NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authorities on Monday introduced guidelines to implement a 2019 citizenship legislation that excludes Muslims, weeks earlier than the Hindu nationalist chief seeks a 3rd time period in workplace.
The Citizenship Modification Act offers a quick monitor to naturalization for Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan earlier than Dec. 31, 2014. The legislation excludes Muslims, who’re a majority in all three nations.
The legislation was authorized by Indian Parliament in 2019, however Modi’s authorities had held off with its implementation after lethal protests broke out in capital New Delhi and elsewhere. Scores have been killed throughout days of clashes.
The nationwide protests in 2019 drew individuals of all faiths who mentioned the legislation undermines India’s basis as a secular nation. Muslims have been significantly fearful that the federal government might use the legislation, mixed with a proposed nationwide register of residents, to marginalize them.
The Nationwide Register of Residents is a part of Modi authorities’s effort to determine and weed out individuals it claims got here to India illegally. The register has solely been carried out within the northeastern state of Assam, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Occasion has promised to roll out an analogous citizenship verification program nationwide.
Modi’s authorities has defended the 2019 citizenship legislation as a humanitarian gesture. It argues that the legislation is supposed solely to increase citizenship to spiritual minorities fleeing persecution and wouldn’t be used in opposition to Indian residents.
“These guidelines will now allow minorities persecuted on spiritual grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to amass citizenship in our nation,” House Minister Amit Shah wrote on X, previously Twitter.
India’s essential opposition Congress social gathering questioned the announcement, saying “the timing proper earlier than the elections is evidently designed to polarise the elections.”
Human rights watchdog Amnesty India in an announcement referred to as the legislation “discriminatory” and mentioned it “goes in opposition to the constitutional values of equality and worldwide human rights legislation.” It mentioned the legislation “legitimises discrimination based mostly on faith” and is “exclusionary in its construction and intent.”
India is house to 200 million Muslims who make up a big minority group within the nation of greater than 1.4 billion individuals. They’re scattered throughout nearly each a part of India and have been focused in a sequence of assaults which have taken place Modi first assumed energy in 2014.
Critics say Modi’s conspicuous silence over anti-Muslim violence has emboldened a few of his most excessive supporters and enabled extra hate speech in opposition to Muslims.
Modi has more and more combined faith with politics in a system that has resonated deeply with India’s majority Hindu inhabitants. In January, he opened a Hindu temple on the web site of a demolished mosque in northern Ayodhya metropolis, fulfilling his social gathering’s long-held Hindu nationalist pledge.
Most ballot surveys counsel Modi will win a majority in a normal election that’s scheduled to be held by Could.