On This Form Under Section 60 Of The Migration Act 1958: Fill & Download for Free

The amount of wrong information circulating on the internet is alarming.The way things are being presented to people by self declared intellectuals shows how important it is to form opinions of our own instead of borrowing it from others. I would like to state some facts about the CAA and NRC, the readers can cross check the facts and decide on their own. This might seem like a long answer since we need to start from the very beginning of the birth of two Nations so please bear with me.NRC – National Register of CitizensHistory : Post Partition, East Pakistan suffered from political turmoil & witnessed civil unrest which finally led to a civil war & separation of East Pakistan from Pakistan and a new country Bangladesh came into being consisting of all the geographical area of erstwhile East Pakistan. There occurred mass exodus of population from the war-torn regions into the Indian side and most of these refugees never returned. Excerpts from the White Paper on Foreigners' Issue published by the Home & Political Department, Government of Assam on 20 October 2012 – Chapter 1, Historical Perspective, section 1.2 reads:'Following Partition and communal riots in the subcontinent, Assam initially saw an influx of refugees and other migrants from East Pakistan. The number of such migrants other than refugees was initially reported by the State Government to be between 1,50,000 and 2,00,000 but later estimated to be around 5,00,000.'Even after the end of civil war & the formation of Bangladesh, migration continued, though illegally. The Government of India already had in it's stock of statutes, the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950. This act came into effect from 1 March 1950 which mandated expulsion of illegal immigrants from the state of Assam. To identify illegal immigrants, the National Register of Citizens was prepared for the first time in Assam during the conduct of 1951 Census. It was carried out under a directive of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) by recording particulars of every single person enumerated during that Census. Practical implementation of the act was difficult & the measures taken under this act proved ineffective largely due to the vast stretch of the open border between the countries and illegal immigrants pushed out of India at one point of it could easily infiltrate again at some other unmanned point.The issue of illegal infiltration was becoming formidable problem in the state of Assam as migrants enjoyed political patronage. The Registrar General of Census in his report on 1961 Census assessed 2,20,691 infiltrators to have entered Assam.In the year 1965, the government of India took up with the government of Assam to expedite completion of the National Register of Citizens and to issue National Identity Cards on the basis of this register to Indian citizens towards the identification of illegal immigrants. But in 1966 the Central Government dropped the proposal to issue identity cards in consultation with the Government of Assam, having found the project impracticable.In a notification issued by the Government of India in the year 1976, the State government was instructed not to deport persons coming from Bangladesh to India prior to March 1971.Thus between 1948 and 1971, there were large scale migrations from Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) to Assam.Given this continuing influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh into Assam, suddenly a group of student leaders in 1979 came out in fierce protest demanding detention, disenfranchisement and deportation of illegal immigrants from Assam. The events quickly developed into a mass movement which came to be known as Assam Agitation or Assam Movement led by All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) and lasted 6 years. Reportedly considered by various intellectuals and media forums as one of the largest mass movement in the history of the world led by students’ union, this six-year-long agitation left behind thousands of bleeding hearts, empty wombs, and bloodstained fields. The movement culminated in the signing of a landmark Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) - the Assam Accord, between the agitating parties & the Union of India on 15 August 1985, at the behest of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in New Delhi.The Accord ended the agitation but could not end the illegal migration. Further it had negotiated defect which called for 1 January 1966 to be the precise date based on which the detection illegal immigrants in Assam would take place and thus ironically allowing Indian citizenship for all persons coming to the territorial limits of the present-day state of Assam from "Specified Territory" (East Pakistan, presently Bangladesh since 1971) prior to that date. Along with came a new Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 which described a controversial procedure to detect illegal immigrants and their expulsion from the state of Assam. Indian citizenship act, 1955 was accordingly amended almost immediately to incorporate provisions by dint of the accord. The act further specified that all persons who came to Assam between to 1 January 1966 (inclusive) and up to 24 March 1971 (midnight) shall be detected in accordance with the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964. The name of foreigners so detected would be deleted from the Electoral Rolls in force. Such persons will be required to register themselves before the Registration Officers of the respective districts in accordance with the provisions of the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939 and the Registration of Foreigners Rules, 1939. Foreigners who came to Assam on or after 25 March 1971 shall continue to be detected, deleted and expelled in accordance with law.ROLE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIAThe process of detecting and expelling immigrants suffered from teething problems for a considerable amount of time. In fact, the first attempt of systematically detecting foreigners by updating the National Register in Assam was through a Pilot Project which was started in 2 circles (referred to as Tehsil in some states), one in Kamrup district and another in Barpeta district in the year 2010, which had to be aborted within 4 weeks amidst a huge law and order problem involving a mob attack on the Office of the IAS Commissioner, Barpeta that resulted in police firing killing 4 persons. For a long time, since the bitter experience in the pilot project, NRC update was considered almost an impossible task by the government agencies.However, the task was again finally taken up at the behest of the Supreme Court of India’s order in the year 2013 in regards to two writ petitions filed by Assam Public Works and Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha & Ors. wherein the Supreme Court, headed by the bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, mandated the Union Government and the State Government to complete the updation of NRC, in accordance with Citizenship Act, 1955 and Citizenship Rules, 2003, in all parts of Assam. Pursuant to the directive of the apex Court, the Registrar General of India via its notification Number S.O. 3591 E dated 6 December 2013 notified commencing of NRC updation.Since then, the Supreme Court of India has been closely monitoring the process and holding regular hearings on representations made to it by various interested parties & stakeholders.To make the process of NRC update smooth, the Supreme Court in its order dated 21 July 2015 passed the following directions:'We make it clear that complaints with regard to any obstruction in the matter of preparation/update of NRC by any person or authority may first be brought to the notice of the Court appointed Committee and the said Committee, upon due enquiry, will submit necessary report to the Registry of this Court where after the same will be brought to notice of the Bench.''We expect all authorities to act faithfully and diligently to carry out their assigned tasks to ensure smooth preparation of NRC and publication thereof within the schedule fixed by us. This is in reiteration of the mandate contained in Article 144 of the Constitution of India. It is not necessary for us to emphasis that any person found to be creating any obstruction or hindrance, in any manner, in the preparation of the NRC would be subjected to such orders as this Court would pass in such eventualities.'In reference to Article 144 of the Constitution of India, all authorities, civil and judicial, in the territory of India shall act in aid of the Supreme Court.METHODOLOGYThe mechanism adopted to update the NRC 1951 has been developed from scratch owing to the fact that there is no precedence of such a mammoth task ever undertaken in India or elsewhere that involved identification of genuine citizens and detection of illegal immigrants using technology since it involved data of over 3 crore people and over 6.6 crore documents.If any one wants to see his name in the selected list of the citizens of Assam then they have to submit a form with any ‘List A’ documents to prove his residence in the state before March 25, 1971.If anybody claims that his/ her ancestors are native residents of the Assam then he/she has to submit a form with any document mentioned in the ‘List B’.List A documents includes;Electoral Rolls upto March 25, 1971NRC of 1951Land and Tenancy RecordsCitizenship CertificatePermanent Resident CertificatePassportBank or LIC documentsPermanent Residential CertificateEducational Certificates and Court order RecordsRefugee Registration CertificateList B documents includes;Land documentsBoard or University CertificatesBirth CertificateBank/LIC/Post office recordsRation cardElectoral RollsOther legally acceptable documentsA Circle Officer or Gram Panchayat Secretary Certificate for married womenThe process of NRC update is divided into the following phases:‌Publication of Legacy Data‌Distribution & Receipt of Application Form‌Verification Process‌Publication of Part Draft NRC‌Complete Publication of Draft NRC‌Receipt and Disposal of Claims & Objections‌Publication of Final NRCHow is verification carried out?The updating process started in May 2015 and ended on 31 August 2015. A total of 3.29 crore people applied through 68.31 lakh applications. The process of verification involved house-to-house field verification, determination of authenticity of documents, family tree investigations in order to rule out bogus claims of parenthood and linkages and separate hearings for married women.NRC in data: The government has spent around 1200 cr rupees on the NRC process, 55000 government officials were involved and 64.4 million documents were examined in the whole process.Final NRC list releasedAssam final NRC list released on 31st August 2019. This list excluded 19,06,657 people while 3,11,21,004 make it to citizenship list. A total of 3,30,27,661 people had applied for it.Creation of additional Foreigners' Tribunals & Construction of Detention Camps.On May 30, 2019, the Government of India passed a Foreigners' (Tribunals) Amendment Order 2019, which allows all states & UTs within the union of India to constitute their own Foreigners' Tribunals, earlier unique to the state of Assam only, to address the question of citizenship of a person. The amendment empowers district magistrates in all states and union territories to set up Foreigners' Tribunals to detect foreigners. Following the Amendment, the provincial Government of Assam has initiated the process of establishing 400 additional Foreigners' Tribunals out of which 200 are made functional since beginning of September 2019. The Government of the state is also set to construct ten more detention camps besides six already in place in anticipation of the possible requirement to house a large number of illegal foreigners who may be declared as such by the Foreigners' Tribunals.Does exclusion from the list mean declaration of foreigner?No; those excluded from the list can apply to the foreigners tribunals which are quasi judicial bodies exists under the 1964 law. These people can appeal to these tribunals within 120 days from the release of the list.If anybody is declared foreigner at foreigners tribunals then he/she can approach to the higher courts. If somebody is declared foreigner by the courts