By: Kimaya Ghoge and Reet Lath
The Short Story
The last week in India has been a shockingly tumultuous one, with the city of New Delhi witnessing some of the worst ever communal violence to take place on its streets in the last 40 years. The background to all of this stems from the passing of a controversial Citizen’s Amendment Act (CAA) in December of 2019, which provides citizenship to religious minorities from India’s three neighbouring Muslim majority countries, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Seeing as the CAA does not make provision for fast-tracking Muslim citizenship, some peaceful protestors took to the streets to voice their discontent with the enacting of this bill, in response to which a BJP leader aggressively threatened them to leave. This ultimatum inspired many of his followers to engage in communal violence, so far resulting in almost 50 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
The Long Story
As of today – March 2nd – communal violence on the streets of New Delhi has resulted in 46 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The deadly clashes between Hindus and Muslims raged across New Delhi for four days, leaving considerable parts of the city in ruins. Whilst there was violence on both sides, the bloodshed was predominantly driven by Hindu nationalists targeting Muslims in response to a comment made by Kapil Mishra, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader. Speaking at a rally against a group of peaceful protestors (consisting largely of Muslim women) who were opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Mishra issued a three day ultimatum to the Delhi Police, threatening to violently remove the protestors himself if the police did not take measures to do so. His incendiary comments prompted many of his right-wing Hindu nationalist followers to take matters into their own hands, and in a matter of hours, New Delhi had descended into the worst Hindu-Muslim violence in India in almost 40 years. In addition to the mob violence on the streets, three mosques and countless Muslim-owned houses, shops, vehicles and schools were burned down. Thousands fled their neighbourhoods in fear of their lives, returning days later to find their livelihoods destroyed.
The Delhi Police failed to control the violence, and in many cases, enabled and allegedly assisted the Hindu nationalists. First hand accounts claim that emergency calls to the Delhi Police during the peak of the violence went unanswered for 48 to 72 hours. Many theorise that since the Delhi Police report to the BJP – the Hindu-nationalist ruling party – rather than the less religiously-driven governing party of New Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) who are in power in New Delhi, they turned a blind eye towards the anti-Muslim attacks. However, some government officials attributed the inefficiency of the police to a shortage of officers, given the number that had been assigned to protect President Trump during his visit to India. Regardless, there is no doubt that the inaction of the police has played a role in prolonging the violence.
Whilst the violence has now ceased, the situation in New Delhi remains tense as people slowly return to normalcy. Aravind Kejriwal, the leader of the AAP, has promised to compensate the victims of the violence for their losses and detain those responsible. Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, addressed the situation on the third day of the violence, calling for “peace and harmony”, but has yet to comment on the religious undertones of the bloodshed.
To a large extent, the violence in Delhi, as well as the protests and religious tensions that preceded it, stems from the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed by Modi’s government in December of 2019. The CAA fast tracks citizenship for refugees – considered illegal immigrants in India – from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India before 2015 and are being religiously persecuted in their countries of origin; this provision applies to Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists, and Christians, notably excluding Muslims. Those excluded under the CAA are still eligible to apply for citizenship through regular channels, but require 12 years of residence.
The BJP defends the CAA, saying that it simply supports persecuted minorities by expediting their citizenship applications. However, the CAA’s critics argue that the legislation violates India’s secular constitution by granting citizenship on the basis of religion. They have also questioned why persecuted Muslim minorities such as Amhadiyya Muslims in Pakistan and Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are not accommodated for.
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