Strangers in Their Own Land https://thebaffler.com/salvos/strangers-in-their-own-land-sitlhou Makepeace Sitlhou no. 65 October 2022
Assam’s Bengali-origin Muslims face disenfranchisement and indignity
National Register of Citizens (NRC). Originally developed in 1951 as part of independent India’s first census, this misleadingly titled registry is supposed to contain a list of “official”—or “legal”—Indian residents of Assam. In 2019, the Indian Supreme Court completed the NRC’s first update since its inception to detect “doubtful” voters, but the NRC does not determine citizenship, nor does it correct the voter list. During the process, which began in 2015 and was funded by the federal government, Assam’s state government reviewed some sixty-six million documents submitted by over thirty million applicants. Those who didn’t make the final draft were likely to face detention or deportation.
Meanwhile, at a federal level, the BJP passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), paving the way for the naturalization of all non-Muslim migrants who came to India before December 31, 2014 from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The BJP claims that the CAA is a humanitarian gesture intended to help religious minorities fleeing surrounding countries, despite the law making clear that all other non-Muslim religions were exempt from new citizenship checks—that in effect, it codified the selective disenfranchisement of Muslims as a whole.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a retired Border Police official told me that since 2007, each Border branch was given a monthly quota, and, if unmet, the BP would not pay their salary or punish them in some other way. It’s not difficult to imagine that police officials fabricated false cases under these circumstances. Officials would even use registers of village surveys in a local station to easily pick off names to charge. “This is what happens when you’re working under pressure to report ten to fifteen cases every month,” the official said. The quotas, of course, are not recorded in any official communiqué by the higher authorities.