On December 11, 2019, the Indian parliament passed the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which allows persecuted minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India before or on December 31, 2014, a fast-track to Indian citizenship. The law has conveniently excluded Muslims immigrants and only allows Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jain, Buddhists and Zoroastrians to become Indian citizens. After stripping the Indian Occupied Kashmir of its relative autonomy, the Hindu nationalist government of BJP has now passed another controversial bill. CAA is another attempt of the BJP government to turn India into a Hindu state and putting India’s secular credentials at stake more than ever. CAA is no surprise as BJP had long ago made it part of its manifesto. While referring to Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh in a gathering in April 2019, the BJP president Amit Shah stated, “A Bharatiya Janata Party government will pick up infiltrators one by one and throw them into the Bay of Bengal.”[1] All this shows the fascist policies that the BJP government is following in order to further marginalize and disenfranchise Muslims living in India.
