India has announced rules that pave the way for implementing a contentious citizenship law that excludes Muslims. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, originally passed by India's parliament in 2019, provides a fast-track to citizenship for immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan – but only for non-Muslim religious minorities, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians.
The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs announced the rules on Monday, March 11, 2024, ahead of India's general election in the spring, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, will seek an unprecedented third term in power.
While the law was well-received by Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it faced heavy protests from opposition parties, who claimed it was unconstitutional and marginalized India's 200-million-strong Muslim population.
Critics argue that the law is another example of how Modi and the BJP have pushed an agenda of Hindu nationalism onto secular India, a country of 1.3 billion people, at the expense of the Muslim population.
The BJP has its roots in India's Hindu right-wing movement, and many of its followers see India as a Hindu nation. Since Modi's rise to power nearly a decade ago, critics say the once secular and democratic founding ethos of the world's largest democracy is crumbling, with minorities feeling persecuted under the BJP's majoritarian policies and any criticism of the government facing censorship and punishment.
The announcement of the rules comes a month after two mosques were demolished in Uttarakhand state and Delhi, within days of each other, leading to clashes and local curfews. In January, Modi inaugurated a vast Hindu temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque that was destroyed by Hindu hardliners more than 30 years ago, a painful reminder to the country's minority Muslim population of the religious divisions that have grown more pronounced under Modi's rule.