Tuesday, December 17, 2019

India Citizenship Bill Debate (2)

India Citizenship Bill Debate
Biometric ID And Citizenship Solutions
India's Contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill
2019 Photos
Has India Gone Crazy?

The bill could have been specific, like Minority Refugees From Afghanistan, Pakistan And Bangladesh Act 2019. That would have meant this bill is nothing to do with the 200 million Muslims in India who are citizens, whether or not they have papers. And the government could have in the aftermath given specific numbers like, we think about 30,000 or 300,000 or three million people will qualify under this.

That specificity would still have raised questions. Why only these three countries? Why not all neighboring countries? Why not Nepal? Sri Lanka? Bhutan? Burma? Maldives? What about Muslim minorities from the three countries? And they would have been valid questions. But at least the 200 million Muslim citizens of India would have not been part of the question.

But right now the protests roiling the nation are putting two and two together and crying four. There is the government attempt to create a national registry of citizens, apparently for the first time. I can see the point behind such a registry. A country has to know who its citizens are. But then to that you add a bill comprehensively called the Citizenship Amendment Bill, and a lot of people are seeing this as an attempt not to welcome foreign refugees, but to mass detain millions of legitimate Muslim citizens of India who know no other country. This is no minor blind spot.

There might be religious persecution in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. There are those who say there is religious persecution inside India. There have been lynchings in recent years, a new phenomenon in Indian politics.

Citizenship is a major issue in Nepal, and it is a Hindu majority country. The southern plains of Nepal were part of India when the Mughals ruled Delhi. Then the British gifted that belt to Nepal in reward for the Nepali help to put down the 1857 mutiny. Millions of people in that belt to this day are denied Nepali citizenship for being "Indian origin." And India helplessly watches, even though it claims it has better relations with Nepal than any other country. What gives?

Religious persecution in neighboring countries can not be made an internal matter of India. It requires supra-national efforts.

Being welcoming of refugees is a good policy for every nation. But I don't get the impression the protests are anti-refugee. The protesters largely fear the bill will be used to carry out large scale religious persecution inside India.

India can not become a global power with such small-mindedness.

And in the backdrop you have a tanking economy. To many the whole exercise feels like a diversion from that tanking economy.





India citizenship law protests: All the latest updates Supreme Court delays hearing of pleas challenging the new law to January 22 amid widespread protests across the country. ....... Protests against India's new citizenship law have spread across the country as 200 million Muslims fear the legislation is part of the Hindu nationalist government's agenda to marginalise them. ...... In the northeastern parts of India, the protests are mainly against allowing any "foreign migrant" from Bangladesh - irrespective of religion - to settle in the region....... On December 15, more than 100 students were injured and dozens arrested after police stormed New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), located 130km (81 miles) from the capital, to disperse the protests against the contentious law........... India's Supreme Court has refused to stall the implementation of the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which has triggered massive protests across the country. ...... The court sent a notice to the federal government, asking it to respond to nearly 60 petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the law. The next hearing will be held on January 22, Reuters news agency said......... The petitioners argue that religion cannot be the basis of granting citizenship to undocumented migrants. The new law, they say, is against the secular principles of India's constitution.......... India's main opposition Congress party and the Asom Gana Parishad party, an ally of the ruling BJP in Assam state, are among those who have filed the petitions. .......... In the country's north, police said 113 people were detained for objectionable social media posts after violent demonstrations there....... A delegation of opposition leaders, led by Congress party's interim president Sonia Gandhi, has met Indian President Ram Nath Kovind over the Jamia Millia Islamia violence......... "We have an example in Delhi where police entered Jamia women's hostel and dragged them out [and] mercilessly beat students," Gandhi told reporters .......... Addressing an election rally in poll-bound Jharkhand state, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said the opposition parties are "urban naxals firing off your [protesting students'] shoulders". ........ "Urban naxals" is usually used by India's right-wing forces to describe activists working on tribal and minority rights......... Leader of the Congress party, Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of interim president Sonia Gandhi and sister of senior party leader Rahul, sat for a protest at the India Gate war memorial in New Delhi against the police crackdown on student campuses....... "The prime minister should answer what happened at the university yesterday. Whose government beat up the students?" .........

