A wave of anti-immigrant
hysteria is sweeping across the world: it has empowered Trump,
enabled Brexit and
is polarising the politics of Europe. In the Indian north-eastern
state of Assam millions are about to be declared stateless in the
country on the grounds that either they or their ancestors came over
as undocumented migrants from India’s eastern neighbour,
Bangladesh. Assam is
updating its National Register of Citizens: a supposed listing of
genuine Indian nationals. Anyone who does not find their name on this
NRC will be branded an illegal migrant. The situation has
drawn comparisons to the Rohingya
crisis
– both
being stark examples of states stripping a minority of their
citizenship. In fact, like Assam, Myanmar also accuses the Rohingya
of being migrants from Bangladesh and refers
to the persecuted group
as
“Bengalis” in order to reinforce that narrative. However, where
the two differ is in magnitude. The Rohingya refugees who fled number
about three-quarters
of a million.
The draft NRC published in 2018 excludes more than five times that
number.
The
NRC's
2018 draft list declared more then 4 million people to be foreigners.
While an exercise that aims to vet each one of Assam’s 30 million
citizens is draconian enough, the real devil lies in the detail. The
burden of proof under the NRC is so stringent, partisan and arbitrary
that the entire exercise seems geared to exclude people rather than
any genuine effort to create a roster of Indian citizens. To qualify
for the NRC, applicants have to prove that either they or their
ancestors lived in Assam before the start of the 1971
Bangladesh
war.
The cut-off date is in itself a tool of exclusion since atrocities by
the Pakistan army had forced millions of refugees to flee to India
even as Bangladesh fought to secede. India’s courts have taken an
exceedingly illiberal turn. Rather than act as a check on executive
excess, the judiciary has itself pushed the NRC hard, leading a
commentator to declare:
“The supreme court has transformed itself from the protector of the
rule of law into an enthusiastic abettor of its daily violation.”
People frantically seek out family land title deeds, the name of a grandparent
in historical electoral rolls or even family entries in the original
NRC records, created in 1951 to locate family documents from seven decades
back to prove that they are a citizen of the country where they were
born in. There is also the stumbling block of Assam’s illiteracy rate. More than
one in four people in the state are completely illiterate and cannot
either read documents nor submit them if they want to avoid being
stripped of their citizenship.
The
entire process is underpinned by ethnic bigotry. In fact, the NRC has
an explicitly racist classification of “original inhabitants” –
which means that the Assamese ethnic majority will be put through a" less strict and vigourous process" of citizenship vetting. The NRC process has resulted in some surreal
outcomes. In one case, a father was declared a foreigner in the draft NRC but his son was declared Indian. A six-year-old girl
passed the citizenship test but her twin brother was found to be a
foreigner. Spelling errors and inconsistencies in documents –
common enough given high illiteracy levels – have acted as a significant obstacle.
A typo in your grandfather’s documents could mean you lose your
citizenship.
As in other parts of the world,
Assam is using supposed illegal migration as a cover and an excuse to target minorities
and to harass Assam’s Bengali speakers, who share their ethnic
identity with Bangladeshis. This in spite of the fact that there are
more than 83 million Bengalis who are Indian citizens and Bengali
speakers have lived in Assam as long as any other ethnic group. This
ethnic targeting in Assam replicates the Hindu nationalism of Prime
Minister Modi and the BJP, who portray Muslims swamping India. After
Assam, the BJP has promised a citizenship test for all of India’s
1.3 billion residents – part of a plan to make India a Hindu nation. The number of Indian Muslims is almost equal the population
of Brazil which is the sixth most populous country in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment