July 21, 2019

India’s government targets ‘illegal immigrants’

topic:	Humans
located:	India
editor:	Tish Sanghera

Citizens of the northeastern, tea-growing state of Assam have until July 31 to ensure they make it onto a ‘National Register of Citizens’ (NRC) drawn up by the Indian government. Failure to do so means they will be labelled illegal immigrants and face the prospect of proving their ‘Indian-ness’ in the Foreigners’ Tribunals – special parallel courts set up to hear individual cases but which offer no right of appeal.

Proving to the state that you are an Indian citizen though will not be easy for many who currently find themselves missing from the draft NRC. They are mostly poor, illiterate and unable to provide identification papers proving they have been living in India pre-1971, the year neighbouring Bangladesh was created. Last year, over 4 million of Assam’s 33 million strong population were not included on the list – many of them also have Muslim names.

Assam is currently governed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, whose right-wing, hindu-nationalist agenda is the brains behind the NRC; a project which will render many of the state’s Muslims stateless. Bangladesh refuses to recognise these people as their former citizens and is unwilling to become entangled in the ordeal. Meanwhile, the newly formed Indian government is implementing a new Citizenship Bill which will recognise all Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Parsi, Jain and Buddhist refugees from neighbouring countries as automatic citizens, purposefully barring Muslims in a clear snub to the country’s founding principle of secularism.

The drawing up of the NRC has been fraught with tragedy, with multiple suicides and cases of mental distress reported as many who have lived in the state all their life, now fear for their future security. Not even a decorated war veteran and serving police officer, 52-year-old Mohammed Sana Ullah, made the cut. He was sent to a detention camp for ‘foreigners’, where a further 1,000 people are currently held. A further ten purpose-built camps are set to be built in the near future.

BJP president and Home Minister Amit Shah has now promised to extend the NRC to the whole of India, and cleanse the country of illegal immigrants who he has previously called ‘termites’. It is not clear however how this could be done and confusingly parliament has recently said this is not the plan, suggesting Shah’s words are simply fiery rhetoric that is being used to further propel his party’s familiar breed of nationalism – a tactic the BJP used extensively in the recent elections – to expand its base in new areas like Assam.

History tells us that politicians scapegoating and targeting easily identifiable ‘others’ in society, like illegal immigrants, is usually a distraction from something else. As the economy splutters and the mass job creation promised by Prime Minister Modi five years ago looks like a distant dream, could such rhetoric be used as a tonic to soothe the masses?

Image: Selco Foundation