Source – indianexpress.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe CAA is essentially an anti-poor exercise which is now being marketed as a religious exercise,\u201d said Kannan Gopinathan, a former IAS officer, who resigned from the Indian Administrative Services over the government\u2019s decision to abrogate the\u00a0Article 370, speaking at a panel discussion on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) held at the Laugh Club in\u00a0Chandigarh\u00a0on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The panel discussion, involving lawyers and political activists, was organised by city residents for discussing the law without the interference of political affiliations. \u201cThis is a safe space where we can ask questions and express opinions without being judged. No one here is allowed to chant slogans or hold posters or claim allegiance to political factions. It is purely an informative, discussion platform,\u201d said Megha, one of the organisers of the panel discussion, as a disclaimer at the beginning of the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gopinathan, who has been actively participating in anti-CAA protests, was allegedly detained by the Uttar Pradesh police on Saturday while he was on his way to Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) to address a protest rally. The former IAS officer had been tweeting throughout his detention to provide updates on where the police was taking him, before he was ultimately released from police custody. \u201cThe dialogue and discussion that we are doing here, we cannot conduct in Uttar Pradesh right now. I was planning to do something similar in AMU but they did not even let me reach the venue,\u201d said Gopinathan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apart from Gopinathan, the panel consisted of advocates Sarthak Gupta and Shreenath Khemka, city-based activist and lawyer Arjun Sheoran and political activist Kanwaljeet Singh. In an attempt to remain unbiased and conduct dialogue instead of propagating uniformed opinions, the panelists highlighted varied perspectives on the polarising issue which has brought many Indian citizens out on the streets to protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think, before we get into the argument, we should begin with understanding the rationale behind introducing the CAA,\u201d said Sarthak Gupta, a lawyer practicing at the Punjab and Haryana High court. Gupta traced the history of religious persecution in countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, whose religious minorities excluding Muslims have been granted accelerated naturalization in the CAA. \u201cIt is this context that highlights the need for the Act and we should keep that in mind before we proceed to talk about the social and political ramifications of the Act,\u201d said Gupta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Khemka, another advocate at the panel, continued Gupta\u2019s argument and gave a rationale for the legal basis of the Act, stating that the CAA and\u00a0NRC\u00a0exercise are a natural exercise for fortifying India as a modern nation state. \u201cThis all goes back to the European concept of nation building, where minorities were not even a concept. It is this understanding that we need to place in the current situation as well,\u201d said Khemka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, others on the panel vociferously disagreed with the advocates\u2019 opinion on the implementation of the CAA.
\u201cWe can argue all we want over the legal basis of the Act, but it is the lived experience of it\u2019s implementation that ultimately reveals its dangerous political ramifications,\u201d said political activist Kanwaljeet Singh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMaybe not all of us will feel the ramifications of these institutional exercises such as the NRC, the CAA and even the NPR now. But migrant populations, the poor and the marginalised, who will be forced to trace their roots to provide proof and go through various bureaucratic hurdles will be unnecessarily tortured by this exercise,\u201d said Singh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agreeing with Singh, Gopinathan highlighted that the law will most brutally affect the dispossessed and the marginalised. \u201cIt is the Dalit population, the adivasi population, the women of our country, who often do not have documents or the means to avail these documents, who will suffer the most,\u201d said Gopinathan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe burden of proving citizenship cannot be on the citizens, because it is the state who has to ensure proper documentation is provided to its people, then how can they ask us to again and again produce documents and prove our citizenship?\u201d said an impassioned Gopinathan.<\/p>\n