Policy Center for the New South Another concern is the impact this process will have on children. Article 3 of the CRC (Children Rights Convention) considers the best interest of the child and is a foundational principle that guides the interpretation and implementation of the international conventions. It is also relevant to the interpretation of other treaties relating to children. The concept of the best interest of the child in the context of refugees and statelessness entails the duty to make the interest of the child a primary consideration and to protect children by guaranteeing their fundamental rights to life, education and security. The Committee on the Rights of the Child states that the concept of the best interest principle, like all rights laid down in the CRC, applies to all children, irrespective of their nationality or residential status19. The Hindu Nationalist Agenda of the BJP Party The political opposition says that the CAA is another example of how India’s prime minister Narendra Modi and his BJP party have pushed an agenda of Hindu nationalism onto secular India, at the expense of the Muslim population. In the wake of Britain’s colonial rule, India’s democracy was conceived as secular in nature, with a civic form of citizenship. Yet, when Modi’s BJP came to power in 2014, critics warned of the challenges that democratic institutions were set to face. The BJP has roots in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing organization founded in 1925 that promotes a vision of a Hindu nation. The political doctrine of the movement was fundamentally at odds with the principals of the Indian nationalist movement, led by Mahatma Gandhi and his disciple Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become the first prime minister of India after the independence. Gandhi, though deeply religious, advocated for Hindu-Muslim coexistence. Nehru, a staunch secularist, had supported religious pluralism. The first Hindu nationalists sought to make Hinduism, an ancient religion which has no single holy text, no overarching set of beliefs and no single place of pilgrimage, into a homogeneous, organized faith based upon a set of common religious tenets. During the early years of the Indian Republic, following 19. See CRC, General comment No 14 on the right of the child to have his or her best interests taken as a primary consideration (art. 3(1)), (29 May 2013), CRC/C/GC/14; UNHRC, Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on challenges and best practices in the implementation of the international framework for the protection of the rights of the child in the context of migration (5 July 2010), A/ HRC/15/29 www.policycenter.ma Policy Brief its independence from British colonial rule in 1947, the ideology of Hindutva and its adherents gained little appeal traction among the Indian electorate. However, since the 1990s, the BJP has become stronger in both the electoral and social arenas. Electorally, it was in power as the dominant partner in a coalition from 1998 to 2004. Later, in 2014 it emerged as a majority in parliament with substantial numbers of followers. When Prime Minister Modi came to power in 2014, he has made three key elections promises: first, he would overturn the autonomous status of Kashmir, second build a temple to the Hindu god Ram at the holy site of Ayodhya, and finally impose a uniform civil code that would create one law for all, regardless of religion. Six months after Modi was elected in May 2019 for his second term, the Hindu nationalists had already made headway in achieving two of their aims. In August 2019, the Indian government stripped the Muslim majority state of Kashmir of its autonomous status, essentially giving New-Delhi more control over the region’s affairs. That same month, nearly two million people in Assam on the border with Bangladesh, were left off a controversial new national Register of Citizens, which critics feared could be used to justify religious discrimination against Muslims in the state. Indeed, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a list of people who can prove they came to India before 24 March 1971, a day before neighboring Bangladesh became an independent country. Many indigenous groups in Assam fear that giving citizenship to large numbers of immigrants, who came over the perous border with Bangladesh following independence in 1971, would change the unique ethnic make-up of the region and their way of life, regardless of religion, considering that illegal migration from Bangladesh has long been a concern in the state. However, in November 2019, India’s Supreme Court in a unanimous decision, granted Hindus permission to build a temple at the centuries-old Ayodhya holy site (a religious flashpoint for more than 400 years), while giving Muslim representatives a separate five acres of land in the town, ending one of the country’s most politically-charged land disputes. The ruling on the Ayodhya site was a blow to Muslims and came at a time when Muslims increasingly see themselves as second-class citizens. To settle the ownership question, India’s top court was asked to consider ancient texts, including a 500-year-old diary written by a Mughal emperor, travelogues from medieval merchants, and colonial-era surveys and archaeological 6