By Taha Amin Mazumder,
Guwahati/New Delhi, 8 Sept 2015: Ever played soccer? It is a game in which only pushing works, well, of a ball, somewhat like the refugees stranded in a nowhere land. Players dribble, trickle and push the ball to send to the opponent’s goal post, albeit within a given time. The case, however, is entirely different with refugees, who keep on awaiting ages to find a viable shelter. India has been mired in refugee issues since the independence in 1947, and even while the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government announced Monday to shelter the religious minorities from Bangladesh and Pakistan in the country, “the nation wants to know” why all of a sudden this decision was made. Is it a mere political eye-wash, in view of the upcoming polls in Assam, where the alleged illegal migration issue often decides who wins the polls and rules the state?
The central BJP government on 7 September decided, on “humanitarian grounds,” to exempt Bangladeshi and Pakistani minority communities who entered India “on or before December 31, 2014, in respect of their entry and stay in India without proper documents or after the expiry of relevant documents.”
Incidentally the government decision came right when Assam started updating its citizenship register in August, for the first time since 1951. The last date for the people of Assam to submit their citizenship proofs was 31 August 2015 and right from the next day, 1 September, the verification process also began. The state government is yet to declare any specific date for the release of the final register, which is sure to rivet a score of issues before Assam goes to polls sometimes early in 2016.
Although the central government decision encompasses the entire country, legalists from Assam, particularly belonging to the linguistic minority Bengalis, said the BJP government decision is merely an “eye-wash” to woo the Bengali Hindu voters of the state, leaving a huge Bengali-speaking Muslims stranded, who suffered the most in terms of the tag “Bangladeshi immigrants.”
Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury, eminent Muslim leader and a legalist from Assam said, “The notification does not abide by the law. An executive order, in this case a Home Ministry order, cannot override the law. The law excluded only those who entered India before March 25, 1971. So I will call this government decision is a mere eye-wash.”
Nellie, IMDT Act and Assam Agitation
The term “illegal Bangladeshi migrants” incidentally, even though mostly in a social perspective and political rhetoric, refers mainly to the Bengali Muslims of Assam. The Nellie massacre, which took place in central Assam and lasted for more than six hours during the wee hours of 18 February 1983, claimed more than 2,191 people (unofficial figure says more than 5,000). Victims of the massacre were mostly alleged Bangladeshi Muslims, whom then Indira Gandhi-led Congress government at the centre pledged to give voting rights. Nellie is among the many massacres that occurred in Assam since independence where mostly Bengali-speaking Muslims were the main targets.
The Nellie massacre is largely believed to be the fallout of Assam Agitation against the alleged immigrants in Assam, which paved the way for former All Assam Students Union (AASU) leader Prafulla Mahanta’s Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) to sweep the next round of state polls of 1985, being the first regional party in Assam to form the government. In the backdrop of Nellie and Assam Agitation, came the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983, popularly known as the IMDT Act, which was later repealed by the Supreme Court of India in 2005 in response to a challenge by BJP heavyweight Sarbananda Sonowal. The IMDT Act provided special protections against any undue harassment to the minorities that were affected by the Assam Agitation. The Act specified that the onus to prove that a person is an illegal immigrant rested on the accuser and the police, not the accused. Post-2005 and repeal of the IMDT Act, accusations and detentions of people in Assan showed a renewed surge, eventually causing a number of culling events of alleged illegal migrants, extending the issue from the mainstream Assamese people to indigenous Bodos. In a series of violent incidents couple of years ago, more than 70 people were killed and hundreds were left stranded in makeshift camps.
According to Assam legislator Abdul Muhib Mazumder, drafter of the IMDT Act and the Assam Accord of 1985 as the state law minister, IMDT was “the only law that prescribed the filing of a complaint against a foreigner.”
“In the absence of IMDT, now police can take anybody as a foreigner, which means you are allowing lawlessness,” said Mazumder, the Congress party veteran from Assam.
Bengali Barak Valley
The Bengali-dominated Barak valley also has an important history to tell. The three districts of Barak valley, Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi, lie like a lagoon isolated from the mainstream Assam, where unlike the upper Assam, the official language is Bengali. Yet the path to make Bengali the valley’s official language had not been smooth. In 1961, more than 10 persons were killed in police firing while protesting peacefully against an Assam government circular making Assamese the primary official language in the Bengali-dominated valley. Recently when the citizenship update process started, Pradip Paul, brother of BJP MLA Dilip Paul from Silchar, Assam, was notified as a Bangladeshi immigrant, creating a massive ruckus in the valley. Reportedly it took BJP president Amit Shah to intervene and quell the stir.
