The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 – CAA - was enacted on the 11^th December 2019 by the Indian Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  The CAA provides for granting of Indian Citizenship to any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan (being Islamic countries), who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014.  The Act also reduces the 11 year residence requirement to six years for people belonging to six religions mentioned hereinbefore from the three countries namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan.  This Act does not apply to Indian citizens.

The above enactment led to large scale protests mainly in New Delhi.  Protests engulfed various universities including JNU and Jamia Millia.  The protests at Shaheen Bagh, Delhi saw a major road blocked by the protestors thereby bringing to a grinding halt the flow of traffic of more than a hundred thousand vehicles per day.  Protests also spread to some other parts of the country.  However, the most violent was the communal riots across North-East Delhi from the afternoon of 23^rd February 2020 to the night of 25^th February 2020.  Two and a half days of communal violence saw more than 50 people dead, scores of people injured and innumerable homes looted.  Shops and schools were ransacked and reduced to ashes.  This was the worst communal violence Delhi had witnessed in at least three decades. All these were a result of:

• To a great degree a deliberate distortion of the CAA due to vested interests of Left-Urban Naxal-Maoist-Jihadi combine which fuelled insecurity amongst the Indian Muslims
• Hindu-phobia induced by the Left-Urban Naxal-Maoist-Jihadi combine
• A lack of understanding of the law on the part of the professional elite and the public intellectuals as also a deliberate lack of clarification and dissemination of truth from some of those who understood the intent of the legislation

This book, “The CAA – NRC:  The Truth Explained” by the erudite Vivek V Gumaste is a fantabulous effort to dispel the myths propagated against the CAA and to set the record straight as far as the intended ultimate aim of this particular legislation is concerned.

The author through this book successfully proves that the high decibel protests surrounding the CAA and hijacked by a handful of protestors is by no means level headed and a rational response and in the author’s words it is an “emotionally charged harangue, an ideologically entrenched declamation and a devious political shenanigan that appeals to contorted logic”.

The author’s clarity of thoughts and analysis has to be deeply appreciated as also for his brilliant portrayal of the need for an enactment like the CAA taking the reader back in memory to the pre-independence era, the freedom struggle, the communal riots during the freedom struggle, the independence, the partition of India, the violence unleashed after the partition and the flow illegal refugees to Bengal, Assam and other North-Eastern States.

According to the author, CAA is more a humanitarian Act correcting the historical blunder - committed by a modern Indian nation as the successor state of an ancient civilisation -  of abandoning over 5 million Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and Parsis to the vagaries of an oppressive religious state. Facts, largely suppressed from the public, are simply gut-wrenching. Some of the realities lucidly explained by the author are:

• The drastic reduction in Hindu population in Pakistan from 23% in 1947 to 1.6% in 1998
• Discrimination of Hindus and other minorities in Islamic Pakistan as a state sanctioned policy rendering the lives of Hindus and other minorities, from birth to death, to an ordeal of indignity, humiliation and insecurity bereft of basic human rights.  Hindus and Sikhs are not spared ignominy even in death.
• Contraction of Hindu population in Bangladesh from 13.5% in 1974 to 8.96% in 2011, a nearly 33% decline
• Dwindling community of Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan going by a few thousands who were once a flourishing community with a population of almost a quarter million in the 1940s

The main accusations against the CAA are 

• It is in violation of Article 14 of Indian Constitution
• Why Rohingya Muslims and Sri Lankan Tamils are excluded under the CAA?
• Indian Muslims will be disenfranchised and rendered Stateless
• CAA is a prelude to NRC that will be used to target Muslims and render them stateless

The author answers all the above questions backed by a profound explanation of precedents, antecedents and the current happenings, facts and legal foundation.  In the process also highlighted the hypocrisy of those who are finding a fault where there is none, to serve their hidden motives.  It is interesting to note the ability of the author in presenting and deciphering vital statistics to arrive and refute many assumptions by a category of the protestors and the intellectuals supporting them.

Credits to the author for including a separate chapter on the North-Eastern State of Assam.  He also explains in depth how the demographic alteration was allowed to happen over a period of time by turning a blind eye on the illegal migration, just to achieve narrow political agenda.  The author also foresees that the state of Assam may well become the benchmark for implementation of a national NRC!

As regards the protests the author summarises it beautifully-“Drilled down to the core, this protest turns out to be a dangerous cocktail of violent blackmail, naked political opportunism and revolting schadenfreude that celebrates the woes of persecuted minorities especially Hindus from neighbouring nations”.

Author’s perspicacity, clarity of thought, sagacity, perfect presentation, intelligent use of statistics and historical references used most appropriately are the hallmark of this compact book which makes it a must read for every Indian. 

Note and references:

1. Book image credit: www.amazon.in
2. Delhi Riots 2020 The Untold Story by Monika Arora, Sonali Chitalkar, Prerna Malhotra published by Garuda Prakashan Private Limited