Biometric ID And Citizenship Solutions

Every human being has a right to being a citizen of this or that country. Statelessness is a human rights violation.

At one end the claim is being made that this bill will affect about 32,000 people who have sought asylum. But the protests point at something entirely different. There are a lot of illiterate citizens in India who have lived in the country for generations who do not have any kind of paperwork. Because in India's informal economy, no paperwork is necessary. The Muslims are disproportionately poor and are less likely to have paperwork despite having no other country. India is the only country they know. This bill along with the national effort to create a registry of all citizens can be used in ways so as to render tens of millions stateless at the stroke of a pen. That is the fear. And it is combustible.

That religious minorities face persecution in Pakistan, or Afghanistan or Bangladesh is not a reason why they should also face persecution in India. This is not about Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Bangladesh. This is about the fundamental character of India.

You start with the biometric ID. You don't ask for paperwork. You give them paperwork based on their biometric IDs. That should be the Indian way.

India is in a good position to take a political lead on this and make it a global issue to be tackled at many regional forums, and at the United Nations. The Indian national government should not embarrass itself by ill-thought measures that do not stand the shine of its own constitution.

India's Contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill
Has India Gone Crazy?

JUST IN | "Any decision on CAB will be taken after court gives verdict on its constitutional validity" says @OfficeofUT

— The Hindu (@the_hindu) December 15, 2019

India's Contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill

Has India Gone Crazy?

UN closely analysing possible consequences of Citizenship Amendment Bill: UN spokesperson The UN is closely analysing the possible consequences of India's amended Citizenship Act, a spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres has said.

India abandoning its founding principles with Citizenship Amendment Bill The purpose is to create, through law, a permanent threat to hang over every single Muslim head in India, writes Mihir S Sharma. ........ As with Trump’s “Muslim ban,” this law’s inability to hide its true intent is almost comic. Migrants fleeing religious persecution in the Muslim-majority countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are to be granted citizenship--but not those fleeing persecution in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka or Myanmar. It is the latter, of course, where there’s a genuine humanitarian crisis — but the Rohingya are Muslim, so by the BJP’s logic they cannot and do not deserve a place in the Hindu homeland of India. Hindus being murdered in Pakistan can flee to India — but not Shias, Baloch or Ahmedis, who are if anything currently even more at risk in that troubled country. Once aspiring to be as multicultural, secular and inclusive as other modern liberal democracies, India now looks less to those countries as its model and more to Israel, Pakistan or China........ But it would be a mistake to think this new citizenship law is only about migration and refugees and nebulous notions of national identity. It is far more immediate and insidious than that, particularly when seen in combination with the other big state project in border areas: a national register of citizens, or NRC, which demands that residents produce extensive documentation, sometimes going back decades, to prove their Indian citizenship. Naturally,

this exercise is particularly difficult for some of India’s poorest, who have little or no paperwork.

In the border state of Assam, millions were thrown into legal limbo when they were left off the NRC. ....... The purpose of the Citizenship Amendment Bill is simple:

when combined with the NRC, it can protect poor Hindus from the regulations that could render any poor Muslim a non-citizen at the stroke of an official’s pen.

The purpose is to create, through law, a permanent threat to hang over every single Muslim head in India: Don’t stand up for yourself, or we will set you the impossible task of proving that you are, in fact, Indian.......... Some people are puzzled that, in the midst of an economic slowdown that it has no idea how to combat, the government is instead spending enormous amounts of political capital on India’s variant of the Muslim ban. ........ India’s Partition, in which one country turned to religious nationalism and one to secular liberalism, is the largest such natural experiment in history. One country, Pakistan, headed down the road to disaster; the other, India, has managed to make something of itself. Who would have thought that the one with a chance of success would decide at this late stage to emulate its less successful twin?

