There is no doubt that that nationwide, there is gathering storm against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA)2019 among religious minorities including free thinkers and intellectuals. All that the government had said in defence of the CAA are at best vague pretensions of CAA being a‘humanitarian act for persecuted minorities(illegal immigrants)’ but falls apart when the act of ‘humanitarianism’ openly and un-humanitarianly excludes Muslims from being granted Indian citizenship. In Delhi, while Modi was playing host to visiting US president Donald Trump, the mood was marred by violence that spilled out in parts of Delhi on Sunday and worsened on the eve of the departure of Trump on Tuesday.Serious accusations of police biasness, even to the point of complicity was hurled against Delhi Police from various spectrum. This is not the first time that the Delhi Police has been under scanner for its biased handling of protests beginning from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) to Shaheen Bagh and at several protests against CAA in Delhi.Till date,the toll in Delhi since Sunday has risen to 20 and is likely to climb as many among the nearly 200 suffered serious injuries.Videos purportedly showing either passivity or even complicity of police in favouring the pro-CAA mobs is shocking. The other is the ruling party’s strategy of combating anti-CAA protests with hate speeches by its leaders and with counter pro-CAA demonstrations. Any sane person knows that these are sure recipes for violent clashes. There are many ways that CAA is being seen, depending from which prism one looks through. The CAA seeks to grant Indian citizenship to illegal Bangladeshi Hindu immigrants (who are not even classed as refugees who fled due to religious persecution); if they can produce any document and claim they have been in India for five years (on or before December 31, 2014) as per CAA instead of the conditions of the previous Citizenship Act 1955 of eleven years and the Assam Accord (on or before March 24,1971). Since the CAA is clearly against “illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants”, Muslims in general would soon be compelled to prove their Indian citizenship on the basis of National Register of Citizens (NRC).In Assam the NRC left out nearly 20 lakh Indian citizens who could not prove their citizenship through documents. The biasness in the motive behind NRC went too far that after it failed to disqualify suspected Bangladeshi Muslims in Assam, there is a move to throw it to the dustbin and restart the process. The National Population Register (NPR) is a database of people living in India. The protests against CAA is not unfounded given the fact that the motive of the government in steamrolling the controversial Act remains opaque.Even India’s economic slowdown and rise of hate speeches that have shocked free nations, don’t seem to matter for the Centre but CAA. Therefore, suspicions arise despite the assurance that CAA will not take away anyone’s citizenshipsince it had been exposed by the Assam NRC. The other factor that has generated deep suspicion are the roles played by police forces in UP where BJP is in power and Delhi where police is under the union home ministry. Perhaps it is all about the agenda to divide and conquer which has made religious minorities apprehensive about rising majoritarianism that could well change the spirit of India they knew.
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