Say No to CAA-NRC-NPR!
Stand with the People of Ladakh!
After a gap of 4 years since the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019, the Ministry of Home Affairs suddenly notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules (CAR), 2024 on 11th of March. At a time when the ruling BJP is trying hard to ensure a third term in their favour, a nationwide ramping up of communal conflicts and polarisation is underway. From the Ram Mandir consecration to the notification of the CAR, it is all a part of the project of Hindu Rashtra.
The CAA ostensibly claims to provide citizenship to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians fleeing persecution from India’s Muslim-majority neighbours – namely, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh – and who arrived in India before 2015. It conspicuously omits any mention of persecuted Muslim communities from these very countries or even the Rohingyas from Myanmar who are facing genocide. One does not even expect this government to take cognisance of any persecuted communities not following these organised religions of course.
Back in 2019, when CAA was passed by the parliament, there was a wave of mass protests across the nation. The public pressure was so intense that the government was forced to back off from immediate implementation of the Act. There was severe state repression on activists particularly through a series of UAPAs slapped in connection with the Delhi pogrom that was meticulously planned and executed by the saffron brigade. This time the state high-handedness has been almost immediate. Student activists in Delhi, Lucknow, and even Kerala were detained, arrested, and slapped with cases for coming out in
protest against the CAA. Just 4 days after the CAR announcement on 11th, on 16th, the election dates were announced by the Election Commission of India, virtually putting the model code of conduct in place. On that very day, an anti-CAA protest was planned in Bangalore that had to be cancelled upon pressure from the police. Clearly, the announcement of the CAR was done at a time to ensure that even protests with police permissions become difficult to execute with the added burden of having to get it approved by the EC.
The otherisation of Muslims, relegating them to second class citizenship has reached a fever-pitch in India. The CAA-NRC combine is intended to give it a legal stamp. With the help of this combine the Modi government intends to reduce a section of the Muslim population into a people without rights. People without rights can be exploited in any which way, most prominently as miserably cheap labourers. It is important to remember that many of the workers involved in building massive detention camps meant to hoard ‘illegal’ humans in Goalpara of Assam were left out of the state-level NRC in 2019. Even Hindu BJP workers got left out! The Assam government was also advised by the union government to free all non-Muslims from the neighbouring countries from these detention centres in 2020. Depending on the outcome of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the nation is probably on the brink of witnessing the RSS versions of the Auschwitz, Dachau etc. Laughably, the CAA helpline recently stated that “any local pujari (priest) can be asked to issue it (eligibility certificate to avail CAA)”. It is to be noted that the Assam experiment has shown, the NRC exercise will cause
tremendous harassment for people irrespective of their identities. Recently, a youth named Debasish Sengupta (37) died by suicide in Bengal due to extreme stress caused by the CAR notification.
The CAA has received widespread criticism, including from international quarters. “As we said in 2019, we are concerned that CAA is fundamentally discriminatory in nature and in breach of India’s international human rights obligations.” a spokesperson of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told Reuters. Amnesty International said the CAA is a “blow to the Indian constitutional values of equality and religious non-discrimination and inconsistent and incompatible with India’s international human rights obligations”.
At this very moment, Manipur continues to burn. A sizable portion of the Ladakhi population has come out on the streets demanding statehood from the Union government. Buddhist groups from Ladakh and Muslim groups from Kargil have come together to demand statehood despite having a history of suffering the state’s divide-and-rule policy over the abrogation of article 370 back in 2019. Spark extends solidarity to the people of Ladakh fighting for their just demands! This fire of assertion where communities come together irrespective of their identities is the only antidote to this divisive Hindutva regime. Let everyone unite on the basis of an aspiration for true democracy, towards a society that can ensure basic needs sans all discrimination based on identities. There is no other way out of this dire situation.