Govt. decision to allow ‘immigrants’ to stay without papers
While questioning the legality of the government decision to allow the religious minorities coming from Bangladesh and Pakistan to stay in India without papers a mere “eye-wash,” Assam’s Bengali Muslim leader Hafiz Rashid said the decision is partisan as well, because it excludes Assam’s contentious D-voters, or doubtful voters.
“What about those who have been reeling in the detention centres? What about the D-voters of Assam? Does the notification talk about them? No,” said Hafiz Rashid, one of the founders of the current All India United Democratic Front, a principal opposition party in Assam.
Two-times Assam minister and prominent lawyer Muhib Mazumder views the government decision as a mere political stunt. The Congress legislator said, “This notification I will call an election stunt by the BJP in view of the coming state assembly polls. The notification can be challenged in the court of law, even though I will say a government notification is law, because a government issues any notification with some authority. Yet, it can be challenged in the court because it violates a number of constitutional laws.”
Social perspectives
Nilim Dutta, eminent Assamese activist and director of the Strategic Research & Analysis Organisation, however, views the issue from an entirely secular and social pedestal. “What must be understood is what exactly does the term ‘minority’ define in the said order. Muslims are not minorities in Bangladesh or Pakistan, but many sects like Shias and Ahmadis are facing similarly intense religious persecution at the hands of religious zealots. In Bangladesh, ‘atheists’, who would neither be Hindus nor Muslims technically have become targets of repeated violence. So, do these people also get similar waiver if any of them are living as refugees in India? Why shouldn’t Rohingya Muslims who are facing one of the worst genocides of 21st century, and many who have fled to India from Myanmar be treated on par with say Hindu refugees from Bangladesh?
“A ‘humanitarian gesture’ cannot take into account the faith of a persecuted asylum seeker.
Whether this decision has been taken with a belief to reap any political dividend in the forthcoming Assam Assembly Elections in 2016 is something I will be able to comment on only after I have read the actual notification and not by reading media reports,” said Nilim Dutta, who is also chairman of the Unified People’s Movement, a social movement the motto of which is to “Reclaim Freedom, Equality, Justice.”
According to Sushanta Kar, eminent Bengali writer from Assam and assistant professor of Tinsukia College in Assam, the government step is an act aimed at pleasing the “Assamese chauvinist block.”
“Interestingly it was the Congress that initially said make the benchmark year 2014 for NRC (National Register of Citizens) update. They sent even a bill from the state assembly even before saying this. While BJP called them refugee, Congress called for citizenship for them. A lot of politics of words happened. In practice, it’s not clear even BJP will give them citizenship. The notification simply gives people some space for a prolonged stay but not citizenship. Particularly in Assam, if BJP allows the asylum-seeking people to stay, it will make the Assamese chauvinist bloc upset. Moreover, a notification is not an ordinance, nor a law,” said Kar who runs a famous Bengali e-zine called Ishaner Punjamegh.
Incidentally, the Assam Congress on 2 June 2015 urged the central government to allow citizenship to Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh, per a PTI report published in The Business Standard.
Reaction of Assamese media
Reacting over the government decision to allow immigrants to stay without documents, leading Assamese daily Asomiya Pratidin wrote on Tuesday, “The central government decision is going to severely affect the demography of Assam. As a result, the martyrdom of 855 people during the anti-foreigners Assam Agitation will become valueless. The decision makes the Assam Accord also worthless.”
At a time when Assam is going through a transition with the nation’s first citizenship update since 1951 and both Bengali and Assamese populations are at loggerheads over the citizenship issue, it remains to be seen what actually happens to the doubtful voters, who were either tagged as “illegal immigrants” or threats to the demography of the state. As of 6 January 2014, there were a total of 143,227 D voters in the state who are awaiting their fate to be cleared by foreigner’s tribunal, according to the state government, while the central government said on Monday, “The issue of regularization of entry and stay of such Bangladeshi and Pakistani nationals in India has been under consideration by the Central Government.”
