Citizenship Amendment Bill: A new lease of life for the two-nation theory

Introduction of a religious test for citizenship signals a u-turn from our Constitutional ideals and independence movement.

Business Standard : Abdus Salam was a brilliant Physicist, a rare prodigy who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was born in 1929 in Punjab in what was then undivided India. Salam can also be considered the father of Pakistan’s nuclear and space programs, which he anchored till he left the country, in protest. Salam was a devout Muslim of the Ahmadi sect. In 1974, the Bhutto government in Pakistan pushed through the Parliament a resolution that declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslim. He was never to return to Pakistan, his homeland. By every account, Salam was a patriot. He returned only after his death when he was buried next to his parents. The epitaph on his grave read, “the first Muslim Nobel laureate”. The epitaph was defaced and the word ‘Muslim’ scratched off. The Pakistani constitution bars Ahmadis from identifying as Muslims and denies other religious rights to the community.

Salam’s story is one of the less tragic ones from the Ahmadi community in Pakistan. Ahmadis have been lynched, their mosques bombed (they are also barred from calling them mosques) and massacres have taken place across Pakistan. The minuscule community (estimated to be less than 2 per cent of Pakistan’s population) fulfills every criteria to be recognised as a persecuted minority which is discriminated against by state sanction.

Last night the Lok Sabha passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill with 311 votes in favour and 80 against. This comes within a fortnight of Constitution Day which is celebrated every 26 November. The Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November, 1949 and came into effect on 26 January, 1950. The conception of India as a modern, secular, liberal republic was one of the greatest national experiments undertaken in history. It is an experiment that not only sought to break the shackles of colonial slavery but also sought to move on from a feudal past. It was the culmination of an enlightened independence movement led by giants who decided that it would be a constitutional republic that wouldn’t differentiate on the basis of faith. The Constitution doesn’t create a perfect republic by just existing, it doesn’t even ensure freedom from discrimination but it offers a protection and provides an ideal for us citizens to strive for. For the Republic of India, the Constitution is the lodestar.

On December 9, 2019, the Parliament took the first u-turn from this ideal. The Citizenship Amendment Bill has introduced a religious test for Indian citizenship. A religious test that screams that only Muslims aren’t welcome.

In an essay, Secular Common Sense, Mukul Kesavan quotes Isaiah Berlin who says that all thinkers are either hedgehogs or foxes. “The hedgehog had one big idea with which he ordered the world while the fox had a series of insights that explained it.”