FOFONGA, India Marzina Bibi, a Muslim woman living in India’s northeastern state of Assam, is petrified she will be declared stateless.
The 26-year-old’s name was not on a preliminary list of citizens that was published at midnight on Sunday, although she holds a voter identity card and had voted in state elections in 2016.
“Why are they doing this to me?” Bibi asked, sitting beside a bamboo mat she was weaving outside her mud house in Assam’s Fofonga village. “They think I am a Bangladeshi. I was born here, my parents were born here, I am an Indian.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power in Assam in the April, 2016 elections, vowed during the campaign to act against illegal Muslim immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. But rights activists say the drive is also targeting Muslims who are Indian citizens.
Two national spokesmen for the BJP declined to comment.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Home Affairs in New Delhi did not reply to e-mails and a telephone call seeking comment.
Reuters spoke to nearly two dozen Muslims, including Bibi, from paddy-growing villages around Fofonga who said their names were not on the preliminary list.
“I feel we are targeted because we are Muslims,” said Bibi, who said she has already proved she was Indian – she was jailed for eight months on charges of being an illegal migrant from Bangladesh and was let off only after showing documents attesting to her nationality.
Surrounded by her neighbors in the village, she showed her voter identity card and the court order for her release from jail.