2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) protections. However, Niraja Gopal Jayal suggests that migrants prefer citizenship due to the economic security it entails. 167 Granting citizenship to these migrants, who continue to live on the peripheries of urban and rural life, even after coming to India, provides them access to public distribution systems through Aadhar, Below Poverty Line cards and ration cards 168 and, dependent on their caste status, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe status. 169 Given precedents under the CAA, the actual process of granting citizenship continues to be problematic. 170 The CAA has reignited sustained Assamese– Bengali tensions and political opposition in Assam. Even in relatively underpopulated Rajasthan and Gujarat, those who have been granted Indian citizenship under the CAA are often at loggerheads with local residents, despite being Hindus with shared cultural and social values. 171 Perhaps the biggest failure of the CAA as a quasi-refugee law is how it deals with the Rohingya crisis. The majority-Muslim Rohingya population of the Arakan region of Myanmar, with cultural links to Bengal and a language akin to Bengali, have been denied Myanmarese nationality since 1982 and have been subject to increasing persecution since 2012. In 2016, a major crackdown on Rohingyas led to a mass migration into Bangladesh, Pakistan and (to a lesser extent) India, with 54,000 refugees having moved to India by September 2017. 172 Were the CAA neutral in religious terms, there would be no reason to deny the Rohingya the opportunity to become Indian citizens, given their historical links with India. Indeed, Burma was even part of British India until 1935. The Rohingya people currently fulfil all the criteria of a persecuted minority — indubitably more so than Afghan, Pakistani or Bangladeshi minorities, who are ostensibly citizens of these countries with equal rights. Myanmar’s regime, on the other hand, continues to deny the Rohingya citizenship rights, using the same rubric of ‘illegal immigration’ that India has used to deny Bengali-speaking Muslim citizenship rights in the northeast. 173 Incidentally, by dating the residence requirement of the ethnic group from 1823, the Myanmarese law carries jus sanguinis to a level unprecedented in South Asia. Additionally, the level of violence unleashed on both Hindu and Muslim Rohingyas since 2016 far exceeds the ‘routine, low-grade’ violence to which minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh are subjected. 174 The 167 Niraja Gopal Jayal (n 12) 93–96. 168 Below Poverty Line Cards would entitle these refugees to obtain certain necessities of life at subsidised rates: ibid 94. 169 The vast majority of immigrants into Rajasthan and Gujarat are tribals usually coming from 170 171 172 173 174 either the Cholistan desert of Southern Punjab or Sindh: see Maitreya Buddha Samantaray, ‘Pakistan’s Disappearing Hindus’, Open Democracy (online, 22 October 2012) <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opensecurity/pakistans-disappearing-hindus/>. Pranjal Baruah, ‘Government Tells HC about Refugee Citizenship Nod’, Times of India (online, 18 July 2014) <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Government-tells-HCabout-refugee-citizenship-nod/articleshow/38596847.cms>. Niraja Gopal Jayal (n 12) 96. Krishna N Das, ‘India in Talks With Myanmar, Bangladesh to Deport 40,000 Rohingya’, Reuters (online, 11 August 2017) <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmarrohingya-india-idUSKBN1AR0MH>. NyiNyi U, ‘The Case Against Rohingya Citizenship’, Myanmar Times (online, 4 June 2018) <https://www.mmtimes.com/opinion/9519-why-the-government-is-right-to-deny-rohingyacitizenship.html>. The UNHCR Independent International Fact-Finding Report has, in its September 2018 report, demonstrated instances of a ‘horrifying and ubiquitous’ pattern of human rights violations through decades and laid out evidence to support prima facie claims of genocide and crimes against humanity: Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, (UNHCR Report, 12 September 2018). 234