Bangladesh's Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has said his government has asked India for information on undocumented Bangladeshis so they could be repatriated

...... "The Indian government has been telling us repeatedly that they aren't pushing anyone into Bangladesh. We asked them to inform us about anyone living there illegally. We have a standard procedure for this issue. They will be repatriated as per the procedure," he told journalists in Dhaka........... Prime Minister Modi blamed vested interest groups for "creating the disturbance".

"I want to unequivocally assure my fellow Indians that CAA [Citizens Amendment Act] does not affect any citizen of India of any religion... This Act is only for those who have faced years of persecution outside and have no other place to go except India," he tweeted.

....... "The CAB [Citizenship Amendment Bill, now a law] and NRC [National Register of Citizens] are

weapons of mass polarisation

unleashed by fascists on India. The best defence against these dirty weapons is peaceful, non-violent Satyagraha [insistence on truth]," tweeted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. "I stand in solidarity with all those protesting peacefully against the CAB & NRC."



Has India's Narendra Modi gone too far with controversial new citizenship law? Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indian government has stripped the country's only Muslim-majority state of autonomy and rolled out a citizenship check in the northeastern state of Assam that effectively left nearly 2 million people stateless, many of them Muslims. ........ And when Modi backed the passage of a controversial new citizenship law, which prioritizes immigrants from three Muslim-majority countries of virtually every religious stripe over Islam, protests broke out across India. ........ To Modi's critics, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) -- which fast-tracks applications for immigrants, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who arrived in India before 2015 -- has become

the most brazen example of a Hindu nationalist agenda aimed at marginalizing Indian Muslims

. ...... Since the law passed through both houses of Parliament last week, demonstrations have swept university campuses in at least nine states. Protesters have taken to the streets across Assam and Tripura over fears that large numbers of Hindus, who migrated to the region in the past few decades, will now be able to get their citizenship fast-tracked. Many there fear it will dramatically recast the religious and ethnic makeup of the northeastern states -- home to 200 distinct indigenous groups. .......

critics are worried it might pave the way for nationwide citizenship tests, stripping the rights of Muslims who have lived in India for generations but cannot prove their family's lineage -- turning countless people stateless.

........ Home Minister Amit Shah has repeatedly said that the government will roll out a national citizenship registry. ...... Modi tried to reassure the public on Monday, saying on Twitter that the new law "does not affect any citizen of India of any religion." And that "no Indian has anything to worry" about....... But when a citizenship registry took place in Assam earlier this year it left 1.9 million people off a list of Indian citizens. The government said at the time that no one would be declared a foreigner if they are not on the list, but that failed to temper concerns........ What is at stake is "the future of liberal democracy in India," Vaishnav said. "And it looks like a side, which has been asleep or at least silent, has really woken up and made sure that their voices are being heard." ...... The protests are sure to have caught Modi -- who has developed a reputation for being a Teflon premier -- somewhat off guard. ..... As protests roiled the country over the weekend, the government shut down the internet in several affected states in a bid to maintain law and order........ in spite of mounting grievances, analysts think it is unlikely that the BJP will scrap the law. "Modi still remains, head and shoulders, the most popular politician in India" ......

India lacks a foreplan for what comes next. Its detention centers do not have the capacity needed to house "millions of people that could potentially be caught up," if a nationwide citizenship check is rolled out

...... there appears to be no existing talks with neighboring countries, like Bangladesh, on the issue of deportation ....... "Are you going to see large numbers of Muslims detained or lose their citizenship? It is a game of wait and see."

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India Citizenship Bill Debate



The bill is roiling the nation. It is a volatile situation. Some of those defending the bill are saying this will not impact the 200 million Muslims in India, this will only impact about 30,000 refugees from the named three countries. If that is true, why is that point not being emphasized? The communication is faulty. The bill's language itself is faulty. The bill's name is faulty. The name is too comprehensive to give that kind of meaning.

Biometric ID And Citizenship Solutions
India's Contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill
2019 Photos
Has India Gone Crazy?

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Is The Trade War Over?

