ગુજરાતી
English
New Delhi, May 3, 2024
Narendra Modi has decided to go to Gujarat first and then Bengal. He is calling Muslims infiltrators of India in the elections. Congress is being called Muslim League. Now many such laws have been made which violate the universality of the Constitution. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is creating a stir by mentioning Muslims, Pakistan and Muslim League in every meeting. This is getting votes. His words are so serious that he never says that the Constitution will not be changed. He is saying that the Constitution will not be changed just for reservation.
The purpose of the Constitution in India has now been fulfilled by many laws.
The Constitution of India was written amid the dark shadow of the frenzied religious violence of Partition. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs on both sides of the new border killed more than one million people and uprooted one and a half lakh people from their homeland.
Separated from the western and eastern parts of undivided India, Pakistan was created as a country by and for Muslims. The people of India, through their 389 representatives in the Constituent Assembly, in a debate that lasted for more than three years, made a weighty pledge that independent India would not be a religious state.
Although the word “secular” was added to the Preamble of the Indian Constitution only three decades later, its intent was clear at the time the Constitution was written.
Although the word “secular” was added to the Preamble of the Indian Constitution only three decades later, its intent was clear at the time the Constitution was written. India will become a secular democratic republic.
The constitutional secularism of India has several meanings. The State will have no religion. It will sincerely maintain an equidistance from all religions. People of every religion, both majority and minority, will have complete freedom not only to practice but also to propagate their religious beliefs.
The State has not only the right but also the duty to interfere in religious conduct when it violates constitutional morality. People of all minority religions will be given equal rights of citizenship as those of the majority religion.
It shall be the duty of the State to protect these rights and to ensure that the State does not discriminate in any manner on the basis of religion.
The practice of Indian secularism was never perfect during the formation of the Indian Republic. From the beginning, but particularly after the death of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964, successive governments in New Delhi as well as in various state capitals have often compromised the constitutional principles of secular democracy in various ways.
But the edifice of secularism has still survived these assaults. So far. The decade of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership has seen so many virulent assaults that many fear that despite the letter and spirit of the Preamble of the Constitution, India has already turned into a religious state, a Hindu Rashtra.
A decade of Modi’s leadership has seen several blatant intrusions into the bastions of secular democracy. This violates the rights to religious freedom and equal citizenship.
It shall be the duty of the State to protect these rights and to ensure that the State does not discriminate in any manner on the basis of religion.
Attacks the principle of equal citizenship of Muslims. The second criminalizes conversion for inter-religious marriage. This echoes the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany.
Nuremberg had special importance during the Nazi era, partly because of its location in the center of Germany. The Nuremberg Laws were promulgated by Adolf Hitler in September 1935 after a huge victory rally in Nuremberg, the only meeting of the Reichstag held outside Berlin during the years of Nazi rule in Germany.
The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jewish Germans of their citizenship rights and criminalized inter-religious marital and sexual relations. The Reich Citizenship Law made only Germans eligible to become Reich citizens.
The rest – mainly Jews, but also Sinti and Roma and black people – were classified as state subjects deprived of any citizenship rights. Even before this, Hitler had declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933 and banned so-called non-Aryans from the civil service and legal practice and from professions such as education by law.
The second Nuremberg Law was a law for the protection of German blood and German honor, which outlawed marriage and sexual relations between Jews and ‘Aryan’ Germans. Violators were punished with imprisonment in prisons and concentration camps, often resulting in death.
These two Nuremberg Laws made the Jews of Germany non-citizens and criminalized marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans. Do the laws passed in Modi’s India mirror the Nuremberg Laws?
India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, passed in the winter of 2019, sparked the largest peaceful mass uprising of independent India to date, with not just Muslim citizens but thousands of people of all religions and identities joining in to protest the law.
Indians were able to quickly sense the dangers of this law and for the first time used religious identity to determine a person’s right to citizenship. That
saw the thin edge that could topple India’s secular democracy.
The rationale given by government leaders for this reform was that it was humanitarian.
A refugee law has been enacted to provide aid and shelter to minorities from neighbouring countries.
A decade of Modi’s leadership has seen several blatant intrusions into the bastions of secular democracy.
India’s 2019 citizenship law does not even explain why it would take applications for citizenship from undocumented individuals from three Muslim-majority countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Religious persecution is a grim reality for Hindus, Christians and Ahmadis in almost every country in India’s neighbourhood – Pakistan; Hindus, Sikhs and Hazara Shias in Afghanistan; Uighur Muslims and Tibetans in China; Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar; Tamil Hindus and Muslims in Sri Lanka; and Hindus in Bangladesh.
On humanitarian grounds, why shouldn’t India open its doors to the most brutally persecuted minorities in its neighbourhood?
Just as Israel is the natural home of every Jewish person, India is the natural home of Hindus anywhere in the world. This is what pushes away from secular thinking.
India has Hindu, Muslim, Adivasi, Dalit, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and atheist populations.
