Fact check: Are illegal Bangladeshi migrants responsible for increase in Assam's Muslim population?
As National Register of Citizens is updated to identify illegal immigrants, a former statistics professor’s book busts a few myths about the state’s demography.
Fact check: Are illegal Bangladeshi migrants responsible for increase in Assam's Muslim population?
Reuters
Jan 16, 2018 · 09:00 am
Ajaz Ashraf
Share
Tweet
Email
Reddit
Print
Share
Tweet
Email
Reddit
Print
Census reports have long been a pivot of Assam’s politics, spawning anxiety among its people that “unabated infiltration” from Bangladesh would endanger their cultural identity. It is claimed that the influx from the neighbouring nation is why Muslims have grown from being 24.68% of the state’s population in 1951 to 28.43% in 1991 and 34.22% in 2011.
It is a myth that Infiltration: Genesis of Assam Movement busts conclusively. The book, published last year, is written by Abdul Mannan, former professor of statistics at Gauhati University. He concludes that Assam’s Muslim population has increased because of the community’s high birth rate and not because of illegal immigration from Bangladesh. Illegal immigrants in Assam are estimated to number between 16 lakh and 84 lakh, in a total population of 3.12 crore according to the 2011 Census.
ADVERTISEMENT
Discussing Mannan’s findings in a recent article in the Economic and Political Weekly, the political scientist Akhil Ranjan Dutta wrote:
“Successive censuses have proved, as Abdul Mannan has established using extensive data in his recent book on immigration in Assam, that birth rates among Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and Christians in Assam had been even higher than among Muslims during 1971-91. This was due to the backwardness of these communities in all dimensions of development.”
But that is getting ahead of the story.
In the 1950s and 1960s, successive Congress governments expelled lakhs of Bengali Muslims from Assam on the ground that they were illegal infiltrators from what was then East Pakistan. It was not until Bangladesh became an independent country in 1971, however, that popular anger against the so-called foreigners acquired intensity. Bangladeshi Muslims were perceived to be flooding into Assam through the porous border to escape poverty.
By 1979-80, the All Assam Students Union was spearheading the anti-foreigner movement, cashing in on wild estimates of the number of Bangladeshi immigrants to gain wide support. One estimate numbered the Bangladeshis at 45% of Assam’s estimated population of 1.6 crore in 1981. Such claims were hard to refute, not least because the 1981 Census could not be conducted owing to the Assam agitation, then at its peak.
ADVERTISEMENT
In 1991, the Census reported that Muslims were 28.43% of Assam’s population, up from 24.56% in 1971. Several publications interpreted these figures to reach an alarming conclusion: Bangladeshis were demographically colonising Assam.
For instance, Asam Bani, a popular weekly, claimed in its August 18, 1994 edition that 16 lakh Bangladeshis had entered Assam between 1971 and 1991. Who were they? Muslims, Asam Bani declared, after analysing the Census data. Since Hindus had a growth rate of 41.89% in 1971-1991 and Muslims 77.42%, the weekly argued that the excess growth rate of Muslims was primarily because of the Bangladeshis.
It further argued that had the influx from Bangladesh been negligible, the growth rate of Muslims would not have exceeded 45%. Why? It did not offer a reason. Still, such claims became common sense in Assam.
It is this common sense that Mannan challenges: the rise in Assam’s Muslim population was not unusual and it was not a consequence of immigration from Bangladesh. After all, the all-India growth rate of Muslims between 1971 and 1991 was 71.47%, just a little lower than the 77.42% that the Muslims of Assam clocked in the same period.
More significantly, the growth rate of Assam’s Muslims in 1971-1991 compared favourably with the community’s growth rate in states such as Uttar Pradesh (76.30%), West Bengal (77.32%), Madhya Pradesh (80.76%), Rajasthan (98.29%), Tripura (89%), Punjab (110.32%) and Himachal Pradesh (77.64%). Barring Punjab, all these states have always had sizeable Muslim populations.
ADVERTISEMENT
In this context, Mannan asks a crucial question: “If it is assumed that the high growth rate among Muslims in Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana is due to the migration of Muslim workers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam or West Bengal, then how would we explain the high growth rate in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and West Bengal?”
Certainly not on account of Bangladeshi infiltrators, with West Bengal perhaps being the exception.
The growth rate of Hindus (41.89%) in Assam in 1971-1991 was indeed much lower than that of Muslims (77.42%). But parsing this low growth rate throws up a story: Assam’s Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes grew at a higher rate than even Muslims – Scheduled Castes at 81.84% and Scheduled Tribes at 78.91%.
The high growth rate of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes too is not unique to Assam. As Table 2 shows, the growth rate of Scheduled Castes was far higher than that of Hindus generally in most states. In fact, Scheduled Castes in Andhra Pradesh (83.43%), Maharashtra (189.44%) and Karnataka (91.41%) grew at a higher rate than in Assam. The growth rate of Scheduled Tribes followed similar trends as Table 2 shows. (Remember that Scheduled Tribes, unlike Scheduled Castes, are more concentrated in some states.)
ADVERTISEMENT
Referring to these trends, Mannan asks: Is the higher growth rate among Muslims, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes linked to poverty, illiteracy and social backwardness?
He proceeds to answer this question through another statistical comparison. Table 3 shows the growth rates of various communities in each of Assam’s 23 districts between 1971 and 1991. (There are now 33 districts). The growth rate of the Scheduled Castes is higher than that of Muslims in 10 districts. In eight districts, the Scheduled Tribes outstrip the growth rate of Muslims.
Significantly, Mannan compares the growth rates of Muslims in Upper Assam and Lower Assam in this period. This is because Muslims in Upper Assam are largely of indigenous origin while Lower Assam is home to Muslims of Bengali origin. The latter are not infiltrators. They are descendants of Bengali Muslim peasants settled by the British in marshy and riverine areas of Assam to boost agriculture. Some also migrated voluntarily in search of livelihood, but, in undivided India, they were just moving from one part of the country to another.
