A few weeks ago, the Indian government formally notified the rules implementing the controversial 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA. The law provides persecuted religious minorities hailing from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan an expedited pathway to Indian citizenship, provided they belong to the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Parsi, or Sikh communities. Notably, the law does not provide such a pathway to those who belong to the Muslim faith.

The notification of the CAA rules—on the eve of India’s 2024 general election—has kicked off a fresh debate over the law, its implementing provisions, and the resulting implications for the future of secularism in India.

To discuss all of this and more, Milan is joined on the show this week by legal scholar M. Mohsin Alam Bhat. Mohsin is a Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of London, where he specializes in constitutional law and human rights. Mohsin has written extensively about law and citizenship in India.

Milan and Mohsin discuss the origins of the CAA, its constitutionality, and the fine print of the CAA rules. Plus, the two discuss the situation in Assam, that state’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the prospects of an all-India NRC exercise.

Episode notes:

1. “What’s Happening to India’s Rohingya Refugees? (with Priyali Sur and Daniel Sullivan),” Grand Tamasha, May 24, 2023.

2. Mohsin Alam Bhat and Aashish Yadav, “CAA will not help persecuted Hindus, Sikhs from neighbouring countries,” Indian Express, March 19, 2024.

3. “The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019,” PRS Legislative Research.

4. Madhav Khosla and Milan Vaishnav, “The Three Faces of the Indian State,” Journal of Democracy 32, no. 1 (2021): 111-125.

5. Mohsin Alam Bhat, “The Constitutional Case Against the Citizenship Amendment Bill,” Economic and Political Weekly 54, no.3 (2019): 12-14.

6. Mohsin Alam Bhat, “‘The Irregular’ and the Unmaking of Minority Citizenship: The Rules of Law in Majoritarian India,” Queen Mary Law Research Paper No. 395/2022.

7. Niraja Gopal Jayal, “Faith-based Citizenship,” The India Forum, October 31, 2019.