Divide and win: How Citizenship Bill and NRC are BJP's next Ram Mandir

Fight is for India How Muslims are striving to keep it peaceful, inclusive and secular ...... The point they were trying to hammer home: the Muslims are not fighting for themselves but to preserve the idea of India. ...... When tyres were burnt in a minority-dominated locality in Calcutta in the afternoon, messages went out on social media hinting at “riots”. ...... “These protests are spontaneous, but I have requested them not to cause hardship to people as the people are the backbone of any form of protest,” said Mamata, who is planning movements from Monday against the “twin blows of NRC-CAB (as the bill was known before it was signed into law)”. ...... ordinary Muslims have been joining the protests out of a deep sense of fear.

Smells like a page from ‘Nazi’ copybook Parallels with Hitler Germany cited ...... The MP drew a parallel between the concentration camps of 1933 and the detention camps of 2018, before adding that 60 per cent of the people in those detention camps are Bengali Hindus........ The Reich Citizenship Law of 1935 protected those with German blood....... In Germany under the Nazis there was a plan, known as the Madagascar Plan, to deport the Jews. Now, the Indian government has the National Register of Citizens (NRC) ...... “And the last one, in the German copybook they referred to a very interesting word, ‘Jews’ as ‘rats’. And, as someone said, once powerful politicians start using dehumanising language, what happens after that, termites! What are we talking about today — termites, cockroaches, vermin. These words are not used by any party worker, but these words are being used by the Prime Minister and sometimes by the home minister,” he said.

Indians punish Corbyn over Kashmir
Shinzo Abe cancels Japan-India summit amid citizenship bill violence Narendra Modi's government has said its Citizenship Amendment Bill, making it easier for non-Muslim minorities from neighbouring countries to gain India citizenship, will protect those persecuted from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. ..... The United Nations human rights office voiced concern that the new law is "fundamentally discriminatory in nature", and called for it to be reviewed.

In India’s Citizenship Act, an eerie echo of Nazi Germany’s claims to protect ‘racial comrades’ The Nazis used moral concern over the plight of German minorities abroad to construct the idea of a racialised national polity that transcended boundaries. ........ worrying similarities with the rhetoric and policies of the German state between 1929-1940. ...... Germans constituted the largest ethnic minority in Eastern Europe at the time, spread over Czechoslovakia, Poland, Greece and parts of the USSR and the Balkans.The German state, the Weimar Republic succeeded by the Nazi state, tirelessly raised the issue of the oppression faced by German minorities in these states –claims that were rooted in reality. ....... In October 1933, the representative of the newly formed Nazi state to the League clarified that the German nation had “a natural and moral right to consider that all its members – even those separated from the mother country by state frontiers-constitute a moral and cultural whole”. Continuing the pursual of this policy after their withdrawal from the League, the Nazis claimed to protect their “racial comrades” either through invasion (Austria and Sudetenland) or via the acquisition of “trustee rights” in their Danubian client states that gave Germany, the “mother country”, the right to intervene to protect “the folk-group”. ..... In the words of a pan-German theorist: “Blood is stronger than the passport.” ....... Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan are constructed as helpless victims whom India must save from the tyranny of intolerant, Islamic theocratic states by easing the procedures of Indian citizenship for them. ...... rejecting the Joint Parliamentary Commission’s proposal to replace the list of groups with “persecuted minorities”, which could have included persecuted Muslims and Tamils from neighbouring countries. ....... Shah’s riposte also fails to address why the law does not extend to Myanmar or Sri Lanka – neighbouring states culpable for the systemic oppression of Rohingyas and Tamils respectively....... These exclusions tell us that the suffering of the Rohingyas, Sri Lankan Tamils or Ahmediyas does not matter to the Indian state. Akin to German policies in the 1930s, the objects of moral concern for the national community help articulate a racialised conception of the nation – the Hindu Rashtra......... Since they were not Hindus, Muslims and Christians would have to live as subordinate members of the Hindu political community, according to Savarkar.

In India, protests over new citizenship bill as Muslims fear further persecution A federal panel on religion has urged the United States to sanction India’s Home Minister Amit Shah if it passes. .......... India’s foreign ministry called the panel’s statement inaccurate, saying the bill seeks to help persecuted religious minorities already in the country. “It seeks to address their current difficulties and meet their basic human rights,” said ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar.