then he/she can be arrested in the detention centre. As of July 2019; there are 1,17,164 persons have been declared foreigners out of which 1,145 are in the detention.Timeline of NRC1948: There were no restrictions on the movements of persons from India to Pakistan or vice versa even after Partition till July 19, 1948, when ‘Influx from West Pakistan (Control) Ordinance, 1948’ came into existence. Later, the Constitution of India formalized this as the cut-off date that entitled the Right to citizenship of certain migrants from Pakistan.1950: Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act came into force from March 1, 1950, following influx of refugees from then East Pakistan to Assam after partition.1951: The first-ever NRC of India was published in Assam based on Census Report of 1951 containing 80 lakh citizens.1955: The Citizenship Act came into force that codified rules for Indian citizenship by birth, descent and registration.1957: Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act was repealed.1960: The bill was passed in the Assam legislative assembly to make Assamese the only official language.1964: The Centre issued the Foreigners’ Tribunal Order under the Foreigners’ Act, 1964.1964-1965: Influx of refugees from East Pakistan due to disturbances in that country.1971: Fresh influx due to riot and war in East Pakistan. Bangladesh comes into existence.1979: Anti-foreigners’ movement started in Assam in 1979.1979-1985: Six-year-long Assam agitation, spearheaded by the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) and All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) for detection, disenfranchisement and deportation of foreigners.1980: All Assam Students' Union (AASU) submitted the first memorandum demanding updating of NRC to Centre on January 18, 1980.1983: Massacre at Nellie in Central Assam which claimed the lives of over 3,000 people. Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act passed.1985: Assam Accord signed by the Centre, the state, AASU and AAGSP in the presence of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on the midnight of August 14. It stated, among other clauses, that foreigners who came to Assam on or after March 25, 1971 shall be expelled.1990: AASU submitted modalities to update NRC to Centre as well State Government in 1990.1997: Election Commission decides to add 'D' (doubtful) against names of voters whose claim to Indian citizenship is doubtful.1999: Centre took the first formal decision to update the NRC as per the Assam Accord’s cut-off date to detect illegal foreigners during a tripartite meeting between Centre, State Government and AASU on November 17, 1999.2003: The Citizenship (Amendment) Act was introduced. Among other changes to the 1955 law, it said anyone born in India between 1950-1987 is an Indian citizen. Anyone born between 1987-2003 is a citizen provided one of the parents is Indian. Anyone born in India since 2004 is a citizen provided one of the parents is Indian and other is not an ‘illegal immigrant’ at the time.2005: Supreme Court strikes down IMDT Act as unconstitutional. Tripartite meeting among Centre, state government and AASU decides to update 1951 NRC. But no major development takes place.2006: Central government issued the Foreigners (Tribunal) Amendment Order, exempting Assam from the 1964 tribunal order.2009: Assam Public Works (APW), an NGO, files case in Supreme Court praying for deletion of foreigners's name in electoral rolls and updation of NRC.2010: Pilot project starts in Chaygaon, Barpeta to update NRC. Project successful in Chaygaon. Four killed in violence in Barpeta. Project shelved.2013: Supreme Court takes up APW petition, directs Centre, state to begin the process for updating NRC. NRC State Coordinator's office set up.2015: Updation of NRC process begins.2016: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) introduced the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. It proposed to facilitate citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.2017: On December 31 midnight, Draft NRC published with names of 1.9 crore of total 3.29 crore applicants.2018: Another Draft NRC published, 40 lakh of 2.9 crore people excluded on July 30.2019: Publication of Additional Draft Exclusion List of 1,02,462 was released on July 26.2019: Final NRC released on August 31.CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT - 2019Citizenship Amendment Act - is an Act to speed up citizenship process for minority refugees who came into India from 3 neighbouring countries.Legislative historyThe Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha on 19 July 2016 as the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. It was referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 12 August 2016. The Committee submitted its report on 7 January 2019 to Parliament. The Bill was taken into consideration and passed by Lok Sabha on 8 January 2019. It was pending for consideration and passing by the Rajya Sabha. Consequent to dissolution of 16th Lok Sabha, this Bill has lapsed.Subsequently after the formation of 17th Lok Sabha, the Union Cabinet cleared the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, on 4 December 2019 for introduction in the parliament.The Bill was introduced in 17th Lok Sabha by the Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah on 9 December 2019 and was passed on 10 December 2019, with 311 MPs voting in favour and 80 against the Bill.The bill was subsequently passed by the Rajya Sabha on 11 December 2019 with 125 votes in favour and 105 votes against it.Those voted in favour included BJP allies such as Janata Dal (United), AIADMK, Biju Janata Dal, TDP and YSR-Congress.After receiving assent from the President of India on 12 December 2019, the bill assumed the status of an act.The act will come into force on a date chosen by the Government of India, and will be notified as such.The first hearing by the Supreme Court of India on 60 petitions challenging the Act was on 18 December 2019. During the first hearing, the court declined to stay implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. The court has set January 22, 2020 as the next date of hearing.Who does CAA affect ?CAA affects immigrants/refugees, not Indian Citizens - whether Hindu, Muslim, Sikh etc.CAA is for refugees who came into India from Pakistan/Bangladesh/Afghanistan, not any other nation.CAA is only for those refugees who came into India before Dec 31 2014, not after.CAA is for refugees who came into India based on religious persecution reasons in those 3 countries.What does CAA do ?CAA reduces the waiting time for citizenship from the usual 11 years to 5 years for Hindu/Buddhist/Sikh/Parsi/Christian refugeesCAA keeps waiting time at the usual 11 years for Muslim refugees.CAA does not deny citizenship to any refugee - whether they are Muslim/Hindu, whether they came for religious/economic reasons.The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) can be broadly considered to be an immigration amnesty scheme.It does not confer citizenship upon anyone but merely removes the disability on Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan from acquisition of citizenship by “naturalization”, if they are illegal immigrants (those who have entered the country without valid travel documents or overstayed).They, however, still have to satisfy the Third Schedule of the Citizenship Act 1955 to acquire citizenship.Presently, there is no legal way for illegal immigrants from these countries to acquire Indian citizenship.It is the identification of the communities by name that has created some questions on whether such a law passes the muster of our “secular” Constitution.Here, we need to look into the scheme of citizenship in the Constitution.In 1947, the Constitution makers had the unenviable task of putting a square peg in a round hole.On one hand, they had to accept the cold hard fact of mass migration of Hindus from Pakistan (includes present Bangladesh), and on the other hand, ideologically, they were unwilling to accept the two-nation theory.The compromise was five articles in the Constitution that accommodated these twin concerns (Articles 5 to 10).The basic crux of these provisions was that anyone born in India and domiciled in India would be an Indian citizen (Article 5); if he has entered from the territory of Pakistan or Bangladesh, he has to register (Article 6).Under Article 7, anyone migrating to Pakistan from India will lose Indian citizenship if they have migrated to the Islamic nation.Thereafter, Article 8 extends citizenship to persons of Indian origin and Article 9 terminates Indian citizenship upon acquisition of foreign citizenship.Finally. Article 10 seals it with the mandate that the citizenship of persons having acquired the same under these provisions cannot be taken away.These provisions do not identify the communities by name but clearly creates a de-facto policy favouring the Hindu and Sikh immigrants from Pakistan over largely Muslim emigrants from India.This is not occasioned by any malice towards the Muslims, but simply an acknowledgement of the fact that the erstwhile Pakistan (Pakistan + Bangladesh) is an Islamic country (as per 1949 Objectives Resolution and later the Constitution of Bangladesh), and given the nature of politics of these countries, the return of the Hindu/Sikh migrants would never be possible.The liberals, in their desire to paint a secular Constitution, choose to ignore this policy.Post commencement of the Constitution, the power to enact a law for acquisition and termination of citizenship was left to the Parliament (Article 11).The Constitution offers no direction as to how this power is to be exercised.However, since all laws in India have to be in accordance with provision of Part-III, (fundamental rights), the liberals argue that even acquisition of citizenship has to comply with a principle of “secularism”.Why is the northeast and others protest against CAA?The opposition to the CAA has been widespread but especially vociferous in the north-eastern states. Assam and Meghalaya saw internet shutdowns and imposition of curfew. The protests took a grim turn with reports of four deaths during the crackdown by the police and armed forces on protestors.The north-eastern states for long faced large scale migration from neighbouring countries and resultant protests from indigenous residents over the strain this migration placed on the social, economic and political fabric of the region. The protests against the provisions of the CAA in these states is against legitimisation of all immigrants from any country irrespective of their faith rather than excluding only Muslims.However, The Citizenship (Amendment) Act does not apply to tribal areas of Tripura, Mizoram, Assam and Meghalaya because of being included in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. Also areas that fall under the Inner Limit notified under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, will also be outside the Act's purview. This keeps almost entire Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland out of the ambit of the Act.Apart from the above exceptions, the law shall be applicable across all states. The Chief Ministers of Kerala, Punjab, West Bengal, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have stated that they will not implement the act in their respective states alleging it to be against the exclusion of Muslims and thereby against the ethos of the Constitution. However, the states may not have the power to refuse implementation of the law, as it is enacted under the Union List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.Why does CAA differentiate based on religion?CAA is designed to help minorities - based on definition. Pakistan/Bangladesh/Afghanistan are 'Islamist Republics' based on their constitution. Hence other religions are considered secondary/minority to Islam.CAA is meant to help minorities - based on population. Those 3 countries have religious minority population between 3-10%. During 1971 Pakistan-Bangladesh liberation, Hindu population was ~23% in Bangladesh. Currently it is 9%CAA is designed to help minorities - based on persecution. Minorities in those 3 countries have historically faced trauma - conversion, exodus, rape & murder.Why does CAA differentiate based on country?4 other neighbours - Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar - have a 'secular' constitution. While