Assam’s districts have been repeatedly divided to create new ones, leading to a peculiar trend in Dhemaji. When this district was carved out of Lakhimpur in 1989, a large number of Muslims moved to the latter for reasons of livelihood. Dhemaji thus registered a negative growth rate for Muslims, as Table 3, prepared soon after the new district was created, shows.
ADVERTISEMENT
In 2011, Hindus comprised 95.47% of Dhemaji’s population and Muslims just 1.96%. “Dhemaji’s Muslim population was low even in 1987,” Mannan told Scroll.in. “The migration of Muslims brought down the population sharply and led to the community’s growth rate being negative. But the growth rate of Muslims in Dhemaji in 2001-2011 crawled up to 20%.”
Leave out Dhemaji as an anomaly then. In all other districts of Upper Assam except Jorhat and Sibsagar (now Sivasagar), the growth rate of Muslims was over 68%. In Jorhat, it was 60.80% and in Sibsagar 59.01%.
What Jorhat and Sibsagar have in common is a high literacy rate. In 1991, it was 65.89% for Jorhat and 64.84% for Sibsagar, much higher than the state average of 52.89%. The high literacy rates are a consequence of their relative prosperity – a large number of Assam’s tea gardens and oil fields are concentrated in these two districts, and they hum with business.
Literacy and prosperity translated, not surprisingly, in the low growth rate of Hindus in Jorhat (33.54%) and Sibsagar (35.91%). But why was the growth rate of Muslims still substantially higher than that of Hindus in the two districts? “The reason may be the social backwardness and relative poverty among Muslims,” Mannan suggests.
ADVERTISEMENT
He also points out another statistical peculiarity: “If those who say Bangladeshi immigrants have ballooned the population of Muslims in Lower Assam, then how would they explain their high growth rate in the districts of Tinsukia (89.56%), Golaghat (97.24%) and Dibrugarh (68.43%), which are in Upper Assam, where the presence of migrant Muslims is negligible?”
Mannan then turns the spotlight on Table 4, based on the Census figures of 2001 and 2011. It shows that districts with a growth rate of 21% and above also have a high percentage of Muslims. What explains this phenomenon? Mannan chooses two districts – Jorhat and Dhubri – for comparison. In 2001-2011, Dhubri registered the highest growth rate (24.4%) among all districts of Assam. By contrast, Jorhat clocked the lowest growth rate of 9.3%.
This gulf between the population growth rates was mirrored in other social indicators. Dhubri had an infant mortality rate of 72 in 2011 as against Jorhat’s 57. In Dhubri, there was a doctor for every 10,844 people as compared to one for every 7,189 people in Jorhat. Dhubri’s literacy rate of 48.21% was far behind Jorhat’s 76.21%. There was one lower primary school for every 1,129 people in Dhubri as against one for every 638 people in Jorhat. Dhubri had a bank branch for every 29,239 people while Jorhat had one for every 11,355 people. The per capita loan disbursal in Jorhat was three times more than Dhubri’s.
It is truism in demographic studies that population explosion is a consequence of poverty, illiteracy, insufficient health and sanitation services, and a sluggish economy. “This is precisely true of Assam too,” Mannan writes.
ADVERTISEMENT
Indeed, many foot soldiers of the Assam agitation have veered around to thinking that the presence of Bangladeshi Muslims is not as high as was previously believed. One of them is popular TV anchor and author of Assam After Independence Mrinal Talukdar. In his college days, he was deeply engaged with the All Assam Students Union’s movement. “During those days I believed Bangladeshi Muslims had a substantial presence in Assam,” Talukdar told Scroll.in. “I have a neutral position on the issue now. I am willing to go by whatever number the National Register of Citizens throws up.”
Mannan says he is certain that if the ongoing exercise to update the National Register of Citizens is carried out honestly, Bangladeshi Muslims in Assam will be counted in thousands, not in lakhs.
Regardless of how many Bangladeshi Muslims the National Register of Citizens identifies, there is no denying that the truth about Assam’s demography was sacrificed on the altar of politics. It seems spurious theories about Bangladeshi Muslims were spun not out of ignorance, but with intent. In this, two Assam police officers and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh played a crucial role. The RSS deftly turned the All Assam Students Union’s movement against outsiders, that is, Indians from other states, into one against foreigners, that is, Bangladeshi Muslims.
The second part of this series will look at how the two police officers and the RSS changed the course of the Assam movement.
National Register of Citizens in Assam can trigger a humanitarian crisis
For the BJP/RSS, it is also part of their ideology; their belief that Muslims reproduce fast and should be stopped.
POLITICS | 5-minute read | 16-01-2018
Seema GuhaSEEMA GUHA @seemaguha1
54
Total Shares
At the heart of the student movement in Assam in the early 1980s was the move to get Bengali Muslim immigrants out of the state and delete their names from the state’s electoral rolls. At the time, BJP leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Jaswant Singh and LK Advani paid regular visits to Assam to support the students’ demand. The RSS, too, seeing the anti-Muslim mood in the state, began working quietly behind the scenes to spread its ideology.
The All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the BJP were on the same page owing to the fear that Assam’s demographic pattern could change because of the illegal influx of Bangladeshi Muslims, turning it into India’s second Muslim majority state (after Kashmir). Second, the Congress party kept winning elections because illegal immigrants voted the party into power.
Simply put, Bangladeshis were on the electoral rolls and formed the Congress’ vote bank. Not much has changed in the decades since.
In 1985, a settlement was negotiated between student leaders and the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government, and the former launched their regional party, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP).
nrc-690_011518071520.jpg
Simply put, Bangladeshis were on the electoral rolls and formed the Congress’ vote bank. Not much has changed in the decades since. Photo: Reuters
Today, the BJP and the AGP often use the same language.
