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Amid heated arguments, political backlashes and sporadic protests over the Centre’s notification of rules for implementing the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, an old video of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud’s son explaining why the law is unconstitutional is going viral. In the widely shared video, advocate Abhinav Chandrachud argued that the CAA leaves out several minorities, atheists and agnostics, going against the fundamentals of a secular nation.
The Citizenship Amendment Act seeks to grant citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who came to India before December 31, 2014.
Sharing Abhinav’s viral video on CAA, Rajya Sabha MP and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi in a post on X (formerly Twitter) said, “Do listen to Abhinav Chandrachud on not just CAA but also the constitutional gaps over the years on citizenship.”
Abhinav has argued that those not falling under the CAA, have to wait for 11 years to become an Indian citizen by naturalisation constitutionally, while those covered under the CAA get to be a citizen in 5 years. “This does not make any sense to me.”
“The residence requirement in India has been reduced by the Citizenship Amendment Act. So anyone else who wants to apply to be a citizen by naturalisation has to reside in India for 11 years. But for somebody who falls under the Citizenship Amendment Act, the residency requirement is only five years,” Abhinav said sharing an example of how it applies to the Parsis.
“Parsis originally fled Iran. A Parsi who fled Iran and came to India has to wait 11 years to be naturalised as a citizen but a Parsi who flees Afghanistan has to wait only 5 years,” Abhinav explained.
The viral video is from 2020 when the anti-CAA protests were at a peak.
The advocate, in the viral video, said that he had once questioned why the Jews were left out of the CAA. To his surprise, he was told that they had a different country for them, Israel. Abhinav then argued that the Christians and Buddhists have their own country too, but are still a part of the CAA.
He also added that the atheists and the agnostics, who don’t know whether there is a God or not, have been excluded from the law too. “You have left out Muslims who may be considered minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh,” he added.
The CJI’s son explained the two waves of migration that took place from West Pakistan to India when the country was partitioned— first in 1947 consisting of Hindus and Sikhs, the second in 1948 consisting of Muslims. “This second wave of return created problems for the Indian administration. The Hindus and Sikhs were given the properties of the Muslims who had left India.”
During the second wave of migration, Abhinav said, the Indian administration came up with a permit system for those who left India and wanted to come back. However, this system was not used during migration from East Pakistan (Bangladesh today).
“This puzzled me and made me wonder why it was not for East Pakistan…while there were only about seven or eight hundred thousand Hindus left in West Pakistan, there were 16 million Hindus left in East Pakistan at the time when the permit system was introduced,” Abhinav said.
The law has faced criticism for alleged discrimination against Muslims. However, the Ministry of Home Affairs assured that Indian Muslims don’t have to worry about it.
“Indian Muslims need not worry as CAA has not made any provision to impact their citizenship and has nothing to do with the present 18 crore Indian Muslims, who have equal rights like their Hindu counterparts. No Indian citizen would be asked to produce any document to prove his citizenship after this Act,” MHA said in a statement.
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Published: 13 Mar 2024, 11:15 PM IST
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