In the end, the Rajya Sabha numbers too caused no problem. The Lok Sabha had already passed the Citizenship (Amendment), 2019, on Monday, with a huge majority. On Wednesday, the Upper House okayed it with 125 votes in favour and 99 against, underlining the fact that despite a shrill campaign against the controversial Bill, the Opposition still has a long way to go before it can thwart the Government even as it pushes forward its contentious agenda. From clamping down on triple talaq, abolition of Article 370, and the green signaling of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, albeit through an apex court order, the BJP-led ruling coalition has succeeded in implementing quite a few hot-button items on its election manifesto. The nearly eight-hour debate in the Rajya Sabha witnessed fiery speeches on both sides of the aisle, with the Opposition speakers accusing the Government of trampling upon the sacredness of the founding document, its secular character, its sacrosanct contract with the people of India. For the first time, speaker after speaker from the Opposition benches charged the Government with the injection of religion for determining Indian citizenship. People were sought to be divided on religious grounds; India was being turned into a Hindu Pakistan; the RSS-BJP was out to achieve its hitherto unspoken but real objective of a Hindu Rashtra. There was expectedly an effort to draw a parallel between the current Bill and Hitler’s Germany. After harking back to the founding fathers and the debates in the Constituent Assembly, most critics pinned their hopes on the Supreme Court doing the task which they for want of numbers were unable to do inside Parliament. The Opposition had an uphill task from the very start of the debate in Parliament. Not only the ruling NDA, but a few other regional groups, such as the AIADMK and the BJD, had no problem supporting the Bill. The plight of the Sena was unenviable. Ordinarily it would have been in the forefront singing paeans in support of the Bill, but given its new-fangled power alliance with the Congress and the NCP in Maharashtra it sheepishly voted in favour of the Bill in the Lok Sabha on Monday. And on Wednesday, after feeling the pressure from the Congress, its three members staged a walk-out at the time of voting on the Bill. That way, it can argue from both sides of its mouth whenever it finds its new alliance broken and it feels the need to re-connect with its old and intrinsic Hindutva roots. The ruling party was not lacking in ammunition to blunt the Opposition case, either. It insisted that the Bill merely seeks to provide justice to the victims of the Partition.
The Congress Party may not have been the original votary of the division of the sub-continent on the transfer of population on religious grounds, but without it, and it alone, ceding to the demand for Partition it would not have been possible. Therefore, it must owe up full responsibility for the bloodied and barbaric division. Granting an easier passage to citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh who entered India before December 31, 2014, was not an act of discrimination against members of other religions. As the only Hindu-majority country in the world, if it did not provide shelter to these persecuted groups, who else will? The Bill was not anti-Muslim because Islam was the State religion of all three countries; besides, persecuted Muslims, if any, of these countries could seek protection of a host of other Islamic nations whereas India was the lone Hindu-majority, albeit a secular country. Speaker after speaker from the ruling party benches cited facts and figures to buttress the point that the minorities in the three countries were persecuted, their share in the population having come down to negligible numbers since the Partition, whereas the share of the Muslims in India’s population had grown disproportionately higher, far and above the national average. If there was any persecution of the minorities in India, the higher growth in their population would not have been possible, the ruling party argued. The passage of the Bill would assure lakhs of Hindu Bengalis in Assam over whose citizenship there was a question mark. The on-going protest in Assam and a few other parts of the North-East is not so much against the Bill as it is against the likely settlement of its beneficiaries in the region and thus weaken their ethnic character. How the Government will reassure the people that the Bill does not harm their interests, while providing protection to persecuted minorities who have no country to call their own barring India, is an immediate challenge. The disruption and protests in Assam and other parts of the North-East must be handled with tact and circumspection without re-igniting the agitation against ‘foreigners.’
