Have
you ever wondered what the biggest failure of India’s intelligentsia was? Let
me tell you a story. It is a small anecdote from the tumultuous days of the
French revolution between 1789 and 1799. A newspaper reporter was interviewing
a leader of the revolution in a Paris café. As they were sipping coffee and
chatting, a wildly howling mob shouting slogans stomped by along the adjoining
street. The reporter wondered aloud what the procession was all about. On
hearing this, the leader shouted “Oh my God, I am supposed to lead the
procession” and ran out. At
times when mass movements acquire a momentum of their own, revolutionary leaders might have to follow the mobs while pretending they were
leading. But the intellectuals of a society are not weathercocks but its
leading lights. They do not—and should not—sometimes follow while pretending to
always lead. They should possess the moral fibre and intellectual integrity to
pursue ideals even if they are unpopular.
The
words honesty and integrity are interchangeable but are paired to amplify
the meaning, in a figure of speech called synonymia. The word integrity is derived from the mathematical word integer, meaning a whole
number, undivided and complete. There can be no partial honesty or fractional integrity. In the case of public intellectuals it is an all or
none phenomenon. Lamentably many of our public
intellectuals fail in this test.
As
a test of the principle, consider the idea of freedom of expression. If a
society cannot provide the protection needed for free expression of ideas, it
is the public intellectuals who should hold themselves responsible for their
failure to create the ambience for free flow of ideas. Is the principle of
freedom of expression absolute or are there limits to it? If the public
intellectuals champion absolute freedom on one occasion, but argue alibis for
scuttling it on another occasion for political reasons, their vacillation
cannot advance the cause of freedom of expression. It keeps the society
splintered by competitive populism. If the public intellectuals swing with
political winds they cannot expect the society to conform to abstract ideals.
Consider the ongoing
agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019. Let
us look what citizenship means under various Indian laws. We will try to
explain it in plain language devoid of legal lingo.
The issue of citizenship is
dealt with in the very beginning of the Indian Constitution (in Part II)
just after nation and the powers of the national government are defined. Articles
5 to 11 are related to citizenship. While Part II confers citizenship to
residents in the territory of India when the nation was formed, it also allowed
for conferring citizenship to those Indians who remained in Pakistan at the
time of partition and, those who went there after partition but wanted to return
to India—before July 1948.
The Citizenship Act of 1955 defines natural and acquired
citizenship in clauses 3 to 7. It flows from Part II of the Constitution
and is enacted to amplify and encode rules and regulations for conferring
citizenship. Here briefly are the modes that confer citizenship:
1.
Citizenship by
birth (Clause 3)
2.
Citizenship by
descent (Clause 4)
3.
Citizenship by
registration (Clause 5)
4.
Citizenship by
naturalization (Clause 6)
5. Special provision
as to citizenship of persons covered by the Assam Accord (Clause 6A)
6.
Citizenship by
incorporation of territory (Clause 7)
There is no ambiguity about
the nature or cause of partition of the country. Pakistan and its later splinter
Bangladesh were formed as the Muslims of undivided India wanted a separate
state for themselves. Many non–Muslims remained in Pakistan after partition
either because they were complacent about their status despite the religious
nature of the newly formed state or because of an inertia that held them back
from making the long journey to India. It was also possible that they stayed
back as they reposed faith in the assurances given by leaders of the nascent
state who promised them complete religious freedom.
What happened to them in the
subsequent decades too needs no recounting. To put it simply their populations were
decimated. Many of them had to flee to India, the only country in which they
felt they could seek asylum.
All that the CAA does is to
provide relief to persecuted minorities fleeing Afghanistan, Bangladesh and
Pakistan who would otherwise be defined as ‘illegal migrants’ under Section 2
(1) (b) of the 1955 Citizenship Act. It does not take away the rights of anyone
nor does it seek to strip bona fide Indian citizens of their citizenship.
It does not abrogate the Clause 6 (Naturalisation) of the principal act by
which anyone from outside can seek citizenship. There is a sunset clause in the
CAA. It limits the ‘relief’ to those who entered India before December 31,
2014.
The
conduct of the opposition parties has no surprises. Their objective is to usurp power,
no matter how divisive and fraught with long–term consequences their modus
could be. It is the conduct of the public intellectuals that should
surprise.
Those who are making a public
spectacle of reading the Preamble in agitations across the country
should carefully read the wording of Article 11 of the Constitution.
It confers unqualified power to the Parliament to make provisions with respect
to acquisition and termination of all matters relating to citizenship. Here is
what it states:
“11. Nothing in the foregoing provisions of this Part shall derogate from the power of Parliament to make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship and all other matters relating to citizenship.”
Is
the ongoing agitation mere tilting at windmills or a machination of deception, disinformation and psychological operations (known as Dee–Dee–PsyOps in the parlance of intelligence agencies), intended to intimidate the central government against bringing in
progressive legislations like the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the Supreme Court hearing petitions
against the abrogation of Article 370 and the CAA?