CHANGES TO INDIAS CITIZENSHIP L AWS *

ABSTRACT

In December 2019, India's Parliament passed, and its President signed into law, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, altering the country's 1955 Citizenship Act. For the first time in independent India's history, a religious criterion was added to the country's naturalization process. The changes sparked significant controversy, including large-scale and sometimes violent protests. Opponents of the CAA warn that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are pursuing a Hindu majoritarian, anti-Muslim agenda that threatens India's status as an officially secular republic and violates international human rights norms and obligations. In tandem with a National Register of Citizens (NRC) planned by the federal government, the as-yet unimplemented CAA may threaten the citizenship rights of India's large Muslim minority of roughly 200 million. India's Supreme Court is set to resume its review more than 250 petitions on the law's constitutionality in December 2022.