The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 and the public declarations of 2024 stigmatizing Muslims as “infiltrators” are being made by Modi and Shah. The word “infiltrator” suggests a deadly conspiracy to take over this land that is not officially theirs.
The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jewish Germans of their citizenship rights and criminalized inter-religious marital and sexual relations.
But if one is an undocumented Hindu, one need not worry because with the Citizenship Amendment Act now on the statute books, one will be treated as a persecuted Hindu from Bangladesh and one’s citizenship will be decided expeditiously.
If one were a Muslim, the protection of this faith would be denied.
To be a true Indian, it is very important to respect all religions. However, people have now started believing that it is very important to stop inter-religious marriages.
Marrying or mixing with people of lower caste is dangerous. India has long been a dangerous place for couples who choose to live with people of other religions or ‘lower’ castes. This is what has been termed as ‘honour killings’.
The danger for such couples has increased manifold due to the spread of the ‘love jihad’ narrative by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that Muslim men are being forced to convert Hindu women to Islam. The so-called laws of love jihad have constantly increased the dangers for inter-religious couples.
The Reich Citizenship Law makes only Germans eligible to become Reich citizens.
The idea has been implanted in people’s minds that Hindus should not employ Muslims in their business or home.
About 90 percent of marriages in India are monogamous, arranged and within the same religious community and caste. Less than 2 percent of marriages are inter-religious.
During the ten years of Modi’s leadership, senior BJP leaders, including chief ministers and Union ministers, helped propagate and legitimise this disgusting lie.
Leaders of the Gujarat government have said several times that things like ‘love jihad’ will not be tolerated in the state. Marriage by law places various constraints on conversions.
Amendments to anti-conversion laws in seven BJP-ruled states during Modi’s rule require interfaith couples to apply to state authorities and publicly declare their wish to marry.
Odisha was the first state government to enact an anti-conversion law in 1967. Other states have since enacted similar laws.
Madhya Pradesh was the first in 1968. Other states, including Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh. Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, have followed suit.
Many laws provide for punishment, including imprisonment, for those who convert; but some laws penalise those who convert and even annul religious conversions.
During Modi’s 10-year leadership, several BJP-ruled state governments not only tightened their anti-conversion laws but also effectively discouraged marriages and even criminalised live-in relationships between Muslim men and women, using them as a weapon to take on Hindu women.
The Freedom of Religion Act passed by the Jharkhand state legislature in 2017 also provides for imprisonment and fines for a person who converts. It has also made offences under the act non-bailable for the first time. The rules require district magistrates to maintain registers of religious institutions, inspect the institutions and have powers to register beneficiaries of these institutions.
In 2018, Uttarakhand for the first time banned conversion for marriage in its statutory ban. Conversion by choice of an adult in an inter-religious marriage has been criminalised.
Such marriages can be declared void by the court.
Other BJP-ruled states – Jharkhand (2017), Himachal Pradesh (2019), Madhya Pradesh (2021), Gujarat (2021), Karnataka (2022) and Haryana (2022) – have also declared their names for the Modi Decade.
All states except Jharkhand have outlawed religious conversion for marriage by Muslim men, effectively criminalising interfaith marriages.
This law serves to violently prevent marriages or punish couples.
The anti-conversion law
has become stricter. The passage of the new law drew attention to a large increase in complaints prompted by forced conversions by interfaith couples and families who are watching.
All states except Jharkhand have outlawed religious conversion for marriage by Muslim men.
Uttar Pradesh does not explicitly ban marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men.
The Supreme Court has upheld the right of consenting adults to marry or choose to live together in several judgments.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had announced in 2023 that “things like love jihad” would not be tolerated in the state.
As a result of recent anti-conversion laws, interfaith couples face not just social sanctions but also state intimidation.
Family courts in many states can declare interfaith marriages invalid, even if the adult couple wishes to live together.
Anti-conversion laws have not so far sought to regulate live-in relationships.
But if a Hindu man marries a Muslim woman, the law makes no difference. If a Muslim man marries a Hindu woman, he is stealing Hindu “property” and is therefore punishable. On the other hand, when a Hindu man marries a Muslim, he adds to Hindu “wealth” and this is welcome.
As most Indian Muslims are believed to be converts from Hinduism, this section of the law actually exempts conversions from Islam to Hinduism.
Is 2024 an echo of 1935 Nuremberg in Modi’s India? In Nazi Germany, the official decision to exclude Jews, Roma and Sinti people, and black Germans from citizenship was clear and harsh. So was the official decision to make sexual relations and marriages between Jews and Germans a serious crime.
The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 does not directly strip Indian Muslims of their citizenship.
When protests broke out across the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, many feared it would strip them of their nationality.
The cumulative effect of changes to anti-conversion laws during ten years of Modi’s leadership has been a sharp curtailment of both religious freedom and the freedom of adults to choose their partners – for a partner, for sex, for romance, and for marriage. (Google translation from Gujarati)
