Hawzah News Agency - (Istanbul - Turkey) - Academics and researchers gathered in Istanbul to discuss a new citizenship law in India which has been criticised for discriminating against Muslims and strengthening Islamophobia, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported. 

The roundtable discussion was organised on Wednesday by the South Asia Strategic Research Center (GASAM), a think tank founded by Ali Şahin, a Turkish Islamic who studied in Pakistan and who now serves as the deputy minister for European Affairs on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s cabinet.

Mehmet Özay, an academic at Istanbul’s Ibn Haldun University and one of the speakers at the discussion, said that India’s new law violated the country’s constitution.

"Perhaps today we are witnessing a process in which India is turning from a multicultural, multi-ethnic, secular structure based on its 1947 constitution … to an Islamophobia-dominant country,” Özay said.

The Citizenship Amendment Act, which was approved on Dec. 12, fast-tracks Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from three neighbouring countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Protesters across India have taken to the streets since December to oppose the controversial law, which they say discriminates against Muslims.

Nedim Çavdari, a researcher and Istanbul-based medical doctor who is originally from Kashmir, said the law had been introduced to clean up Muslim culture from India.

“You can stay as a Muslim there, but you have to live Hindu culture socially,” he said.

Tensions between Hindu and Muslim populations have been close to the surface since India was partitioned in 1947. Rights group accuse the Indian government of pursuing a Hindu-nationalist agenda that aims to marginalise the country’s 200 million Muslims.