The Assam Accord, laid down that all those who entered the state after March 25, 1971, are foreigners, and must be identified and deported back to Bangladesh. Those settled in Assam before that date would be considered Indian citizens.
Detecting and deporting so called foreigners is a tough ask. The AGP, which came to power on the pledge of relieving Assam of Bangladeshis, realised how difficult the exercise was.
The National Register of Citizens (NRC), on the face of it is an excellent idea for border areas and would help in assuaging the anxiety of the local Assamese worried about the influx of migrants. It was not introduced by the BJP. The decision to form a register of Indian citizens of Assam was taken in 1951 after the first Census. However, not much was done. It was revived again in 2014, with the idea of upgrading the NRC. The first draft of the register was published on December 31, 2017 on the instruction of the Supreme Court. There are many anomalies in the first draft which, government officials have time and again stressed, can be corrected.
What is needed, however, is proof that a citizen’s ancestors’ names were in the 1951 census, or in the electoral rolls, or land papers. All this was very well for the educated, even though many among them were running from pillar to post to get their long lost documents. However, for the poor and illiterate, these problems are often insurmountable. Many have no papers, neither are their names on voter lists nor are their forefathers registered.
While some of them may genuinely be foreign nationals, many genuine citizens, too, may not possess any documentary evidence to prove their citizenship. Harrowing tales are coming in every day of genuine Bengali speaking Muslims being targeted as foreign nationals. With the prevalent anti-immigrant mood in the state, officials are quick to band every Bengali-speaking Muslim as a Bangladeshi, provided the citizen does not possess the necessary documents.
The BJP’s support for the NRC is natural. No political party can object to illegal foreigners being sent out of the state. But for the BJP/RSS it is also part of their ideology; their belief that Muslims reproduce fast and should be stopped. If they are in Assam, the minorities will be thrown out.
Everyone knows how the system can discriminate against Muslims, and this is bound to happen. More stories of hapless Bengali Muslims will surface as cross verification by the officials of the NRC continues.
The fact is, the numbers of illegal entrants are not conclusive. The fact is, since the Assam agitation largescale migration from Bangladesh has not been easy. During the 1971 India-Pakistan war, refugees poured into the northeastern states of India and many stayed back in the country after Bangladesh was created. Hindus, especially, did not return. While the Assamese claim that immigration is continuing unabated, others say that if new settlers are spotted in a district, they are basically those moving from one part of the state to the other.
During British rule, the colonisers got hardworking Bengali Muslims into the Brahmaputra valley to clear Assam’s malarial swamps and turn them into fertile agricultural land. The valley has been converted into a rich rice bowl for the country. Much of the problem in the past was that the land holdings of indigenous Assamese were gradually reduced as more and more Bengali Muslims bought agricultural land in rural areas. Land is at the heart of the immigrant issue in Assam and it was also a plank on which the student movement got overwhelming support from both rural and urban areas. Essentially, assamese resentment against Bangladeshi Muslims stems from shrinking land holdings.
While the BJP has happily gone along with the AGP over Bengali Muslim immigrants, their views do not coincide on Hindu Bengalis.Anti-Bengali Hindu sentiment, too, is rampant in Assam. This is because Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that Bengali Hindu refugees from Bangladesh would always find a home in India. Some of them will also have to be accommodated in Assam.
Before the anti-immigrant agitation took the state by storm, clashes in Assam were mainly between the local Assamese and the Bengali-speaking settlers. Just after Independence, the Bengali-speaking population of the state, because of taking to an English education much earlier than citizens of other states of British India, held the majority of state and central government jobs.
At the time, this led to attacks on members of the community. While the numbers of Bengalis in Assam government rolls have hugely reduced, the animosity continues.
It was PM’s announcement that gave it a fresh spurt.
The NRC and its aftermath will take a toll on India’s cordial relations with Bangladesh. Dhaka, under Shiekh Hasina, has been an exemplary friend to India. At the end of the process of upgrading the NRC, what happens to those branded as foreigners, who must be repatriated? Dhaka’s position is that there is no illegal influx of Bangladeshis into India — that it will accept only those who New Delhi can prove are illegal immigrants.
So, what happens to these people? Will they become like the stateless Rohingyas of Myanmar who nobody wants to touch?
The NRC may just trigger a major humanitarian and diplomatic crisis in future.
Why retired Army officer in Assam was asked to prove Indian nationality
Between history's healed scars and freshly opened wounds in 'New India' lies the never-ending irony of identity crisis.
VARIETY | 7-minute read | 02-10-2017
Sanghamitra BaruahSANGHAMITRA BARUAH
---
Total Shares
In India, the election voter ID card cuts both ways. To acquire one you have to furnish proof of your citizenship, and to prove that you are a citizen of India, your voter ID card is enough. Of course, the much-debated Aadhaar may soon become the only identity card in future replacing all other types of I-cards, including the voter ID and PAN. But let's keep the validity of that "formal fallacy" for another time.
There is one more identity that makes you a proud, uncontested citizen of India - your badge of patriotism (read Hindu nationalism) and how high up on your chest you wear it. No other affiliation can undo the superiority of that identity. Not even if you have served as a soldier in the armed forces and risked your life for the nation. Your non-Hindu identity will make you as much an outsider as any other refugee.
And this is what has happened to a soldier who after serving in the Army for 30 years has been asked to prove his Indian citizenship in the state of Assam.
His "crime": his Muslim name - Mohammad Azmal Haque.
assam1_100217033343.jpg
Mohammad Azmal Haque (Photo courtesy: Family album/aljazeera.com)
The foreigners tribunal (Number 2) at Boko in Kamrup district of Assam reportedly issued a notice to Mohammad Azmal Haque, a junior commissioned officer who retired in 2016, following a police report that suspected him of illegally entering India from Bangladesh after 1971.
