Updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam and What it Means

In an attempt at bringing a closure to the vexed foreigners’ issue in Assam— an issue over which thousands have lost their lives—the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is being updated in Assam, for the first time since 1951. This news has roused various arguments, especially regarding its implications for those who are socially profiled as ‘illegal Bangladeshis’. Even though the final consolidated NRC will be published only by the end of this year, there is a commonsensical understanding that people whose names don’t appear on the NRC, will be deported to Bangladesh. This is a hogwash that the Indian government is aware of and yet it has not informed (even informally) the Bangladesh government that such an exercise is being taken up.

Though the official process of updating the NRC, under the supervision of Supreme Court, started from 2015, it has been done with the mandate of the tripartite Assam Accord 1985, signed by the Government of India, Government of Assam, and leaders of the Assam Movement. Barring the sangh parivar, almost all organizations in Assam— representing all ethnicities, communities, and political parties across the political spectrum— were in agreement that there should be a fair and error-free NRC.Among various organizations, those representing the religious minority (of East Bengali origin) in Brahmaputra valley had also spent a tremendous amount of energy running awareness campaigns so that people know how to apply correctly for NRC updating. NRC is important, especially for the Religious minority (of the East Bengali origin) since many believe that once they are recognized through the NRC as legitimate citizens of India, their continued harassment by chauvinist and xenophobic forces will cease. On the contrary, various organizations representing various tribes and other ethnicities of Assam, wholeheartedly support the NRC process for they believe that such an arrangement will help identify illegal migrants who entered Assam post March 24,1971, and settle the issue of illegal migrants once and for all – a cornerstone of Assam Accord.

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It is a well-documented historical fact, that a large number of Muslim peasants from erstwhile East Bengal settled in Assam in the early 20th century. However, vested interests over the decades have tried to prove that their descendants are illegal migrants. Right wing’s often parroted rhetoric of “illegal” Muslim migrants flooding the region is backed largely by what seems to be paranoia about the perceived growing numbers of Muslims, all of whom are assumed to be “illegal” migrants, irrespective of when they or their ancestors settled in Assam.

Following the Supreme Court directive, a partial draft, which included the names of 1.9 crores out of the 3.29 crores people who had applied for NRC, was published on the midnight of December 31, 2017. The complete draft is set to be published on June 30, 2018.

Much to the anger of various organisations, including the All Assam Students Union, some BJP leaders made polarising and rabidly communal statements in the aftermath of the publication of the partial draft of NRC. And it seemed that some BJP leaders were also unhappy that any sort of violence didn’t break out after midnight of 31st December and everything went ahead peacefully.

It is important to note that even prior to the publication of the partial draft, many leaders of the ruling party were ever busy making comments for months, that there will be “unprecedented violence” in 14 or 15 Muslim (allegedly of Bangladeshi) majority districts of Assam and that 45 companies of central paratroopers will have to be deployed.

The Sangh Parivar has reasons for not completely being in favour of a fair and error-free NRC. Firstly, if a fair and error-free NRC is completed under a non-polarised environment, the parivar might just have to partially shut shop that invokes bogey of Bangladeshis for everything under the sun. Secondly, the final NRC might throw up ‘unexpected’ results; many have speculated that a large percentage of non-citizens will turn out to be Hindu Bengali immigrants from the neighbouring country, who came to Assam after the cut-off date of March 24, 1971.. Therefore, in an attempt to convince the central government to pass the communally motivated Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, so that the Hindu Bengalis, who are found to be non-citizens, can be granted citizenship, many BJP leaders from Assam dashed to Delhi after the Supreme court’s order to publish the NRC partial draft.

Though, on 30th June, the complete draft list of NRC will be published, a narrative has been constructed, mostly by BJP leaders and the sangh parivar that 30th June will decide the fate of who is a citizen and who not. This narrative of finality has been spearheaded by powerful BJP minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who has been repeatedly saying that 30th June 2018 will decide ‘friend or foe of Assam". This imposed narrative has, understandable, created anxiety and fear among many people, especially Muslims of East Bengali origin.

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That being the situation, if any NRC related issue is sensationalised without proper substantiation or understanding of the nuances related to the process, it might further strengthen the conspiracy of fear that is being spread by the Sanghparivar.

Unfortunately, a section of International media, along with a few civil society organisations based outside also seem to believe that June 30 is the culminating point of the NRC process after which, the people who do not find their names in the complete draft will become Stateless. This assumption clearly ignores the fact that there is to be a further process of claims, objections, and correction of documents before the publication of the final consolidated NRC by the end of this year.

On June 11, four special rapporteurs of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had written a letter to the Ministry of External Affairs expressing “serious concern”, exclusively over the alleged discrimination of “members of Bengali Muslim minority in Assam”in getting “access to and enjoyment of citizenship status on the basis of their ethnic and religious minority status”.

However, even the OHCHR letter, based on information provided by civil society groups from India, mentions June 30 as the date for publishing the complete draft. Even a cursory glance at the letter makes it clear that the special rapporteurs have not been provided with adequate information about the impending processes post June 30.

The letter casts severe aspersion on the NRC process which at least on paper, is not an attempt at officially determining who is Assamese or Bengali, Hindu or Muslim (This has been done by the Census authorities in 2011), though at the ground level there might be biases in operation during the NRC process. Also, the NRC exercise might not solve the ethnic tensions, vexed illegal foreigners issue, and everyday discrimination of a large section of Muslims of East Bengali origin, but it will certainly provide a window which needs to be optimally explored to solve the problems that various communities residing in Assam face.

