Nearly two million people in northeast India were left confronting statelessness after the state of Assam published a citizenship list aimed at eliminating foreign fifth column A large portion of those rejected were anticipated to be Muslims. Assam has long seen large inflow from somewhere else, including under British colonial rule and around 1971 war, when many rejoined into India. Occasional brutality has included the 1983 massacre of around 2,000 Muslims people. Security was strengthened in Assam before the release of the NRC, with about 20,000 additional personnel brought in and gatherings prohibited in some places. Only those who can show that they or their fore fathers were in India before 1971 could be included in the list Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party Assam. Analysis states that the NRC processes contemplate the BJP’s object to serve only its Hindus. In January, India’s lower house passed legislation that grants citizenship to people who moved to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan as recently as six years ago – as far as they are not Muslims. This has spread fears among India’s more than 170million Muslim minority for their going forward. On August 5, India discontinued the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir. The Muslim-majority region is currently in its fifth week of a near-total communications blackout. Those left out NRC have 120 days to call at special Foreigners Tribunals, which the government states are being in number. But campaigner says that tribunal members are often not qualified. Nur Mohammad, 65, spent approximately 10 years in one such camp until a Supreme Court order him released this month. Prime Minister Imran Khan has also raised his concern on the matter, saying, that reports in Indian and international media on Modi government’s ethnic cleansing of Muslims should send danger bells ringing across the world that the unlawful annexation of Kashmir is part of a wider policy to target Muslims. About 31.1 million people were included on the list Assam’s government released on Saturday, leaving out about 1.9 million. The list known as the National Register of Citizens, or NRC is extra ordinary to Assam state, in India’s far northeast bordering Bangladesh. The government has stated it gathered the list to identify and expel not registered immigrants from Bangladesh but has also made clear that those left off the final citizenship list won’t be declared foreigners. It is vague what occurred next. Those out of the list can appeal to special tribunals, but if they lose, they could be sent to custody centres being established by the government. India’s foreign ministry has protected a debatable citizenship register in Assam state after condemnation from the United Nations, stating that the almost two million people discarded from the list would not become “stateless”. The government would provide legal support to those who cannot contribute chase their cases through the judicial system. Experts have said the NRC process depict the BJP’s object to serve Hindus, with a large share of those removed to be Muslims. Approximately two million, majority Muslims, face statelessness as India publishes disputable citizenship list. These are the people majority being Bengali-speaking Muslims that have been considered to be foreigners because of being not being able to prove that they or their forefathers lived or entered India before March 1971, prior to which Bengalis were vigorously urged to migrate to India. Many have been living in Assam for several years, or have known no other home but India. The process of updating the NRC has been in controversy given the BJP’s anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant feeling. Narendra Modi’s home minister has gone as far as to pledge that the NRC will be executed across India, to eradicate those who he describes as ‘infiltrators’ and has compared to pest.
Approximately 1,100 people are imprisoned in Assam’s known foreigner detention centres. There are worries that huge imprisonment is approaching or worse, such as forced removal and mass murder massacres. In the event of the Rohingya crisis of 2017, when hundreds of thousands were deprived of Burmese citizenship and forced to escape Myanmar into Bangladesh, seemed a gigantic human tragedy, what may happen in Assam might well be even more disastrous. India’s start in Assam will really trouble its ties with Bangladesh which has depicted no sign it will accept these Assamese Muslims. It is necessary on both nations to deal a rational and kindhearted settlement to this menacing crisis. Bangladesh must come to some sort of understanding with India, and quickly, as well as review its policies in context to the position of the stateless Rohingya seeking refuge within its borders. Some two-thirds of the Bengalis in Assam are Muslim, the rest Hindu. United Nations’ special rapporteurs voiced serious worries in a recent letter to the Indian government about the process fueling ethnic tensions. A local researcher and activist registered minimum 26 connected suicides since the NRC process began in 2015.
Under Modi leadership and his BJP nationalists, has consistently permitted acts of mass murder and ethnic cleansing. Considering assuming power in 2014, the BJP government has carefully planned to suppress the Muslim minority community across India. In this year, the lower house of parliament passed a law that granted citizenship to immigrants who moved to India as long as they were not Muslims. Shortly after that, the Indian government authorized the annexation of the Muslim-majority Kashmir, which it has forcefully occupied for several years. If not ceased at present, the Modi regime will very soon, make religion an eligibility criterion for Indian citizenship which by default will sideline Muslims. India’s regime show its strong desire to preserve the country’s Hindu personality and continue with its drive for Hinduisation whatever the cost, the destiny of millions, most of them among the most exposed in the country, stays unsure.