The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) must have been taken aback by the range and intensity of the protests that have erupted across the country against the new citizenship law. Notwithstanding the legislative focus only on non-Muslims, the BJP -led government at the centre apparently presumed that it had drafted the legislation carefully enough to preclude criticism. The reason for its confidence was probably that the law is meant exclusively for persecuted non-Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and does not deal with an estimated 200 million Indian Muslims, a point which the BJP’s spokespersons have been at pains to emphasize.

What must have surprised the  party is that there should have been such a widespread outpouring of concern over the omission of Muslims from the list of the six communities – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians and Parsees - who have become entitled to gain Indian citizenship if they are maltreated in these three Islamic countries. Even the assurance that Muslims from these neighbouring countries can become citizens on a case-by-case basis hasn’t defused the tension.

What the expression of angst and anguish over the exclusion of Muslims from the first list denotes is the depth of the nation’s secular conscience which finds it outrageous that a government can so casually keep out a community on the plea that they do not face persecution in the Islamic countries. When it is pointed out that there are Muslim groups like the Ahmediyas, Shias, Balochis, Hazaras, Rohingyas and others in Pakistan,  Afghanistan and Bangladesh who do face persecution, the explanation is that the Shias can go to Iran (!); that the Ahmediyas are ostracized by orthodox Muslims in India as well; that the Balochis face political persecution and not a religious form; and that the Rohingyas from Myanmar enter India via Bangladesh.

But it is not so much these evasions which have led to protests as the belief that the new law, with its pointed omission of Muslims, is a straw in the wind which underlines the irrelevance of the community in the eyes of a government which is known to have a pronounced pro-Hindu bias. Moreover, the absence of Muslims from the list has been seen in conjunction with the preparation of a National Register of Citizens (NRC), whose avowed purpose is to smoke out the illegal Muslim immigrants living in India and either deport them to their country of origin or put them in detention centres.

It is worth noting, however, that the magnitude of the protests against the citizenship law, mainly by students across the country. and also by middle-aged and even elderly activists,  have alerted the government to the possibility that, for once, it may have crossed an undefined red line.

For a government known for its arrogance, it has been an unprecedented step backwards to distance itself from the NRC by saying that it hasn’t yet been discussed in the higher echelons of power. In the process, the government has exposed Home Minister Amit Shah as someone who was economical with the truth when he said that the NRC would be implemented across the nation by 2024.

But why did the government cross the red line in the first place? The reason will become evident when it is realized that ever since the government’s assumption of power in 2014, the saffron brotherhood - identified broadly as Sangh Parivar comprising the BJP’s ideological mentor the RSS and its branches - has been testing the limits of secular resistance as it pushes its pro-Hindu agenda. In the first five years, the agenda comprised organizing “ghar wapsi”, or the reconversion of Muslims to Hinduism, the campaigns against “love jehad”, or the alleged seduction of Hindu women by predatory Muslim men; and the lynching of Muslims, usually in broad daylight, for violating cow protection laws.

It is the return to power with a larger majority which has palpably emboldened the government to raise the tempo of its pro-Hindu assertions, from ghar wapsi and love jehad, to dispensing with Article 370 of the Constitution conferring special status to Kashmir by stationing half a million troops and placing the state (now a Union territory) under severe restrictions.

The tweaking of the citizenship law and the proposed NRC were the next steps after the Kashmir lockdown, in line with the longstanding objective of the saffron brotherhood to convert India into a Hindu rashtra, or a nation of, by and for Hindus.

As External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has pointed out, initiatives such as these are meant to eliminate a “legacy of problems” and that this approach is similar to what happens in China where the entire system is geared towards “solving” problems. By this token, the Chinese can be said to have “solved” the problems of Tibet and Xinjiang, although not yet in Hongkong. But if the Indian government is finding itself facing a storm of protests at home and criticism abroad, it is obviously because the Chinese “model” is leading to a dead end.

Far from “solving” the “problems” of Kashmir and of illegal immigrants, the scene is becoming more and more complex with the government clearly clueless on when to take the lid off the simmering cauldron in Kashmir and on the citizenship law and the NRC as a section in the BJP’s ally, the Janata Dal (United) wants them to be scrapped.

In any event, nearly all the non-BJP state governments have ruled out implementing the two measures, thereby preparing the battlefield for an unprecedented confrontation which will shake up the federal polity. Yet, driven by an innate arrogance based on the conviction that after decades of rule by an Anglicized class, the people who are rooted in orthodox Hindu values are finally in power, the government is unwilling to accept that it may have made a mistake. 

While the refusal to budge may create a constitutional crisis, there is also the possibility that the BJP’s electoral reverses, as in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, and perhaps in Delhi in February, will make the party realize that India is not China.

(The writer is a current affairs analyst)