India’s government moved abruptly Monday to implement a citizenship law that excludes Muslims from a naturalization fast track. It stoked massive protests and deadly riots when it passed in 2019.
The move came weeks ahead of a national election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to seek a third term.
The Citizenship Amendment Act provides non-Muslims from neighboring countries with a path to Indian citizenship. It applies to asylum claims filed by Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists, Jains and Christians from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who fled to the Hindu-majority India before 2015 — but not Muslims, who make up a majority in the three countries.
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Critics say a law that uses religion as a criterion for citizenship violates the secularism embraced by the country’s founders. The law, which Modi delayed implementing over the unrest it prompted, has stoked fears of the potential for a broader effort to strip citizenship from Muslims in India who lack documents.
The announcement by Modi’s government that it would begin to enforce the act nationwide drew cheers from Hindu nationalist groups in India and abroad. The groups see the law as a step in making India a sanctuary for Hindus and lending the Indian state a more explicitly religious character. The unrest so far has been relatively limited, compared with the bloodshed that erupted in 2019 over the measure.
During the protests four years ago, videos spread online of police assaulting students in a library at a Muslim-majority university in New Delhi. Two months later, deadly riots erupted as then-President Donald Trump visited the city. More than 50 people died, and more than 100 of those detained are still in jail, according to local media reports.
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The upheaval left the law’s fate in limbo. At the time, the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights had called the act “fundamentally discriminatory in nature and in breach of India’s international human rights obligations.”
In southern Tamil Nadu state, many ethnic Tamils have decried the fast-track program’s exclusion of Tamil Muslims who fled Sri Lanka. State leader M.K. Stalin, who hails from a Tamil political party, called the act divisive and said his state would not implement it. In northeast India’s Assam state, protests broke out over fears that a sudden influx of non-Muslim migrants from neighboring Bangladesh might change the local cultural fabric. On university campuses in New Delhi, which were hotbeds of protests in 2019, dozens of students were detained, largely as a preemptive measure, by police.
Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man and the powerful home minister who is set to oversee the program, argued that the act would only provide a home to those who are persecuted, not take citizenship away from others.
Opposition parties in the country have criticized Modi for ushering in the new act just before the election and accused his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of using divisive measures to appeal to Hindu voters. The BJP is widely expected to win in national elections to be held between April and May.
The government is seeking “polarization and distraction,” Sanjay Hegde, a lawyer who argues cases before India’s Supreme Court, said in an interview with journalist Barkha Dutt on Tuesday.
“Fundamentally, this is the objection to the CAA: That we are a country which does not have a preferred religion or a despised religion,” Hegde said.
Gerry Shih contributed to this report.