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Business News/ Opinion / Columns/  Opinion | Critics of the anti-CAA protests should widen their perspective
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Opinion | Critics of the anti-CAA protests should widen their perspective

Protesters do not lack compassion for Hindus persecuted elsewhere. Rather, their humanism is broader and more inclusive

The CAA is flawed because it is based on the premise that specific identity-based persecution is always worse than other forms of ill treatment. (PTI)Premium
The CAA is flawed because it is based on the premise that specific identity-based persecution is always worse than other forms of ill treatment. (PTI)

Of all the misinformed criticisms aimed at the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters in India who are singing the national anthem, reciting the preamble of the Constitution and waving the tricolour, the most disingenuous is the assertion that they want to block persecuted Hindus from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan from getting Indian citizenship. Supporters of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act have made that false claim, and then, with self-righteous zeal, argued that they care for human rights more than the protesters. Irony dies again.

The anti-CAA protesters do not lack compassion for persecuted Hindus. Rather, their humanism is broader and more inclusive. They embrace everyone who is persecuted; they do not wish to cherry-pick, which is what the CAA does. It is blissfully ignorant or cold-heartedly cynical to argue that because Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim-majority countries, only narrowly-defined religious minorities in those countries face persecution.

To be sure, there are other major concerns about the CAA, such as its potential link with the National Register of Citizens, which has unnerved many Indians because of the difficulty that Muslims without proper paperwork may face in proving their bona fides as citizens. Until time-consuming processes are completed, they may face the prospect of being taken to detention centres, which are reported to have been built in some states. That is discriminatory and unjust. So is the CAA, which allows some refugees to get fast-track citizenship. It is flawed because it is based on the premise that specific identity-based persecution is worse than other forms of persecution.

Our religious identity is typically assigned to us by our parents, and by society, after we are born. As infants and children, we are not aware of that identity, except what we have acquired and learned from our elders, or through imitation and/or indoctrination, and, over time, it could become conviction for many. But not all.

In The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie writes:

“Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief

Doubt….."

Stressing the power of reason, he adds:

“To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent."

The woman who wants to defy society by going to work or study; the man who loves another man; the community that looks different, dresses differently, cooks differently, than the mainstream does; the family that chooses to speak in their own language and not the one the state calls the national language; the writer who questions the existence of God—they are all dissenters. India’s new, narrow definition won’t recognize any of them as persecuted.

No refuge then for Junaid Hafeez, the Pakistani academic sentenced to death on spurious blasphemy charges in Pakistan, were he to flee Pakistan and seek asylum in India. Neither would the rationalist writer Bonya Ahmed qualify, were she to seek it. She was physically attacked in Dhaka (and her husband Avijit Roy hacked to death) in 2015, but as a “free thinker," “rationalist," “atheist" or “with a Muslim name" she does not fall under the categories of chosen ones that the Indian government has created for special dispensation. Hers is a hypothetical example, as she is a US citizen, but I personally know several other courageous Bangladeshi bloggers, artists and writers, who have defied religion and the state in that country. Being nominally Muslim, many won’t qualify under this law. Besides, in Pakistan, there are Ahmadis and Shias, and there are gays and lesbians in all three countries. Nor would Sri Lankan Tamils qualify, some of whom may be Muslim, and who may face persecution in Sri Lanka. And certainly not Rohingyas from Myanmar, who present a clear case of religion-based persecution. And with rising sea levels, vast parts of Bangladesh will get submerged some day, which could result in a refugee crisis of a scale which would make 1971 seem like a dress rehearsal. What will India do then? Send the boats back? Check their papers? Insist they aren’t refugees?

The CAA is based on a fundamentally dubious premise and offers a discriminatory remedy. And it picks a fight with Bangladesh, among the few nations in the region with which the Indian government hasn’t yet worsened bilateral relations.

There is a simple solution: If the government is genuinely committed to providing refuge to the persecuted, it should offer a general amnesty with a path to eventual citizenship to anyone who has been persecuted anywhere on grounds identified under the refugee convention. True, India has not signed the refugee convention, but until 2014, India abided by its provisions, including the provision of non-refoulement—that is, not sending back refugees to a place where they are likely to face persecution. That is how Tibetans, Afghans, Chins, Rohingyas and Kachins from Myanmar, Tamils from Sri Lanka, and East Pakistanis who became Bangladeshis have made their way into India, and the country has let them in. That is consistent with a tradition of hospitality and generosity for which India was known until recently. By moving away from those ideals, India diminishes itself, and it is that undermining of an Indian ideal that the protesters are opposing so vehemently.

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in New York. Read Salil’s previous Mint columns at www.livemint.com/saliltripathi

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Published: 26 Dec 2019, 09:57 PM IST
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