It Is 2020 and India Bleeds Saffron

It is 2020 and India bleeds saffron.

Within the past year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah’s Hindutva (Hindu Right) agenda has violently manifested itself through an escalation of India-Pakistan tensions over the Kashmiri occupation including increased military presence and human rights abuses, the revocation of Article 370 which further stripped Muslim-majority Kashmir of its autonomy, and the longest internet blackout in any democratic nation’s history. With the reigning Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at India’s helm, saffron terror, a term used to describe acts of violence motivated by Hindu nationalism, and fascism grip the country as the Hindu Right’s agenda seeps into the lives of over one billion people. The Modi-Shah governance model rests upon a Hindutva ideology that led to the United States banning Modi from entry in 2005 under the International Religious Freedom Act provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Under Modi’s leadership as Chief Minister of Gujarat, a state in western India, and as the current PM, India witnessed the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the 2002 Gujarat Pogrom which resulted in over 2,000 deaths, a steep escalation in cow vigilantism, and overall rise in Hindutva driven communal violence against its 200 million strong Muslim minority population. The BJP has emerged as an alternative political force to the Indian National Congress Party through emotionally charged anti-Muslim rhetoric with the purpose of transforming India into a Hindu nation-state, in which Muslims are relegated as second-class citizens. 

During December of 2019, the Modi-Shah government signed into law the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA amends the Citizenship Act of 1955 ‒ the first citizenship law established post-Independence and post-Partition. The CAA grants citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and Parsi refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who have migrated to India before 2014, a cut off lacking justification. The Act allows those who have been designated as minority religions a fast track to citizenship with a reduced five-year residency requirement as opposed to eleven years for everyone else. The UN has lambasted the law as “fundamentally discriminatory in nature” as it willfully excludes Muslims and other religious minority groups facing persecution in South Asian countries. Shah argues that Muslims do not face religious persecution as Islam is the majority religion in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and therefore their exclusion from the Act is justifiable. This is wholly untrue as the Ahmaddiyas and Baluchis in Pakistan face religious persecution. Moreover, the Rohingyas from Myanmar, Muslim and Hindu Tamils from Sri Lanka, and Uighurs from China do not receive protection under the bill. Those who are a part of the six religious communities coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan will not be considered “illegal migrants.” The Citizenship Act, 1955, defines illegal migrants as foreigners entering India without a valid passport. It is unclear what will happen to those not protected under the CAA. However, concentration camps have been built in Assam and preparations to build more are being undertaken in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and West Bengal. 

The CAA works in tandem with the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) to create a citizenship model rooted in inhumane exclusion and hierarchy. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) was mandated by the Citizenship Act of 1955 and has currently only been implemented in the Northeastern Indian border state of Assam, which was partitioned in 1947. The error-ridden NRC places the burden of proof on the people to prove their citizenship by submitting documents to prove their family’s residency in India. In Assam, over 1,900,000 people were excluded from the NRC’s list published in August, forcing them to appeal to the Foreigners’ Tribunal to prove their citizenship. Asking those living in poverty or in difficult terrains, landless tribal groups, migrant laborers, and illiterate populations who face obstacles in producing documentation of residency is inherently patriarchal and casteist. The implementation of the NRC in Assam demonstrates that even those who are able to produce documents can be arbitrarily deemed as illegal by the officials of Foreigner Tribunals. If the Foreigners’ Tribunal does not accept the claim, then the claimant must appeal to the High Court of Assam or the Supreme Court. If this fails, the claimant will be sent to a detention camp. It is important to note that this discrimination compounds itself upon already oppressed and marginalized groups, including Muslims, Dalits, transgender persons, those with disabilities, women, and migrant workers. 

In addition to the NRC, the National Population Register (NPR) registers the “usual” residents of India to produce census like data. “Usual” residents are those who have resided in an area for at least six months or plan to reside in an area for the next six months. Based on the NPR, the Indian government seeks to create a list of “doubtful citizens,” although there is no articulated definition of a doubtful citizen. Shah looks to make the BJP promise of an expanded NRC into a reality. At the end of this process, those who are declared as non-citizens will become stateless.

