Statement of South Asian Independent Citizens on India’s Citizenship Amendment Act

Statement of South Asian Independent Citizens on India’s Citizenship Amendment Act

26 December 2019

We independent citizens of countries neighbouring India hereby register our reservations about the Citizenship Amendment Act adopted by India’s Parliament, which aims to provide Indian citizenship to non-Muslims from three select countries – Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The Act is discriminatory at the first instance because it is targeted against Muslims beyond the stated intent of the law. It is unacceptable for a country with a secular Constitution to distinguish between foreign citizens on the basis of religion. Further, the Act has the potential of deepening geopolitical schisms among the countries of South Asia, which should be striving for peace and mutual understanding.

We are further concerned that the announced India-wide National Register of Citizens or an adapted exercise, planned as follow-up to the CAA, will make vulnerable tens of millions of people. As observers of India, we had not understood citizenship to be a major problem in the country when compared to many other pressing issues of social justice. We fear that such a programme will have deadly fallout, particularly for the 200 million Muslims living under the umbrella of a secular Constitution of India.

The signatories believe that India’s plans for growth and equity is being hurt by ill-advised attempts at social engineering, and this in turn will impact the larger South Asian region. A weakened, insular India would not be able to take a stand on urgent matters confronting humanity, such as nuclear weaponisation, the climate crisis, hi-tech surveillance and runaway pollution.

We question the logic of the Indian Government wanting to extend citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians and Sikhs when there are also larger numbers of Muslims of different sects in the three selected countries enduring sectarian strife. These include Ahmedia and Shia, particularly Hazara, of Pakistan and Ahmediya of Bangladesh. What of the thousands of Tamil refugees of Sri Lanka, and the Rohingya who are so vulnerable in Myanmar and as refugees in Bangladesh?

If the authorities in New Delhi were seeking the well-being of religious minorities in the three selected countries, it should have engaged in sustained diplomatic effort to ensure their protection. We believe that with its action the Government of India has made religious minorities in the three countries more vulnerable than they were earlier.

The most logical approach for India is to join the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, and to be open to foreigners of any faith or persuasion who are in distress. To select non-citizens based on faith is in defiance of basic human values.

The rest of South Asia has long appreciated the spirit of inclusion and social justice that has marked modern India, a country that has stood for democracy, pluralism and freedom. We signatories of this statement are distressed by the decisive majoritarian turn in India, and the intolerance evident in the ongoing crackdown on peaceful dissent.

A democratic, pluralist India that promotes solidarity, co-existence and mutual respect among diverse ethnic, religious and cultural communities of citizens within its borders is vital for a peaceful and stable South Asia.

Signatories:

Arif Hasan, Karachi
Beena Sarwar, Karachi
Hameeda Hossain, Dhaka
I.A. Rehman, Lahore
Jayadeva Uyangoda, Colombo
Kanak Mani Dixit, Lalitpur
Mahesh Maskey, Kathmandu
Mubashir Hasan, Lahore
NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, Lalitpur
Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islamabad
Pratyoush Onta, Lalitpur
Serajul Islam Choudhury, Dhaka
Shahidul Alam, Dhaka
Sumathy Sivamohan, Peradeniya

Since this statement came out. Several others have also wanted to be signatories. It will be too complicated to change the sequence every time a new name is added, so new names will be added in the order in which they are received. If you want your name to be added, please say so in the comments section and I’ll add it as soon as I can.

Sultana Kamal, Dhaka
Khushi Kabir, Dhaka
Mohammad Shahnewaz Khan, Chattagram
Tanzim Wahab, Dhaka
Bikas Rauniar, Kathmandu
Faruq Faisel, Dhaka

THE PLACE OF SHAHIDUL ALAM

First published in PIX

by Rahaab Allana

From A Struggle for Democracy, 1987–1990

No heaven, no hell, no everafter, do I care for when I’m gone
Peace here I seek, in this sand and soil, this place where I was born
As oceans deep, as deserts wide, as forests and fences loom
As children die, as lovers sigh, no cross, no epitaph, no tomb…

Place by Shahidul Alam, 2017* Continue reading “THE PLACE OF SHAHIDUL ALAM”

‘The Shahidul Alam I Know Is Gentle’

Urvashi Butalia writes about the times she met and worked with the Bangladeshi photojournalist, who was granted bail by the High Court in Dhaka after 102 days of detention.

By Urvashi Butalia November 16, 2018

I cannot now remember when I first met Shahidul Alam, but I think it was some twenty or more years ago when both of us served on the board of an organisation called Panos South Asia. My first impression of him was of a somewhat large, bearded man who spoke with an accent I could not place. It did not take long – perhaps a few hours – for this to change and for the warm, affectionate and caring human being to emerge.