According to this report, Haque joined the Indian Army as a sepoy on September 13, 1986, and retired on September 13, 2016.
"It hurts to receive such a notice after serving and defending one's motherland for three decades," the ex-serviceman was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.
According to Haque, he received the notice asking him to appear before a local tribunal on October 13, with relevant documents to prove that he was not an illegal Bangladeshi migrant.
Notices similar to the one that placed Haque in the doubtful-voter category ('D' voter), he claims, have been served to 40 others from his native village.
"Considering the current situation in the state, I am forced to think that it had happened to me only because I belong to a particular community. Around 40 others from my village have been given such notices and I personally know that they are all Indian citizens," he added.
But this was not the first time he has been served with such a notice. He claims to have received a similar notice in 2012 saying he was a doubtful voter. "...but I submitted all documents in the tribunal court and it had declared me as an Indian citizen," he said.
"Why do I have to be humiliated so many times? I request the prime minister, the president and the home minister to end this harassment of a proper citizen," Haque was quoted as saying by the PTI.
He said a notice was slapped on his wife also in 2012, but the "tribunal declared her an Indian citizen after she furnished proof".
For the record, Assam has 100 foreigners tribunals to detect illegal migrants. Under the 1985 Assam Accord, 1971 has been designated as the cut-off year. The tribunals have been entrusted with the task of detecting the "authenticity of a person claim to citizenship" based on police references.
While the Army has offered to provide the required assistance to Haque, when reporters contacted Assam DGP Mukesh Sahay over the controversy, he reasoned out that "receiving a notice doesn't mean that one has been branded an illegal migrant".
"When a court or foreigners tribunal issues notice to a person, it does not do so as to whether that person is an Army personnel or not. The onus to prove that one is an Indian citizen is on the person served with notice. It's a 2008 case and on October 3 when the court reopens, we will send for the documents."
"The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is being updated in Assam and it is a matter of procedure to asks for documents to prove one's citizenship," he told mediapersons.
Sahay is right. Of course, a notice asking to prove citizenship doesn't brand anyone an illegal migrant, but what he failed to reason out is that it also means that your identity has been questioned.
Even if we consider the tribunals are just doing their jobs, will a Bengali/Assamese/Hindi-speaking Hindu man who has served in the Army for three decades be asked to prove that he is not an illegal migrant? More so, when the "soldier" has become a stick for the chest-thumping hypernationalists to beat any anti-establishment voice.
Is that not ground enough to feel discriminated against because of religion?
Between history's healed scars and freshly inflicted wounds in New India lies the never-ending irony of identity crisis, especially with the RSS-BJP narrative of Hindu nationalism.
The way the Assam DGP defended his force for "persecuting" an ex-serviceman on religious grounds couldn't be more indicative of the callousness with which the detection of illegal immigrants is being carried out.
The BJP came to power in Assam on the promise of flushing out Bangladeshis from the state where illegal infiltration has remained the most-contentious issue for decades. The BJP government also promised to seal the 263-km-long Indo-Bangladesh border.
(Assam shares only 263km of the 4,096km boundary between India and Bangladesh. Plans to erect a barbed wire fence along the entire stretch has remained incomplete for a long time. One of the reasons behind the delay is that about 44km of the border is porous - it passes through the Brahmaputra. While releasing the vision document in Guwahati ahead of Assembly elections, the BJP, however, had clarified that the border will be sealed in all places, except the riverine frontier where wires could not be put up.)
However, at the same time, the BJP decided to grant citizenship to Hindu refugees who migrated because of "religious persecution" - something that became a major poll plank of the party during the Assam Assembly election last year.
This announcement though didn't go down well with coalition partners, the AGP, which came into existence in 1985 after a six-year-long Assam Agitation against illegal infiltration of Bangladeshis. The AGP had clearly distanced itself on the issue saying the party doesn't distinguish between Hindu and Muslim immigrants.
There have been many incidents when "genuine" Indian citizens have complained of being harassed by police and other law enforcing agencies in the name of detecting illegal foreigners.
But this has happened not just during the current BJP rule. There also have been instances when government officials, including Assam police personnel belonging to the Muslim community, were enlisted as 'D' voters.
The most surprising were the cases when family members of Assamese actor of international repute, Adil Hussain, and Padma Shri Eli Ahmed were also branded as 'D' voters.
The BJP has also promised to complete the mega project to update the National Register of Citizenship, which began on 2015. However, fingers have been raised over the promise after the government missed the first deadline - December 2016 - and again the revised deadline of March 2017.
The government is now fighting hard not to miss the December 2017 (re-revised) deadline for completing the NRC in Assam.
The updated NRC is expected to include in the electoral roll the "names of persons or their descendants who appear in the NRC 1951, or in any of the electoral roll up to the midnight of March 24, 1971, or in any of the admissible documents issued up to the midnight of March 24, 1971".
While citizenship is a much-complicated issue, especially in Assam, it's strange that the Indian government has not been able to see the irony in the exercise. While the agency suspecting or accusing someone of being an illegal immigrant doesn't have to prove the basis of their allegation, the onus to prove that a person is not an illegal immigrant lies only on the accused.
According to government data, there are 141,733 'D' voters in Assam. Interestingly, more than 92 per cent of the resolved cases of 'D' voters have been declared as genuine Indian nationals, according to a white paper published by the Assam government in 2012.
Whether Haque is an illegal migrant or a genuine Indian citizen will be decided by the tribunal, but the latest case also raises fingers over the army's recruitment, and thereby the entire government machinery.
The onus is now on the Indian government and its bureaucracy to prove the "success" of Indian democracy.
In Assam, Indian Muslims are being abused as 'Bangladeshi'
The term has become an excuse to deny them rights and to commit atrocities.
POLITICS | 6-minute read | 17-08-2016
Aman WadudAMAN WADUD @amanwadud
8
Total Shares
On August 13, in a discussion in the Assam Assembly about eviction of illegal encroachers from government/khas/VGR/PGR lands, a Muslim Congress MLA was called a "Bangladeshi" by a BJP MLA.
