The resolution passed by the Kerala Assembly earlier this week against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, in the backdrop of fierce protests across the country against this law, is a historic step whose epochal significance we may overlook at our peril.
Above all, the resolution cautions us that the country shall be composed, and run on quasi-federal lines as envisaged in the Constitution, if and only those who rule at the Centre are wise enough to be mindful of the sensitivities of every religious, linguistic and ethnic group in the country.
In formal terms, it is true of course that as per the constitutional scheme, the question of citizenship is in the Centre’s domain and there is no legal ground on which a state may refuse to implement a Central law, which the CAA is. However, if the Kerala example were to be emulated by others, the damage to the spirit of the Constitution will be incalculable.
This will not be a vote of no-confidence in the Constitution but an indictment of the value systems of those with a comfortable parliamentary majority making laws which the states of the Union are uncomfortable with. Since our states were formed on a linguistic basis, resolutions of rejection of a Central law by states is like rejection of the Centre’s intent by language groups which make up the diversity-filled mosaic that India is.
The parallel may not be exact, but we will do well to remember that America’s Civil War began with dissonance over a single over-arching idea between the northern states and those that made up the Confederacy. The issue turned grave enough to be resolved on the field of battle. We are, fortunately, nowhere near there. But it is a dangerous sign that state legislatures should begin to pass a resolution against a Central law.
It is sobering to remember that while Kerala (so far) is the only state to pass a resolution against the CAA, the chief ministers of nine states have declared they wouldn’t enforce the CAA and/or its companion idea contained in the thought behind the National Register of Citizens, that Union home minister Amit Shah vociferously spoke about before the anti-CAA protests erupted. These include Bihar, run by the JDU-BJP, and BJD-run Odisha.
If the Centre was genuinely compassionate about “persecuted” people, it could have passed a law that offered succour to those persecuted for any reason — political, religious, or for exercising anyone’s right to dissent. That would have attracted no protests.
But the government chose to single out Hindus (and some others) while expressly leaving out Muslims in passing the CAA, giving a religious bias to the idea of Indian citizenship. This was low-grade politics meant for electoral gain, and to advance the Hindutva agenda, which privileges the seriously unconstitutional idea that India is for Hindus.
The foundational principle behind Indian citizenship cannot be religion-based, as in Islamic Pakistan. While people of every faith were passionately involved in the freedom movement, those with Hindutva leanings stayed away.
