Amid the news coverage of President Donald Trump’s two-day trip to India — which began with a massive rally at a cricket stadium, but appears to be ending without any deal on key trade issues — another subject has simply not received sufficient attention in the American press: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ongoing persecution of Muslims, and the wave of violence sweeping the country’s capital of New Delhi.
Modi’s government recently passed a law granting a fast-tracked citizenship process to immigrants from the “Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan.” The law notably excludes Muslims from that list, providing a double standard for citizenship and violating the Indian Constitution’s declaration of a “secular democratic republic.”
On the latest episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the eponymous host explained how this new “immigration” law can combine with another government measure, the National Register of Citizens, to target Indian Muslims who were too poor to ever have gotten full documentation of their births and citizenship. He also explained that some of the affected Indians now fear they will potentially be put into detention centers as purportedly undocumented immigrants.