In this article, the authors explain that the recent amendments to India’s citizenship law, and the processes for listing Indian residents and Indian citizens in national registers together constitute an unprecedented threat to India’s secular democratic constitution. It explains that this is the first time a legal regime is being established which differentiates based on religious identity, which strikes at the heart of the humanist and inclusive framework of the Indian constitution.

The CAA is not the first and by no means will be the last attempt to further the agenda of Hindu Rashtra. One can anticipate many such moves meant to keep the hatred against Muslims simmering. However, the divisive politics will only hurtle India onto the treacherous road of relentless anxiety, uncertainty and injustice, exposing million of its own citizens against the vagaries of statelessness.

India’s Northeast, a land of volatile identities having an uneasy experience with migration, is held to-gether by a fragile consensus forged in the larger interest of peace and co-existence. The seams of these fault-lines pass by people’s lived realities, always at the risk of being burst open with an act of insensitivity. The enactment of the CAA is considered by many as one such act.

In the last few decades, villages in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district have been struggling with three significant challenges – iron-ore mining in their forests, abrogation of their recognised for-ests rights and increased state militarisation in the region. However, in Korchi, along with resist-ing against the state-sponsored mining and asserting their rights over traditional territories under the Scheduled Areas and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 – commonly known as Forest Rights Act, the villagers are also beginning to re-imagine and reconstruct their traditional governance systems, localise control over their forest resources, raise gender concerns, and revive cultural identity. The process unfolding in Korchi brings out how collective power of people can be used to trigger positive transformations in the situations of extreme conflicts.

Formed in 1972 and located in the northern east of the Indian subcontinent, Meghalaya shares its northern border with Assam and southern border with Bangladesh. Having a population of over three million, the state is made of a mild climate with clouds constantly floating through green layers of the hills. And nestled in the state’s East Khasi Hills lies the Mawphlang sacred grove. Guiding through the forest, Johnstarfield Myrthong portrays his perception of the grove, local belief systems and the social structure of the Khasi community.

Though the instrument is flawed and limited, there is merit in engaging with CEDAW to highlight the issues of members of the LGBTIAQ+ communities in India.