To me, Shahidul came across that time as the best kind of nationalist. He loved – he still does – his country Bangladesh. His stint abroad – I never actually knew where he has studied or spent any time – had actually left this feeling much stronger in him. He told all of us about Drik, the photo agency that showcased photographers from the global South and that fiercely protected their rights and their work, refusing to accept that simply because they belonged to the South, their value was any the less. Drik charged for their photos as did international agencies, and why not, was Shahidul’s question. Continue reading “‘The Shahidul Alam I Know Is Gentle’”

Reply to Arundhati: Yes, We Will Rise

Dearest Arundhati,

It was a letter I read and reread long before it appeared before my eyes. It was through layers of metal bars that I strained to listen to Rahnuma’s words. At over 130 decibels, the noise made by us screaming prisoners, straining to hear and be heard, was akin to a crowded stadium or a fire siren. As she repeated her words over and over again, I faintly heard, Arundhati. Letter. It was just over a hundred days that I had been incarcerated. A hundred days since I’d slept on my own bed, fed my fish, cycled down the streets of Dhaka. A hundred days since I’d pressed my shutter as I searched for that elusive light.

Arundhati Roy with Maati Ke Laal in her flat in Delhi. Photo: Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Those words, screamed out but barely heard was the nourishment I needed. Did you write it by hand? What was the paper like? In this digital age, you probably used a keyboard. What font had you used? What point size? And the words. Words that you so gracefully string together. I relished the imagined words. Your words. I missed words as I missed my bed, my fish and Rahnuma’s touch. When they asked me what I needed in jail, books were on top of my list. The first lot of books came in. Mujib’s prison diaries, Schendel’s History of Bangladesh, and the book you’d given me when we last met, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. I’d been meaning to read it ever since we said goodbye in Delhi, but our lives had been taken over by the immediacy of our struggles. Now I had the time. Continue reading “Reply to Arundhati: Yes, We Will Rise”

Arundhati Roy’s letter to Shahidul Alam

Update – 15 November 2018

PEN International welcomes the news that Shahidul Alam was granted bail today. PEN continues to call for the case against Alam to be dropped.

“While it is a relief to see the court in Dhaka granting bail to Shahidul Alam, it is by no means certain that he is free. The government is still determined to appeal in its ill-conceived pursuit of Shahidul on ridiculous charges under Bangladesh’s draconian laws. Those charges must be dropped immediately and Shahidul should be released unconditionally and his freedoms restored – freedoms which should never have been taken away,” said Salil Tripathi, Chair of PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee.

15th November 2018

PEN International’s Day of the Imprisoned Writer

Dear Shahidul,

It’s been more than a hundred days now since they took you away. Times aren’t easy in your country or in mine, so when we first heard that unknown men had abducted you from your home, of course we feared the worst. Were you going to be “encountered” (our word in India for extra-judicial murder by security forces) or killed by “non-state actors”? Would your body be found in an alley, or floating in some shallow pond on the outskirts of Dhaka? When your arrest was announced and you surfaced alive in a police station, our first reaction was one of sheer joy.

Am I really writing to you? Perhaps not. If I were, I wouldn’t need to say very much beyond, “Dearest Shahidul, no matter how lonely your prison cell, know that we have our eyes on you. We are looking out for you.” Continue reading “Arundhati Roy’s letter to Shahidul Alam”

Didi. The Street Fighter

MAHASWETA DEVI (JANUARY 14, 1926 -?JULY 28, 2016), WRITER AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST

Mahasweta Devi looking at photo exhibition catalogue "Nature's Fury" by Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World — Mahasweta Devi looking at photo exhibition catalogue “Nature’s Fury” by Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Protocol wasn?t Didi?s thing.?Shoitan! (Satan) she would say lovingly. And then grab you and plonk you on her lap. The fact that both Rahnuma and I were far too old, and I was certainly much too heavy, to be sitting on anyone?s lap wasn?t something she worried much about. She didn?t care much for people?s age, and what other people thought, was something that had never bothered her. If you love someone, they sit on your lap. ?You have a problem with that??
Mahasweta Devi (Didi ? elder sister ? to all of us) had been a giant of a figure in South Asian literature for as far back as I can remember.?Jhansir Rani?(The Queen of Jhansi, 1956), Hajar Churashir Maa (Mother of 1084, 1975) and?Aranyer Adhikar?(The Occupation of the Forest, 1977) her powerful novel about the Santal uprising were what we knew this celebrated writer and activist by. That she was a tease and loved to sing, and didn?t mind the odd practical joke, was a side to her that had remained private. What should have been apparent was the rebel in her; her uncompromising stand for the oppressed, and her clear position as to which side of the fence she belonged. Continue reading

Runs in the Family

New findings about schizophrenia rekindle old questions about genes and identity.