Sherman Ali, the Congress MLA, was only trying to make his point that there are 1,30,000 families affected by erosion who could be occupying these lands and they should be properly rehabilitated instead of being indiscriminately evicted.
Ali was advocating for the most marginalised people of Assam who lost their homes to monstrous erosion of the Brahmaputra. Since Independence, more than 7 per cent of Assam's land mass has been eroded.
In the last ten years, more than 35 revenue villages got eroded by the Brahmaputra in Barpeta district alone. A very large number of affected people are Muslims.
On March 12, 2015, vide notification RGR 785/2014/6, the previous government had launched a special scheme to relocate and rehabilitate families affected by river erosion.
Also read: Assam’s political rhetoric over illegals is sending Indians to detention camps
Moreover the standing committee on works department recommended that erosion-affected homeless families should be rehabilitated before starting any effort to evict encroachers from government/khas/VGR/PGR lands.
Now, the BJP government has sent circulars to district administrations to evict encroachers from such lands.
The best answer BJP MLA Ramakanta Deuri had is to abuse the Muslim MLA as "Bangladeshi".
As India approached its 70th Independence Day, an Indian citizen who was constitutionally elected to the Assam Assembly was being abused as "Bangladeshi", because he spoke for landless people.
If a Muslim MLA can be abused as "Bangladeshi" inside the legislative assembly, imagine the condition of common Muslims in Assam.
Muslims comprise 34 per cent of Assam's total population. With abysmally low literacy and employment rate, many of them work as daily wage labourers, vegetable and fruit vendors, rickshaw-pullers and in other menial jobs.
assam-embed_081716040245.jpg
A relief camp in Kokrajhar.
These people who venture out to urban areas are being abused as "Bangladeshis" on a daily basis.
Mostly Assamese Muslims of Bengal origin face this humiliation; they are suspected citizens in their own motherland.
The daily wage labourers who construct roads and high-rise buildings are mostly Muslims, but their contribution towards building a modern Assam is rarely acknowledged, all they get in return is humiliation and harassment. They are stripped of their dignity every day.
The migration of Muslim peasants of Bengal origin started in the later part of the 19th century under the patronage of colonial administrators, according to a well thought-out colonial policy.
The British promoted such migration as they wanted the hardworking Bengali Muslim peasants to cultivate the barren and fertile land of the Brahmaputra valley.
They have enormously contributed towards agriculture and irrigation since then. The migration of these peasants was at its peak in the first three decades of the 20th century.
Also read: BJP wants to replicate Assam formula in Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls
Slowly, Muslims of Bengal origin got assimilated with Assamese culture and language and started calling themselves Assamese.
Post-Independence, during language movement, Assamese became the official language of Assam, mainly because Muslims of Bengal origin overwhelmingly accepted Assamese as their mother tongue to make it the language spoken by the majority people of Assam.
Muslims of Bengal origin even gave their blood for Assamese language. Today, in the entire area dominated by Muslims of Bengal origin, there is not even a single Bengali medium school.
The Muslims of Bengal origin sacrificed their mother tongue for Assamese language.
But no amount of sacrifice and contribution has stopped the daily humiliation they have to face.
MLA Sherman Ali from Baghbar LAC in Barpeta district scored the highest marks in the state in Assamese subjects in the HSCL examination (Assam Board) in the year 1983.
But even if he was not the highest scorer, even if he was an illiterate person, no one has any right to call an Indian citizen a "Bangladeshi". Nothing whatsoever can justify such humiliation of an Indian citizen.
The term "Bangladeshi" has become an excuse to deny even basic rights to Muslims and to commit worst atrocities against them.
Also read: What Bodos' latest attack in Kokrajhar means
Every time Muslims become victims of targeted mass violence, the murderers get away without punishment just by accusing the victims as "Bangladeshis".
On February 18, 1983, Independent India saw its worst massacre.
More than 3,000 Muslims were slaughtered in less than six hours in Nellie. A day before, around 500 Muslims were murdered on the small river island of Chaolkhuwa.
No one was ever punished, because the victims were branded "Bangladeshis", because they were seen as lesser Indian, lesser human.
The impunity didn't stop there. Mass violence against Muslims and Adivasis has become cyclic in Assam.
Hundreds of Muslims were killed in Kokrajhar (1993), Bashbari (1994), Udalguri (2008), Kokrajhar and Chirang (2012) and Narayanguri (2014).
Every time Muslims are killed and branded as "Bangladeshi", the debate immediately shifts from gross violation of human rights to illegal immigration.
Not just that, Muslims are being made "doubtful voters" and stripped of citizenship rights despite having all valid documents.
Even Bengali Hindus are victims of this menace, but now that Bengali Hindus who came to India on or before December 31, 2014, will be granted citizenship, they will be exempted from this humiliation - the only target will be the Muslims who have been here for generations.
Also read: Why floods in Assam and Bihar are worsening over time
The Border Police, which has presence in every police station and outpost in Assam, arbitrarily and without investigation sends "reference cases" against genuine Indian citizens to the Foreigners Tribunal to prove their citizenship under the Foreigners Act.
No wonder the majority of such "reference cases" are held as negative and the so-called suspected citizens are held as Indian citizens.
Those held as foreigners by the tribunal either don't appear before it and are thereby considered foreigners by ex-parte judgment, or are held as foreigners on frivolous ground such as minor anomalies in name and age in the voter list and other documents.
Many Indian citizens held as foreigners for these reasons are languishing in detention camps, without parole. Some might have to spend the rest of their lives in detention.
Most of these people are poor and illiterate, who hardly understand complex judicial procedures. They are damned as foreigners in their own motherland.
This way of branding and abusing Indian Muslims as Bangladeshis won't die out anytime soon as it provides rich dividend during elections.