The OHCHR letter also mentions a Gauhati High Court judgment on May 2, 2017 (WP(C) 360/2017) and states that on the basis of the order, the State coordinator of the NRC has issued two official memos.

The high Court judgment states:

“…once a proceedee is declared to be a foreigner it would only be a logical corollary to such declaration that is brothers sisters and family members would be foreigner. Therefore it became the duty of the Jurisdictional Superintendent of Police (B) to cause enquiry in respect of brothers, sisters and other family members of the declared foreigners and thereafter, to make a confirmed by the concerned Foreigners Tribunal similar to procedure for D-Voters.”

Till date, 93,628 persons have been declared foreigners by the Foreigner Tribunals in Assam, out of which, 15,000 have been found to have come to Assam between January 1, 1966 and March 24, 1971. Under Article 6(a), which was inserted into the Citizenship Act after the Assam Accord in 1985, these people were retrospectively granted citizenship, and hence they along with their family members, are eligible for NRC. Only 4,288 Declared foreigners have been found to have applied for NRC, while the rest are said to be “untraceable”.

The OHCHR letter also states that the two above mentioned official NRC memos “may lead to wrongful exclusion of close to two million names from the NRC, without a prior investigation and trial”.

While, in line with the principles of universal human rights, the concerns expressed in the letter are well founded, a question arises - How did the OHCHR special rapporteurs or their Indian informants arrive at the figure of two million (20 Lakh)? Given this situation, the NRC status of the family members of those 4,288 identified Declared Foreigners will be put on “Hold”, even if we assume that of those families have 10 members each, their total numbers come close to 50,000, and if we add around 2.5 lakh declared D-Voter it totals upto 3 lakh.

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For months now, unsubstantiated claims are being made by various quarters that 20 to 30 lakhs Muslims of East Bengali origin will be dropped from the NRC. This singling out might lead to a further polarization— as has been the attempt of BJP leaders and supporters— in the already tensed situation of Assam. Here, we would like to assert that we are not trying to defend or reject the legal validity of the Gauhati High Court order, or the concerned official NRC memos. We are of the opinion that the family members of the Declared Foreigners should not have been excluded, neither should their NRC statuses be put on “Hold”, adding to their anxiety, harassment, and loss of livelihood. Nonetheless, a responsible and respected office like that of the OHCHR, falling into the trap of quoting unsubstantiated numbers, is unfortunate since it provides a semblance of credibility to the unsubstantiated number crunching that is already in the rumour mills, and further vitiates the already fragile political situation in Assam.

Apart from the Declared Foreigners’ family members, whose NRC statuses will be put on “Hold”, our own observations from the ground suggests that lakhs of names will be missing from the complete draft NRC on June 30. There could be varied reasons, ranging from submission of faulty application and wrong pre-1971 legacy data, to prejudices and alleged biases of NRC officials at the lower echelon. The names of people belonging to communities other than Muslims of the East Bengali origin, will also be dropped from the final draft NRC. The cases of dropped names will be taken up during the “claims, Objection and Correction” process, post publication of the complete draft on June 30, making the post June 30 process, one of the crucial phases of the NRC updating process. The OHCHR letter fails to take cognizance of these important nuances.

It would have been a far more fruitful intervention if the OHCHR letter, instead of falling for unsubstantiated claims, had cautioned the Government of India that the “claims, Objection and Correction” process, post the publication of complete draft on June 30, be pursued with utmost diligence and without any religious, racial, or ethnic prejudices.

The OHCHR letter has rightly sought answers from the government on “… the implication for those individuals who will be excluded from the final NRC”, in particular, “whether they will face detention or deportation”. It is in this context, that the intervention of the special rapporteurs could have been most useful. Various legal experts and human rights defenders have been pointing out the arbitrariness with which the border police refers to people suspected of being illegal foreigners to the Foreigners Tribunal, and the deplorable and inhuman condition of the detention camps where arrested Declared Foreigners languish.

Vested interests are out to create confusion that if people’s names don’t appear on the NRC draft of June 30, they will be on the verge of becoming STATELESS. On the contrary, the fact is that even if someone’s name is excluded from the final NRC due by the end of this year, that person will not automatically become stateless. However torturous the process might be, their citizenship will finally have to be decided in the Foreigners Tribunal and the higher judiciary.

NRC authorities have made it clear that the personal details and reasons for exclusion of names from the complete draft NRC will not be put in public domain; and as of today, nobody is in a position to concretely predict numbers of exclusion and their ethnicities. By falling into the trap of making unsubstantiated claims, we will only be helping the vested interests who are bound to run the propaganda campaign that all those whose names have been excluded in the complete draft NRC on June 30 are ‘Illegal Muslim Bangladeshis’.

All concerned and democratic forces should instead work towards exploring, and optimally using the options available within the NRC process. This would mean providing legal and other necessary assistance during the “claims, objection and correction” process to those people, whose names do not appear in the June 30 draft due to discrepancies in application forms, faulty submission of documents, and alleged biases of NRC verification officials. At the same time, we constantly need to raise the issue of arbitrariness with which the border police refers the people suspected of being illegal foreigners to the Foreigners Tribunals, along with the deplorable and inhuman condition of the detention camps.

Angshuman Sarma is a Phd candidate at Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, JNU. Bonojit Hussain is a former Research Professor, Sung Kong Hoe (Anglican) University, Korea, and currently he is an independent researcher based in Assam.