'I Feel Like An Alien': Afghan Muslims Decry India's New Citizenship Law

'I Feel Like An Alien': Osman Ali was just a few weeks old when his family fled Afghanistan's devastating civil war and moved to India in the early 1990s.

Today, few members of his family of eight remember their homeland. Ali and his five siblings all grew up in India and do not speak any Afghan languages.

But the 30-year-old, like many other Afghans in India, is only on a temporary visa and ineligible to work or receive government help.

When Indian lawmakers moved to amend the citizenship law for migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, many Afghans were hopeful of gaining a fast track to naturalization.

But the new rules implemented by New Delhi on March 11 exclude Muslims, who are the majority in all three countries. Only members of non-Muslim minorities, including Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists, who moved to India before December 31, 2014, can apply for citizenship.

The move is a major blow to many of the thousands of Afghan Muslims in India, a Hindu-majority country of some 1.4 billion people.

"I feel like an alien staying in my own country and not enjoying any of the rights that all citizens in India enjoy," Ali told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi. "It is a dark day for secularism in India."

The Citizenship Amendment Act has sparked protests in India and attracted widespread criticism. Human rights groups said the legislation discriminates against Muslims and undermines the South Asian country's secular constitution.

'Bad Development'

Farhad, an Afghan migrant, has lived in India for the past 15 years. Each year, he must renew his visa. He is not permitted to travel abroad. Even traveling within India is difficult, he said.

Farhad, a Muslim, had hoped the Indian government would provide a fast track to citizenship for Afghans who had fled their homeland due to war and poverty.

"This is a bad development," Farhad told Radio Azadi, referring to the new citizenship law. "We have tried very hard, but we have been denied citizenship [for years]."

Without Indian citizenship, many Afghans cannot open a bank account or work legally, condemning them to a life of poverty, said Farhad, who only revealed his first name.

"The government needs to pay attention to the numerous problems we face," he said.

India has been a close ally of Afghanistan for decades. New Delhi has granted asylum to tens of thousands of Afghans since the civil war of the 1990s, including Muslims as well as members of Afghanistan's small Hindu and Sikh communities.

But New Delhi is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or the related 1967 protocol intended to eliminate restrictions on who can be considered a refugee.

The result has been that thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees have lived in India in limbo for years, with no livelihood or security.

The exact number of Afghans in India is unknown. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said in 2022 that people from Afghanistan and Myanmar comprised most of the 46,000 registered refugees in India. Several thousand more undocumented Afghans are also believed to live in India.

"Most of us have no money to pay rent and other expenses," said Mohammad Qais Malakzada, the head of the Afghan Solidarity Committee, an NGO based in New Delhi that provides help to the estimated 7,000 Afghans living in the Indian capital.

Boon For Hindus, Sikhs

The new citizenship law does not just affect Muslim migrants.

The legislation marks the first time that India -- officially a secular state that is home to over a dozen religious groups -- has established religious criteria for citizenship.

Rights groups said the amended law is the latest attempt by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government to further marginalize the 200-million-strong Muslim minority in India.

"The Citizenship Amendment Act is a bigoted law that legitimizes discrimination on the basis of religion," said Aakar Patel, chairman of the board at Amnesty International India, on March 14.

Despite widespread criticism, the new law is a significant boon for members of Afghanistan's Hindu and Sikh minorities.

Sikhs and Hindus together numbered around 100,000 several decades ago, but the outbreak of war and the onset of growing persecution pushed many out.

Many of those who remained fled Afghanistan after a string of deadly militant attacks in 2018 and 2020.

"This law will solve all of our problems," Partab Singh, an Afghan Sikh who arrived in New Delhi in 1992, told Radio Azadi.

Diya Singh Anjan is another Afghan Sikh who has lived in the Indian capital for decades.

"If we go to any government office now, we will receive the same treatment and privileges given to a citizen," he said. RFE/RL/SP