Having a leader who is neither trusted by our erstwhile friends nor feared by our foreign rivals reduces our global influence in ways we’re just starting to see. Trump’s trade war didn’t achieve any of its goals, but it did succeed in making America weak again.
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Sunday, December 15, 2019

Bloomberg's Political "Innovation:" Money Heavy

"Money talks."
-- Mike Bloomberg

‘Mayors for Mike’: How Bloomberg’s Money Built a 2020 Political Network Michael Bloomberg is relying on powerful city leaders as allies in his presidential campaign. Several have received grants, training and support packages totaling millions from his foundation. ...... Mr. Tubbs had reason to feel kinship with Mr. Bloomberg. Last year, he graduated from a mayoral training program that Mr. Bloomberg sponsors at Harvard University. Mr. Tubbs had attended a conference co-sponsored by Mr. Bloomberg’s philanthropic foundation in Paris in 2017, and was featured in its 2018 annual report. And this past June, Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation donated $500,000 to an education reform group based in Stockton, a struggling inland city in Northern California......... Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has assets totaling $9 billion, has supported 196 different cities with grants, technical assistance and education programs worth a combined $350 million. Now, leaders in some of those cities are forming the spine of Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign: He has been endorsed so far by eight mayors — from larger cities like San Jose, Calif., and Louisville, Ky., and smaller ones like Gary, Ind., representing a total of more than 2.6 million Americans............

the extraordinary nature of Mr. Bloomberg’s candidacy

...... After an onslaught of self-funded television ads, he reached 5 percent support in two national polls this week........... Mr. Bloomberg is one of the richest people in the world, with a net worth estimated at more than $50 billion....... “Unlike Donald Trump, Mike Bloomberg has a real foundation that does real work addressing people’s serious needs ........ One graduate of the Bloomberg program at Harvard is a leading opponent in the presidential race — Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., whose city also received $1 million from a Bloomberg program in 2018.



To skip the first four contests entirely, that is something. That has never been attempted before.

When you are Mayor of NYC, you are already holding the second most high profile political office in the land.

He was a Democrat. Then he was a Republican. Then he was an Independent. Now he is a Democrat. The claim to being "basically nonpartisan" rings true.

He is formidable. No doubt. As to how this will play out, we will just have to wait and see.

Mike Bloomberg’s money buys him a very different kind of campaign. And it’s a big one. After two weeks in the presidential race, Mike Bloomberg now employs one of the largest campaign staff rosters, has spent more money on ads than all the top-polling Democrats combined and is simultaneously building out ground operations in 27 states........ with the Bloomberg campaign, it is not at all clear what established rules apply, if any. Everything he is doing is so unlike what has been done for decades that it is difficult to decipher how voters will react............ Rather than focus on the early states, he is campaigning for votes deep in the 2020 calendar, in places where voters are less tuned in to the nominating process. Rather than worry about a budget, he has put no limit on the money he is prepared to spend. Rather than run in a Democratic primary by appealing to ideological die-hards or partisan flag bearers, he describes himself as “basically nonpartisan.” ........ As a former three-term New York mayor, he comes to the race with more executive governing experience and has represented more voters than most of his competitors, as well as a philanthropic record he has emphasized in campaign ads while pushing several core liberal priorities, including increased gun regulation and the reduction of carbon pollution. His campaign message is focused on his own competence and electability............ no one has ever run a national primary campaign since Kennedy in 1960.” ........ there are hundreds of staff members working remotely or out of the temporary campaign headquarters in one of Bloomberg’s Beaux-Arts limestone mansions on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where the blinds rise and fall with time of day, the food is free ......... The campaign has been offering field organizers salaries of $6,000 a month, a 70 percent premium from the going rate of $3,500 paid by the campaigns of ........ and Gary Briggs, a former top marketing executive for Facebook and Google......... Since his campaign launch on Nov. 24, Bloomberg has spent or reserved about $60 million in television and radio ads, with no sign of slowing down. Taken together, the top four polling Democrats in the race — former vice president Joe Biden; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sanders and Warren — have spent about $28 million on similar ads all year.......... He has also purchased $4.6 million of Google ads ...... On Facebook, his spending over the past week ran at more than $170,000 a day, 2½ times the level of President Trump’s reelection campaign and about three times more than Tom Steyer, the other billionaire Democrat seeking the nomination. All of his digital ads are focused on increasing his support and recruiting staff........... When he entered in November, he decided to skip the first four contests, which tend to pick presidential nominees by showing early momentum and redirecting the national focus.......... Instead, his operation is aimed at the 25 states that will award nearly two-thirds of the available convention delegates over a 15-day period that begins March 3........

it is something no one has ever tried to do before.”

