Subhas Bagmar :
More than 19 lakh people in Assam were excluded from the final version of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was released on August 31. Saruharid village of Barpeta district in Assam is known as the Fauji Gaon (village of defence personnel) in the locality. Almost 200 families live here, which send over 20 soldiers to the Indian Army and paramilitary forces. Many of these soldiers are facing an identity crisis as their names didn’t appear in the final NRC list which was published on August 31.
Similarly the family members of former President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed’s nephew, who were left out of the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) last year, have again not been included in the final list. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was the fifth President of India from 1974 to 1977. The family of the son of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed’s brother has not been listed in the final NRC.
In a country where the landless population is almost 4 in every 10 people the vast majority of people will have no access to any document proving that they are citizens — as these people don’t have passports or other identification documents in India historically. So the first question is how to prove if they are actually Indian or not.
But the second question is also equally important–what is then, the genuine nationality of those left out in the NRC. If the immediate family members of former Presidents, army jawans, and civil servants can be left out — almost anyone can. The Chief Minister of Assam states openly that they are Bangladeshis and should be sent back to Bangladesh — parroting the national line of BJP which has openly talked about Bangladeshi migrants as unwanted ‘termites’.
But the question remains — how can the Indian government know that they are conclusively Bangladeshi citizens and not citizens of India who have migrated from West Bengal? India has no internal controls to check the movement of mass numbers of citizens from one of its states to the other. So it is almost impossible to figure out which individual is an Indian citizen or not , as there is no check and balance within India’s internal borders.
So the idea that India has almost 1.9 million people who are Bangladeshi nationals living in India in just one state is quite absurd. This is further compounded by the BJP’s policy of Hindus belonging to India, wherever they may come from. So if there are any Hindu Bangladeshis then they are automatically part of India — no matter what their original citizenship is from. But if they are Muslims then they are Muslim Bangladeshis!
When the definition of citizenship itself is questioned — by even members of the BJP itself, how then can India arrive at any sort of a meaningful consensus? If the family members of a former President of India are left out it simply shows the weaknesses of the NRC in its current incarnation. Since no historical record is available to verify with any sort of accuracy which goes beyond a reasonable doubt it stands to reason that no future incarnation of the NRC will have the meaningful accuracy which India’s state and federal government want.
Firstly then India should find out who its true citizens are, and only then, should it say that they belong to another country. But finding out a method to do this with any sort of proper accuracy is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.
