Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking his country down a dangerous and divisive path with a new citizenship law that undermines its secular traditions and discriminates against Muslims.

For weeks now, demonstrations across India have underlined the extent of opposition to the new law. It’s the biggest push-back Modi has faced since he won power in 2014, and for good reason.

The citizenship law, adopted by India’s parliament in December, sets out a fast-track to citizenship for people from neighbouring countries seeking refuge from religious persecution.

That sounds laudable, on its face. But what has aroused so much opposition is that it offers a path to citizenship for Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Jains forced out of three Muslim-majority countries — Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The law conspicuously does not offer so-called accelerated citizenship to Muslims, nor does it extend to non-Muslim countries bordering India such as Myanmar and China. It would not apply, for example, to Ahmadi Muslims who are persecuted in Pakistan or to Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar.

Modi’s government argues there’s no issue here. The citizenship law, says the prime minister, will have no impact on India’s 200 million Muslims, who form 14 per cent of the country’s 1.3 billion people.

Strictly speaking, he’s right. But Muslims, along with many other Indians, see the law as part of Modi’s ongoing campaign to promote what’s known as “Hindutva,” or a concept of India that sees it as essentially a Hindu nation.

That runs counter to modern India’s tradition of secularism; even though its population is 80 per cent Hindu, its constitution treats all citizens on an equal basis regardless of religion. The new law, writes political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta of Ashoka University, “redefines Indian national identity, moving the country emphatically in the direction of becoming an ethnocracy.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calls it “fundamentally discriminatory.”

Alarm bells are also ringing because Modi’s government has taken other actions that have the effect of marginalizing Muslims, India’s biggest minority.

Last summer it imposed direct rule on the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. It unilaterally revoked two articles in India’s constitution that gave the territory special status, which it had since it joined India in 1947, and sent thousands of troops to lock down the region.

The Modi government is also proposing to introduce a national program of citizenship tests. A similar measure in the northeastern state of Assam resulted in almost 2 million people finding themselves stateless, and many fear a national plan along the same lines would have the effect of depriving a disproportionate number of Muslims of the right to live in India.

Opponents of all this remember Modi’s political history, as well. As chief minister of Gujarat state almost 20 years ago, he was blamed for being complicit in anti-Muslim riots that resulted in thousands of deaths. And his BJP party has long promoted a vision of India as an essentially Hindu nation.

This is all incendiary stuff in a country like India, whose independence was marked by bloody violence between Hindus and Muslims, and where communal tensions are always near the surface.

For more than seven decades, India has managed to remain democratic and maintain a remarkable level of harmony among its many ethnic and religious groups by upholding the principle of secularism and guaranteeing equal rights for all.

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Modi’s government risks upsetting that balance and inflaming religious feelings. If India’s Muslims become convinced their government is out to make them second-class citizens, that will only feed extremism and lead to more unrest.

It would be a tragedy if a country as important as India went down that path. A wiser course would be to uphold the secular tradition that has served it so well.

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