331: Citizenship Amendment Bill: Why it Does More Damage Than Actual Good - a podcast by The Quint

The Citizenship amendment bill was taken up by the Lok Sabha and passed close to midnight on 9 December with 311 ayes and 80 noes.

For those who followed the parliamentary proceedings will agree that rarely have we seen the Parliament work till so late, and with such determination and carry on a session till midnight as it did on the 9 December to be able to pass this particular bill that the government had failed to pass in Narendra Modi’s first term. But despite putting such long hours what our legislators have presented what many are calling an illogical and biased bill that does more damage than actual good.

What this bill does is aims to offer Indian citizenship to migrants who have entered India illegally, from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan as they fled religious persecutions in their own nations. But only if the migrants belong to any of these communities — Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian — everybody but Muslims. And that’s why the bill is so controversial irrespective of it being passed by a majority in the Lok Sabha.

The second aspect of the Bill is that the waiting period for naturalisation for these select communities have been reduced to six years instead of 11 years.

Currently, who we understand to be illegal migrants for instance take the case of the number of Bengali Hindus and Muslims residing in Assam who featured on the NRC list can't apply for citizenship. But what this bill will do is selectively pick the Hindu migrants, cross them off the list and make them citizens and continue to treat the Muslim migrants as illegal.

But here are the several questions that this raising. Why does it pick only three countries amongst the several neighbours that we have where there are minority communities that face religious persecution? Why does it exclude Muslims from these nations? How is the government defending this bill in a secular state with a constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of religions?



Producer and Host: Shorbori Purkayastha

Editor: Shelly Walia



Music: Big Bang Fuzz



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