By right of blood: how changes to India’s citizenship regime put millions at risk of becoming stateless in Assam Province

Millions at risk of becoming stateless in Assam Province

After 30 July 2018 the status of millions in Assam Province could change overnight. Al-Jazeera, the Hindu newspaper and The Independent ¹, amongst others, have recently featured stories about the five million people at risk of becoming stateless in Assam Province, India, as they are now required to prove that they are Indian citizens. If they cannot prove that they or their families already lived in India prior to 1971 they face forced expulsion from the country they have called home.

Who are the minorities at risk of becoming stateless in Assam Province?

So how are so many people left at the mercy of a verification process that requires them to keep documents which reach back to before 1971? And why should those that came to India after 1971, but were born and resided there ever since, be expelled from their home?

The Southeastasian Monitor gives some background to this issue ². As is so often the case, the root of the issue is the fallout from British Colonial Rule. In effect, there are two groups of Muslims in Assam state: those already established in the area in the 16th century and who call themselves indigenous. They form about 40% of the population of Assam. After the annexation of Assam in 1826 into British India and the Partition of Bengal by the British along religious lines in 1905, many Bengali Muslims move to what was then the province of ‘East Bengal and Assam’. But the migration was not haphazard, in fact the British encouraged landless Muslim peasants to come to the province to cultivate the land.

The first Partition of the region which included Assam led to revolt and the East and West part of Bengal were reunited in 1911. At least until India’s own Partition in 1947. Between 1947 and the creation of the State of Bangladesh in 1971 political and civil unrest drove many Hindus from then East Pakistan into India. Many Muslims from India went into East Pakistan. It was in this context that the first National Register of Citizens was prepared in 1950. At the time of the unrest between 1947, during the 1965 India-Pakistan conflict and leading to 1971, the Indian Constitution appears to have been reasonably flexible:

“The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, the India Citizenship Act, 1955, and other laws had enough amplitude to keep the doors open for continued coming and going. Other measures, like the Prevention of Infiltration from Pakistan (PIP) scheme and the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, both of 1964, were not seriously implemented and allowed to waste away.” ³

Assam’s National Register of Citizens

The change in status for those at risk of becoming stateless in Assam Province is as a result to changes in India’s citizenship regime. The changes will take effect after 30 July when the deadline for updating Assam’s National Register of Citizens expires.

India’s Supreme Court has ordered that the final register be published by 30 July 2018. This exercise is only carried out in Assam Province and not across India.  The aim is to update the original register of 1951. For individuals to keep their names on the updated register, their names have to appear in the 1951 register, or in any pre-1971 electoral roll documents. If this is not the case, individuals can produce admissible documents to establish their linkage with those having their names in these the primary set of documents known as ‘Legacy Data’ ⁴.

The new National Register of Citizens is an attempt to limit the tolerated population exchanges to the period of unrest: to 1971. In effect, by updating the register, India is saying that anyone who came into a much-shrunk post-partition Assam after 1971 should have remained in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. If they did come into India, they can be treated as a foreigner and stripped of citizenship and participatory rights in their home region. And if that happens to impact anyone who was in India pre-1971 but does not have the relevant documents to evidence this, then so be it. Currently, more than 2 million Muslims in Assam can trace their roots to Bangladesh ⁵

What’s next for the people of Assam?

The risk with updating the National Register of Citizens for the first time in over half a century is that it will render stateless many Muslim citizens and long-term refugees of Bangladeshi origin who cannot produce the right documents. And the risks are real. The first draft of the register published on 1 January 2018 listed 19 million people as citizens of Assam. Left out were 13.9 million people. Many, though not all, are Muslim. Reassurances were given that more than 7 million records were to be added after that first draft. However, there is no certainty that all who are entitled to be on the register will find themselves on it by the 30 July deadline given by the Supreme Court.

What does it mean to become stateless in Assam Province? The first stage will be a gradual and not-so-gradual erosion of people’s rights, ultimately ending in expulsion from the Assam region. The Assam Chief Minister is quoted in the Guardian that the first step for the so-called ‘foreigners’ would be the loss of constitutional rights: “They will have only one right – human rights as guaranteed by the UN that include food, shelter and clothing.” ⁶

Eventually, all those who cannot verify their entitlement to be on the Register will be left without proof of entitlement to be in India and face being sent back to Bangladesh. This is issue has received limited coverage in the media, but where it has, authors and journalists have compared the situation to the Rohingya community in Myanmar: a grim prediction for a grim outcome ⁷