Physics Poetry Platter and Politics

The uproar pertaining to and emerging from the Citizenship Amendment Act has largely been associated with its relation to the National Register of Citizens exercise currently underway in Assam and proposed for the entire country by the government. The CAA has largely been criticized for being a tool that could allow all non-muslims to stay in India and to deny citizenship to Muslim immigrants. There is some legitimacy to such apprehensions and arguments given the political extremes that exist in the current ruling dispensation. At the same time, it also seems to me that the whole picture of India's immigration policy over the years is far more complicated, the NRC and CAA debates when looked at from this perspective have provided space for debate and also to some extent hope. The CAA is not the first time India's citizenship act has been amended. Under the original act of 1950 anyone born in India from the date of enactment of the constitution was a citizen by virtue of thei...

The Citizenship Amendment Bill having occupied a prominent part of the political discourse in India in recent days has deservedly won its acronym, the CAB. Although, it has become one of those pieces of legislation which has been given interpretations beyond its scope and aims. It has become a vent for those who perennially believe that the Indian government has sinister motives at its heart and wants to make India a Hindu Rashtra. There is no denying that there is a section in the ruling dispensation that does want that, but the quintessential question is, as it always is, has the actions of the democratically elected and accountable government reflected those desires? People will agree to disagree on that question. My objection is not to that disagreement but to the overarching misinformation that is going around about the CAB. Usually, I do not attach much importance to the reporting of foreign media outlets on events in India, since they are filled with biases and oversimplificat...