Thank you for commenting on my article, although it seems you might have benefited from a closer reading. I also recommend that, perhaps, you might benefit from some further critical reading on the ways in which “secularism” (which emerged as a response to Christianity) has been weaponized and manipulated in very particular ways in the Indian context. The rest of your argument is logically very similar to that of “All Lives Matter”, and while I would never co-opt the #BLM movement’s hard-won, brilliant messaging (and would ask for folks to refrain from using a Hindu Lives Matter hashtag), it’s important to recognize the similarity, since the critiques of “All Lives Matter” are more widely understood. All Lives Matter is a position advanced by folks who are uncomfortable with acknowledging white supremacy. Similarly, it would appear, folks are uncomfortable with the idea of recognizing Islamic supremacy in the context of these three nations. The idea that I can make a case to recognize Hindu (and other non-Muslim) persecution in Islamic theocracies certainly does not preclude me from recognizing and having compassion regarding the persecution of some Muslims in those same countries. Nowhere in my article do I suggest that some Muslims are not persecuted in those countries. But they are not persecuted on the basis of religion, (e.g. for not being Muslim). The CAA is the Indian government’s response to the state-sanctioned discrimination by the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh on the basis of religion. Those governments are the source of the religious discrimination. The rights of persecuted Muslims (from those three countries and from anywhere) continue to be protected by the same rules under Indian law and pathways to citizenship are still available to them, as they should. Additionally, the only thing the Act does is to reduce the waiting time for citizenship from 11 to 5 years for a certain subsect of that group — those who entered India before December 2014. There is no difference in pathways towards citizenship — or in the treatment of those seeking asylum — for those who enter the country today.
To take that small amendment (and tack on fears about a national NRC that hasn’t even been designed yet), which is a technical adjustment and an important and long overdue response to and symbolic recognition that non-Muslims are being persecuted in India’s neighboring nations, and extrapolate from that this is tantamount to Nazi Germany is not only irresponsible and sensationalist, it is disturbingly insulting to the millions who were impacted by the Holocaust.
As for the value-signaling, ableist, snarky jibe at the end of your comment, it’s a powerful example of exactly the phenomenon that my article seeks to illuminate, so thank you.