In the last Assembly election, the BJP openly called Muslim-dominated constituencies as "seats dominated by Bangladeshi immigrants".
No wonder the 2016 Assembly election was one of the most polarised elections in the history of Assam, which BJP won by a thumping majority.
What Bodos' latest attack in Kokrajhar means
It is easy to attribute the shooting to intelligence failure. But that would be ignoring the complex environment prevailing in Assam.
POLITICS | 5-minute read | 06-08-2016
Colonel R HariharanCOLONEL R HARIHARAN @colhari2
---
Total Shares
Two to four Bodo militants travelling in an auto-rickshaw opened fire and killed 13 people and left 14 others wounded in the busy Friday market of Kokrajhar in Assam on August 5. Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the police are jointly carrying out search operations to apprehend the other militants, who threw a grenade and set fire to shops before fleeing the scene.
Army jawans present on the spot shot dead one of the militants armed with an AK-47 rifle. Mobile phone recovered from the dead militant showed probably he belonged to the hard line faction - the National Democratic Front of Bodoland-Songbijit (NDFB-S), though the organization quickly disowned the attack.
assam11_080616012825.jpg
The Songbijit faction is only one carrying out insurgency now.
Songbijit Ingti Kathar, the military chief of the NDFB, broke away to form the NDFB-S faction in 2012 as he was against holding peace talks with the government mooted by the NDFB leadership. He has expressed his determination to carry on the armed struggle for the creation of independent Bodoland in an interview in 2013.
In all likelihood, Songbijit is sending a strong message with the latest attack in Kokrajhar that he might be down but not out, as the group had been on a low profile since 2015. However, NDFB-S should not be ignored as it is known to have connections across the border with the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) faction and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) holed up in Myanmar. The other two factions - NDFB (Ranjan Daimary) and NDFB (Pro-talks) are observing ceasefire pending peace talks with the government.
The NDFB is one of the three proscribed insurgent groups in Assam; it had carried out sporadic attacks in the region along the north bank of Brahmaputra for the creation of an independent Bodoland. During its peak period of militancy between 1992 and 2001, the NDFB violence had resulted in the death of over 172 security forces and over 1200 civilians, while NDFB lost 370 cadres.
The Songbijit faction is only one carrying out insurgency now.
Doubts have been expressed about the involvement of NDFB-S because the attack was carried out brazenly in the style of jihadi militants. Moreover, NDFB-S in the past had targeted only Muslims and Adivasis whereas those killed in Kokrajhar attack included six Bodos. But that would under estimating the possibility of Songbijit changing his tactics.
The NDFB-S is capable of vicious killings; it has been responsible for killing about 100 people in a series of attacks carried out in the same region in May and December 2014. In the May 2014 attacks alone it had killed 32 Muslims who had been its main target.
It is easy to attribute the latest attack to intelligence failure. But that would be ignoring the complex environment prevailing in Assam as a result of over five decades of insurgency. The state has seen the rise of nearly 60 militant groups in this period; out of this seven are active at present. Thirteen groups are either observing ceasefire or involved in peace talks, while 36 other outfits have become inactive.
Kokrajhar is in the heartland of Bodo tribals who number around a million. The headquarters of the Bodo Territorial Area Districts (BTAD), an autonomous administrative unit of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), created under the sixth schedule of the constitution, is located there. It was created in December 2003 after the state and central governments signed the Bodoland Accord with the biggest Bodo insurgent group -the Bodoland Liberation Tigers (BLT) in February 2003.
The BTAD covers the districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri with a population of over three million people. It was created to fulfill the aspirations of Bodo tribals in habiting the neglected region to preserve their land rights and linguistic, socio-cultural and ethnic identity as well as to economically develop the region.
However, the creation of BTC did not satisfy the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) and Bodo Peoples Action Council (BPAC) which had led a violent struggle for the creation of an independent Bodoland from March 1987 onwards. However, the creation of the BTC politically divided the Bodo community. The NDBF was a product of these divisions within the community.
The problems of the region are far from over although the BTAD's chief administrator Hagrama Mohilary was the head of the BLT militant group in the past. It had not been able to bring about the expected development in the region. The infrastructure development has not kept pace with the requirement of the difficult terrain crisscrossed by tributaries flowing into Brahmaputra.
The region has also been backlash against Bodo domination from other minority communities, particularly Muslims and Adivasis inhabiting the region. Muslims and Adivasis had raised their own militant groups to fight the Bodo militants; now they are observing ceasefire. This has enabled militant groups like the NDFB-S to survive and carryout sporadic violent activities.
It will be facetious to ignore the lingering insurgency problem in Assam. Unfortunately, despite all the lip service, the Northeast continues to be neglected and languishes on the periphery of the national mainstream. But things are changing now as many leaders with militancy background have joined mainstream politics in Assam. For instance, Naba Kumar Sarania, the independent MP elected from Kokrajhar, was a dreaded leader of the ULFA.
Unfortunately, we seem to forget that insurgency in the Northeast is a challenge not only to the state and central governments, but also the people of India as it is a vanguard to strategic security and remains our tenuous land link to Southeast Asia.
ALSOREAD
TTV Dhinakaran, AIADMK, Tamil Nadu, JayalalithaaLokpria VasudevanLOKPRIA VASUDEVAN
@lokpria
Leadership in disarray, cadre discontent: Can the AIADMK pull itself together?
Nawaz Sharif, Judiciary, Army, isi, Pakistan general electionsShantanu MukharjiSHANTANU MUKHARJI
@shantanu2818
Pakistan general elections 2018: Why things are getting murkier as D-day nears
Hindu Taliban, Mob violence, Lynching, VigilantismRajeev DhavanRAJEEV DHAVAN
India’s lynching mobocracy: Are we a nation prone to violence?
img
Your email address
Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Parliament, No-confidence motionGautam BenegalGAUTAM BENEGAL
@gautambenegal
What the Opposition achieved with the No Confidence Motion
Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, BJP-PDP break-up, Jammu and KashmirJavaid TraliJAVAID TRALI
@traluk
End the family drama — dynasty politics has only blackmailed J&K and Delhi
#Bodos, #Assam, #Kokrajhar attack
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of DailyO.in or the India Today Group. The writers are solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.
