*GUWAHATI: Almost two million people in northeast India were left facingstatelessness on Saturday after the state of Assam published a citizenshiplist aimed at weeding out “foreign infiltrators”, in a process the centralgovernment wants to replicate nationwide.*
A total of 31.1 million people were included in a final National Registerof Citizens (NRC), but 1.9 million were deemed ineligible, according to astatement from the Assam government. Most of those excluded were expectedto be Muslim.
Assam, an impoverished isolated state of 33 million, has long seen largeinfluxes from elsewhere, including under British colonial rule and aroundBangladesh´s 1971 war of independence when millions fled into India.
For decades this has made Assam a hotbed of inter-religious and ethnictensions. Sporadic violence has included the 1983 massacre of around 2,000people.
This has led to pressure from those who see themselves as genuine Assamesefor a lasting solution — which they hope will come from the NRC released onSaturday.
Only those who can demonstrate that they or their forebears were in Indiabefore 1971 could be included in the list.
But navigating the complex process is a huge challenge for many in a regionof high illiteracy where many lack documentation.´Termites´
Members of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi´s Hindu nationalistBharatiya Janata Party-run Assam — and critics say the NRC process reflectsthe BJP´s goal to serve only its co-religionists.
In January India´s lower house passed legislation that grants citizenshipto people who moved to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan asrecently as six years ago — as long as they are not Muslims.
This has stoked fears among India´s 170-million Muslim minority for theirfuture.
Home Minister Amit Shah, Modi´s right-hand-man, has called for the ejectionof “termites” and said before the BJP´s thumping re-election victory in Maythat it would “run a countrywide campaign to send back the infiltrators”.
Those left off the NRC have 120 days to appeal at special ForeignersTribunals, which the government says are being expanded in number.
But critics say that tribunal members can be underqualified and are subjectto “performance” targets, and that the entire process has been riddled withinconsistencies and errors.
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The number of errors has also turned some in the BJP in Assam against theprocess, with Himanta Biswa Sarma, a BJP minister in the state, saying ithad left off “so many genuine Indians”.
“We have lost hope in the present form of the NRC,” Sarma told reporters,saying that the party was already mulling a “fresh strategy on how we candrive out the illegal migrants”.Camps and suicides
Those who have been rejected by the tribunals and have exhausted all otherlegal avenues can be declared foreigners and — in theory — be placed in oneof six detention centres with a view to possible deportation, althoughBangladesh is yet to signal its cooperation.
Ten new such camps have been announced. One with space for 3,000 is beingconstructed in Goalpara, west of Assam´s capital Guwuhati.
The camps currently hold 1,135 people, according to the state government,and have been operating for years.
Nur Mohammad, 65, spent almost 10 years in one such camp until a SupremeCourt order saw him released this month.
“I just want to ask them what is my crime? I was born here and lived inAssam all my life,” he told AFP. “I don´t know if my name will be in theNRC or not.”
Media reports say that there have been more than 40 cases of suicide causedby concern over the NRC.
Samujjal Bhattacharya from the All Assam Students´ Union (AASU), a keydriver behind the NRC, said the register was necessary to protect Assam´sindigenous “sons of the soil”.
“We are not ready to live here like a second-class citizens in our ownmotherland,” he said. -APP/AFP