they may have a dominant religion (like Buddhism), and while the minority religions may be ill-treated occasionally, such persecution does not have State sanction and could be just the result of a particular government's policies.CAA does not deal with religious minorities of other nations - the goal of first iteration is to start by helping refugees from neighbouring countries.Is CAA against Muslims?Against Indian Muslims ? NO. No current Indian citizen will be asked to prove citizenship.Against Refugee Muslims ? NO. No refugee Muslim is denied citizenship, nor their waiting time is increased.For Refugee Minorities ? YES. Waiting time of citizenship is reduced.Objects of the legislationNow the objectives of the legislation are two fold, namely:(a) Protection of the de-facto refugees (de-facto because in India refugee is an administrative rather than legal category)(b) Protection of national security by regulating immigration in IndiaThese objectives have been vetted by the Supreme Court itself. The court has considered refugee influx as external aggression under Article 355 (Sarbananda Sonowal (2005) 5SCC 655).It was the Supreme Court which took the initiative on the NRC in Assam. (Assam Public Works v Union of India 2009).At the same time, it has been proactive in protecting the rights of the de-facto refugees from Bangladesh (National Human Rights Commission v. State of Arunachal Pradesh (1996).As for the Ahmediyas and Rohingyas, nothing prevents them from seeking Indian citizenship through naturalization (if they enter with valid travel documents).In any case, since India follows the principle of non-refoulment (even without acceding to the Refugee Convention 1951), they would not be pushed back.Constitutional Aspects of CAAIs it against the Secular India ?Secularism is a Constitutional value diffused throughout Part-III. The relevant Articles could be Article 14 (Equality before law), Article 21 (right to life and liberty), Article 15 (Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth), Article 16 (Equality of opportunity in public employment), Article 25 (freedom of conscience), Article 26 (freedom to manage religious affairs), Article 27 (prohibition on religion specific tax), Article 28 (protection of minority script and culture) and finally Article 30 (rights of minorities to administer educational institutions).Unfortunately, except for Articles 14 and 21, all these Articles apply to “citizens”, and thus the secularism of the Constitution seems to be a directed exclusively towards citizens and not foreigners yet to acquire citizenship.The liberal opponents are aware of this lacunae in their argument and so, their last resort is a technical reading of Article 14.Article 14 - The State shall not deny to any person equality* before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.Right to equality is a restriction on the powers of state. It defines the boundaries within which state action has to be confined. However, the restriction under Article 14 has an exception: unequal treatment to unequal persons.*equality - subject to reasonable classification.Eg: The President and common man have different powers. This is not a violation of equality because the President requires extra powers to fulfill the office's duties and to enjoy its benefits.Eg: SC/ST and other castes have different reservations. This is not a violation of equality because SC/ST require extra reservations to correct historical wrongs and to uplift.Basically, 'Equal' does not mean 'Same'.The Constitution, acknowledging that inequalities exist in society and providing equal treatment to unequal persons lead to injustice, permits a state action which is discriminatory provided that such differentiation is based on an ‘intelligible differentia’ and such differentiation has a reasonable nexus with the objective sought to be achieved by the state action.The term intelligible differentia distinguishes, reasonably, between persons or things that are grouped together from those that are left out of the group (see DS Nakara & Ors v. Union of India 1983 AIR 130).Moreover, such differentiation must have a nexus with the objective sought to be achieved by the state action meaning that there must be an objective of a state action and the differentiation must be necessary to achieve that objective (Shri Ram Krishna Dalmia v. Shri Justice S.R. Tendolkar & Ors. 1958 AIR 538).The new legislation has to pass the twin test of intelligible differentia and reasonable nexus in order to survive the test of Article 14.It is argued that CAA is under-inclusive.This is because if the purpose of classification is “religious persecution” then it fails to bring Muslim communities like Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Ahmadiyyas in Pakistan within its ambit.This is a rhetorically impressive argument. It also allows liberals to “virtue signal” their concerns for Indian Muslims (who are paradoxically not touched by the CAA at all).However, is it legally tenable?Sovereign spaceTo begin with, the justifiability of citizenship or laws that regulate the ingress of foreigners is often treated as a ‘sovereign space’ where the courts are reluctant to intervene.Thus, in Trump v Hawaii No. 17-965, 585 U.S. (2018), the US Supreme Court upheld travel ban from several Muslim countries holding that regulation of foreigners including ingress is “fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control.”Indian courts have generally followed a similar reasoning. In David John Hopkins vs. Union of India (1997), the Madras High Court held that the right of the Union to refuse citizenship is absolute and not fettered by equal protection under Article 14.Similarly, in Louis De Raedt vs. Union of India (1991), the Supreme Court held that a right of a foreigner in India is confined to Article 21 and he cannot seek citizenship as a matter of right.Even if the court enters into a review of the CAB 2019 on merits, the State can easily satisfy the technical test for reasonable classification.Intelligible DifferentiaThe amendment makes differentiation between two groups: one consisting of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian community and the other, Muslim.The language of the proviso makes reasonable distinction between the two groups in a particular context which is discernible from the phrase “from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan”. The amendment is restricted in terms of only three countries where Islam is the official state religion and the said communities form minority groups in those countries.The differentiation in the proviso is, thus, based on the fact that it separates the minorities from the majority of these three countries. The minority communities in these countries have fear of persecution on the basis of religion and the differentiation becomes reasonable on humanitarian grounds.To get the “intelligible” differentia, we have to go back in time to partition.The partition of Bengal and Punjab have been diametrically opposite historical experiences. • In Punjab, partition was a jhatka — mass slaughter followed by population exchange. By 1949, the relative demographics of the communities have stabilised. Articles 5 to 10 of the Constitution more or less settled the question of citizenship in the west.• In Bengal, it was a “halal” — slow destruction of the Bengali Hindus in Bangladesh over a period of 70 years. The Hindu population in Bangladesh fell from 23 per cent in 1947 to about 9 per cent in 2011. Since the early 1980s, the eastern border also saw the proliferation of Muslim migrants. This migration created justified demographic anxieties in Assam and the North East, resulting in protracted insurgencies.India has traditionally not been able to address this. In 1950, the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Treaty was entered into to ‘ensure to the minorities throughout its territory complete equality..’ which included ‘freedom of movement’.Nehru-Liaquat Ali TreatyIt failed miserably. Thereafter, India maintained a policy of granting citizenship under registration under section 5(1) of the Act.This was discontinued after the Bangladesh war through an executive order dated 29 November 1971, whereby the Government of India through its Under Secretary C.L. Goyal issued an express letter No. 26011/16/71-10 to the Chief Secretaries to all state governments and Union Territory Administrations.The order reads:'Grant of Indian citizenship to refugees from East Bengal who have crossed over to India after 25 March 1971 — instructing not to register the refugees from East Pakistan as Citizens'.This policy was solidified by the amendment of the Citizenship Act in 2004 that now requires a person not to be an “illegal immigrant” (i.e. someone who has entered India without valid papers) to be registered as citizens.Thus, a vast number of Bengali Hindus from Bangladesh live and work in India and own properties and documents but have no locus standi for citizenship.Now, the ‘liberals’ sought to bring a sense of ‘equivalence’ between the two communities by arguing that migration is largely driven by ‘climate vulnerabilities, economic opportunities, community networks etc.’While these could indeed be ancillary reasons for migration, the prosecution of the Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh is a well-established fact.This is acknowledged internationally, being part of the records of the United National High Commission for Refugees, Report of the US Commission on Religious Freedom and various international organisations.The Muslim immigrants, all said and done, do not suffer from religious persecution.The court can simply take judicial notice of it under section 57 of the Indian Evidence Act (IEA) thereby establishing the “intelligible differentia”.The law, by taking note of the fact, has eliminated the need for every migrant to prove the fact of “persecution”.Reasonable NexusThe statement of object and reasons of the amendment states that Islam being the state religion of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, minority communities have faced persecutions there and many such persons have fled to India to seek shelter and have continued to stay in India.The amendment seeks to provide protection to such individuals as many of them have incomplete or no document and are ineligible to apply for Indian citizenship under sections 5 or 6 of the Citizenship Act.The protection is simply a relaxation provided to the persons belonging to specified groups who form minority communities in these countries and expedites the process of acquiring citizenship for them.The amendment does not prohibit persons belonging to Muslim community from applying for citizenship of India. It does not ‘freshly’ declare foreign Muslims as illegal migrants. The position of foreign Muslims remains unchanged by the amended Act and only a relaxation to foreign persons belonging to minority communities of specific three countries has been provided based on a reasonable objective.The debate surrounding the amendment also raises questions on inclusion of minorities from only three countries where Hindus are a minority. Other questions revolve around ignorance of the government to the fact that even certain groups within the Muslim community face persecution in these three countries.However, the answers to such questions fall under the sphere of policy decision and are not the subject of Article 14 of the Constitution. So far as the constitutionality of the Amendment is concerned, it, in my opinion, passes the twin test laid down in Article 14.Minorities (Hindu/Buddhist/Sikh/Parsi/Christian) and Muslims have different citizenship requirements. This is not a violation of equality because religiously persecuted minorities require faster citizenship to raise their standard of living which was denied in those 3 countries.Minorities, however, still have to satisfy the Third Schedule of the Citizenship Act 1955 to acquire citizenship.Let’s not forget that while the bill overlooks Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh it also leaves out Hindus: Tamils in Sri Lanka and Hindu Rohingyas (a minority within a minority) in Myanmar. This suggests that the Citizenship Amendment Bill is about securing human rights and not persecuting a religion.The precedent was well established by Indira Gandhi’s regime when it denied full citizenship rights to Pakistani Hindu refugees but positively discriminated in favour of