Writer
Colonel R Hariharan COLONEL R HARIHARAN @colhari2
Why retired Army officer in Assam was asked to prove Indian nationality
Between history's healed scars and freshly opened wounds in 'New India' lies the never-ending irony of identity crisis.
VARIETY | 7-minute read | 02-10-2017
Sanghamitra BaruahSANGHAMITRA BARUAH
---
Total Shares
In India, the election voter ID card cuts both ways. To acquire one you have to furnish proof of your citizenship, and to prove that you are a citizen of India, your voter ID card is enough. Of course, the much-debated Aadhaar may soon become the only identity card in future replacing all other types of I-cards, including the voter ID and PAN. But let's keep the validity of that "formal fallacy" for another time.
There is one more identity that makes you a proud, uncontested citizen of India - your badge of patriotism (read Hindu nationalism) and how high up on your chest you wear it. No other affiliation can undo the superiority of that identity. Not even if you have served as a soldier in the armed forces and risked your life for the nation. Your non-Hindu identity will make you as much an outsider as any other refugee.
And this is what has happened to a soldier who after serving in the Army for 30 years has been asked to prove his Indian citizenship in the state of Assam.
His "crime": his Muslim name - Mohammad Azmal Haque.
assam1_100217033343.jpg
Mohammad Azmal Haque (Photo courtesy: Family album/aljazeera.com)
The foreigners tribunal (Number 2) at Boko in Kamrup district of Assam reportedly issued a notice to Mohammad Azmal Haque, a junior commissioned officer who retired in 2016, following a police report that suspected him of illegally entering India from Bangladesh after 1971.
According to this report, Haque joined the Indian Army as a sepoy on September 13, 1986, and retired on September 13, 2016.
"It hurts to receive such a notice after serving and defending one's motherland for three decades," the ex-serviceman was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.
According to Haque, he received the notice asking him to appear before a local tribunal on October 13, with relevant documents to prove that he was not an illegal Bangladeshi migrant.
Notices similar to the one that placed Haque in the doubtful-voter category ('D' voter), he claims, have been served to 40 others from his native village.
"Considering the current situation in the state, I am forced to think that it had happened to me only because I belong to a particular community. Around 40 others from my village have been given such notices and I personally know that they are all Indian citizens," he added.
But this was not the first time he has been served with such a notice. He claims to have received a similar notice in 2012 saying he was a doubtful voter. "...but I submitted all documents in the tribunal court and it had declared me as an Indian citizen," he said.
"Why do I have to be humiliated so many times? I request the prime minister, the president and the home minister to end this harassment of a proper citizen," Haque was quoted as saying by the PTI.
He said a notice was slapped on his wife also in 2012, but the "tribunal declared her an Indian citizen after she furnished proof".
For the record, Assam has 100 foreigners tribunals to detect illegal migrants. Under the 1985 Assam Accord, 1971 has been designated as the cut-off year. The tribunals have been entrusted with the task of detecting the "authenticity of a person claim to citizenship" based on police references.
While the Army has offered to provide the required assistance to Haque, when reporters contacted Assam DGP Mukesh Sahay over the controversy, he reasoned out that "receiving a notice doesn't mean that one has been branded an illegal migrant".
"When a court or foreigners tribunal issues notice to a person, it does not do so as to whether that person is an Army personnel or not. The onus to prove that one is an Indian citizen is on the person served with notice. It's a 2008 case and on October 3 when the court reopens, we will send for the documents."
"The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is being updated in Assam and it is a matter of procedure to asks for documents to prove one's citizenship," he told mediapersons.
Sahay is right. Of course, a notice asking to prove citizenship doesn't brand anyone an illegal migrant, but what he failed to reason out is that it also means that your identity has been questioned.
Even if we consider the tribunals are just doing their jobs, will a Bengali/Assamese/Hindi-speaking Hindu man who has served in the Army for three decades be asked to prove that he is not an illegal migrant? More so, when the "soldier" has become a stick for the chest-thumping hypernationalists to beat any anti-establishment voice.
Is that not ground enough to feel discriminated against because of religion?
Between history's healed scars and freshly inflicted wounds in New India lies the never-ending irony of identity crisis, especially with the RSS-BJP narrative of Hindu nationalism.
The way the Assam DGP defended his force for "persecuting" an ex-serviceman on religious grounds couldn't be more indicative of the callousness with which the detection of illegal immigrants is being carried out.
The BJP came to power in Assam on the promise of flushing out Bangladeshis from the state where illegal infiltration has remained the most-contentious issue for decades. The BJP government also promised to seal the 263-km-long Indo-Bangladesh border.
(Assam shares only 263km of the 4,096km boundary between India and Bangladesh. Plans to erect a barbed wire fence along the entire stretch has remained incomplete for a long time. One of the reasons behind the delay is that about 44km of the border is porous - it passes through the Brahmaputra. While releasing the vision document in Guwahati ahead of Assembly elections, the BJP, however, had clarified that the border will be sealed in all places, except the riverine frontier where wires could not be put up.)
However, at the same time, the BJP decided to grant citizenship to Hindu refugees who migrated because of "religious persecution" - something that became a major poll plank of the party during the Assam Assembly election last year.
This announcement though didn't go down well with coalition partners, the AGP, which came into existence in 1985 after a six-year-long Assam Agitation against illegal infiltration of Bangladeshis. The AGP had clearly distanced itself on the issue saying the party doesn't distinguish between Hindu and Muslim immigrants.
