Prof. Nasim Akhtar
The government is all set to launch a heinous program of genocide, statelessness and mass conversion of Muslims in India. It is in this context that the recent change in the Indian Constitution has been made which is called CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act). And for the same purpose the NPR and NRC are going to be done despite nation wide protests. NPR stands for National Population Register, which is updated before every census. However, this time it is not the same as before. Many changes have been made in it, and each of them smacks of the sinister design of the government to disenfranchise Muslims.
In NPR there is a provision of marking D against any doubtful person. There is no criteria mentioned for that. Further, at any stage of time any person from anywhere whose identity will not be revealed to anyone may claim that certain person was doubtful. And the statement of this ghost person is enough to ruin a whole family for which no one will be accountable at all.
Ironically, no paper can offer a proof of your citizenship, neither your passport, your national ID (which is called AADHAR card here), PAN (a card which shows that you are a tax payer of India), nor your Voter ID. Furthermore, any paper or document that you produce can be questioned on its authenticity for which you have to bring the issuing authority to the court. Imagine, how can I bring my Qazi (who died 30 years ago) to the court to prove that my marriage certificate was valid. So much so, that a family of a former chief minister of a state is finding it difficult to prove their documents valid. A retired army officer couldn’t prove his credentials despite having certificates from the President of India, and had to go to detention center.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims (along with others of the marginalized communities) have been marked doubtful in just one state. And the same is going to replicate all over India. Modi and Shah (the Home Minister of India) are hell bent to do it. You can well imagine the scenario India is going to present if this satanic thing is going to be implemented all over India. As per the estimate of the experts of population studies, about 50 million people will be put in detention centers. These detention centers are nothing but worst kind of jails. (You may google check to see the real situation there. There are six such centers in operation in the state of Assam. These are the Indian version of Nazi’s Concentration camps). In these centers, there are men women, children, new borns, pregnant women, old and sick men and women. They die like flies. No one cares. Women are subjected to worst kind of brutalities.
The courts which hear these cases are the perfect examples of Kangaroo courts. Fresh law graduates with absolutely no experience of the court have been made responsible for looking into the cases. There are more than a hundred of such tribunals. Even more worrisome is that they have been given instructions that those who send maximum number of people to the detention centers will get extension of their job and promotion. Hence, each one of them tries to outnumber the other in inflicting atrocities on the innocents.
Since the target is marginalised communities, which are mainly Muslims, the STs (mainly the tribals) and SCs (comprise the lowest of lower class of non-Muslims).
A mention of the STs and SCs is necessary here for a clear picture. They are said to be the aboriginal Indians and are at the lowest rung of the society-socially, economically and politically. The framer of the Indian Constitution, Dr Ambedkar, belonged to that class. So, he fought for them to get reservation in govt jobs and educational institutions for their social upliftment. Even after more than seven decades of the Independence there has not been much improvement due to the Brahmanical supremacy. However, they have now started emerging as a formidable challenge before that class which has been treating them worse than dogs. It is this class, which is on the target along with Muslims.
The STs and SCs will be given a passage from the detention centers by means of the new act CAA. They will be asked to fill a declaration form that they came from Pakistan or Bangladesh, and that they are Hindus. Since they were being persecuted there they infiltrated into India. The CAA will enable them to come out of the detention centers. In turn, this declaration will give Brahmanical system (read RSS and its fringe organizations) manifold advantage. They will lose their status of ST and SC instantly. Hence, they will cease to make claim for any reservation. (They have reserved seats in Parliament and Assemblies, as well.) The confirmation of their citizenship may be put on hold for a certain period of maturity and may be subject to an inquiry, which may never take place. Meanwhile, they will lose the validity of all their documents, be they of land holding, college degrees, jobs, bank accounts, etc. But, anyhow they will be better than the detention centers. At least they can live with their families.
Looking at the above picture, Muslims in the detention centers may feel tempted to denounce their faith and fill the same forms of declaration that they, too, were Hindus who infiltrated from across the border facing persecution. However, their declaration will always be doubted, and naturally so, and they will never get the citizenship of India, although in all probability they will be allowed to walk out of the detention centers because even in the worst case the government would be incurring hundreds of millions of rupees per day on their food, medicine, security, etc.
India will be a place to hold the largest number of stateless people in world, 50 millions, at least. And all this will happen because the world will allow it to happen. Nothing went unnoticed by the world. The world community was watching all this happen brazenly. Didn’t the world see all the university campuses around the world rises in unison with a single voice against these draconian laws? Didn’t the world see the largest ever women’s protest in the history of world braving bone chilling cold of the winter in all the nook and corners of India which reverberated throughout the world? Didn’t the world watch on small screens of celluloids and hand held gadgets how innocent people were targeted by the brute police not only in the streets, in schools, but even in their homes and places of worship for just raising voice against the satanic laws? People being killed in cold blood for raising their voice against unconstitutional exercises of the govt, and the world is watching in silence was but to meet God’s retribution in the form of Corona. This is God’s scourge for your silence. But the government of India is not ready to pick any lesson from this. She is still on the spree to picking up innocent people and labelling charges of provoking riots in Delhi while the real culprits are walking free under the protection of Y and Z category provided by the government.
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The author is former Prof. of English at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah.