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1 [1] (December 1, 2022)

handle is hein.crs/govejpa0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Rai informing the legislitive delI earch Service ito since 1914 Updated December 1, 2022 Changes to India's Citizenship Laws In December 2019, India's Parliament passed, and its President signed into law, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, altering the country's 1955 Citizenship Act. For the first time in independent India's history, a religious criterion was added to the country's naturalization process. The changes sparked significant controversy, including large-scale and sometimes violent protests. Opponents of the CAA warn that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are pursuing a Hindu majoritarian, anti-Muslim agenda that threatens India's status as an officially secular republic and violates international human rights norms and obligations. In tandem with a National Register of Citizens (NRC) planned by the federal government, the as-yet unimplemented CAA may threaten the citizenship rights of India's large Muslim minority of roughly 200 million. India's Supreme Court is set to resume its review more than 250 petitions on the law's constitutionality in December 2022. Context: India's Hindu Natonalist Government India's population of nearly 1.4 billion includes a Hindu majority of about 80%, as well as a large Muslim minority of above 14% (see Figure 1). Prime Minister Modi, a self- avowed Hindu nationalist, took office in 2014 after his BJP won the first outright majority in 30 years in the Lok Sabha (the lower chamber of India's bicameral legislature). That majority was expanded in May 2019 elections, providing an apparent mandate for pursuing Hindu nationalist policy goals. Among these were abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which provided special status to Jammu and Kashmir, previously India's only Muslim-majority state (announced in August 2019 and accomplished in October), and construction of a Hindu temple at the Ayodhya site of a historic mosque destroyed in 1992 (enabled by a long- awaited September 2019 Supreme Court ruling). Figure I. Religious Demographics in India, 2011 Source: Census of India, 201-. Hindu nationalists tend to view India's history as a series of humiliations at the hands of foreign invaders-Mughal Muslims and later British colonialists. As a consequence, they have rejected the secularism propounded by founders of the modern Indian state such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas Gandhi. Some analysts have contended that in 2019 and throughout the economic slowdown associated with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Modi-BJP government has responded to slowed growth by becoming more reliant on emotive, religious-based issues to consolidate political support. The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 India's Citizenship Act of 1955 prohibited illegal immigrants from becoming citizens. Among numerous amendments to the act since 1955, none contained a religious aspect. In 2015 and 2016, the Modi-BJP government issued notifications that Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis (Zoroastrians), and Christians-but not Muslims-who came to India from Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Afghanistan before 2015 would be exempted from laws prohibiting citizenship for illegal immigrants. A Citizenship Amendment Bill, meant to formalize these exemptions, was introduced in 2016, and was first voted upon in early 2019, when it was passed by the Lok Sabha. The bill was not taken up by the Rajya Sabha (Parliament's upper chamber) following resistance from opposition parties and street protests in India's northeastern states. In December 2019, seven months after a sweeping reelection that expanded the BJP's Lok Sabha majority and improved its standing in the Rajya Sabha, the bill was passed by both chambers. Its key provisions-allowing immigrants of six religions from three countries a path to citizenship while excluding Muslims-may violate certain Articles of the Indian Constitution (see text box). The CAA was immediately challenged in the Supreme Court by scores of petitioners. Selected Articles of the Indian Constitution 14. The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India. 15. The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, or any of them. India's federal government, which calls the CAA a benign piece of legislation, argues that the three specified countries have a state religion (Islam), resulting in the persecution of religious minorities. Proponents say that Muslims do not face persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Afghanistan, and that the CAA is constitutional because it addresses migrants rather than Indian citizens. Yet it is not clear why migrants from other neighboring countries with state (or favored) religions, such as Sri Lanka (where Buddhism is the official religion and Tamil Hindus face persecution) and Burma (where Buddhism enjoys primacy and Rohingya Muslims are persecuted), are excluded from a path to citizenship. In addition, oppressed Muslim minority communities such as Pakistan's Shias and Ahmadis enjoy no protections under the CAA. Hindu 79.8% Muslim 14.2% Christian 2.3% Buddhist,Jain, and Others 2.0% Sikh .7%

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