It had all the trappings of a powerful bomb. Now, you may ask what they are? An outer casing, the inner explosive material, devices such as fins to stabilise the bomb, one or more fuzes to ignite the bomb's main charge, and a mechanism for arming the fuze or preparing it to explode. Alas, the bomb failed to detonate to the expected extent!

My reference is to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019, which came into force on the first day of Ramadan, when Muslims congregated in mosques in large numbers. There was no other incident in independent India that roused the Muslim feelings as the CAA. Neither alimony for Shah Bano nor Babri Masjid demolition antagonised them as this one.

Millions of Muslim men and women came out on the streets from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu to Kangan in Kashmir and Kolkata in West Bengal to the Dandi beach in Gujarat to protest against the Act. To be fair to them, tens of thousands of people who believe that religion is a personal matter and it should not be mixed with politics and statecraft also joined shoulders with them. I was one of them.

All this forced the government to keep the CAA in cold storage, though legally, it is mandated to notify the Act within six months of the President giving his assent. The spread of Covid-19 also forced the government to go slow on the CAA. Of course, I do not forget a sinister attempt made to blame the Muslims for the spread of the pandemic.

When most people had forgotten the CAA, the government brought it out from the closet and notified it in the hope that it would be able to cover up its shame over the electoral bonds issue. Now that the bond details are in the public domain, though not in the desirable format, it proves the point that every time the government institutions ordered an inquiry against any company, it donated huge sums of money to the BJP. It was nothing but extortion.

One of the heaviest contributors to the bond scheme is the Lottery King, who organises lotteries in the name of states and makes billions of rupees. Many thought that the implementation of the CAA would witness a heavy turnout of protestors on the roads, especially in states like Assam, West Bengal, and Kerala. In fact, elaborate security arrangements were made in Assam.

Yes, there were some protests in Assam and Kerala. The most forceful one was on the campus of Jamia Millia Islamia, where the students organised a Press conference to tell the world why they were against the CAA. Deeply disappointed were the leaders of the ruling party, who thought that the CAA would polarise the voters and it could win the forthcoming elections hands down. Nothing of the sort happened.

If anything, it exposed the inherent diabolism in the CAA. Not many would believe that the BJP's original plan did not include Christians. Before I discuss the law, let me discuss another "promise" that Modi implemented. During the 2019 election, one promise Modi made was about ending what is called Triple Talaq. In fact, the first legislation he attempted after returning to power was a law abolishing triple talaq. It is now five years since the law came into being. Can Modi and Co. mention how many cases were registered under the new law? It was an exercise in futility.

Cannibalism is worse than triple talaq. Is there any law against cannibalistic practices? None at all because a Cannibal can be punished under various criminal laws. Passing a law against cannibalism won't polarise voters or fetch the BJP votes. Perhaps it may lose the votes of those who practice it in some form or another.

Now that the CAA has come into force, has it set the Ganga or the Brahmaputra aflame? No. This is because the people have realised that the CAA was an unwanted and unwarranted law. India has a citizenship law under which anyone who came to India in search of refuge and has been living here for 11 years could apply for citizenship. This was applicable to all the refugees from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Why was the CAA enacted? It was to reduce the period of stay in India from 11 to five years for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Christians etc from those countries. Muslims were barred from enjoying the benefits of the CAA. This was unacceptable under a secular Constitution, and that is why it is still being opposed by all right-thinking persons, including the son of the Chief Justice of India, Abhinav Chandrachud, whose old speech on the subject has gone viral on social media.

The CAA was justified on the grounds that Muslims would not face any persecution because they are Muslim countries. This is a preposterous claim. Last month, I had the privilege of releasing Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen's latest book, Chumban (Kiss), in Delhi. She cannot go back to Bangladesh, where, as she says, her own relatives would kill her. Why?

Because her books have antagonised the religious establishment. And to make her condition worse, she is an atheist. The Muslim society can easily understand a Hindu or an animist but not an atheist or agnostic. They are hated more. Till today, only two Pakistanis have won the Nobel Prize. When Dr. Abdus Salam won the Prize in 1979, the Physicist was in London.

Do you know how Pakistan celebrated the day? By organising a blackout. Did he do anything against Pakistan? Nothing at all. The Pakistanis acted in this manner only because he was an Ahmadiyya Muslim. The Pakistan Supreme Court has declared Ahmadiyyas as non-Muslims because they believe in a living Prophet who, incidentally, lives in Amritsar district in India. No one is persecuted more than the Ahmadiyyas in Pakistan.

