Beyond Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019:

Understanding the Right-Wing Populist Challenge to Minority Citizenship of Muslims in India

Abid Yousuf Bhat

Nor Hafizah Bt Mohd Badrol Afandi

 

Abstract: India established a regime of limited multicultural rights for religious minorities within a secular democratic constitutional framework at the inception of the Indian Republic, following significant contestation from Hindu nationalist voices. Although minority rights have not effectively served as a safeguard against the dangers of majoritarianism, the disdain of Hindu nationalists for multicultural rights for minorities has persisted unabated. In legal terms, Muslims have continued to enjoy equal citizenship. However, the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) by the Indian Parliament marked a pivotal moment, as it introduced religion as an explicit criterion for citizenship for the first time. The study argues that the CAA should be seen as a logical culmination of ongoing and systematic challenges to Muslim citizenship and notions of national belonging, which have coexisted with the establishment of the Indian Republic. Drawing on key theoretical frameworks—specifically T.H. Marshall’s conception of citizenship as a bundle of rights, Hannah Arendt’s description of citizenship as the “Right to have rights”, and Brubaker’s distinction between formal and substantive citizenship—this study argues that the transformative potential of the Constitution has failed to convert the formal equality promised to all citizens into substantive equality for its Muslim minority. In contemporary times, the fusion of Hindu ethnonationalism with populist discourse has established a political and legal framework that significantly endangers the future of Muslim citizenship.