There have been many incidents when "genuine" Indian citizens have complained of being harassed by police and other law enforcing agencies in the name of detecting illegal foreigners.
But this has happened not just during the current BJP rule. There also have been instances when government officials, including Assam police personnel belonging to the Muslim community, were enlisted as 'D' voters.
The most surprising were the cases when family members of Assamese actor of international repute, Adil Hussain, and Padma Shri Eli Ahmed were also branded as 'D' voters.
The BJP has also promised to complete the mega project to update the National Register of Citizenship, which began on 2015. However, fingers have been raised over the promise after the government missed the first deadline - December 2016 - and again the revised deadline of March 2017.
The government is now fighting hard not to miss the December 2017 (re-revised) deadline for completing the NRC in Assam.
The updated NRC is expected to include in the electoral roll the "names of persons or their descendants who appear in the NRC 1951, or in any of the electoral roll up to the midnight of March 24, 1971, or in any of the admissible documents issued up to the midnight of March 24, 1971".
While citizenship is a much-complicated issue, especially in Assam, it's strange that the Indian government has not been able to see the irony in the exercise. While the agency suspecting or accusing someone of being an illegal immigrant doesn't have to prove the basis of their allegation, the onus to prove that a person is not an illegal immigrant lies only on the accused.
According to government data, there are 141,733 'D' voters in Assam. Interestingly, more than 92 per cent of the resolved cases of 'D' voters have been declared as genuine Indian nationals, according to a white paper published by the Assam government in 2012.
Whether Haque is an illegal migrant or a genuine Indian citizen will be decided by the tribunal, but the latest case also raises fingers over the army's recruitment, and thereby the entire government machinery.
The onus is now on the Indian government and its bureaucracy to prove the "success" of Indian democracy.
Fear sweeps Assam over National Register of Citizens
Rahul Karmakar GUWAHATI, JUNE 24, 2018 22:23 IST
UPDATED: JUNE 25, 2018 12:56 IST
SHARE ARTICLE 5 28 PRINT A A A
More complications: People waiting to check their names on the first draft of the NRC at Goroimari in Assam. File
More complications: People waiting to check their names on the first draft of the NRC at Goroimari in Assam. File | Photo Credit: AFP
June 30 is the deadline for final draft
Of Assam’s 14 MPs, All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) chief Badruddin Ajmal and his brother Sirajuddin Ajmal did not figure in the first draft of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) published on December 31 last.
Also missing from the first draft containing 19 million names were at least 15 of Assam’s 126 MLAs. They included Badruddin Ajmal’s son Abdur Rahim Ajmal, who represents the AIUDF, perceived to be a pro-minority party, from the Jamunamukh constituency.
Off the list too were Boby Bhuyan Baruah, wife of separatist Paresh Baruah, who has been operating from neighbouring countries, including China, for three decades now, and their sons, Ankur and Akash. Baruah leads the United National Front of Asom-Independent.
The MPs and MLAs — including BJP’s Shiladitya Dev and Ashwini Rai Sarkar — and relatives of extremist leaders would rather wait for the final draft of the Supreme Court-monitored NRC to be out by the June 30 deadline. “The first list did not have my name despite my being an MLA for one term and an MP for two. The doors of the Supreme Court are open, in case the name does not show up,” the AIUDF chief said a few days ago.
The leaders are not worried. But the likes of Moinal Islam, a mason from near Chhaygaon, west of Guwahati, who has been at a loss to explain why his father adds ‘Sheikh’ to his name while he doesn’t, and Subhas Saha of western Assam’s Dhubri town, half of whose family were excluded from the first draft despite having lived there for almost a century, are worried by speculation that up to four million people — mostly Bengali Hindus and Muslims — would become stateless after June 30.
Misplaced fears: official
“These are misplaced fears. We cannot quantify at this moment, but the number of people who might get left out would be 50,000 at most. Even then, they will get an opportunity to prove their citizenship through claims and objections,” Prateek Hajela, State NRC Coordinator, told The Hindu.
As the deadline for the final draft nears, minority organisations have pointed out anomalies in the exercise that appears to be aimed at Bengali Hindus and Muslims.
“The NRC authorities are coming up with new rules, and officials on the ground are taking decisions that are different from what is on paper,” Azizur Rahman, convener of the Coordination Committee of Minority Organisations, Assam, said.
The committee represents 23 minority groups.
“Since the exercise is being monitored by the Supreme Court, no one can intervene. But the Assam government came out with new rules such as the one on May 2 making siblings of those marked foreigners ineligible for NRC updating. Such rules, if at all, should have been made before the exercise was undertaken. The complications are deliberate, aimed at harassing Bengali Hindus and Muslims,” Aminul Islam, AIDUF general secretary, said.
Court dismisses petition
On Friday, the Gauhati High Court dismissed a petition against the May 2 order on siblings of “declared foreigners”.
Dharmananda Deb of the Silchar-based Hindu Legal Cell said a slew of orders that had made the exercise for the final draft complicated were aimed at Bengali Hindus. “We were the main targets in 1979 when the D-voter (doubtful voter) issue cropped up. Almost 90% of D-voters and those in detention camps are Bengali Hindus,” he said.
“Bengali Hindus are likely to suffer this time too. Maybe, they will come up with D-NRC to keep harassing the common people,” Mr. Deb said. About 28% people in Assam are Bengali-speakers, a majority of them in Barak Valley where having the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 passed by Parliament before publication of the final NRC draft matters most. “If enacted after NRC, the Bill will have no meaning,” Mr. Deb said.
“The Bill is not acceptable because it will endanger the existence of the indigenous people, already burdened with waves of immigrants. It is against the secularism that the Constitution upholds and violates the provision of the 1985 Assam Accord that prescribes March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for illegal migrants,” Samujjal Bhattacharyya, advisor of All Assam Students’ Union, said.
