India moves forward with controversial citizenship law and protests erupt across the country

Today, Monday, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs announced 11 measures aimed at implementing a controversial law, which has been in effect since 2019, granting… Citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians persecuted in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and PakistanBut Muslims are excluded from interest. The introduction of the controversial legislation comes just before Indian elections scheduled for April and May, and indicates the country's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's desire to win the support of Hindu refugees in important areas in this year's elections.

The government justified the new rules as a humanitarian response to the plight of minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, India's three major Muslim-majority neighbors. Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk who has become a political ally of Modi, wrote on social media that saving communities “suffering from religious brutality” would bring “joy to humanity.”

In practice, the absence of citizenship registration would allow residents to be expelled from India, without taking into account the presence of previous generations already living in the country. On the other hand, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized the application of the law, which it described as “fundamentally discriminatory.” But the agency is not alone. Thousands of Muslims and Indians condemn the definition of citizenship based on religious identity.

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Protests across the country

In February 2020, demonstrations broke out in the Indian capital, New Delhi, while then-US President Donald Trump was on a state visit. On that occasion, gas cylinders were used to make improvised bombs that were dropped on mosques in the northeast of the city. In all, 50 people were killed in the riots, most of them Muslims. The protests lost their strength after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is responsible for preventing crowds due to health measures.

But new actions contradicting the Modi government's decision broke out across the country on Monday. In an interview with the New York Times, Shaheen Ahmed, a doctoral student in Kerala, said the police response was violent, and claimed some officers tried to “beat up” her group of friends.