The CAA act is a step in the wrong direction, both for Indian secularism and for regional harmony. It remains to be seen what ripple effects that may have within and outside India.  

The implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) by the Indian government has emerged as a focal point of discussions in the socio-political and diplomatic spheres of South Asian countries. According to the Act, Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians — specifically non-Muslims — who have escaped to India from religious persecution in Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan before 31 December 2014, will receive Indian citizenship. The law was passed more than four years ago, but its implementation was suspended at that time due to widespread protests across India against its discriminatory nature and the possible diplomatic friction with neighbouring countries. Though the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has consistently assured Dhaka, and other capitals, that the CAA is a domestic issue, Dhaka’s anxiety has been little assuaged, particularly since Bangladesh is at the centre of India’s foreign nationals’ issue.  

While the BJP government has claimed that the measure is not against the Muslim population of India, doubt looms since the act offers citizenship only to illegal immigrants belonging to six specific religious groups — excluding Muslims. This violates Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, which says: “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.” The post-1947 secular values upheld by many of India’s founding leaders, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and BR Ambedkar, are significantly undermined by the law.  

According to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the CAA divides people, incites communal feelings, and undermines the Constitution. The timing of the CAA enactment just weeks before the 2024 Indian General Election raises suspicions about whether the Modi-led government is using the law as part of its vote-bank political campaign, especially in the Bengali Hindu electorate in Assam and West Bengal. For instance, the enactment of CAA would deny voting rights to Bengali-origin Muslims, who have generally rallied behind the Trinamool Congress, the BJP’s main opposition in these states.  

Moreover, the law would exclude many persecuted groups, such as the Ahmadiyas and Shias of Pakistan, Hazaras of Afghanistan, Rohingya refugees of Myanmar, and Tamil refugees of Sri Lanka from granting Indian citizenship. The enactment of such a discriminatory law before general elections seems aimed at the communal polarisation of India to solidify Hindu Votes. 

India’s drastic move to enact the CAA and, subsequently, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has sparked outrage in Afghanistan; the first diplomatic setback occurred when the Afghan envoy condemned India for levelling them as religious aggressors and persecutors. Sri Lanka has also voiced its concerns against the implementation of CAA-NRC and has condemned India for the ill-treatment of minority communities. They are deeply concerned about the thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils who took refuge in India during the Civil War in Sri Lanka. Nepal fears that the omission of Gurkhas from Assam’s NRC list could lead to their exodus. Thus the CAA has the potential to negatively affect India’s bilateral relations with other regional countries. 

While the Bangladesh government has been circumspect in its comments, with the foreign ministry repeatedly saying that the CAA is India’s “internal matter,” it has also voiced concerns that any “uncertainty” in India is likely to affect its neighbours. India does not share a border with Afghanistan, and Pakistan will resist any forced exodus of undocumented people from India very strongly. It is with these considerations that Bangladesh has been gripped with concerns that the CAA will push millions of undocumented Indian Muslims into Bangladesh, hitting heavily on the country’s economy, as well as its social fabric and environment, which has already been overburdened with Rohingyas from Myanmar.  

The enactment of the CAA coincides with the ongoing anti-India campaign “India Out” on Bangladeshi social media platforms, which advocates for a boycott of Indian products. Anti-India feelings have been on the rise in Bangladesh over the years, mainly due to the deep grievances about the Indian government’s unfriendly actions regarding border killings, water sharing, transit facilities, and other trade-related issues. Moreover, the persistent Bangladeshi-bashing vitriol of the Indian ruling elite has triggered a sense of hatred among the ordinary citizens of Bangladesh. For example, BJP General Secretary Amit Shah, also the home minister, has publicly equated Bangladeshi immigrants to “termites,” “illegal infiltrators,” and a threat to national security. Naturally, this hasn’t gone over too well with the general public in Bangladesh. 

While not entirely true, some Bangladeshis believe that India has significantly (and asymetrically) benefited from two-way trade and connectivity, with Bangladesh losing out. While Bangladesh’s political, commercial, and diplomatic relations with India have been very strong for more than a decade and a half, Bangladeshi citizens have long been concerned by India’s reluctance towards Bangladesh’s concerns on multiple issues, the most glaring of them all is the border killings by the Indian Border Security Force (BSF). Despite repeated state-level promises to reduce such murders to zero, there has been a steady rise in killings along the India-Bangladesh border over the last three years. 30 Bangladeshi citizens died at the hands of the BSF in 2023, while the number was 23 in 2022. This issue has regularly sparked widespread anger in Bangladesh. 

The water sharing of rivers — the Teesta, to be more specific — is another issue of critical dispute between two neighbours. Bangladesh has recently allowed India to use its Chittagong and Mongla ports, while the former has not yet received permission to export goods to Nepal or Bhutan through the latter’s land transit hubs. All these events have already caused much discontent among Bangladeshis towards the Indian government. The CAA, therefore, is likely to fan already burning flames of contempt and give strength to the India-out campaign, raising anti-India sentiment.  

The CAA will also play a role in Bangladesh’s internal politics, providing an opportunity for militant Islamic groups and other anti-Indian forces to unite against the ruling government or draw the government into a more hardline stance. The CAA’s enforcement will set a precedent in the subcontinent that religious identity can be the basis of citizenship. Resentment toward the law might lead to a dangerous rise in identity politics along religious lines in the region.  

It is logical to conclude that instability in India over the law will likely affect its neighbours as well, particularly Bangladesh. New Delhi must collaborate more closely with Dhaka to manage the fallout of its domestic policy, and insulate Dhaka from the repercussions of the CAA. 

Kamal Uddin Mazumder is a Security Affairs Analyst in Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.