The New Citizenship Act of India Is a Push for the Racial Selection of Citizens: A Recipe for Limbo-like Situations for Minorities

The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 (CAA), the 10^th such amendment since 1957, has ignited unprecedented levels of opposition, inflamed street riots and incited polarization of people on religious lines. Curiously, India did not have any existing law prescribing the acquisition of citizenship or termination of the same before independence and hence the dilemma of who is an Indian citizen confounded the constitution makers and parliament after independence. The history of rights of citizenship for Indians is very short as it was started in 1949 with the adoption of the Indian constitution and the law came into existence in 1955. Before that, there was no citizenship rights existed for Indians and they were regulated by the British Citizenship and Alien Rights Act of 1914, which used to consider Indians as British subjects, not British citizens. The act was modified in 1928 and finally repealed in 1948. Frenzy street reactions to CAA 2019 flaring up owing to fear stemmed from the recently concluded National Register of Citizens, where 1.9 million people of Assam did not find a place in the final list of Indian citizens published on 31 July 2019. In the contemporary era when countries across the world from the United States to Turkey to China forcefully adopt exclusionary membership policies in state policy, India’s vulnerability could not be ruled out. This study is about a) how the CAA came into being, especially in the backdrop of fear of minority populations in India; b) whether the act was rational and needed for India’s development; and c) how the minorities will be affected due to the enforcement of this act.