Kalpana's Warriors in Delhi

THE SEARCH FOR KALPANA CHAKMA

BY SMRITI DANIEL??/??28TH JANUARY 2016

Kalpana's Warriors_Exehibition Opening — Opening of ?Kalpana?s Warriors? at Drik Gallery 12 June 2015 on the 19th anniversary of her abduction. Photo: Habibul Haque/Drik

Shahidul Alam has long been gripped by the life of a woman he has never met.
It?s been two decades since Kalpana Chakma was abducted, but Shahidul refuses to forget her. Standing at the threshold of his latest exhibition,Kalpana?s Warriors, the Bangladeshi photographer pauses for a moment.
In the room beyond is the third in a series of photo exhibitions that began with Searching for Kalpana Chakma in 2013, and was followed by 18 in 2014. The woman around whom these pictures revolve is notably absent from them. She was abducted at gunpoint in the early hours of 12 June 1996 from her home in Rangamati in Bangladesh. Her captors were a group of plain-clothed men who were recognised as being from a nearby army camp. Kalpana never returned home and her fate remains unknown.
When the exhibition first opened at the Drik Gallery in Dhaka, many of those who had been photographed could not risk coming out of hiding, yet the room was full of people who knew Kalpana?s story intimately. Some simply stood for a while before the portraits, others wept. Continue reading “Kalpana's Warriors in Delhi”

Modi visits Bangladesh, but Teesta is not even in the agenda

by Taj Hashmi

Last time I met my old friend Gowher Rizvi at his office in December 2011, he was very upbeat and optimistic about the ?impending? Teesta water sharing agreement with India. He seemed to have reposed absolute trust in what Manmohan Singh ? a fellow Oxford alumnus ? had promised him in this regard. Although I was still a bit skeptic about the deal, I brushed aside my skepticism momentarily, thinking the Oxford Old Boy camaraderie might have worked to the advantage of Bangladesh.

PMs Hasina, Modi and CM Mamata Banerjee flagging off a bus service between Bangladesh and India, in Dhaka Saturday. (Source: PTI) - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/india-bangladesh-seal-historic-land-boundary-agreement/2/#sthash.sxgId5nZ.dpuf — PMs Hasina, Modi and CM Mamata Banerjee flagging off a bus service between Bangladesh and India, in Dhaka Saturday. (Source: PTI) – See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/india-bangladesh-seal-historic-land-boundary-agreement/2/#sthash.sxgId5nZ.dpuf

Majority World exhibition in Rome: Justice in Focus

IDLO Photo Exhibition in Rome
Farnesina Porte Aperte 2015
22 – 29 May 2015

justice in focus in rome

IDLO’s photo exhibition “In Focus: Justice and the Post-2015 Agenda” will form part of this year’s initiative by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to open its doors to the general public. From 22 until 29 May 2015, visitors will be able to participate in “Farnesina Porte Aperte” and view the exhibition during guided tours of the building. The Farnesina’s art collection is internationally recognized, and IDLO is proud to have been chosen to exhibit alongside this.

The photographs were also featured by The Guardian.
guardian piece on justice in focus

Curated by IDLO and the photo agency Majority World, the exhibition focuses on the challenges of development and the rule of law. From gender equality and indigenous rights to energy poverty and land tenure, it presents the rule of law as lived experience. The pictures vividly explore the human side of the rule of law and its importance in everyday life.

?In Focus: Justice and the Post-2015 Agenda? illustrates these themes through 32 images – taken by photographers from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, India and Kenya – ranging from the Amazonian settlement of Colniza, Brazil, where rule of law measures have reversed illegal logging and deforestation, to the energy-starved metropolis of Kibera, Africa?s largest slum.

To sign up for a guided tour, please visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation?s Farnesina Porte Aperte website and choose the ?art route?, currently available from Monday 25 until Wednesday 27 May.
Before traveling to Rome, the exhibition was shown at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, to coincide with the 28th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Over the coming months, it will be shown in Milan, New York, Washington and The Hague, and will return to Rome for an exclusive viewing in November.

For more information, please read this article in Italy’s Corriere della Sera,?visit theIDLO mini-site and watch video interviews?with the photographers.

Tag: India