The majority of the over 1,900,000 people left off of Assam’s NRC list are Muslim, with Muslims constituting about 34 percent of the state’s overall population. There are documented cases of people committing suicide out of anxiety and fear over the citizenship list and possible detention in the camps. Over 26 people have died in these facilities. Even nursing mothers and children are held in the concentration camps. In a disturbing turn of events, many of the laborers who built the facilities in Assam are now being sent to those same camps after facing exclusion from the NRC and designated as illegal migrants. The number of those detained in these concentration camps could exceed the approximately one million Uighur Muslims currently held in China’s mass internment system. If those detained in the camps are deported from India, there could be a greater wave of forced statelessness than the, ongoing Rohingya Muslim refugee crisis, in which over 1.3 million people are displaced. The National Human Rights Commission visited two of the facilities in the last year and stated the migrant detainees to be deprived of the rights of convicted prisoners. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom all agree that the institution of the CAA, NRC, and concentration camps in India constitute an international humanitarian crisis.

In the last two weeks, Indian citizens, beginning in Assam — have come together all over the country to protest the CAA, NRC, NPR, and saffron fascism. Over 25 people have been killed, with many thousands more facing violence and detainment at the hands of the Indian police. Thousands of diasporic South Asians have joined them all around the world, their transnational solidarities reaching everywhere from San Francisco to London to Tokyo. It’s important to recognize the prolonged efforts of these protestors, especially considering the persistent resistance to Modi’s reign since 2014. 

However, in the midst of these protests, there’s been a disappointing lack of engagement from many within the Indian diaspora. To amass social capital, many practice henna-turmeric liberalism — as activist Instagram @southasia.art terms it — which is built on a “reclamation” of Indian identity marked by multicultural (song and dance) performance, colorfully marketable “Indo-chic” products such as henna, bindis, and paisley designs, and self-Orientalizing technologies. Troublingly, this performance of identity is accompanied by toothless commentary and apolitical stances on domestic and global issues. This activism is heartbreakingly inadequate. The majority of Indians living in the United States are raised in castles of privilege, and their lack of transnational activism to comment on movements such as #StandWithKashmir or #ResistCAA due to self-imposed lack of knowledge/confusion/ignorance is not a get out of jail free card. Posting one Instagram story, watching a Hasan Minhaj episode, and professing ignorance in the hopes of being excused does not cut it. In fact, henna-turmeric liberalism practiced by anyone risks silent complicity. Activism is not a metaphor and must be accompanied by tangible and material actions.

Posting one Instagram story, watching a Hasan Minhaj episode, and professing ignorance in the hopes of being excused does not cut it.

It is key to first and foremost acknowledge our diasporic privilege when building transnational solidarities with those on the Indian subcontinent. However, this acknowledgement itself is not a form of solidarity. To rectify a malaise of diasporic indifference and silent complicity, steps to increase activist and advocacy skills must be taken. One way to do so is to become involved in Ekta (meaning: unity), a discussion group focused on increasing social awareness about South Asian identity, culture, and current affairs on Washington University in St. Louis’s campus. Ekta will be hosting a teach in about the current state of affairs on the Indian subcontinent this semester, during which we will take steps to increase dialogue, call and email our representatives to support Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s resolution urging the Republic of India to end the restrictions on communications and mass detentions in Jammu and Kashmir as swiftly as possible and preserve religious freedom for all residents, and hold a skill building workshop on resisting saffron fascism. Ekta emphasizes a non-hierarchical and egalitarian form of organizing, based in consensus and community in its methodology, unbound by nationality and religion. We enthusiastically welcome collaborative programming and action with individuals and groups, as evidenced by our “Jaago” Diwali piece. Please reach out and join us in transnational solidarity, silence is simply no longer an option.