refugees from Bangladesh and those cast out by Idi Amin’s Uganda in 1972.Do the minorities face discrimination in these countries?In practice, non-Muslim minorities do face discrimination and persecution.What are Pakistan's blasphemy laws?Human rights group Amnesty International has pointed to Pakistan's blasphemy laws, which it says "are vaguely formulated and arbitrarily enforced by the police and judiciary in a way which amounts to harassment and persecution of religious minorities".Pakistani Hindus who moved to India in recent years told the BBC they face social and religious discrimination, with a particular issue being the targeting of Hindu girls in Sindh province.In Bangladesh, there are various reasons for the decline in the proportion of Hindus over the years. The better-off Hindu population have had their homes and businesses targeted, sometimes in attempts to get them to leave so their land or assets can be taken over. Hindus have also been the targets of attacks by religious militants.In Pakistan, 14 year old Christian student was kidnapped and enforcedly converted her to Islam and marriage with Muslim cabby. The horrific incident of burning home of Christian family in Kasur district of Punjab is an eye opening for human right defenders on situation of Christians in Pakistan[1][1][1][1] .The international media reports that 629 Pakistani women were wrongfully married by Chinese men taken to China where they were kept in brothels and abused. In some cases when Chinese men took these brides to Islamabad, they were sexually attacked by many other Chinese allowed by their husbands on which these brides refused to migrate to China and returned back to their parents.The marriages of Chinese men surfaced in early 2018, when some Pastors of House Churches were approached by these alleged criminal human traffickers from China declaring themselves as Christians and expressed intentions to marry Christian girls from poor families with monetary help and a lucrative life in China.Its also reported that among 629 Pakistani women are 80% Christian and other Muslims which shows the reach of these Chinese human trafficker gangs and their support in Pakistan[2][2][2][2] .The Pakistani Christians witness rising abduction of Christian women and forcibly converting them to Islam , Gang rape of Christian women, murder of innocent Christians on petty issues and dispute covering under blasphemy laws, increasing unemployment of Christian youth in government and semi-government institutions and due share in resources of federation[3][3][3][3].The only promising action was seen, the release of blasphemy accused Christian woman Asia Bibi was facing death sentence but again she was taken in protective custody by secret service agencies of Pakistan and moved to undisclosed location from release of jail where she was not even allowed to attend Christmas services; which disappointed all who expected freedom for Asia Bibi.[4][4][4][4]read more :US, UK, Canada slam China, Pakistan for persecuting minorities. [5][5][5][5]Pakistan’s religious minorities continue to suffer [6][6][6][6]Religious persecution remains a silent feature of Pakistan[7][7][7][7]Girls from religious minorities are under constant threat of forced marriage and conversion [8][8][8][8]Why are Pakistan's Christians targeted?[9][9][9][9][10][10][10][10]CAA + NRC (in all states)Do Indian Muslims need to worry about CAA + NRC?No Indian citizen of any religion needs to worry either about CAA or NRC.Will people be excluded in NRC on religious grounds?No. NRC is not about religion. NRC, as and when conducted, shall not be on religious grounds.How is citizenship decided? Will it be in the hands of government?The citizenship will be decided as per The Citizenship Rules, 2009 as framed under The Citizenship Act, 1955. They are in public domain. There are five ways in which a person can become an Indian citizen:I. Citizenship by birth,II. Citizenship by descent,III. Citizenship by registration,IV. Citizenship by naturalization,V. Citizenship by incorporation of territoryWhen NRC comes, will I have to provide details of birth of parents etc. to prove my Indian citizenship?Details of your birth like date/month and year and place of birth are enough. If not available, you may have to provide such details of birth of parents, but no documents will be required to be compulsorily submitted w.r.t parents. The citizenship can be proved by submitting any documents relating to date and place of birth. The details of such admissible documents are yet to be decided. But they are likely to include voter card, passport, Aadhaar, license, insurance papers, birth certificate, school leaving certificate, land or house papers or such other documents issued by public authorities. The list of these documents is likely to be fairly long so that no Indian citizen is put to any undue harassment.When NRC comes, do I have to prove ancestry dating back before 1971?No. You don’t have to prove any ancestry by presenting any document like ID cards or birth certificates of parents/ ancestors dating back to before 1971. That was valid only for the Assam NRC and mandated by the Assam Accord and implemented on the directions of Supreme Court. NRC procedure in the rest of the country is entirely different as provided under The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.What if a person is illiterate and does not have relevant documents?In this case, authorities will allow him to bring witnesses, various other proofs/community verification etc. A due procedure will be followed. No Indian citizen will be put to undue trouble.Does NRC exclude anyone for being transgender, atheist, Adivasi, Dalit, women and landless without documents?No. NRC, as and when carried out, shall not affect any of the mentioned above.I see CAA as an Act, as an evolution of Indian citizenship jurisprudence over a period of time rather than a sudden sharp move by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The law is constitutionally sound and historically prudent but that’s said I strongly believe that including Ahmadiyyas community also under the category of the religious minority will only justify the purpose of this amendment as Ahmadiyyas are not considered as muslims in Pakistan and also faces religious persecution.See also:CAB: CPIM wanted citizenship rights for Bengali Hindus in 2012When former PM Manmohan Singh supported Indian citizenship for neighbouring minorities | India News - Times of IndiaBIBLIOGRAPHYNational Register of Citizens - WikipediaWhat is (CAA) Citizenship Amendment Bill and why it has triggered protests | India News - Times of IndiaCitizenship Amendment Act 2019: All you need to knowCitizenship Amendment Bill: A humanitarian act A Constitutional Defence Of The Citizenship Amendment BillCAB in simple wordsNational Register of Citizenship (NRC): All You need to knowFrom 1947 to 2019: NRC timeline shows milestones in Assam’s history FAQ: All you need to know about the CAA and its link with the NRC | Citizen MattersFootnotes[1] Present situation of Christian in Pakistan is worsening. By Nazir Bhatti[1] Present situation of Christian in Pakistan is worsening. By Nazir Bhatti[1] Present situation of Christian in Pakistan is worsening. By Nazir Bhatti[1] Present situation of Christian in Pakistan is worsening. By Nazir Bhatti[2] Imran Khan government protecting Chinese criminal involved in human trafficking of Christian brides. By Nazir S Bhatti[2] Imran Khan government protecting Chinese criminal involved in human trafficking of Christian brides. By Nazir S Bhatti[2] Imran Khan government protecting Chinese criminal involved in human trafficking of Christian brides. By Nazir S Bhatti[2] Imran Khan government protecting Chinese criminal involved in human trafficking of Christian brides. By Nazir S Bhatti[3] Pakistani Christians faced worst religious freedom issues in year 2018. By Nazir S Bhatti[3] Pakistani Christians faced worst religious freedom issues in year 2018. By Nazir S Bhatti[3] Pakistani Christians faced worst religious freedom issues in year 2018. By Nazir S Bhatti[3] Pakistani Christians faced worst religious freedom issues in year 2018. By Nazir S Bhatti[4] Where is Asia Bibi? A mystery surrounds about her whereabouts. By Dr. Nazir Bhatti[4] Where is Asia Bibi? A mystery surrounds about her whereabouts. By Dr. Nazir Bhatti[4] Where is Asia Bibi? A mystery surrounds about her whereabouts. By Dr. Nazir Bhatti[4] Where is Asia Bibi? A mystery surrounds about her whereabouts. By Dr. Nazir Bhatti[5] US, UK, Canada slam China, Pakistan for persecuting minorities[5] US, UK, Canada slam China, Pakistan for persecuting minorities[5] US, UK, Canada slam China, Pakistan for persecuting minorities[5] US, UK, Canada slam China, Pakistan for persecuting minorities[6] Asia Times | Pakistan’s religious minorities continue to suffer | Opinion[6] Asia Times | Pakistan’s religious minorities continue to suffer | Opinion[6] Asia Times | Pakistan’s religious minorities continue to suffer | Opinion[6] Asia Times | Pakistan’s religious minorities continue to suffer | Opinion[7] Religious persecution remains a silent feature of Pakistan: Rights activist[7] Religious persecution remains a silent feature of Pakistan: Rights activist[7] Religious persecution remains a silent feature of Pakistan: Rights activist[7] Religious persecution remains a silent feature of Pakistan: Rights activist[8] Pakistan’s persecuted minorities[8] Pakistan’s persecuted minorities[8] Pakistan’s persecuted minorities[8] Pakistan’s persecuted minorities[9] Why are Pakistan's Christians targeted?[9] Why are Pakistan's Christians targeted?[9] Why are Pakistan's Christians targeted?[9] Why are Pakistan's Christians targeted?[10] Pakistan Christians still persecuted[10] Pakistan Christians still persecuted[10] Pakistan Christians still persecuted[10] Pakistan Christians still persecuted

Well, first let's answer this question from a Maoist sympathesizer's perspective. ( Inputs taken from radical notes by Rita Khanna Nov.2009)Who are these Maoists?The Maoists are revolutionaries mainly consisting of the extremely poor people including a large number of dalits and tribals. They come mainly from the toiling masses of India and they are trying ti organize the vast population of such masses of this country. They seek to arm and train them so that these masses can resist the onslaught of the rich. In this effort they go beyond the idea that mass movements should focus on some specific issues like increase of wages, better health care, more honesty of public servants and so forth.The view of the Maoist rebels is that the poor and exploited people must first and foremost establish their own democratic political power and their own state power in various places. This is because without controlling state power, the poor and the exploited can at most hope for only limited improvements in their living conditions, i.e., so long as it does not inconvenience the rich who usually control state power. So the Maoists mobilize the the poor to fight against the existing state, even armed fight if possible, as they consider the existing state to be a set of agents acting for the big multinational corporations, rich landlords and the wealthy in general.The fight is an extremely challenging and unequal one as the rich are aided by the government bureaucrats, the police and even the military. Also, contrary to what the Government and the mainstream media are propagating, the Maoist rebels are actually completely opposed to individual killings, they openly denigrate such stray terrorism-like acts. What they have been attempting to build up is a mass movement, even armed, to take on the violence of the ruling classes and its representative state machinery.The Maoist movement was born in India in the late 1960’s, after a radical section of political workers broke away mainly from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM) because they felt the CPIM and other such parties like CPI, RSP, etc. had discredited themselves with their opportunist politics of placating and compromising with the rich. The movement has a long history of development. The present party CPI (Maoist), came into being in 2004 by the merger of a number of fraternal organizations.THE GOALS:1) Overhauling the entire structure of oppression instead of piecemeal reformsIn addition to all the woes described above, India is also a country, where thousands of Muslims can be butchered in