State of despair: Millions left off Assam citizen list

Activists hold placards as they shout slogans during a protest against the exclusion of applicants in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, in New Delhi on September 5, 2019. (AFP)

• Assam became the first state in India to file a citizenship list last year when it published the NRC
• “Two married women have gone insane because their husbands left them after their name was not in the NRC,” an activist said

NEW DELHI: Ahmed Toweb says his life has taken a turn for the worse since Aug. 31 last year, when his name was left off the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a 7-year-old program to identify “genuine” citizens in India’s eastern state of Assam.
“I’ve faced rejection in three marriage proposals in the last six months. Only my name has been excluded in my family of nine. How is it possible that my parents and other siblings are Indians and I am a foreigner?” Toweb, 28, a social and political activist from Barpara village in the Bongaigaon district of Assam, told Arab News.
“The entire list is faulty and not prepared properly,” he added.
Assam became the first state in India to file a citizenship list last year when it published the NRC, which excluded about 1.9 million people.
The NRC is a by-product of violent civil strife in Assam in the 1980s, when students and political activists led a popular movement to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants.
To end the agitation, New Delhi signed the Assam Accord with students and the local government in 1985. It ordered a new list of citizens and resulted in a decree that people who entered the state after March 25, 1971, would be declared foreigners.
However, following the accord, no real progress was delivered.
In 2013, the Supreme Court expedited the process and fixed a time frame to complete the NRC process, before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014 and claimed credit for the list.
With the advent of the BJP government in Assam in 2016, there were allegations that the party was using the NRC to target Bengali-speaking Muslims and consolidate its core vote bloc among Bengali-speaking Hindus.
To save its core Hindu constituency, the BJP brought in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a law that allows citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Buddhists from neighboring Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but excludes Muslims.
For Ahmed Toweb, the debacle has caused concern about the future, especially if his appeal to be included in the NRC is rejected.
“I was very active when the NRC was being prepared, helping others to fill up forms and collect the right documents. Muslims thought the NRC would take off the stigma of being called illegal Bangladeshis, but we failed to understand the designs of the government,” he said, adding that Hindus now have the “advantage of the CAA, but we are left to our own fate.”
Those not listed on the NRC are sent a rejection letter by the government, after which they can appeal to the Foreign Tribunal, a quasi-judicial body, and submit documents to “prove their citizenship.”
“It’s more than a year, and the reason for our non-inclusion has not been explained. As a result, we are in limbo,” Toweb said.
Fatema Begum from Bongaigaon district agreed and said she faces the same dilemma. Her husband is in the NRC, but she is not.
“What will happen to my married life and family if I am declared stateless? Already I am facing a problem. I can’t get a ration from the government shop because my name is not in the NRC,” Begum, 29, told Arab News.
Bongaigaon-based social activist, Rubul Iftikar, said Begum is not alone and that “the situation is so grim, that in his district, two married women have gone insane because their husbands left them after their name was not in the NRC.
“Some young girls who are not in the NRC list are not finding a groom. It’s a desperate situation where Muslims are not at all hopeful that the system would give them justice after the introduction of the CAA,” Iftikar told Arab News.
Experts said there are other motivations behind the NRC.
“The most enduring belief is that the NRC has an inherent bias against Muslims,” Assam-based lawyer A Sabur Tapader told Arab News.
Last year, after the release of the NRC, the BJP rejected the list and called for a review following reports that more than 60 percent of the 1.9 million left out were Hindus.
“The NRC is a political tool for the ruling BJP, and they want to woo the Bengali Hindu voters again by saying that they are fighting for them in court,” he added.
Now there are reports that the BJP is moving the Supreme Court to review the NRC again.
In the meantime, the process has left Bengali Hindus feeling confused, too, with some saying they have become a “political pendulum.”
“It’s difficult to trust the government. Assam will never accept the CAA because of its history. The government just wants to keep the issue alive and keep people fighting in the name of religion,” said Biplab Das of Sonipat district in Assam.
Das’ name is in the list, but his children are not included in the NRC.
Tapader said that with Assam elections scheduled for early next year, the government is reaching out to the Supreme Court to seek a reprieve.
“They have not yet framed the rules of the CAA, and it takes time to implement it. So people now understand the hidden motive of the BJP,” he said.
Delhi-based political analyst Jayanta Kalita said the BJP has an “ulterior motive” in implementing the NRC.
“The BJP had an ulterior motive when it talked about the NRC before 2014. It was not at all concerned about the grave threat posed by the influx of migrants from Bangladesh to Assam’s ethnic demography. Assam made a mistake by trusting the BJP. It showed its true communal colors by passing the CAA that is intended to benefit Hindu migrants,” Kalita told Arab News.
“Assam can’t be allowed to become a dumping ground for illegal immigrants,” he added.