How Modi supporters are trying to cloak an anti-Muslim bill in American law

India's Citizenship Amendment Act isn't based on America's Lautenberg law at all

Narendra Modi.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev/Kremlin via REUTERS, PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP via Getty Images)

America's harsh anti-immigration policies under the Trump administration are hardly a good example for the rest of the world. But leave it to the supporters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to distort a well-intentioned American law for nefarious ends. They have dusted off something called the Lautenberg Amendment, an obscure Cold War-era law, to justify Prime Minister Narendra Modi's anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Modi's law has sparked massive protests in India and condemnation around the world. But his supporters claim there is no functional difference between America's Lautenberg and India's CAA.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.