India just redefined its citizenship criteria to exclude Muslims

With a new law — and massive new detention camps — the country is undermining its status as a democracy.

India is home to 200 million Muslims. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they have faced mounting threats to their status in the majority-Hindu country. And on Wednesday, they were walloped by a new worrisome development: The upper house of India’s Parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB).

Source

At first glance, the bill may seem like a laudable effort to protect persecuted minorities. It says Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who came to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan won’t be treated as illegal. They’ll have a clear path to citizenship.

But one major group has been left out: Muslims.

That’s no coincidence.

The CAB is closely linked with another contentious document: India’s National Register of Citizens (NRC). That citizenship list is part of the government’s effort to identify and weed out people it claims are illegal immigrants in the northeastern state of Assam. India says many Muslims whose families originally came from neighboring Bangladesh are not rightful citizens, even though they’ve lived in Assam for decades.

When the NRC was published in August, around 2 million people — many of them Muslims, some of them Hindus — found that their names were not on it. They were told they had a limited time in which to prove that they are, in fact, citizens. Otherwise, they can be rounded up into massive new detention camps and, ultimately, deported.

Wow!

How many folks would want the same consideration given in their own home country?

Should we do this in the UK? In the US?

I wonder what is driving this type of attitude. I imagine that there are many folks in many countries that would like to see similar legislation. I don't know that much about India, but is this ok according to their constitution? I think Trump got into trouble for trying the same think.

What do you folks think?

i had heard of the Chinese detention camps but not the Indian ones before ,i guess they are setting them up for "illegal immigrants" vs re-education camps in chinas case en.wikipedia.org...

Assam Detention Centre located in Goalpara district, Assam, is India's first (and largest) detention center for illegal immigrants.[1][2][3] The detention center will cover approximately 2,88,000 square feet and will include a school, recreational area and hospital.[2] The center has been sanctioned by the Union Home Ministry in June 2018, which is funding the entire project.[4] It is the first of the many in-construction or proposed detention centres to be constructed following the exclusion of 1.9 million people from the final National Register of Citizens of India.[5][6] In 2014, the Centre had told all the states to set up at least one detention centre for illegal immigrants so as not to mix them up with jail inmates. Those in detention are eligible for bail.[4]

least it seems they list bail as an option but before your thread i had not hear of any of this

that is India's business, the US has it's own accords it needs to take care of.. It's time for other countries to take care of themselves.

Wasn't Pakistan created because the Muslims and Hindus could not get along?

a reply to: MarlbBlack

Amen, they can deal with it themselves we have enough problems that we are not involved with

a reply to: RalagaNarHallas

i had heard of the Chinese detention camps but not the Indian ones before ,i guess they are setting them up for "illegal immigrants" vs re-education camps in chinas case

Detention and re-education camps.

I thought humanity got away from "camps" in the 20th century.

OK, if this becomes the new normal, we are all screwed.

I wonder what is driving this type of attitude.

I think Trump got into trouble for trying the same think.

You are making the wrong connection in this case. In the case of India and Pakistan, it is bad blood between the majority Hindus and the Muslims who moved in later. Many people in india still recall the Mughal era and look upon it much like the Chinese remember the Opium Wars (which the Chinese call the Century of Humiliation); it was a time when an Islamic empire took over the subcontinent from Hindu rulers.

The majority Hindus get along moderately well with the Buddhists and the Jains, as they share some common history and the religions are related. Islam and Hinduism share no common root and are oil and water, and they have been at territorial war ever since. In 47-48, India split into India and Pakistan. The largest Muslim portion of the country became its own independent state, and the whole affair was a massive humanitarian mess. Here is a discussion about that period:

www.theguardian.com...

suffice to say, things have not improved much today.

a reply to: KrankBruder

Humanity has always been cruel.

This is nothing new.

Too many now want the US to be the world police or moral arbiters to every other country.

a reply to: joeraynor

Two great things to watch that really delve into the India/Muslim sentiment are:


Sacred Games - series on Netflix. It does have English voice over. Very good series
Padmavat - Amazon Prime. Absolutely extraordinary movie. Only subtitles, but is well worth the watch.
If you really want to know how Natives feel about Muslims, this movie is it.

a reply to: joeraynor
Good points.

I was not trying to do a political dig at Trump, just noting that there were legal challenges because of the US constitution .

Nice review of the history. I have some background on India, but it is mostly from friends I work with from those lands.

This law is specifically targeted at immigrants, not the millions of Muslims who are already citizens. It seems some are misinterpreting this law as preventing Muslim citizenship altogether, which is not the case at all. If you still deem this as bad, fine, but let's not create a straw man argument here.

Although partition was one of the biggest tragedies of the post-War twentieth century, my heart still goes out to the genocide of the Hindu Pandits in Kashmir (1989-1990), although virtually unmentioned in the West these days.

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: Homefree
Wasn't Pakistan created because the Muslims and Hindus could not get along?

Yep. Just like Israel was created because Jews and Arabs couldn't get along, and Liberia was created to "send them back".

Only globalists would moan at India for doing what they deem necessary. If they feel that islam is having a negative influence on their country, culture or maybe even safety, they are totally entitled to stop more muslim immigrants if they so wish.
The rest are only cow towing to some western ideals that don't necessarily have to be the best.
If muslim countries start being more open minded and less religiously stuck in the 5th century, maybe they can get back on the list but until then they just reap what they sow.

Every country should have the right to preserve their sovereignty, culture and national identity, however, I don’t see anything like that being needed in the U.S. or U.K.

a reply to: JAGStorm

The history is long and complicated, and there isn't really a unified viewpoint either side holds. There have been periods of cooperation between the two, periods of non-remarkable coexistence, and many instances of genocide perpetrated by either side against the other. There are a string of maybe 50 specific incidents over the last 50 years where tens of thousands have been slain. Bengal is another major epicenter for Hindu-Muslim friction.

The whole situation sort of resembles Southern Spain in a way, where there have been periods where Muslims and Christians have lived together peacefully, and many less peaceful times.

a reply to: joeraynor

Let’s be honest...Muslims don’t play well with others. Everywhere there are Muslims there is conflict.

a reply to: Hecate666

If muslim countries start being more open minded and less religiously stuck in the 5th century, maybe they can get back on the list but until then they just reap what they sow.

Uh, You got your times wrong. Fifth century is 400-499. Islam begins in the 7th century (600 AD).