India's Citizenship Act gets challenged at the Supreme Court barely a day after passing Parliament
India is slowing down so fast that even experts can’t keep up
Citizenship bill is a triumph of the idea of India 'This bill is for the children of Partition who are still subject to inhuman barbarism because they profess a faith rooted in India.' ...... 'If India fails them, we shall be no better than a Pakistan which brutalises its minorities and has turned into a factory of intolerant bigots,' says former BJP MP Tarun Vijay. ....... It was quite revealing to hear Opposition leader after leader in Parliament opposing the bill, but none, absolutely none, had a word to say about the miseries and pains of suffering Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Buddhists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. ...... The bill does not stop any religious person from any country on this planet to seek asylum or shelter in India. The doors for them, Muslims or any other sect, remain open through Constitutional means. There are innumerable instances of people from all religious streams coming to India and choosing to stay here....... No one stops them. No one will ever stop them. India will remain the best place to live for those who love pluralism and democratic values......... This bill is for the children of Partition who are still subject to inhuman barbarism because they profess a faith rooted in India. ........ From Goa's inquisition to the selling of Hindu men and women in Iraq's slave market by Muslim conquerors and even recently, forcing them to leave their homes and orchards in the Kashmir valley by jihadists -- it is they who not only suffer the contempt of the Islamists for being practising Hindus, but are mocked at for raising their voice to seek help........ For Hindus and Sikhs, there is no other homeland in the world except Hindustan........ the Hindu population in Pakistan and now in Bangladesh has been continuously decreasing at an alarming rate. ....In Pakistan from 13% to 1% and less, and in Bangladesh from 22% in 1947 to 8% currently........... After centuries of subjugation, here is the first government that is speaking up for the rights of persecuted Hindus without harming any other people.

UN closely analysing possible consequences of Citizenship Amendment Bill: UN spokesperson According to the amended Act, members of Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 and facing religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship....... The Act says the refugees of the six communities will be given Indian citizenship after residing in India for five years, instead of earlier requirement of 11 years.

Indian president disregards protests, signs citizenship bill into law New law grants Indian citizenship for six minority religious groups, except Muslims ..... The party said the law is “prima facie communal” and questioned the exclusion of minorities such as Rohingya Muslims who were just as persecuted as other faiths listed in the law.

India’s citizenship bill puts secularism at risk The right is given to Christians — which cynics might suggest is aimed at fending off US criticism — but not Jews, or atheists. The act also ignores members of Muslim sects who do face discrimination in the three neighbouring countries, and Muslim refugees from elsewhere, such as Rohingyas from Myanmar and Uighurs from China. As such, it rekindles the two-nation theory — the idea of a Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India — that was rejected by the independence leader Mahatma Gandhi and India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. ......... Tens of millions of Indians still have no documentation; as late as 2005-2006, only 40 per cent obtained birth certificates and even now only 80 per cent of babies are registered at birth. Replicating the Assam process nationwide could leave huge numbers off the register. The citizenship amendment law, however, would provide a path to citizenship for followers of “Indic” religions — but not Muslims. Amit Shah, the home minister, has repeatedly pledged to introduce an NRC across the country.

He has also pledged that illegal migrants will be deported before India’s 2024 parliamentary election.

........... India’s courts might yet strike down the amendment as unconstitutional. Judicial challenges are likely to take years, however, by which time severe damage might already have been done. ........ If Mr Modi’s government is serious about protecting immigrants, it should sign the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention — which asserts refugees should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to life or freedom, but to which India is not a party.

Asaduddin Owaisi files petition in Supreme Court against citizenship bill The Hyderabad lawmaker, who had torn the copy of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Parliament, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Centre’s move.

Owaisi had alleged the bill was aimed at making Muslims “stateless”. He also warned that it would lead to another partition

during the debate in the Lok Sabha.

