Tension has intensified in the Indian region of Assam, as much of the Muslim community is likely to get expelled or forced to leave the country. The situation has turned worse especially since Monday, as after decades of long debates and Modi government’s repeated intimidation — the Indian government has finally prepared a list of over one crore permanent residents as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. Moreover, the primary draft of the National Register of Citizens [NRC] published the names of 1.9 crore people out of the 3.29 crore total applicants in Assam, recognising them as legal citizens of India.
In the midst of such ominous developments, the Home Minister has said ‘Dhaka has no knowledge about the issue’. He said he didn’t receive any information from the Indian government about forced deportation plans along Assam-Bangladesh border.
Considering the deportation of Bengalis as a purely domestic issue of India, the Minister should have understood, India would never inform about it. Our government is not in a position to do anything about forcible entry of other people from another country? There is a glaring similarity between what’s happening in Assam and what happened in Myanmar’s Rakhaine State in late last August.
Our government had no knowledge about the military crackdown and carnage taking place in villages which were just a stone’s throw from our borders, and it couldn’t also foresee the possibility of a big-scale refugee influx either. The situation in Assam is a lot different since a number of Human Rights organisations within the country are concerned and have also cautioned that millions of people could be ‘stateless’ if the Indian government remains rigid on the decision. Prior to publishing the list, several hundred Muslims in Assam went to court apparently to prove their nationality. Needs be mentioned, thousands of Muslim nationals have been kept in the detention camps throughout Assam in the last few years.
If our government doesn’t take the matter seriously enough, it might well have to deal with another flood of refugees entering Bangladesh soon. The international media as well as the Indian media are both closely observing and reporting on the deportation issue, whereas our government remains ‘uninformed’.
The government’s own weakness is seen as the weakness of the people of Bangladesh against aggression from other countries. In the present age, no country is too weak or too small for protecting its sovereignty. That the government does not enjoy popular support is not unknown to others. The government is simply blackmailed.
