CAA Revisited: A Conversation on Citizenship, Refugee Protection and Migration along India’s Western Borders
On the 27th of August, Parichay organized a panel discussion on the May 2021 order of the Ministry of Home Affairs, which significantly relaxes the citizenship process for minority communities from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The panel focused on migration across India’s Western border and the making of the identities of the refugee and citizen, exploring the legal and social journeys of recognition and assimilation, the structural impediments in the legal regime and the possibility of an alternative system. The speakers were Dr. Farhana Ibrahim, Prof. Natasha Raheja and Ms. Darshana Mitra and the panel was moderated by Prof. Mohsin Alam Bhat.
The themes that emerged out of the panel are as follows:
The need to historicize citizenship and migration along the Western border
Dr. Farhana Ibrahim pointed out that there have been several MHA executive orders that have relaxed immigration and long-term visa requirements for Pakistani Hindus and other religious minorities from Pakistan like the 2003 amendment. These changes have happened continuously after 1947. Prof. Natasha Raheja spoke about her research in Rajasthan, and how people have shared histories and connections, and their mobility predates the existence of borders. Speaking about her research in Rajasthan, she pointed out, “our assumptions about people making these journeys are fixed within the logic of the contemporary India- Pakistan border. Until the more recent border fencing in Rajasthan and Sindh in Punjab in the 1990s, there wasn’t the same sense of partition the way we understood it in other parts of South Asia.” The research conducted by the panelists also revealed other reasons why people choose to migrate. Prof. Raheja indicated that in addition to experiences of religious persecution, caste also played a role in the decision to migrate. Dr. Ibrahim gave the example of migration by the Sodha community to India from the Tharparkar region in Pakistan after 1971, as they were the only remaining upper caste community in Pakistan and endogamous marriage alliances were increasingly difficult.
Legal inclusion and social inclusion
The speakers also spoke about processes of legal inclusion and social inclusion. They emphasized that even when a statute guarantees visas and subsequently citizenship to a category of refugees, the process itself still takes a very long time. Applicants must undergo immigration inquiries and interviews that can be difficult and humiliating. Within these spaces, the position of lower caste applicants is especially precarious. This painful process of interacting with the citizenship regime is what Prof. Raheja calls a selective welcome. She highlights that, “on one hand, there is a welcoming of Hindu migrants from Pakistan but the reality on the ground is that they undergo the undignifying experience of documentation. Some of the statements that I hear from people is that “In Pakistan we may die because of religion but here we die by paperwork.”
She highlights how Hindu migrants spoke of the “undignifying experience of documentation.”
Dr. Ibrahim mentioned that legal inclusion is not always followed by social inclusion. She noted that migrants struggle to be accepted into the Hindu community, even if they had caste privilege, and had to struggle for resources and livelihood. Also, they were still identified socially as “pakistan-wallahs”, keeping intact the stigma of migration and forcing them to establish their Hinduness for acceptance. One can only imagine how much more difficult social assimilation is for people belonging to marginalized communities.
Darshana Mitra then proceeded to emphasize on the existing legal regime for citizenship applicants and discussed possible alternatives and suggestions that could be borrowed from other jurisdictions.
Legal impediments to citizenship seekers
Darshana Mitra spoke of how Indian law does not recognize or grant refugees a separate legal status, and most refugees fall into the category of illegal migrants under the Citizenship Act 1955. This becomes a significant barrier as illegal migrants are prevented from applying for citizenship and renders them vulnerable to prosecution for immigration offences under the Passports Entry into India Act or the Foreigners Act. This ‘illegal migrant’ tag does not allow people to avail various government schemes, send their kids to school or even avail proper housing.
Once they have fallen into the criminal justice system as a criminal or an accused, the pathway to citizenship is effectively closed for them because and then if they are convicted under any of these legislations then the state’s response after conviction is detention and deportation. Granting citizenship to a person who has been convicted under an immigration offense is not an option that is exercised by the state.
The state’s response has been the selective easing of processes for certain communities. The May 2021 order is an example of a significantly truncated process for citizenship registration and naturalization procedure for minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The order creates a single tier process for registration and naturalization current process, which non-Muslim minorities can avail, while Muslim applicants must go through the existing three-tier process. This means that at the very point of entry, Muslim claims of persecution are rejected, and their pathways to citizenship made significantly harder. A proposed alternative was the rigorous scrutiny of all refugee claims, but after a refugee is admitted, they have the same pathway to citizenship as everyone else, determined by a case-by-case assessment. This would be similar to the system of refugee status determination and subsequent pathways to citizenship implemented in the United States.
The discussion ended with questions on the way forward, and a consensus that the current legal regime, even with amendments and orders that presumably help migrants and refugees obtain citizenship, is discriminatory and arbitrary, and that there is a need to reimagine a legal system that recognizes why and how migrations take place along India’s borders, and one that can adequately respond to people’s lived realities.
Further references:
Farhana Ibrahim, “Re-Making a Region: Ritual Inversions and Border Transgressions in Kutch” 34.3 Journal of South Asian Studies 439 (2011) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00856401.2011.620555
Farhana Ibrahim, “Cross-Border Intimacies: Marriage, migration, and citizenship in western India” 52.5 Modern Asian Studies 1664 (2018) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/crossborder-intimacies-marriage-migration-and-citizenship-in-western-india/72B0E16730FD62F0A18768FF8D919727
Farhana Ibrahim, “Defining a Border: Harijan Migrants and the State in Kachchh” 40.16 Economic and Political Weekly 1623 (2005) https://www.jstor.org/stable/4416504?casa_token=6xdhQ_jmPgcAAAAA%3ABlqAjrS7BTDaCMTwOeLVBTGTUrFL8tpM1eaNaIV71MnBGn-4LpOR_M9zD7Fsxz9P341Yxim_MlcNovOo0c51hxiGuy0sobNv9OKXhmYy7Vv8ZdoF6A&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Natasha Raheja, “Neither Here nor There: Pakistani Hindu Refugee Claims at the Interface of the International and South Asian Refugee Regimes” 31.3 Journal of Refugee Studies 334 (2018) https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article-abstract/31/3/334/4922733
You can find Parichay’s note on the May 28, 2021 order here.