The Pact assured equal citizenship, security for life and property, personal honour, and freedom of speech, occupation, and worship to minorities. But the terms of the Pact have been brazenly dishonoured by Pakistan.
The Rules of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 were notified by the Union Government, thereby giving it legal force on 11 March 2024. The CAA is again the Golden Apple of Discord in the national arena. The Act is, indeed, a controversial piece of legislation. But, apart from theoretical polemics, the Act clearly has practical relevance and legitimacy.
The Act is designed to heal the wounds of Partition of India. Partition was clearly on religious lines, even though India magnanimously opted for a secular Constitution after the Partition. Sumit Ganguly in his 2016 book, “Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century”, rightly observed that “Pakistan was created as a putative homeland for the Muslims of South Asia to escape Hindu domination.” It is a natural corollary that in such a Muslim-centred state, non-Muslims are supposed to be secondary citizens and lesser humans. But India conferred equal citizenship to its Muslim population.
MUTUAL GUARANTEE FOR MINORITIES
The Nehru-Liaquat Pact signed in April 1950 had committed that Indian and Pakistani governments would protect the interests of minorities in their respective countries. Both governments have been made accountable to each other on the issue of the protection of minority rights. The Pact was a joint agreement to extend the jurisdiction of their diplomatic missions to the welfare of minority citizens across the border. During the immediate years after the Partition, the migration of refugees posed a serious threat to the security and stability of newly born India and Pakistan.
The estimates put the numbers crossing the border at 1 lakh per week. The Government of Pakistan claimed the entry of more than three million refugees into East Bengal within one year after Partition. Indian policymakers like Gopalaswamy Ayyangar and B.C. Roy even pondered on the feasibility of a complete exchange of all minority populations of India and Pakistan to stop the uncontrolled exodus of non-Muslims from East Bengal.
During the first India-Pakistan inter-dominion conference on minorities held in Calcutta in 1948, H.M. Patel ICS, a member of the Steering Committee of the Partition Council, urged that the refugee crisis not be addressed in terms of the prestige of either government but rather as a big human problem. The refugee question is still a human predicament rather than a politico-religious issue. Then both governments acknowledged the legitimate concerns of each other on minority communities across the border. Ghulam Muhammed, Pakistan’s minister for minorities who led their delegation, praised Sri Prakasa, the Indian High Commissioner, for his involvement in the cause of minorities in West Pakistan. “Mr Sri Prakasa looks after the interests of Hindus in Sind. My government gives him every facility to do so,” he said.
BORDOLOI’S OUTBURST
The Calcutta Conference witnessed the outburst of Gopinath Bordoloi, the Congress Chief Minister of Assam, on the influx of migrants from East Pakistan to his state. Bordoloi contented that his government was entitled to evict those Muslim cultivators who had migrated to the province after 1938, on the basis of an agreement that concluded between the government of Assam and the Muslim League in 1945. Bordoloi got his Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Bill passed in 1949. The bill stipulated that those who had arrived in Assam after 1938 would be repatriated to East Bengal.
International law and diplomatic developments facilitated the moulding of the Nehru-Liaquat Pact. The question of minority rights has been a tricky one for many states, especially in interwar Europe. International treaties defined and ensured minority rights. The Polish Treaty on Minority Rights (1919), for example, stipulated that “all inhabitants were to be entitled to the free exercise, whether public or private, of any creed or any religious belief, whose practice were not inconsistent with public order or public beliefs”. The minorities were assured religious, cultural, educational, and social rights by this treaty. Violations of these rights were to be reported to the League of Nations and the League of Nations was entitled to seek solutions from the states concerned. Sir Muhammed Iqbal, poet and statesman, had proposed in 1937, an “Eastern League of Nations” in South Asia to safeguard the interests of minorities.
The 1948 Interdominion Conference at Calcutta delivered a declaration by the Chief Ministers of East and West Bengal. It assured the basic human rights of minorities in both states. It aimed to stop the mass exodus and the return of refugees to their homes. Despite this declaration, the deputy high commissioner of India in Dhaka was flooded with complaints from Hindus in East Bengal of human rights violations. This led to the signing of the Nehru-Liaquat Pact. The Pact visualised a guarantee system for the protection of religious minorities in contracting states.
The Pact assured equal citizenship, security for life and property, personal honour, and freedom of speech, occupation, and worship to minorities. But the terms of the Pact have been brazenly dishonoured by Pakistan. Jogendranath Mandal, a Dalit leader who was the first law and labour minister of Pakistan, in his poignant resignation letter to Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, castigated the Government of Pakistan for being apathetic to the plight of minorities in his country. He alleged that the Nehru-Liaquat Pact was treated as a mere scrap of paper by the East Bengal government and the Muslim League and the future of Hindus in Pakistan was hopeless.
HOPELESS MINORITIES AND THE CAA
Farahnaz Ispahani, a former Pakistan People’s Party parliamentarian, in her 2015 book, “Purifying the Land of the Pure: A History of Pakistan’s Religious Minorities” has clearly explored the reasons why Pakistan, created as a homeland for the Indian subcontinent’s largest religious minority, is so plagued with violence against its religious minorities. She boldly exposed the genocidal policy of the Pakistani polity and society towards its religious minorities. Pakistan was declared an Islamic republic and non-Muslims have been banished from the seats of power and made outcasts in politics and society.
The book, “Being Hindu in Bangladesh: An Untold Story” (2023) by Deep Haldar and Avishek Biswas is a startling testimony of the ordeals of the Hindu community in Bangladesh since Partition. According to the data of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, there were 17 million Hindus in the country. The rise of Islamic extremism in the 1990s forced a major portion of Bangladeshi Hindus to flee the country for India. On an average, as of 2016, 632 people from the minority community leave Bangladesh every day. The Hindu population has gone down from 13.5% in 1974 to 8.5% in 2022. The minorities, especially Hindus, face severe persecution and harassment in Bangladesh.
Pakistan and Bangladesh have failed to honour the spirit of the Nehru-Liaquat Pact. Hence, India has every right to step into the shoes of the protector of minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh. By enacting the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, India has fulfilled its legal, moral, and historical obligation towards the minorities in these countries. The principle of non-refoulement in international law that forbids a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to a country in which they would be in probable danger of persecution based on “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”, further entrenches the Act.
Faisal C.K. is Deputy Law Secretary to the Government of Kerala. Views are personal.