Citizenship Amendment Bill: Are India's claims about minorities in other countries true? Census data for 1998 shows that the Hindu population of Pakistan (which was formerly west Pakistan) had not really changed significantly from its 1951 level of around 1.5 to 2%. ....... But the data also suggests that the Hindu population of Bangladesh did fall - from around 22% or 23% in 1951 to around 8% in 2011. ...... It's true that the state religion of Pakistan is Islam. Afghanistan is also an Islamic state......... A lengthy legal battle to get that reversed ended in 2016 when Bangladesh's top court ruled that Islam should remain the state religion....... all these countries have constitutional provisions stating that non-Muslims have rights and are free to practise their faith. And individual Hindus have risen to prominent positions in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, notably as chief justices in the two countries......... In practice, non-Muslim minorities do face discrimination and persecution........Pakistani Hindus who moved to India in recent years told the BBC they face social and religious discrimination, with a particular issue being the targeting of Hindu girls in Sindh province...... In Bangladesh, there are various reasons for the decline in the proportion of Hindus over the years. The better-off Hindu population have had their homes and businesses targeted, sometimes in attempts to get them to leave so their land or assets can be taken over. Hindus have also been the targets of attacks by religious militants......... According to UN data, the number of refugees in India went up by 17% between 2016-19. As of August this year, the biggest numbers registered with the UN were actually from Tibet and Sri Lanka.

What does India's new citizenship law mean? The law does not clarify why minority migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan are favored over those fleeing Sri Lanka and Myanmar from where minority Muslims have sought refuge in India. ....... The law has been challenged in India’s Supreme Court by a Muslim political party, lawyers and rights groups on the grounds that it violates the secular constitution......... More than 500 eminent Indian jurists, lawyers, academics and actors, have signed a statement condemning the legislation.

Secularism Is Dying in India Both houses of parliament have passed a controversial citizenship bill that excludes Muslims.
India: Citizenship Bill Discriminates Against Muslims
Opinion: India's new citizenship act is unconstitutional Indian citizenship has always been firmly rooted in the country's constitution, which emphasizes equality, regardless of gender, caste, religion, class, community or language. ....... The recently approved Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) does exactly the opposite. It violates every one of these fundamental values and spreads the wings of "Hindutva," or Hindu nationalism, in this so-called secular country by making religion the key to citizenship. ...... The NRC in the northeastern state of Assam has already excluded nearly 2 million people from Indian citizenship. This has demonstrated the terrible human costs of dividing people and linking citizenship to documentation in a country where many people are illiterate and lack the proper papers....... Persecuted people have suffered atrocities, broken families and statelessness, among other hardships. It's also true for Muslims........

The new citizenship act shows us that India needs a refugee policy in line with international law, and not a law based on discrimination and dictated by an ideology that makes use of religion for political gains.

..... If things continue at this pace, it will not be long before the fundamental pluralistic character of India is altered.

Citizenship Amendment Bill: Decoding, what it holds for India "The constitutions of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh provide for a specific state religion. As a result many persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities have faced persecution on grounds of religion in those countries. Some of them also have fears about such persecution in their day-to-day life where right to practice, profess and propagate their religion has been obstructed and restricted. Many such persons have fled to India to seek shelter and continued to stay in India even if their travel documents have expired or they have incomplete or no documents," the Bill states........ Among the main opposition against the Bill is that it is said to be violative of Article 14 of the Constitution — the Right to Equality. Congress, Trinamool Congress, CPI(M) and a few other political parties have been steadfastly opposing the bill, claiming that citizenship can't be given on the basis of religion. There has also been widespread protests across North East in Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim........... there are 31,313 persons belonging to these minority community living in India on Long Term Visa...... Home Minister Amit Shah in Parliament said the bill will give a new dawn to lakhs and crores of people. Parties like Shiv Sena have been asking for an exact number. As per the IB records the numbers are -

Hindus 25,447, Sikhs 5,807, Christians 55, Buddhists 2 and Parsis 2.