INDIAN Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assured Bangladesh that there is nothing to be worried about National Register of Citizens (NRC) of India as he held a bilateral meeting with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in New York. The meeting between the two leaders was held at New York on Saturday. The talks between the two premiers were held in a very cordial and friendly environment and the entire gamut of bilateral relations, including the issues of the NRC and the water sharing of the common rivers, came up for discussion. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina raised the issue of the NRC mentioning that it has become a matter of great concern for Bangladesh.
That should come as a relief for Bangladesh as it has the Rohingya issue to worry about without adding another 1.9 million displaced Indians into the bargain. These internally displaced persons are the unfortunate result of a political promise gone badly wrong. The NRC exercise in Assam is so dubious that even leaders of the political party in power, the BJP, have excoriated it as an exercise in futility. But while Bangladesh may be relieved due to the Indian PM’s statement the four million internally displaced Indians cannot. They have no other steps now but to take recourse through legal action to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that they are in fact Indian nationals.
Unfortunately this is going to be very difficult to prove for the vast majority of them as they don’t have any established chain of documents going back forty eight years–beyond the arbitrary deadline set by the Indian government. So, one can see that their future is very uncertain. The options of being hopelessly entangled in legal battles or in even murkier situations –if the Indian government decides to keep them in camps of Assam, is not something which would appeal to any individual. Unless the Indian federal and state governments have a sudden change of heart and decide to either annul the current results of the recently concluded NRC or to establish a new NRC the fates of these 1.9 million people – those are out of final NRC list — will resemble that of the Rohingyas. They will be strangers in their own land.
