With a reformed citizenship law, New Delhi is paving the way for becoming a Hindu nation, they say. But resistance is growing.

“Long live Assam,” chanted demonstrators in Guwahati, India. About 5,000 people marched through the streets of Assam’s largest city on Sunday, despite a curfew and a ban on gatherings, to vent their anger at reforms to the citizenship law. Critics say the Hindu nationalist government is turning India into a Hindu nation.

At least six people have died in protests in Assam in the past five days. State officials said Sunday that four people hit by police bullets had died in hospital. The other two deaths occurred in fights and when a store caught fire. Dozens of people were also injured.

Demonstration against citizenship law in India

Demonstrators also set up roadblocks and set fire to train stations, cars, buses and shops in the states of Tripura and West Bengal. In some parts, the internet has been blocked and cell phone connections cut off. There were also violent protests in the capital New Delhi.

Last Wednesday, the parliament in New Delhi passed a new law that would allow immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to acquire Indian citizenship provided they are not Muslim.

Neighboring India Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Afghanistan are mostly Muslim. But there are religious minorities of Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis. The new law stipulates that people from this group can obtain Indian citizenship if they have worked in India for six years – even if they do not enter the country legally. It reforms the 64 year old Citizenship Act which barred all illegal migrants from becoming Indian citizens.

India: Religious Hierarchy

India’s Hindu nationalist government justified the reforms saying it would protect people from religious persecution. However, the law has drawn heavy criticism in India and abroad. Indian journalist Barka Dutt dryly commented in the Hindustan Times newspaper that “now we all have to prove our Indian origins”.

The reforms used the guise of generosity to transform India from a secular state into one with a religious hierarchy, Dutt said.

“India’s soul is hurting,” MP and former Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram wrote in the Indian Express newspaper. The reforms send a clear message that Indian Muslims are not equal citizens of India. And in an open letter, more than 700 public figures, including lawyers, professors and actors, condemned the law: “This is the first time there has been a legal effort to not only privilege people of a certain religion, but one at a time that others, the Muslim religion, with second-class status.” In the US, the government’s Commission on Religious Freedom has called for India’s Home Minister Amit Shah to be barred from entering the US The 55-year-old is considered the architect of legal reforms.

Most Indians are Hindus

Residents of the states of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal, which border Bangladesh, are now concerned about the growing number of Bangladeshi non-Muslim immigrants. For decades there has been a protest movement in Assam against migrants from Bangladesh who cross the border illegally in search of work. It’s not just about religion or work. The unrest in the Northeast is a sign of how complex India is as a nation. In Assam, home to more than 200 indigenous, ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups as emotional as religion. Outsiders are not defined here solely by their individual beliefs.

Most Indians are Hindus, who make up about 80 percent of the population. The second largest religious group is Muslims with around 200 million people. They make up about 14 percent of the population. Under the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which has ruled India since 2014, a once religiously tolerant India has changed. In August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government decided to fully integrate Muslim-majority Kashmir into the Indian state and remove the Himalayan region’s special status. In October, the government published a new citizenship register for Assam and declared its nearly two million residents, the majority Muslim, effectively stateless. Assam shares a 260-kilometer border with Bangladesh, which is unguarded in most places.

By Agnes Tandler (with dpa)

20 died in riots in New Delhi – Muslims fear discrimination: Mosques, shops and cars are burned – India is currently experiencing its worst violent clashes in decades.