citizenship if both his parents are Indian or one is Indian and the other is not an illegal migrant. The criteria for anyone born in India between July 1, 1987, and December 3, 2004, is that at least one parents needs to be Indian. It is only before July 1, 1987, that a person born in India is Indian, irrespective of the citizenship status of his parents. Thus, for a person born after July 1, 1987, he will have to legally prove the citizenship status of either one or both parents. As a result, the governments clarification makes little sense. In fact, Assams National Register of Citizens needed people to prove, with documents, their link with their father or grandfather.� (Will NRC only target Muslims? A government clarification directly contradicts Amit Shah, Shoaib Daniyal, Scroll, 21 December 2019)
Moreover, the National Population Register form doing the rounds now has an extra column for date and place of parents birth. This is precisely so that doubtful citizens� can be identified based on NPR and asked to furnish documents under NRC. (more on this later)
Will documents like voter cards, passports, Aadhaar be enough for the NRC?
The Government clarification� claims that the the list of acceptable documents is likely to include voter cards, passports, Aadhaar, licenses, insurance papers, birth certificates, school leaving certificates, documents relating to land or home or other similar documents issued by government officials.�
But the Home Minister Amit Shah himself said in an interview with a news channel on 17 December 2019, that voter card and other government documents do not decide citizenship, Aadhaar does not decide citizenship at all.� (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNd792HSl_A&t=6s)
So it is clear that the Government is speaking in a forked tongue.
In any case, if voter i-card, Aadhaar card, driving licence etc are enough proof, why do these have to be submitted to the Government, when the Government is the one that has issued these documents?
In other words, why conduct an NRC� at all, if not to harass people?
So, when the BJP says they will evict infiltrators�, they mean any Indian who does not have certain documents? They could mean me or my child?
Yes.
In India, the poor do not even have documents to prove they are below poverty line� - as a result they are excluded from ration cards. Many poor people have been excluded from Aadhaar, as a result of which they have even died for lack of rations or pensions.
Now, the Government is threatening to exclude the poor from their right to belong to India!
In Assam, in the NRC exercise, more than 19 lakh people were left out of the NRC list, not because they are illegal immigrants� but because they are poor and lack documents. In many cases, wives are excluded while husbands are included, or a child is excluded while parents are included. The fate of those excluded is uncertain. Those excluded comprise a large number of Hindus, Muslims, adivasis, women, and migrant labour from other states.
If you are not on the NRC list, can you be imprisoned in detention camps?
Yes.
In Assam, if you are found to be a doubtful voter� by a Foreigners Tribunal, you could be detained indefinitely in a detention centre that is far worse than a jail.
The 19 lakh people left out of the NRC list in Assam face that fate, unless they can convince the Foreigners Tribunals that they are not illegal immigrants.
How is CAA linked to NRC?
As we saw above, CAA is designed to separate Muslim from non-Muslim immigrants; and treat the former as infiltrators� and the latter as refugees� entitled to apply for Indian citizenship.
As Amit Shah has said repeatedly in his speeches, the Citizenship Amendment Act is meant to act as a sieve to separate the Muslims left out of the NRC list from non-Muslims.
If you are a Muslim and not able to show documents proving you belong in the NRC list, you will lose your vote forever and be imprisoned in a detention centre which is worse than a jail.
If you are non-Muslim and are not able to show documents proving you belong in the NRC list, you may also be thrown in a detention centre and lose your vote. But the Modi-Shah Government is telling you that if you are a non-Muslim, CAA will allow you to claim you are a refugee� from Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Afghanistan, and apply for Indian citizenship, which you or may not be given after 6 years.
But if I am a worker from Bihar or TN or Karnataka how can I prove that I am a refugee from Pakistan? Moreover, why should I, an Indian, be asked to make such a claim?
But this so called safety net� or lifeline� for non-Muslims left out of NRC is a lie.
How will a Bihari migrant worker, an adivasi woman in Chhattisgarh or Gujarat or Rajasthan, or a farmer in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh claim and prove that they are a persecuted refugee from Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Afghanistan?
And it is an insult for the Government to ask Indians to prove they are Indians, or else claim they are refugees from Bangladesh or Pakistan or Afghanistan!
It is clear that the NRC+CAA has a diabolical anti-Muslim agenda. But if ones neighbours house is on fire, ones own house is also bound to burn. It is clear that the so-called CAA safety net for non-Muslims also is full of holes.
NRC+CAA makes us all unsafe and the only way to resist it is to unite across communities and religious identities to protect ourselves and our Constitution. United we stand, divided we fall!
The Government is saying CAA has nothing to do with NRC, and NRC has nothing to do with religion. I am confused, what is the truth?
Amit Shah himself has repeatedly explained how CAA is linked to NRC.
In a YouTube video uploaded on 23 April 2019 by the BJPs official channel, Amit Shah explained, First the CAB will come. All refugees will get citizenship. Then NRC will come. This is why refugees should not worry, but infiltrators should. Understand the chronology.� (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z__6E5hPbHg&feature=emb_title)
On 1 May 2019, his twitter handle tweeted, First we will pass the Citizenship Amendment bill and ensure that all the refugees from the neighbouring nations get the Indian citizenship. After that NRC will be made and we will detect and deport every infiltrator from our motherland.�
Tweeting about Amit Shahs Raiganj (West Bengal) speech, BJPs official Twitter handle said, We will ensure implementation of NRC in the entire country. We will remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddha (sic), Hindus and Sikhs.� This tweet makes it clear that NRC and CAA are linked to achieve a blatantly communal agenda. The BJP handle has now deleted this tweet!
But the Prime Minister Modi has made a speech in Delhi claiming that his Government has no NRC plans, that India has no detention centres and all this is fear-mongering by Urban Naxals?
At Ramlila Maidan in Delhi on 22 December 2019, Prime Minister Modi made a speech in which he spoke about the Citizenship Amendment Act, the National Register of Citizens and the ongoing protests against CAA-NRC. But what he claimed in his speech is disproved by his own statements, and those of his Minister, Amit Shah.
In his December 2019 speech Modi said:
After my government came into power, since 2014 till today, I want to tell the 130 crore countrymen that NRC word has not been discussed anywhere. We had to implement it in Assam only under the Supreme Courts direction.�
This is a lie. Modi himself has spoken about NRC several times during the 2019 Parliamentary elections, while the BJP manifesto also promised to conduct an NRC.
On 19 April 2019, in an interview to Times Now, Modi was asked about all-India NRC. He replied, Congress did Assam Accord and promised NRC, b
