‘Why give citizenship based on religion?’

Students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) on Wednesday staged a protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB).

Students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) on Wednesday staged a protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB).

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“The bill says it will grant citizenship to migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. But at a time when the world is against the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, there’s no mention of them in the bill, which is unfair,” said a student of the North-East Collective (NEC) at IIT-B.

In a statement, students also highlighted how the introduction of CAB will promote religion-based citizenship in India. “We condemn the government’s hate-based politics,” said another student.

Over the past few days, more than 1400 Indian scientists and scholars from research and academic institutes across the country and overseas have expressed their disappointment over the bill, requesting the government to withdraw it. “We find it deeply troubling that the bill uses religion as a legal criterion for determining Indian citizenship… We fear, in particular, that the careful exclusion of Muslims from the ambit of the bill will greatly strain the pluralistic fabric of the country,” reads the statement.

Some of the signatories to this letter include scientists and scholars from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University,

Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institutes of Technology, University of Toronto, Harvard and Cornell universities.