NRC, CAA, and Muslim Minority in India A Source of Potential Conflict in South Asia?

Abstract

The rise of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – a far right Hindu nationalist political party - as ruling power in India has pushed the South  Asian region into turmoil. After assuming central power of India, BJP government has brought some conflicting issues to the center of  attention, for instance, erasing Muslim history from school text book, construction of Ram Mandir in the site of demolished Babri  Masque, National Register of Citizen (NRC), and Citizenship Amendment ACT-2019 (CAA) that have been issue of heated debate and  potential source of political and religious violence. The moves have ignited serious criticism in Indian and beyond. For example, former  Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, in his speech at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva said, ―India‘s Citizenship  Amendment ACT could not only lead to refugee crisis in South Asia but trigger a conflict between nuclear armed nations‖ (The Times  of India, 2019a). Although Bangladesh termed NRC and CAA as ―internal matter of India‖ people from different quarter have shown  their reaction (Hindustan Times, 2020).  

In this backdrop the study, therefore, attempts to examine whether or not the BJP government‘s moves push the regional actors into a  violent conflict? May NRC and CAA create stateless people and trigger refugee crisis? And to what extent it can stimulate communal  riot in the region? The research has been conducted on the basis of secondary data such as journal articles, books, reports published  by governments and research organizations, published and unpublished thesis, newspapers articles. Various websites and internet  sources have also been used for data collection. Online content has been searched using google scholar and google search engine.