Demonetization of Citizenship.

On an apparent level CAA seems to be independent. It wants convert Hindu, Parsi, Christian, Buddhist and Jain (and not others) illegal immigrants / refugees from the Islamic states of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan into Indian citizens with a 2014 cut off date. The National Population Register (NPR) is a list of usual residents in India (people who have been residing in India for six months or those who have intention of staying). The National Register of Citizenship (NRC) is a list of all citizens of India. The law says that to have the NRC, the basis of it will be NPR.

In the process of making NPR / NRC there will be lakhs of names that will not get into the list because of name mismatch, lack of documents etc. rendering genuine citizens of India nation less. I would assume the CAA would facilitate the hand picked Hindu, Parsi, Christian, Buddhist and Jain (and not other) settlers from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan among those identified as foreigners, to become Indian citizens with a cut off date of 2014.

For Assam the cut off date according to the 1985 Assam Accord was 1971. For the rest of the country it was 1948. Now with CAA for Assam too it will be 2014. What stops a majoritarian govt. from pushing this cut off date further down the line for a selective inclusion of religions camouflaged as minority groups?

What would most probably happen to to these large number of people who have been left out of the NRC? Deportation would be far and few, as the other country should first accept them as their citizens and India should prove such a thing? How would you prove the nationality of an religiously persecuted illegal immigrant who has most probably traveled into India with out any documents? In all eventuality, those who have not made it into the list would be staying in special camps meant for the purpose and would also be taken off the voting list.

Why would this regime want to have such a scenario? Since CAA provides a safety net for non Muslims, it would be the Muslims (mainly from Bangladesh) who would have no voting rights, which they had hitherto in Assam and in West Bengal. In simple terms this is called voter suppression. And as things stands today, which party would likely to be benefited by the increase in non Muslim voters? Obviously the party which is hell bent on implementing CAA. In simple terms it could be termed as voter encouragement. So, it boils down to vote bank politics. It is in the interests of the ruling regime to keep the issue down to religion, rather than giving the edge to regional West Bengal parties who would want it to be a language issue.

In the recently held lit fest in Mangalore, the RSS trouble shooter and BJP party's general secretary as the sangh nominee told the audience in an seminar on demographic issues that these days population explosion is no longer seen as a threat. It is how you use it to your advantage that matters. He probably was talking about this very thing.

Another real issue is in this NPR / NRC exercise how are they going to deal with those genuine names which would be missing n the list. The exercise in Assam tells us that there would be many many of them, irrespective of their religion. In NPR, the information is collected in our door step. Where is in NRC, the onus is on us to apply for the list and prove our citizenship. it would seem like till such time that our names are included the NRC, no single soul in India will be its citizen. So, be prepared to stand in long ques in the coming years. It is the demonetization time for citizenship