......... Rival Democratic strategists remain skeptical of the effort, as they focus on finding a way for their candidates to catch fire in the early states. Bloomberg’s campaign skills are rusty ....... The Trump campaign, by contrast, has chosen to attack Bloomberg early, with Trump tweeting about “Mini Mike Bloomberg” and announcing he would bar reporters for Bloomberg’s eponymous news organization from his campaign events....... Through the Bloomberg campaign and a separate anti-Trump digital effort he is funding, a campaign adviser said, Bloomberg has already spent more than $8.3 million in television and digital ads in six core swing states: Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina............ since then, Bloomberg, who has always cast himself as a competent manager able to build and run large organizations, decided that Biden and the rest of the field were not up for the job of beating Trump........ “He is not afraid of them winning,” said Howard Wolfson, another top political adviser. “He is afraid they are not going to win.” ......... In 2018, he said, he gave away $767 million. Recipients have included groups such as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, smoking-cessation efforts and a number of grant projects for cities and mayors around the country........

Bloomberg used the platform to assail Trump — saying he was the only New York billionaire in the race

....... “The way I see it, Texas is the biggest battleground state, and I’m going to fight like hell to win its 38 electoral votes,” Bloomberg said.



P.S. I got to meet him once. Him, and one other billionaire standing next to him. This was an event at the Bloomberg Foundation on the Upper East Side where the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman was the featured speaker. Curiously the person I talked to most at the event was Arianna of the Huffington Post, a sleep specialist and crusader.



Late in 2015, I wrote a long memo that I dropped off in person at that same location urging him to run. About 20 pages.
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Trade War: US, EU, China, Japan

The trade war is a proven recipe for a global recession or worse and possible political mayhem. Trump's trade war with the EU bores ill for global trade because the EU has none of the China issues, supposedly. Bilateral trade is a primitive concept. It is like ditching digital money and going back to silver coins.

A global depression would create a new wave of fascism across the planet. Irrationality will come to rule.

The only hope is that all this saber-rattling is posturing and will soon give way to common sense. But there are no such signs yet on the horizon.

The idea that every country and every group of countries have been unfair to the US on trade ...... the whole idea of "fair trade" has been that the US has been unfair to the rest of the world, especially to the poorest countries. Racist white nationalism will also have you believe that you feel sorry for the whites because they have suffered so much from racism.

Brexit? Aexit?

The sensible thing to do would be to attempt WTO reform. Killing the WTO takes us back to the 1930s. So far the global economy's resilience built through trade has held. But that resilience can stretch only so much.

Trump's trade temper tantrums are insanely destructive. And his traditionally pro-trade party is going all the way with him. It is strange. This might not be the first time politics trumps sound economic theory.

A trade war with Europe would be larger and more damaging than Washington’s dispute with China Data from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative shows that in 2018, the U.S. imported $683.9 billion of EU goods and $557.9 billion from China. ..... There have already been tariffs on European steel and aluminum — which led the bloc to impose duties of 25% on $2.8 billion of U.S. products in June 2018, and, there’s an ongoing dispute regarding Airbus and Boeing — but experts believe a wider spat with Europe would be much more damaging than the current tit-for-tat with China. ....... “In 2018, the U.S. exported more than three times more to the EU than to China,” Hense said, adding that the region could therefore hit back hard against Washington. ..... “The rules of international trade, which we have developed over the years hand-in-hand with our American partners, cannot be violated without a reaction from our side” ...... Both economies are slowing down, and the cyclical effect of the tariffs is likely to be pretty strong ..... Speaking at the U.S. Senate in mid-July, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that “crosscurrents, such as trade tensions and concerns about global growth, have been weighing on economic activity and the outlook.” .......

the business models of multinational firms is in danger as a result of a potential U.S.- EU trade war

...... “Much of the (EU-U.S.) trade takes place within firms rather than between them … (as a result) when you impose tariffs between the U.S. and Europe, you end up raising the prices for consumers and complicating the way goods are assembled in both places, as in the U.S.-China case, but you also end up disrupting the profitability of the business models for large multinationals,” he said. ...... “Since many, if not most of those large multinationals are American, this is going to put a further drag on the U.S. economy” ....... “A trade war between the U.S. and Europe would be more challenging than a trade war between the U.S. and China because it would weaken U.S. multinationals, reduce the size of the markets U.S. firms can access, and create incentives for U.S. firms to divest from their foreign assets and so unleash further foreign competition”.....“In other words, it would undo all the structural advantages that successive U.S. administrations created since the end of the Second World War”

How Trump May Finally Kill the WTO

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Saturday, December 14, 2019

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?

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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.
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