ABSTRACT
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) marks a significant normative shift in India’s citizenship regime by formally recognizing persecution as a legitimate ground for differential protection. Framed as a humanitarian intervention, the Act provides an expedited pathway to citizenship for select religious minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who have allegedly faced systemic persecution. While this legislative move reflects a positive governmental acknowledgment of vulnerability-based protection, its statutory design remains structurally under-inclusive. By adopting a selective identity-based framework rather than a principle-based persecution model, the CAA excludes several demonstrably persecuted communities, including Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Ahmadiyyas from Pakistan, and Tamil minorities from Sri Lanka.
Keywords: Citizenship, Persecuted Minorities, Humanitarian Protection, Constitutional Equality, Vulnerability-Based Protection.
BACKGROUND
The CAA represents one of the most contested legislative interventions in India’s citizenship regime. Enacted as an amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955, the CAA seeks to provide an expedited pathway to Indian citizenship for persons belonging to six religious communities, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians, from three neighboring countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, who entered India on or before December 31, 2014. The central justification advanced by the State is humanitarian, the Act is framed as a protective measure for persecuted minorities facing religious oppression in Islamic-majority states.[1]
At a conceptual level, the use of the category “persecuted minorities” is not inherently problematic. International refugee law, human rights law, and constitutional traditions across democratic jurisdictions recognize the moral and legal legitimacy of protecting communities facing systematic discrimination, violence, and exclusion on identity-based grounds. However, the difficulty lies not in the recognition of persecution as a basis for protection, but in the selective construction of persecution within the statutory framework of the CAA.[2]
While the Act includes certain persecuted groups, it simultaneously excludes several communities that are demonstrably persecuted in their home countries. Groups such as the Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Ahmadiyyas from Pakistan, Tamil minorities from Sri Lanka, and other vulnerable communities remain outside the protective scope of the CAA. At the same time, some of these excluded groups are afforded limited protection through executive instruments such as Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), reflecting a fragmented and inconsistent protection regime.
This creates a fundamental conceptual tension, if the legislative objective is the protection of persecuted minorities, then the statutory framework must be coherent, inclusive, and principled. The current model under the CAA, 2019 adopts a selective humanitarianism, where persecution isrecognized only when it aligns with predefined religious and geopolitical categories. This undermines both the moral legitimacy and constitutional defensibility of the Act.[3]
[1] Krishan Kant & Anju Rani, “Citizenship Amendment Act-2019” 9 Scholarly Rsch. J. For Human. Sci. & Eng. Language 11567, (2021), https://doi.org/10.21922/srjhsel.v9i47.7698.
[2]Aadyaa Shukla Tiwari & Professor Arunima G, “Citizenship Amendment Act (2019): Indian Youth’s Views” 5 Int’l J. Soc. Sci. & Econ. Rsch. 1988, (2020), https://doi.org/10.46609/ijsser.2020.v05i07.022.
[3] Nikhil E, “The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) Conundrum” 2020 SSRN Elec. J., https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3598965.