Six months after the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019, was passed by Parliament, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is yet to frame rules or inform the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation about the delay in doing so. Without rules being notified, the Act cannot come into force or be implemented.
CAA was passed last year by both houses of Parliament, to the relief of Hindu and other minority-religion refugees from the Islamic nations of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Act benefited those refugees who had entered Bharat by 31 Dec 2014 and relaxed the requirement of residence in Bharat for citizenship by naturalization from 11 years to 5 years for them.
It is conservatively estimated that around 5000 Hindus migrate each year from Pakistan to escape brutal institutionalised persecution, worst of which is routine abduction, forced conversion and sex slavery of minor girls. Over 230,000 Hindus are forced to migrate from Bangladesh each year to escape land grab, sexual violence and other forms of religious persecution. And the few hundred remaining Hindus & Sikhs of Afghanistan are now being offered long-term visas and refuge in Bharat – in the 1970s, these two Dharmic communities numbered around 700,000 i.e. ~ 6% of Afghanistan’s then population.
So while MHA bureaucrats are prolonging the excruciating wait for suffering Hindu refugees, Afghan and Rohingya Muslim refugees are converting to Christianity to exploit a loophole and become eligible for citizenship under CAA.
According to official data, there are 150,000-160,000 Afghan Muslims living in Delhi, and nearly 40,000 Rohingya Muslims across Bharat, with the highest number in Jammu and Kashmir. Many Rohingyas are now claiming to be from Bangladesh while taking up Christianity.
HinduPost had previously argued against inclusion of Christians in the CAA, and one hopes forth-coming MHA rules prevent such fraudulent conversions from circumventing this humanitarian law. Bharat has a civilisational responsibility for persecuted Dharmics, and cannot afford to take the burden of illegal economic migrants.
Moreover, it is instructive that Muslim refugees are choosing Christianity and not the majority religion of Bharat i.e. Hindu Dharma. This tells us 2 things – the relative kinship between Abrahamic ‘People of the Book’ vis a vis their contempt for ‘idol-worshipping’ kafirs/pagans i.e. Hindus. Second, even outsiders realise very soon that the Indian state privileges ‘minorities’ (who are actually global majorities) over the ‘majority’ Hindu population.
Meanwhile, a UNHCR report published last year on displaced Rohingyas in Bangladesh showed that their population is exploding: some 91,000 children were born inside refugee camps in just 2 years since the 2017 Rohingya exodus. “A child is a gift of Allah and it is unethical to stop the birth of a child by taking medicines” is a common refrain of these refugees.
CAA had brought some joy & happiness for the persecuted Hindu refugees who mostly live in slums and face difficulties in employment and education due to lack of citizenship. But as always, our Nehruvian bureaucracy seems to be moving at their customary glacial speed when it comes to any pro-Hindu action.
Are some IAS babus deliberately trying to stymie the law, which has been challenged in Supreme Court via a staggering 144 pleas filed by the usual left-liberal-Islamist stalwarts including ex-IAS Wajahat Habibullah? 106 retired civil servants, including around 25 former secretaries to the central government, had released an open letter against CAA and NRC – the list included Lutyens’ elite like former foreign secretaries Shyam Saran, Shiv Shankar Menon and Sujatha Singh; former cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar; former chief economic adviser Nitin Desai etc.
Is this Nehruvian civil servant lobby trying to scuttle this bare minimum obligation that the Indian state has to victims of horrible persecution seeking refuge in their civilisational homeland? If yes, it is time for all right-thinking bureaucrats and citizens to speak up, and for HM Amit Shah to crack the whip.
(Featured image source: PIB, representative only)
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