The Seattle City Council on the 3rd of February, 2020 became the first legislative body in the United States (US) to pass a resolution against the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA or the Act) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in India. The resolution urges the Indian Parliament to repeal the laws and stop the registery from coming into action. The resolution was sponsored by an Indian-American council member, Kshama Sawant.
The "far right" politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been recognised as discriminatory, the resolution further says, Most Indians lack documentation such as birth certificates to prove citizenship, and a nationwide expansion of the NRC could strip hundreds of millions of people (disproportionately Muslim, oppressed castes, women, indigenous and LGBT communities) left out of the CAA of their citizenship rights with no option to be re-naturalised.
It goes on to state that the Indian parliament must take immediate action against discrimination:
"The resolution has reaffirmed Seattle as a welcoming city and expressed solidarity with Seattle's South Asian community regardless of religion and caste. The Parliament of India needs to uphold the Indian Constitution by repealing the CAA and NRC and also take steps towards helping refugees by ratifying various UN treaties on refugees.
Indian-American groups that have been protesting against the Act in different ways celebrated the Seattle City Councils decision.
Equality Labs, a South Asian human rights group in the US, released a statement thanks the Council and the people of Seattle. Thousands of organisers across the country have called, e-mailed, and visited Seattle City Council members to amplify this Resolution, and it sets an example to cities across the United States that we do not stand on the side of genocide. At a time when members of the Indian ruling party cited Trump, the Muslim ban, and his war on immigrants as justification for targeting hundreds of millions of Indian minorities, Americans have a unique responsibility to stand up and speak about this human rights crisis. We are glad that Seattle is leading the way on this, the statement says.
Javed Sikander, spokesperson for the Seattle chapter of the Indian American Muslim Council, also welcomed the decision. "These acts are unconstitutional and designed to disenfranchise several million Muslim, Dalits and other minorities in order to create a fascist state. The prime minister of India and his party BJP has to be stopped from further damaging India and its secularism, he said.
According to Seema Sirohi, a senior journalist, Some analysts see a resurrection of the old anti-Modi Coalition Against Genocide, which prevailed in the US Congress to deny him a visa while he was Chief Minister of Gujarat."
Protests against CAA have also been held across cities, including New York, Washington, Minneapolis and others.
Author: Dyuti Pandya
