After nearly 80 years, India’s Muslims are being written out of citizenship

A TRT Global article examines the challenges faced by India’s Muslim population, which is now 200 million strong and is projected to be the world’s largest Muslim population by 2060. The article highlights that until December 2019, democratic India did not have a religious test for Indian citizenship, but this principle was overturned with the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which introduced a religion-based criterion for belonging.

The report details how this law permits authorities to disenfranchise Indian Muslims who lack documentary evidence of citizenship, a significant threat in a country where millions of the poor and marginalized lack such papers. Undocumented non-Muslims, however, would remain entitled to citizenship under the law.

The article points to a “layered betrayal” of the promise made to Muslims in 1947, where socio-political and historical fissures are being turned into an instrument of state policy. It notes that the Election Commission of India’s revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, which will re-verify 80 million voters’ papers, is a step in this direction, with officials signaling that large numbers of “illegal immigrants” will be deleted from the lists.

The article concludes that for millions of Indians, especially Muslims, the rights once considered inalienable are being redefined and erased, recasting them as outsiders in their own land.