broad daylight by fascist Hindu forces (the most widespread and gruesome such pogrom in recent times happened in Gujarat in 2002), while the ministers and police look the other way. And these features are not stray results of the misdeeds of a few villains. The existing socio-political system in India has a built-in mechanism which ensures that the common masses would be oppressed by a rich and powerful few. Widespread systemic violence is required and is routinely applied by the Indian state so that common people remain disciplined and do not revolt in the face of oppression.2) Land to the tillers and destruction of the landlord classAbout 60% of the Indian population is still dependent on agriculture. However the primary input, land is predominantly concentrated in the hands of a few landlords and big farmers. Close to 60% of rural households are effectively landless (NSS report). The elite in the villages, by their collusion with the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats have blocked blocked any meaningful land reforms. In the last four decades the proportion of households with little or no land (landless and marginal farmer households) has increased steadily from 66% to 80%. On the other hand the top ten percent rural households own more land now than in 1951 (Source: NSS report). The Maoist revolutionaries want to change this to ensure equitable distribution of land. They do not deter from collective armed fight of the landless and poor peasants and the poor rural labourers against the existing state power for achieving this goal.3) Freedom from moneylenders and tradersIndebtedness in rural India has been increasing by leaps and bounds especially in the recent decades. Public rural banks are closing down due to relaxation of government regulation. Therefore, instead of securing credits from public institutional sources, rural folk are now being forced to approach the village money lenders (who are often big landlords or rich farmers as well) on a larger and larger scale. Unscrupulous traders are adding to the misery of the poor peasants. They also make huge profits by buying their harvest at throwaway prices and selling them in urban areas at a premium.Not-so-well-off peasants, in this no-win situation, of course end up needing substantial credit. Private moneylenders and various for-profit financial companies take advantage of this situation by extracting enormous sums from peasants. Interest rage could be as high as 5% per month. The BBC News reported that more than 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997 under the pressure of such indebtedness. The Maoist rebels want to change this.4) End of caste system and eradication of untouchabilityIt is well known that the caste system is still thriving in India. Economically it keeps the overwhelming majority of the people in dire poverty and politically it suppresses their fundamental democratic rights. Often the lower castes are robbed of their human dignity.They are even denied access to public facilities like some sources of drinking water, schools etc. An expert group of the planning commission reports that in 70% of the villages lower caste people cannot enter places of worship and in more that 50% of the villages they don’t have access to common water sources. (Expert Committee Report to the Planning Commission).According to an NCDHR report, on average, 27 atrocities (including murder, abduction and rape) against dalits take place every day. The well-off landed sections still come mainly from the upper castes. They use brahminical ideology to try to keep all other sections of the population under domination. The same is true for usurers, merchants, boarders, quarry owners, contractors – all mainly come from the upper castes. In short, the upper castes are still very much in command in all aspects of rural life. Often with their own private army or goondas they run a parallel raj.Tha Maoists want to break the strangelhold of the upper castes and ensure equal rights for dalits and adivasis.5) Freedom from exploitation by foreign multinationals and its local partnersSince 1991, foreign capital in alliance with big capitalists like Reliance, Tata and state bureaucrats, has penetrated vast sectors of the Indian economy. Every sphere of our life, starting from road construction, electricity generation, communication networks to food retail, health and education are under direct control of this coterie.In the name of ‘development’ thousands of acres of land are being transferred to big business and multinationals. For example, in Bastar, Chattisgarh, in the name of Bodh Ghat dam, tens of thousands of Adivasis are being forcibly evicted from their “jal-jangal-zameen” (water-forest-land). In Niyamgiri, Orissa the land which is the abode of several Dongria tribes has been handed over to the multinational Vedanta group which will completely destroy the livelihood of these tribes affecting more than 20,000 people. The state government and the mainstream opposition parties of the state are actively supporting such activities.The Maoists, over the years, have been resisting such plunder.6) Ensuring people’s democratic rightsIt is well known that elections are often a sham in India. The Parliament, as we have seen several times, is a bazaar where the rich and super-rich can buy the MP’s. According to ADR (Association of Democratic Reform), the average asset of an MP has gone up to 5.12 crore in 2009 from Rs 1.8 crore in 2004. In our democracy the erstwhile rajas and maharajas, like Scindias, are still proliferating and controlling the local economy and polity at many places.And we also know the state of judicial system in our country. Salman Khans and Sanjeev Nandas can kill by running cars over common people and still they can escape the law for very long, perhaps forever. B.N. Kirpal, the judge, who arbitrarily ordered the Indian rivers be interlinked, ignoring the resulting ecological and human calamity, joined the environmental board of Coca-Cola after he retired.The Maoists want to establish people’s court where poor people can get true justice. In fact, such courts run in many places where the Maoist movement is strong.7) Self-determination for the nationalitiesThe Indian government ruthlessly suppresses national aspirations of a number of people. These people and their land became part of India by accident – because the British raj annexed their homeland or a despotic kind wanted their land to be a part of India. Lakhs of Indian troops have been deployed in Kashmir and north-eastern states to curb such struggles of the people in these states for their national determination. Since 1958, AFSPA has been imposed in north-eastern states, which allows armed forces to conduct search and seizure without warrant, to arrest without warrant, to destroy any house without any verification and shoot to kill with full impunity.In Kashmir there is 1 military personnel for every 15 civilian. Cold-blooded murders, like those of Thangjam Manorama Devi, Chungkham Sanjit, Neelofar and Asiya Jan, are carried out frequently in the ‘countering terrorism’. The Maoists rebels seek to establish freedom of self determination for all nationalities.So to sum up, the new society the Maoists want to establish will have the following components.*Land to the poor and landless. Later on cooperative farming is to be established on voluntary basis.*Forest to the tribal people.*End of rule of the rich and upper caste in villages and uprooting of caste system. Uproot all discriminations based on gender and religion.*Seizure of the ill gotten wealth and assets of multinational corporations and their local Indian partners.*Self determination for the nationalities, political autonomy for the tribes.*Establish a state by the poor, for the poor, where the present day exploiters would be expropriated.*Participation of people in day to day administrative work and decision making. Democracy at the true grassroot level with people having the power to recall its democratic representatives.HOWEVER ,THE SCENARIO FROM A FAR NEUTRAL PERSPECTIVE IS THIS :India's Maoist insurgency is waged mostly from the vast, mineral-rich forests of central and eastern India and poses the country's biggest internal security threat, the government says.Maoist violence affects more than a third of India's districts.Also known as Naxalites, the Maoists say they are fighting on behalf of the rural poor and landless and want to build a communist state.However, the poor are also victims of the insurgency because of the Maoists' brutal, forced membership campaigns.In many states, private armies and vigilante groups, often government-sponsored, have sprung up to counter the Maoists. These have also forcibly recruited villagers, who are caught between the two.Tens of thousands have been displaced by the fighting between Maoists and counter-insurgents.IN DETAILThe Maoist crisis in the mineral-rich heartlands of India has been described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as India's biggest-ever internal security threat.Maoist violence increased dramatically following the merger of two main communist groups in 2004. Their attacks have become bigger, involving hundreds of fighters and militia members, and their presence spread from about 56 districts in 2001 to more than 200 in 2011.The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of India's rural poor and indigenous tribespeople, and are active in the vast mineral-rich forests of central and eastern India which are home to some of India's most deprived communities.Tribespeople (adivasis) living in the area have experienced decades of discrimination and government neglect, and forced migration to make way for large infrastructure and mining projects.The government has increased the number of security forces in the region and focused on development to wean people away from the Maoists.Although some local tribespeople support the rebels, others are caught between government military offensives and forced recruitment by the Maoists. Both sides have committed abuses, and Maoists and government-supported vigilante groups have recruited children, according to rights groups.Up to 450,000 people are estimated to have been displaced by the conflict between 2005 and mid-2010. Nearly 150,000 people were displaced in September 2010 - including 100,000 people who fled a government offensive in Chhattisgarh state between mid-2009 and mid-2010 - the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said.Thousands are living in camps and many more are scattered across Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal states. Many are using false names to avoid being identified, IDMC said.BRIEF HISTORYThe communist movement in India officially began in the 1920s with the formation of the Communist Party of India (CPI).In 1964 a serious ideological rift within the party, corresponding with the Sino-Soviet split, led a breakaway group to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which is now a mainstream Marxist political party.Some members of the Marxist party were behind a famous uprising in defence of tribal land, in Naxalbari in West Bengal in 1967.The leaders of the Naxalbari uprising broke away from CPI (Marxist) in 1969 to form the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) - the Maoists, or Naxalites. This party advocated armed revolution and denounced participation in the electoral process.Soon the Maoists had created vast guerrilla zones stretching from West Bengal to Bihar to Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.But within a few years their fortunes waned because of internal splits, the death in 1972 of their ideological leader Charu Mazumdar, and major crackdowns by the government.Since then there have been many communist revolutionary groups operating in different parts of India.One of the most significant was the People's War Group, formed in 1980 by Kondapally Seetharamaiah, a schoolteacher. It promoted an armed revolution, targeting the state and the security forces as well as oppressive landlords. It began in Andhra Pradesh and spread to Chhattisgarh and Orissa states.It gained strength in 1998 when it merged with another left-wing group, the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist Party Unity).More recently, two events fuelled the Maoists' ascendancy.In 2004, their ability to coordinate grew when two main communist groups - the People's War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre - merged to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).Secondly, the success of the Maoists in neighbouring Nepal raised morale and increased manpower, according to Mallika Joseph of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi.In 2005, both countries' Maoists publicly stated their intention to work with each other to spread communism.Experts are now concerned the Maoists are reaching out to Islamist militants active in India's northeast, and are growing a presence in India's urban areas.INCREASING VIOLENCE?Maoist violence has grown dramatically in the past decade, despite sweeping military offensives and government investment in schools, roads and hospitals.Hundreds of people are killed every year. The worst-affected states are Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand.In 2009, the government launched a security operation in all four states to try and rein in the Maoists. And in March 2010, India launched its largest-ever security operation involving tens of thousands of federal troops and policemen. Although the rebels were pushed deep into their jungle strongholds, they continued to carry out hit-and-run attacks and numerous high-profile kidnappings.In April 2010, the government faced strong criticism that security forces were ill-prepared to deal with the insurgent threat after 75 police were killed in an ambush in Chhattisgarh that led to the home minister tendering his resignation.Indian police believe there are around 20,000 hardcore Maoist militants.VIGILANTESAlthough many tribal people support the Maoists, they have also suffered brutally at their hands.The Maoists demand that each family supply one member as a cadre for their ranks. Maoists support themselves by extorting "taxes" from local people. They exact punishment, including execution, on those who resist them.In Chhattisgarh, the humanitarian situation is particularly bad.Here the government has "outsourced" its war on the Maoists by recruiting villagers to lead the fight.They operate under the umbrella of a movement known as Salwa Judum, which means "Purification Hunt" or "Peace Campaign" depending on who you ask.Since its inception in 2005, Salwa Judum committed atrocities and villagers were forcibly recruited to the movement. Its members have been accused of looting houses, burning down villages and causing the displacement of thousands of tribal people.Villagers face retribution from either side if they support, or appear to sympathise with the other.The authorities evacuated entire villages to makeshift Salwa Judum camps, ostensibly to keep them safe from Maoist attacks. Thousands of tribal people live there, far from their farms and livelihoods. Once in the camps, villagers were subject to Maoist attacks, IDMC said in September 2010.The Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights said the Salwa Judum campaign has been "disastrous", leading to a surge in deaths on both sides and among civilians. In Chhattisgarh the situation became akin to a civil war, it said.India's Supreme Court in July 2011 ordered the Chhattisgarh government to disarm Salwa Judum members and stop funding recruitments to the group.LINKS:The South Asia Terrorism Monitortracks the number of fatalities from Maoist violence.The Asian Centre for Human Rights monitors the Maoist conflict.The New-Delhi based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studiesmonitors the Naxalite rebellions and periodically publishes papers about the conflict.

Blog - Biblical Archaeology SocietyBible History Daily is the ongoing blog of the Biblical Archaeology Society, featuring archaeology news, bible history, and the latest developments in our understanding of the history of bible lands and bible peoples.https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/blogExodus in the Bible and the Egyptian PlaguesCan we make sense of the Biblical plagues?Biblical Archaeology Society Staff March 31, 2020 59 Comments 53136 views ShareThe Book of Exodus in the Bible describes ten Egyptian plagues that bring suffering to the land of pharaoh. Are these Biblical plagues plausible on any level? In the following article, “Three Ways to Look at the Ten Plagues,” Ziony Zevit looks at these Biblical plagues from various vantage points. There’s something unique about these Egyptian plagues as presented in Exodus in the Bible. They’re different from the curses to Israelites as mentioned in Leviticus. Some have connected the Egyptian plagues to natural phenomena that were possible in ancient Egypt. Torrential rains in Ethiopia could have sent red clay (“blood”) into the Nile, which could have caused a migration of frogs, further causing lice and flies, which caused the death of cattle and human boils. A second set of meteorological disasters, hailstorms (the seventh of the Biblical plagues) and locusts, may have been followed by a Libyan dust storm—causing darkness.Many of the Egyptian plagues could also be interpreted as “attacks against the Egyptian pantheon,” Zevit notes. Many of the Egyptian plagues mentioned in Exodus in the Bible have some correlation to an Egyptian god or goddess. For example, Heket was represented as a frog and Hathor as a cow. An ancient Egyptian “Coffin Text” refers to the slaying of first-born gods.A third way to look at the Biblical plagues is by asking, “why ten?” Ultimately the plagues served to increase the faith of the surviving Israelites. On this count ten could be connected to the ten divine utterances of the creation account of Genesis 1. In relating the ten Egyptian plagues, the Exodus in the Bible could represent a parallel account of liberation, affecting all aspects of the created world.This painting, “He turned their waters into blood,” by the 19th-century American folk painter Erastus Salisbury Field (1805–1900), depicts the first of the Biblical plagues inflicted on the Egyptians. One understanding of the Egyptian plagues explains them as expressions of natural events. A second view of the Biblical plagues sees them as attacks on the pantheon of Egyptian gods. Accordingly, the first plague described in Exodus in the Bible—turning the waters of Egypt to blood—is directed against one of several gods associate with Nile or with water. Photo: National Gallery of Art, Washington/Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch.Three Ways to Look at the Ten PlaguesWere they natural disasters, a demonstration of the impotence of the Egyptian gods or an undoing of Creation?by Ziony ZevitWhen the enslaved Israelites sought to leave Egypt, Pharaoh said no. The Lord then visited ten plagues upon the Egyptians until finally Pharaoh permanently relented—the last of the plagues being the slaying of the first-born males of Egyptt. Some of the plagues are the type of disasters that recur often in human history—hailstorms and locusts—and therefore appear possible and realistic. Others, less realistic, border on the comic—frogs and lice. Still others are almost surrealistic—blood and darkness—and appear highly improbable.Many questions have been raised about the plagues on different levels. Some questions are naturalistic and historical: Did the plagues actually occur in the order and manner described in Exodus? Are there any ancient documents or other types of evidence corroborating that they took place or that something like them took place? Can the less realistic and surrealistic plagues be explained as natural phenomena? Other questions are literary and theological: Is the plague narrative a hodgepodge of sources pasted together by ancient editors (redactors)? What is the origin of the traditions in the extant plague narrative? What is the meaning of the narrative in its biblical context? Beyond the obvious story, did the plague narrative have any theological implications for ancient Israel?My research has not provided answers to all these questions, but it will, I believe, provide some new insights.For centuries exegetes have been struggling with the order, the number and the meaning of the plagues. As early as the medieval period, Jewish commentators noticed certain patterns in the narrative that reflected a highly organized literary structure. In the 12th century, a rabbi known as the Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir),1 who lived in northern France, recognized that only certain plagues were introduced by warnings to Pharaoh, while others were not. To appreciate the pattern, divide the first nine plagues into three groups each; in the first two of each group, Pharaoh is warned that if he does not let the Israelites go, the plague will be visited on the Egyptians; in the third plague of each group, the plague strikes without warning.In the 13th century Bahya ben Asher2 and in the 15th century Don Isaac Abravanel3 noted a certain repetitive pattern in who brought on the plagues. The first three plagues are brought on by Moses’ brother Aaron, who holds out his staff as the effective instrument (Exodus 7:19; 8:1; 8:12).a In the next group of three, the first two are brought on by God and the third by Moses (Exodus 8:20: 9:6; 9:10). In the last group of three the plagues are brought on by Moses’ holding out his arm with his staff (Exodus 9:22–23; 10:12–13; 10:21 [the last without mention of his staff]).These patterns indicate that the plague narrative is a conscientiously articulated and tightly wrought composition.Taking the plagues as a whole, however, it is clear that they differ considerably from the curses with which the Israelites are threatened in the so-called curse-lists of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. In the curse-lists, the Lord tells the Israelites what will happen to them if they do not obey the Lord’s laws and commandments, if they breach the covenant. They will suffer, according to Leviticus, terror, consumption, fever, crop failure, defeat at the hands of their enemies, unnecessary fear; wild beasts will consume their children and cattle; they will die by the sword; they will be so hungry that they will eat the flesh of their children and, in the end, go into exile (Leviticus 26:14–26). Similarly in the augmented list of curses in Deuteronomy 28:15–60, they will suffer confusion, consumption, inflammation, madness, blindness, social chaos, military defeat, etc.The maledictions in the curse-lists of Leviticus and Deuteronomy have been shown to be part of a stock of traditional curses employed during the biblical period in the geographical area extending from Israel to ancient Mesopotamia. Not only are they attested in the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), but also in the prophets; they also appear in the “curse” sections of contemporaneous ancient Near Eastern treaties.4 These “curses” reflect the kinds of things that could, and probably did, happen in this geographical area as a result of natural or humanly-impose calamities. True there is some overlap between these curses and the plagues. Dever (pestilence) occurs both in the Egyptian plagues and in the curse lists of Leviticus. 