Washington, Feb 5: Experts warned a US government panel last night that India's Muslims face risks of expulsion and persecution under the country’s new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which has triggered major protests.
The hearing held inside Congress was called by the US Commission on International Freedom, which has been denounced by the Indian government as biased.
Ashutosh Varshney, a prominent scholar of sectarian violence in India, told the panel that the law championed by prime minister Narendra Modi's government amounted to a move to narrow the democracy's historically inclusive and secular definition of citizenship.
"The threat is serious, and the implications quite horrendous," said Varshney, a professor at Brown University.
"Something deeply injurious to the Muslim minority can happen once their citizenship rights are taken away," he said.
Varshney warned that the law could ultimately lead to expulsion or detention -- but, even if not, contributes to marginalization.
"It creates an enabling atmosphere for violence once you say that a particular community is not fully Indian or its Indianness in grave doubt," he said.
India's parliament in December passed a law that fast-tracks citizenship for persecuted non-Muslim minorities from neighboring countries.
Responding to criticism at the time from the US commission, which advises but does not set policy, India's External Affairs Ministry said the law does not strip anyone's citizenship and "should be welcomed, not criticized, by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom."
Fears are particularly acute in Assam, where a citizens' register finalized last year left 1.9 million people, many of them Muslims, facing possible statelessness.
Aman Wadud, a human rights lawyer from Assam who traveled to Washington for the hearing, said that many Indians lacked birth certificates or other documentation to prove citizenship and were only seeking "a dignified life."
The hearing did not exclusively focus on India, with commissioners and witnesses voicing grave concern over Myanmar's refusal to grant citizenship to the Rohingya, the mostly Muslim minority that has faced widespread violence.
Gayle Manchin, the vice chair of the commission, also voiced concern over Bahrain's stripping of citizenship from activists of the Shiite majority as well as a new digital ID system in Kenya that she said risks excluding minorities.
More than 40 people were killed last week in New Delhi in sectarian violence sparked by the citizenship law.
India on Tuesday lodged another protest after the UN human rights chief, Michele Bachelet, sought to join a lawsuit in India that challenges the citizenship law's constitutionality.
Comments
What appears to be a humanitarian helping hand is not all as it may seem ....things never are in an unenlightened state- system! I have no hold in a belief in the contorted constructed structures of religions and the game of its use and its manipulation of ....but" they" do! Are we not all equal, the Muslim fraternity seems to be left out in my understanding. The people who pull the strings know exactly what they are doing we- most play catch up and most are unaware that this is so. It seems the UK is taking a rather interesting turn toward Hindus ? and generally India as a whole, bed partners in crime!...? India has vast natural resources. Pulling humanity together is the plan they wish you to believe is taking place but the goal is still the New World Order!
Habitual Liers have no shame., it is their routine business.
Modi even he doesn't mind to remember what he talks on diffrent occassions on the same subject.
Here if he fools the people saying
" The NRC is for giving nationality to the people and not for stealing it from the. "
If so why does he exclude Muslims from the matter.
He and his team wants to suppress the Muslims., which will be very dearly and costly for his whole
team.
May God help all.
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