Instead of going to Pakistan with the medal, Dr. Abdus Salam came to India and donated it to the Aligarh Muslim University, where I once had the fortune to hold the medal in my hand. He was an alumnus of AMU. The second winner, Malala Yousafzai, may be an international icon but she is not welcome in Pakistan. The Pakistani establishment believes that they were given the prizes to spite the Islamic community.

The point is that the CAA cannot benefit the worst-affected communities in these countries. I cannot claim to have read all the rules and regulations of the CAA, but I find that the Hindus, Sikhs and others who have sought citizenship and have been living in India since December 31, 2014, do not have to show any proof that they were persecuted for religious reasons.

The CAA presumes that they were persecuted. But a Hazara Muslim or, an atheist or a writer like Taslima would not even be considered for citizenship. This is why the CAA is considered discriminatory. In India, one does not have to be a citizen to get the benefit of equality before the law. A foreigner seeking a room in a hotel cannot be denied it because she is a woman or a black or, a Muslim or an atheist, if she is ready to pay the room rent.

The CAA only speeds up citizenship by reducing the period of stay in India from 11 years to 5 years. In another one year, anyone who came from Pakistan or, Afghanistan or Bangladesh would have completed 11 years of staying in India if December 31, 2014, is retained as the cutoff.

The CAA is not a big deal, even for the Hindus who have come from Pakistan. They would have got citizenship in 2025 even without the CAA. Of course, the purpose was to polarise the voters. The same consideration weighed with Modi when he introduced the triple Talaq law. Did the government promise any monetary benefit to the hapless women?

Nothing. Instead, it only promised to send the husband to jail where he would be less capable of paying any alimony. Marriages fail in all communities as Modi's own marriage failed. Only the brave go for divorce, while the clever would take different excuses to escape the divorce proceedings.

There is a possibility that many Hindu minority community members in Bangladesh may be tempted to seek refuge in India and eventually citizenship. The Assam chief minister has stated that if it happened, he would be the first to oppose the CAA.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who struts about as the brain behind the CAA, says that the CAA was a prelude to the National Register of Citizens. I have heard him say that the NRC would be the logical culmination of the CAA. The NRC exists only in Assam. He says it would be introduced all over India. He thinks there are millions of Bangladeshis staying in India as illegal migrants.

I do not know why a Bangladeshi should aspire to come to India when on certain indices like infant mortality rate, mother's mortality rate, literacy rate and even Gross Domestic Product, they are better off than us. That apart, every Act, if challenged, has to pass the test of law. It was only a few weeks ago that the electoral bonds law was set aside by the Supreme Court.

The court found that opaqueness in the functioning of a democratic government was not acceptable. A Maharaja can receive and give gifts worth crores of rupees. We saw the rich and the super-rich showering such gifts on Mukesh Ambani's younger son during the pre-wedding programme in which about Rs 1,000 crore was allegedly spent. But the Prime Minister cannot give or accept such gifts except publicly. If he accepts a watch like Patek Philippe worth, say, 10 crores of rupees, he will be compelled to declare it as government property.

It was against this principle that the court found the electoral bond scheme unacceptable. Today, all those who donated money, some of them out of compulsion, stand exposed before the bar. Modi the great guarantor could not fulfil his guarantee that their identity would not be revealed.

Similarly, it cannot be said with certainty that the last word on the CAA has been uttered. There are a large number of petitions filed against the CAA. The first one to do was the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) which appealed to the court in 2020.

Since then, more than 200 petitions have been filed and tagged with the IUML's challenge. These include petitions from politicians like Asaduddin Owaisi, Jairam Ramesh, Ramesh Chennithala, and Mahua Moitra, and political organisations such as the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), National People's Party (Assam), Muslim Students' Federation (Assam), and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

The cases are pending before a Bench of the Supreme Court. The possibility of the court taking up these cases cannot be ruled out. If the petitioners are able to prove that the CAA violates Article 14 of the Constitution, which says that "the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India", it will be the end of Amit Shah's happiness on this score.

As of now, the CAA challenges the secular principles on which the Constitution is based. One of the BJP MPs has claimed that if the party gets a two-thirds majority, it will amend the Constitution and make India a theocratic nation.

He does not know that secularism is one of the "basic structures" of the Constitution, which cannot be violated even if the BJP occupies 100 per cent of seats in Parliament. They should read the Keshavananda Bharati verdict before making such boastful claims.