Dec 5, 2025

University of Georgia

Drawing the Line in Law: How India’s CAA Turns Citizenship into a Religious Test​

By: Emma Akang

India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) exemplifies how the application of a supposedly technical citizenship law can subvert the democratic boundaries between “citizens” and “non-citizens.” By making provisions for the expedited naturalization of select non-Muslim migrants while excluding Muslims, and by implementing the law in 2024, the Modi Government will utilize legal instruments to institutionalize a Hindu-majoritarian conception of the Indian Nation. 

In 2019, the CAA granted accelerated pathways to Indian citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who had migrated from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan prior to 2015, while specifically excluding Muslims from similar protections. On March 20, 2024, the Modi Government issued notifications outlining the procedures to effectuate the CAA, thus converting an abstract concept of a disputed law into a tangible regulatory regime. The Constitution of India affirms equality before the law and prohibits the state from discriminating based on religion as the basis for defining citizenship. As such, the CAA represents a fundamental departure from the principles of secularism and democracy in India, as it clearly establishes religion as a primary determinant of citizenship and protection. Thus, the CAA constitutes a movement towards what scholars term “ethnocratic” or “majoritarian” democracy. 

Since the ascension to power of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the transition of India from a secular democracy to an ethno-national state has occurred incrementally through a series of legal, administrative, and political decisions. Scholars have identified the CAA, proposals to establish a nationwide registration of all citizens, the cancellation of autonomous status for Jammu and Kashmir, and sweeping restrictions on civil society and the media as components of a larger effort to redefine the Republic of India along Hindu Nationalist lines. 

The CAA provides an exemplary illustration of what democratic-erosion scholars describe as “executive aggrandizement”. Rather than utilizing military force to overthrow democratically elected officials, those officials utilize their legislative powers and bureaucratic authority to skew the playing field and erode liberal checks and balances while maintaining elections and the structures of formal democratic governance. The CAA was enacted by the BJP-led government through Parliament, notwithstanding significant opposition to the bill, and was subsequently left dormant until the political climate became favorable enough to activate its implementation. This model is reflective of a broader trend observed in hybrid regimes, where the ruling party utilizes its legislative majority to alter the law, its control over the bureaucracy to determine how and when the law is enforced, and its dominance over the media and civil society to define the narrative. To outside observers, elections continue to occur, but to those within the system, the rules governing the game are being altered in ways that systematically disadvantage dissidents and minorities. 

Following the passage of the CAA in 2019, widespread student and citizen protests erupted throughout the country in response to the perceived assault on India’s secular Constitution. Police responded to these protests violently at universities such as Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University, resulting in injuries to protesting students, and the arrests of hundreds of anti-Citizenship Amendment Act demonstrators under newly-enacted emergency security laws. International human rights organizations have documented instances of arbitrary detention, campus surveillance, and protest bans implemented by authorities responding to peaceful demonstrations. Additionally, the growing attacks on academic freedom and restrictive regulations governing Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) represent further erosions of fundamental democratic freedoms of expression, assembly, and association. 

Some argue that since the CAA does not revoke citizenship from Indian Muslims, therefore, it cannot be “anti-Muslin.” However, this perspective overlooks the fundamental premise of democracy: it is not simply a matter of who can vote today, but also who can access the protective umbrella of the state and on what terms today, tomorrow, and going forward. The CAA sends a signal that Muslims are less deserving of protection at the border and thus normalizes the practice of religious-based discrimination across other areas of policy-making as well. Through the lens of theories of democratic backsliding, the CAA gradually diminishes both horizontal accountability and democratic norms. 

To date, the legislature and judiciary have failed to provide robust constraints on an executive which is actively engaged in transforming the meaning of equal citizenship. The atmosphere of fear generated by repression and increased polarization has also stifled public discourse on the CAA. This is not only an account of erosion, but also of pockets of democratic resilience. A number of opposition-ruled states have signaled that they will not implement the CAA, nor a national citizenship registry, by employing federalism as a protective barrier against what they see as the increasing over-reach of central authority. The courts are less willing, and far more conservative than the opposition-rules states, however there are still legal challenges and public-interest lawsuits which continue to keep constitutional issues alive and in the spotlight. Coalitions of civil-society organizations—students, women’s groups, religious minority organizations, and secular activist organizations—will continue to document abuses, to organize protests and to invoke both domestic and international norms as they advocate on behalf of their interests. They reflect a fundamental insight of democratic-erosion research: backsliding into illiberalism is not predestined, and active resistance to such projects can increase the political costs associated with them. 

Ultimately, the CAA is not simply a technical immigration regulation; rather, it represents a litmus test of whether India will remain a secular and inclusive democracy, or if it will consolidate as a Hindu-majoritarian state. The creation of a religious hierarchy in the access to citizenship, combined with the suppression of dissent, fundamentally undermines both the letter and the spirit of equal protection in the Indian Constitution. If democratic erosion usually begins at the edges, through legislation directed at the least empowered, then how India treats Muslims, refugees, and student protesters under the CAA regime will indicate whether the democratic promise of India is being rewritten silently — or if it will be preserved in time.

 

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