Why did Hindus and Muslims face up in India?

               Tensions have been growing among those who support and protest the controversial new citizenship law criticized for excluding Muslims in the capital of India, Delhi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for calm. The number of those who lost their lives rose to 27.

       

             Local media in Delhi wrote that some Hindu groups target Muslims and burn their homes and shops. Some Muslims have left their homes. Both mosques were around in the city. Among the dead are both Muslims and Hindus. A police officer also died in the incidents.

             The law, which was approved and enacted by the Indian Parliament, and granted citizenship rights to all refugees from South East Asia, except Muslims, has been criticized for reasons such as "violating India's secular constitution" and "excluding Muslims" because of its relationship between religious rights.

             It has been decades before Delhi witnessed such violence. The escalation of events that Hindus and Muslims have faced in the past few days brings to mind some of the bloody social events in the recent past and creates anxiety.

              In 1984, about 3 thousand people lost their lives in the violent incidents that occurred after the murder of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by the Sikh guards.

              At the root of recent events lies the law that grants refugees the right to citizenship, but its opponents have accused the BJP government, which has been in power since 2014 and has been increasing the number of votes in the elections last year, for discriminatory policies against Muslims for years.

                    What is there in the law accused of discrimination?

             The law, passed through the Indian Parliament in December, grants citizenship to members of 6 religious groups who fled illegally from neighboring countries Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan provided that they have been living there for six years.

The only exception to this right in the law is Muslims.

              The ruling Hindu nationalist BJP government says it is intended to grant legal status to those "fleeing religious oppression" by law, that Muslims are not religious minorities in the mentioned countries and therefore do not need protection from India, so they are not included in the law.

              Muslim groups in the country argue that the regulation is part of the government's policy of excluding Muslims and that the constitutional principle of secularism is broken.

The United Nations also voiced concern about discrimination by law.

           The number of Muslims, who make up 14.2 percent of the population in India, is close to 180 million.

It is not the only practice that raises the concerns of the Muslim community about the policies of the Narendra Modi government in the country, which has the second largest Muslim population in the world.

                                  Article 370 about Jammu Kashmir

               The province of Kashmir in the Himalaya region in northern India remains the subject of dispute between India and Pakistan. India, the old life of Britain, was divided into two as India and Pakistan in the period when it gained its independence in 1947 and Kashmir was also divided in the war that broke out in the meantime.

           Both India and Pakistan claim rights over the entire Kashmir region, and both countries control part of the region.

         With the Article 370 of the Constitution of India, the autonomy of the province, which is predominantly Muslim, was guaranteed.

The cancellation of Article 370 of the BJP government, led by Modi in 2019, caused great reactions and social resistance.

       The previous governments have also opened up Kashmir's special status to discussion, but the stage of making such a change has never been reached.

         However, the BJP removed this item within a few months by strengthening its support in the elections, the Kashmir valley was closed, it was taken under the control of the Indian army and blackout was applied in the field of media and communication for months.

        With the cancellation of Article 370, it was suggested that the government aimed to change the demographic structure in the region by granting the right to settle and buy land that would migrate from other regions to the non-Muslim population.

                           The subject of citizenship registration

          In the state of Assam, in the northeast of India, there is a list of citizenships with people who have proved that they arrived in India before March 24, 1971, when Bangladesh left Pakistan and was established as a separate state. In fact, this list was launched during the Congress Party government, which came to power in 1951 with the first democratic elections in India.

          However, the Modi government ranked "detecting illegal immigrants" as its top priority.

Inline with this practice, people living in the state of Assam were asked to bring documents proving their family background, and it was announced that those who could not prove their citizenship would be seen as illegal foreigners.

          Assam is India's most ethnically diverse state; One-third of the 32 million population is Muslim. This rate constitutes the largest rate for the Muslim population after Kashmir under the Indian administration.

         Muslims say the state and the federal government target themselves directly with this practice.

According to the latest data, 1.9 million people in Assam were discharged from citizenship with the application of citizenship registration, but they were also given the right to appeal.