The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, amended the Citizenship Act, 1955, of India and provided undocumented immigrants from the neighboring countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who are from Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi (Zoroastrians), or Christian religious backgrounds and had entered India before December 31, 2014, a pathway to Indian citizenship. The Act was passed in December 2019 and implemented in March 2024, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections that year. The Act, which reportedly sought to naturalize persons facing religious persecution, evoked large-scale protests across India over two key concerns. In most parts of India, the protests were largely over the proposal to offer Indian citizenship on the basis of religion, which was described by opponents as a departure from previous policy. Protesters and human rights bodies also expressed concerns about the exclusion of the Muslim community and other groups in South Asia, and they argued that by limiting the scope to certain religions, the Act created a classification based on religion that they felt was inconsistent with the values of equality and secularism that the Constitution of India promotes. In Assam, opposition parties and residents protested the move while it was still a bill, over decades-old fears of demographic marginalization caused by large-scale immigration from neighboring Bangladesh, with which it shares a border of more than 160 miles (260 kilometers). The Assamese community felt that the bill went against the Assam Accord, a tripartite agreement between the central and state governments and leaders of the All Assam Students’ Union and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP), signed on August 15, 1985, that promised to protect the cultural, social, and linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.
Some notable sites of women- and student-led protests against the Act were, respectively, Shaheen Bagh and Jamia Millia Islamia University (Delhi), Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi), and Aligarh Muslim University (Uttar Pradesh). Some protests across the country turned violent as groups with opposing views clashed, protesters allegedly vandalized public property, and police forces clamped down on protesters. More than two dozen deaths were reported in the aftermath. Hundreds of petitions were filed against the Act by various groups, the final hearings for which are due in the Supreme Court of India in May 2026.