26:25 and Deuteronomy 28:21. “Boils” occurs in the curse list of Deuteronomy 28:35 while a locust-like plague is mentioned in. Deuteronomy 28:42. Nevertheless, in the Pentateuchal curse lists, the Israelites—on their way to the Promised land—are threatened with disasters they might expect in the ecological system of the land to which they were headed, not those of the land of Egypt from which they were fleeing.The plagues visited on the Egyptians are quite different.5 To understand their significance we should focus on Egypt in particular rather than the ancient Near East as a whole.Two Egyptian deities, Hathor, in the form of a cow (foreground), and Amon-Re (seated, on far wall). This scene was discovered at Deir el-Bahari in 1906 and dates to the beginning of the reign of Amenophis II, about 1440 B.C. The new pharaoh, successor to Tuthmosis III, stands protected beneath Hathor’s horned head; his name is inscribed on her neck. On the far wall, Tuthmosis III pours a libation to Amon-Re. Photo: Verlag Philipp Von Zabern/Photo by Jurgen LiepeThe most sophisticated attempt to relate the Egyptian plagues to natural phenomena does so in terms of Egypt’s ecosystem. According to this interpretation, the first six plagues can even be explained in their sequential order: The naturalistic account is connected initially with the violent rain storms that occur in the mountains of Ethiopia. The first plague, blood, is the red clay swept down into the Nile from the Ethiopian highlands. The mud then choked the fish in the area inhabited by the Israelites. The fish clogged the swamps where the frogs lived; the fish, soon infected with anthrax, caused the frogs (the second plague) to leave the Nile for cool areas, taking refuge in people’s houses. But, since the frogs were already infected with the disease, they died in their new habitats. As a consequence, lice, the third plague, and flies, the fourth plague, began to multiply, feeding off the dead frogs. This gave rise to a pestilence that attacked animals, the fifth plague, because the cattle were feeding on grass which by then had also become infected. In man, the symptom of the same disease was boils, the sixth plague.A second sequence of plagues, according to this explanation, is related to atmospheric and climatic conditions in Egypt. Hailstorms, the seventh plague, came out of nowhere. Although not common, hailstorms do occur rarely in Upper Egypt and occasionally in Lower Egypt during late spring and early fall. In this reconstruction, the hailstorm was followed by the eighth plague, locusts, a more common occurrence. The ninth plague, darkness, was a Libyan dust storm.6The final plague, the death of the first-born, although not strictly commensurate with the other plagues, can be explained in ecological terms. It may be a reflection of the infant mortality rate in ancient Egypt.7 There is a problem with this explanation, however. According to the biblical narrative, the tenth plague struck all first-born males of whatever age, not just new-born infants.This ecological explanation of the plagues does not prove that the biblical account is true, but only that it may have some basis in reality. As indicated, it also has weaknesses: The ecological chain is broken after the sixth plague, there being no causality between the plague of boils (the sixth plague) and the hail. The chain is again broken between the ninth and tenth plagues. In addition, there is no real link between the plagues in the seventh-eighth-ninth sequence (hail-locusts-darkness). Nevertheless, this explanation does firmly anchor the first six plagues in the Egyptian ecosystem, just as the curse-lists in the Torah reflect real conditions in the Land of Israel.Death incarnate. A huge, hideous, scaly messenger of destruction stalks his Egyptian prey in a watercolor, entitled “Pestilence,” by the English artist, Poet and mystic William Blake (1757–1827). With victims lying prostrate or clutched in their mothers arms, the scene easily illustrates the tenth and final plague, the death of first-born males. Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, BostonMoreover, two ancient Egyptian texts provide additional support. One is relevant to the first plague, blood. In “The Admonitions of Ipu-Wer,” dated at the latest to 2050 B.C.E., the author describes a chaotic period in Egypt: “Why really, the River [Nile] is blood. If one drinks of it, one rejects (it) as human and thirsts for water.”8The second text, known as “The Prophecy of Nefer-Rohu” dates towards the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, about 2040–1650 B.C.E.; it relates to the ninth plague, darkness: “The sun disc is covered over. It will not shine (so that) people may see No one knows when midday falls, for his shadow cannot be distinguished.”9The ten plagues may also be interpreted as a series of attacks against the Egyptian pantheon. This suggestion finds support in Numbers 33:4 where we are told that the Egyptians buried those who had died by the tenth plague, by which plague “the Lord executed judgments against their gods.”According to this suggestion, the plague of blood (No. 1) was directed against the god Khnum, creator of water and life; or against Hapi, the Nile god; or against Osiris, whose bloodstream was the Nile. Frogs (No.2) was directed against Heket, a goddess of childbirth who was represented as a frog. The pestilence against cattle (No. 5) might have been directed against Hathor, the mother and sky goddess, represented in the form of a cow; or against Apis, symbol of fertility represented as a bull. Hail (No. 7) and locusts (No. 8 ) were, according to this explanation, directed against Seth, who manifests himself in wind and storms; and/or against Isis, goddess of life, who grinds, spins flax and weaves cloth; or against Min, who was worshiped as a god of fertility and vegetation and as a protector of crops. Min is an especially likely candidate for these two plagues because the notations in Exodus 9:31 indicate that the first plague came as the flax and barley were about to be harvested, but before the wheat and spelt had matured. A widely celebrated “Coming out of Min” was celebrated in Egypt at the beginning of the harvest.10 These plagues, in effect, devastated Min’s coming-out party.Darkness (No. 9), pursuing this line of interpretation, could have been directed against various deities associated with the sun—Amon-Re, Aten, Atum or Horus.Finally, the death of the firstborn (No. 10) was directed against the patron deity of Pharaoh, and the judge of the dead, Osiris.Additional data from Egyptian religious texts clarifies the terrifying tenth plague. The famous “Cannibal Hymn,” carved in the Old Kingdom pyramid of Unas at Saqqara, about 2300 B.C.E., states: “It is the king who will be judged with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on that day of slaying the first born.” Variations of this verse appear in a few Coffin Texts, magic texts derived from royal pyramid inscriptions of the Old Kingdom and written on the coffins of nobility of the Middle Kingdom, about 2000 B.C.E. For example, “I am he who will be judged with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on that night of slaying the first born.”11 Although the first-born referred to in the Coffin Text and probably also in the “Cannibal Hymn” are the first-born of gods, these texts indicate that an ancient tradition in Egypt recalled the slaying of all or some of the first-born of gods on a particular night.12Assuming that some form of this pre-Israelite Egyptian tradition was known during the period of the enslavement, it may have motivated the story of the final plague. However, in the biblical story, he who revealed his hidden name to Moses at the burning bramble bush revealed himself as the Him-whose-name-is-hidden of the Egyptian myth, and alone slew the first-born males of Egypt. In this final plague, then, there was no conflict between the Lord and an Egyptian deity; rather through this plague the triumphant god of Israel fulfilled the role of an anonymous destroyer in a nightmarish prophecy from the Egyptian past.One weakness in interpreting the plagues solely as a religious polemic against Egyptian gods, however, is that some of the plagues are unaccounted for; and not all of the plagues can be conveniently matched up with Egyptian gods or texts. Specifically, divine candidates are lacking for the third, fourth and sixth plagues—lice, flies and boils. Even if scratching through Egyptian sources might produce some minor candidates that could fill these lacunae, there is another difficulty with the religious polemic interpretation. The Egyptian material on which this interpretation rests comes from different times and different places. The extant data do not enable us to claim that the perception of the pantheon presented above was historically probable in the Western Delta during the 14th–12th centuries B.C.E. when and where Israelites became familiar with it. Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, the Egyptian material describing links between Egyptian deities and natural phenomena does provide us with some insights into the way the plagues were intended to be understood.Another line of interpretation, however, results from Posing the questions: Why ten plagues? Why these ten plagues?According to Exodus 7:4–5, the function of the plagues is didactic: “I will lay my hands upon Egypt and deliver hosts, my people, the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment. And the Egyptians shall know that I am God when I stretch out my hand against Egypt.” Despite the reference to the Egyptians learning a lesson—namely, the Lord’s power—it seems clear that the real beneficiaries of the plagues were not intended to be Egyptians. If the education of the Egyptians was the reason for the plagues, the lesson was certainly lost on the intended beneficiaries. The true beneficiaries of the lesson that God said he would teach were the Israelites. As we read in Exodus 14:31: “When Israel saw the mighty act [literally ‘hand/arm’] which the Lord had done in Egypt, the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.”What ignited the faith of the Israelites was not their physical redemption from Egypt, but rather “the mighty act which the Lord had done in Egypt”—that is, the plagues.What was there about the plagues that triggered Israel’s response in faith? Through the plagues the Lord demonstrated that he was the God of creation. As we examine the narrative closely, we will see how this notion is conveyed.The first plague, blood, is described in Exodus 7:19. There we are told that Aaron is to take his staff and hold it over all of Egypt’s bodies (or gatherings) of water and they will become blood. The Hebrew word for “bodies” or “gatherings” of water is mikveh. This is the same word that appears in the opening chapters of Genesis when God creates the seas: “God called the dry land Earth, and the gatherings (mikveh) of waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). The use of the word mikveh in Exodus 7:19 in connection with the plague of blood cannot fail to evoke an association with the creation of the seas in Genesis 1:10 and indicates the cosmic import of the plague. Similarly, the expression in Exodus 7:19 “Let them become blood” echoes the use of “Let there be(come)” in the creation story in Genesis.However, in contrast to the creation, where the primeval waters are not altered by a creative act, the first plague demonstrates that God is able to change the very nature of things.Plagues two, three and four—frogs, lice and flies—form an interesting triad. The frogs are associated with water, the lice with earth, and the flies with air. Frogs, we are told, came out of the “rivers, the canals, and the ponds of Egypt” (Exodus 8:1). In Exodus, the Nile swarmed with frogs which then covered all the land (Exodus 7:28–29), while in Genesis God says, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures” (Genesis 1:20). Understood against the background of Genesis, the frog plague in Egypt was a new creation of life, although not a beneficent one.Similarly, with lice (the third plague) that came forth from the dust of the earth (Exodus 8:12–13). The lice correspond to the crawling creatures (remes) that come forth from the earth in Genesis 1:24.Flies (the fourth plague) correspond to the flying creatures; in Genesis God orders that “flying creatures multiply in the land” (Genesis 1:22). In Egypt, the flies not only multiplied in the land, they filled the land. After the fly plague the situation in Egypt was a complete reversal of the one anticipated by the divine blessing to mankind in Genesis 1:28, where God tells man to “Rule the fish of the sea, the winged creatures of the heavens, and all living creatures which creep on the earth.” In Egypt, these creatures were totally out of control.The fifth plague (pestilence) affected only animals, not men; and only the field animals of the Egyptians, not those of the Israelites (Exodus 9:3–7). In Genesis 2:18–20 the animals are created specifically for man. In the plague of pestilence, the domestic animals that were under man’s dominion were taken away from the Egyptians. That which was first created for man was first removed from the Egyptians by the firstplague directed specifically against created things.The sixth plague, boils, is the only one that does not fit easily into the pattern I have been describing. Perhaps it should be understood against the background of the Torah’s laws of purity: A person afflicted with boils is ritually unclean (Leviticus 13:18–23). This is complemented by the stringent demands of Egyptian religion during the New Kingdom, about 1550–1080 B.C.E., concerning the ritual and physical purity requited of priests before entering a sanctuary.13 Egyptians considered themselves superior to other peoples. Pharaoh himself was a god and his officers were priests. Perhaps the image of these superior, “holier than thou” individuals suffering from boils, a painful and unaesthetic affliction, was humorous to the Israelites and was considered a barb against Egyptian religion.The next two plagues, hail and locusts involve the destruction of another part of creation, primarily vegetation. What was not destroyed by the hail was consumed by the locusts. When these two plagues had run their course, Egypt could be contrasted to the way the world appeared after the third day of creation: “The land brought forth vegetation: seed bearing fruit with seed in it” (Genesis 1:12). By contrast, in Exodus 10:15 we are told that “nothing green was left of tree or grass of the field in all the land of Egypt.”Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the plagues is darkness, the ninth plague. In Exodus 10:21–23 we read that a thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. “People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings” (Exodus 10:23). What is described here is not simply the absence of light. The darkness is something physical, “a darkness that can be touched” (Exodus 10:21b). The alternation of light and darkness, of day and night, has ceased. Yet darkness and light exist side by side in geographically distinct places. The Israelites did have light. In short, in Egypt, God had reverted the relationship between darkness and light to what had been prior to the end of the first day of creation—that is, to the state that existed briefly between Genesis 1:4 and Genesis 1:5.The final plague, the death of the first-born, is only a forerunner to the complete destruction of all the Egyptians at the Red Sea, or Reed Sea.b Here we hear a twisted, obverse echo of the optimism expressed in Genesis 1:26, where God said, “I will make man in my image and after my likeness.” Instead of creating, he is destroying—first, the first-born, and then, at the sea, all of Egypt.The firstborn slain, by Gustave Doré (1832?–1883). Photo: The Doré Bible Illustrations, Dover PublicationsAt the end of the narrative in Exodus, Israel looks back over the stilled water of the sea at a land with no people, no animals and no vegetation, a land in which creation had been undone. Israel is convinced that her redeemer is the Lord of all creation. It is this implicit theological principle that motivated the explicit creation of the literary pattern. He who had just reduced order to chaos was the same as he who had previously ordered the chaos.One question still remains. What is the significance of the number ten in the Exodus tradition? Why ten plagues? The answer, I believe, is clear. The number of plagues in Exodus was meant to correspond to the ten divine utterances by which the world was created and ordered (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29).14 The destruction of Egypt was part of the redemption of Israel, so the Exodus narrator tied his story of redemption to the story of creation through subtle echoes and word plays.15Interestingly enough, there are two other accounts of the plagues in the Bible, one in Psalm 78:44–51 and the other in Psalm 105:28–36. These psalms differ somewhat between themselves; they also differ with the narrative in Exodus—regarding what constitutes a plague and the order in which they occurred.16 These differences can be taken to indicate that the specific number and order of the plagues was less important to Israel than the fact of the plagues and what was revealed to Israel through them.For the psalmists, authors of liturgical texts, there were only seven plagues, a number clearly evoking the seven days of creation. In Egypt, however, the cycle did not end in a Sabbath; it culminated in a silent devastation. At the end of the seventh day (plague), creation in Egypt had been undone.This tangle of threads—creation, on the one hand, and deliverance from slavery, on the other—is gathered together and neatly knotted in the Sabbath commandment of the Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments as set forth in Exodus, the motivation for observing the sabbath (the fifth commandment) is to commemorate creation: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God: You shall not do any work … for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:9–11). In the Ten Commandments as set forth in Deuteronomy, however, the reason Israel is commanded to observe the sabbath is different—not creation, but the delivery from Egyptian slavery. After being told to refrain from work on the sabbath—in the same language as in Exodus—the reason is given: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm [a reference to the plagues]; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15).As we have already noted, Psalms 78 and 105 preserve a tradition of seven plagues. In the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, Israel is told to remember the seventh-day sabbath to commemorate the six-day creation; in Deuteronomy 5, Israel is to observe the seventh-day sabbath to commemorate the deliverance from Egyptian slavery by God’s outstretched arm involving, according to the tradition in the Psalms, seven plagues.This explanation of the plagues and their number also answers some historical questions concerning the biblical tradition of the ten plagues:1. The plague tradition includes calamitous events that do not derive from experiences in the Land of Israel; this establishes a prima faciecase that the tradition has roots in an ecological system unknown to the Israelites living in their own land.2. An Egyptian milieu not only provides a basis for explaining the plagues in terms of natural phenomena, it also allows us plausibly to link at least some of the sequences of plagues.These two points lead me to conclude that a historical kernel must underlie the Egyptian plague traditions preserved in the Bible.3. We can speculate a bit further: perhaps a series of natural disasters occurred in Egypt in a relatively short period of time. Egyptian religion would have had to explain it. A link between these disasters and various Egyptian deities (expressing their displeasure) formed.17 No matter how Egyptians interpreted these disasters, Israelites could have accepted the notion that they were divinely caused but would have viewed them as contests between their patron and the gods of Egypt, the result of which were judgments against the gods of Egypt and their earthly representatives.18 Trace of this stage in the development of the tradition can be found in the Biblical narrative. During this, the interpretative stage, the plagues were theologized, providing cosmic meaning to the natural phenomena even as they were removed from the realm of what we would call “nature.”4. The Plague traditions, which were maintained orally by the Israelites until some time after the establishment of the monarchy, continued to be reworked in the land of Israel. There, far from the ecological context of Egypt, some phenomena natural in Egypt would have appeared incomprehensible to them and even fantastic, inviting imaginative embellishment.The Israelite traditors, those who passed on the tradition, were no longer familiar with the Egyptian cultural milieu in which the disasters had been theoligized and made meaningful by their ancestors. These traditors, therefore, made them meaningful within their own world view by connection the plagues, which initiated the emergence of Israel as a covenant community, with the creation of the world.For further details, see “The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plague Narrative in Exodus,” Jewish Quarterly Review 66 (1976) 193–211. The present article contains new material, however, some of which was not available when the aforementioned study was written, as well as a reevaluation of the significance of the data discussed there. Readers interested in a more technical discussion or in the literary history of the plague narratives or in more bibliographical information that is presented here may consult my earlier study and the remarks of N. M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus (New York: Schocken Books, 1986) 68–80.Ziony Zevit is professor of Biblical literature and Northwest Semitic languages at the University of Judaism, the Los Angeles affiliate of the JewishNotes:a. The verse citations follow the traditional Hebrew enumeration. See, for example, the New Jewish Publication Society translation (Philadelphia: 1985).b. See Bernard F. Batto, “Red Sea or Reed Sea?” BAR, July/August 1984.1. Commentary to Exodus 7:26. The verse citations follow the traditional Hebrew enumeration.2. Commentary to Exodus 10:1.3. Commentary to Exodus 7:26.4. D. R. Hillers, Treaty and the Old Testament Prophets (Rome: PBI, 1964); M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomy School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 116–146.5. The devastating plague of locusts described in the book of Joel (6th century B.C.E.) is considered a unique event, not comparable to the Egyptian plagues. Similarly, in Joel 3:3–4 (2:30–31 in English), where the moon turns to blood and the sun to darkness; this is very unlike the plagues in Egypt if, in fact, the images in Joel are to be taken literally and not metaphorically.6. G. Hort, “The Plagues of Egypt,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 69 (1957), pp. 84–103; 70 (1958), pp. 48–59. This is a very important and very sophisticated study which is most humble in drawing its conclusions.7. P. Montet, L’Egypte et la Bible (Neuchatel: Paris, 1959), pp. 97–98.8. J. B. Pritchard Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ANET), (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 441.9. Pritchard, ANET. p. 445.10. J. Cerny, Ancient Egyptian Religion (AER) (London: Hutchison’s University Library, 1952), pp. 119–120.11. M. Gilula, “The Smiting of the First-Born—An Egyptian Myth?” Tel Aviv 4 (1977), p. 94. Technical references and additional discussion are available in this brief study. M. Lichtheim renders the line from the ‘Cannibal Hymn’: “Unas will judge with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on the day of slaying the eldest,” noting that the line is difficult (Ancient Egyptian Literature. A Book of Readings. Vol 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973], pp. 36–38). The Coffin Text cited is CT VI:178.12. M. Gilula, p. 95.13. Cerny, AER, 118; S. Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt (New York: Grove Press, 1960), pp. 37–39.14. Cf. Mishnah Aboth 5:1, 4.15. This conclusion does not contradict the findings of source criticism. According to source criticism, the final redactor of the plague narratives and of the creation stories was from the priestly school, P.16. Both psalms are pre-Exilic, and probably formed part of the temple liturgy. (D. A. Robertson, Linguistic Evidence in Dating Early Hebrew Poetry [Missoula, Montana: SBL, 1972], pp. 135, 138, 143, 15–52; A. Hurvitz, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew: A study in Post-Exilic Hebrew and Its Implications for the Dating of Psalms [Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1972] finds no linguistic reason to consider these psalms late.) A comparison of the three different presentations indicates a certain plasticity in the Israelite tradition of the plagues. The coexistence of conflicting, somewhat contradictory, parallel plague traditions tells against any attempt to explain the order of the ten plagues as reflecting a connected series of natural catastrophes and provides a qualification to the discussion above concerning the possibility of a sequential disaster. Although it is not impossible that some natural disasters ultimately lie behind the various plagues, the traditions in their extant forms cannot be employed to reconstruct what actually occurred. The implication of the three lists of plagues is that Israel did not preserve the details of the plagues or their number for their own sake, but rather recalled the significance of the plagues as events demonstrating a theological principle.17. Natural disasters would be perceived as forms of divine communication. Compare Amos 4:6–12.18. Cf. the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal in 1 Kings 18.Home - Biblical Archaeology SocietyMay 24 - 29, 2021 - Drs. James Tabor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte & Tina Wray, Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Islandhttp://biblicalarchaeology.org