Rohini Mohan - Excluded from the NRC, These Soldiers from Assam Are Tired of Proving They Are Indian
NB: The RSS-led government is willing to destroy the country, as long as they can retain power. Their newest scheme is to instigate communal hatred all over India under the pretext of redefining citizenship in Assam. If the story below is correct the NRC has become a legal vigilante force. If soldiers and airmen are to be deprived of citizenship because of their religion, we may as well declare India a fiefdom of the Sangh Parivar. Since he is so convinced of the 'patriotism' of the RSS, our ex-President Pranab Mukherjee can be asked to certify that these soldiers are also Indians. DS
GUWAHATI, Assam - A
former Indian Air Force sergeant with a love for words, Sadullah Ahmed has been
trying to write about what it means to be Indian. Since the release of the
final draft of the National Register of Citizens in Assam, the 48-year-old
said, "Everything is ruined. My mind is numb, my soul is crushed." Ahmed's name does not
feature in the NRC list. His two sons, aged 15 and 22, are also excluded. "My younger son
was teased as a Bangladeshi in school yesterday," he said, his voice
quaking with agony. "He came home hurt and asked me, papa what's the point
of you being in the Air Force if we can't even prove we are Indian?"
Ahmed explained that
when he joined the armed forces, the Air Force verified all his documents to
make sure he was Indian. "Going to the
armed forces is not a joke," he said. "Everything was okay, that's
why I was admitted. Why the doubt now? Sitting next to him,
Azmal Hoque, a retired junior commissioned officer in the Indian army, motioned
to Ahmed to calm down. Fifty eight-year-old Hoque, and his children – a son in
military college, and a daughter in an army school – have been left out of the
NRC as well. Ahmed saw Hoque's story in a newspaper in Guwahati, and got in
touch.
"When we talked,
we realised that we personally know at least 15 armed forces personnel who have
been excluded," said Hoque. "All are Bengali. Hindu and Muslim." They decided to
protest as a group, hoping it would put greater pressure on the government, and
also protect each individual from any threats. Seven of them signed a letter,
which they shared with journalists they trusted. At the bottom of the
letter is a single plea: "Please expose our grievances in front of my
beloved nation."
The Excluded
These soldiers are
among the over 40 lakh people who have been excluded from the NRC's
list released on 30 July 2018. The NRC is a list of people who have
been able to prove that they were in India before the midnight of 24 March
1971, when neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence. Assam is the only
state with such a registry, which seeks to detect immigrants from Bangladesh
who may have entered India illegally after 1971.
Immigration and
citizenship have been thorny issues in the state. Large sections of
Assamese-speaking caste Hindus carry an unshakeable fear of being overtaken by
the Bengali-speaking community, especially Muslims. Riots and state-run
anti-immigration programmes have often targeted Bengali-speaking Muslims and
Hindus who have lived in the region for generations. After an especially
violent agitation led by the All Assam Students Union in the early eighties,
the Assam state government, AASU and the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed
the tripartite Assam Accord in 1985. The cut-off date of 1971, which the NRC
today follows, was decided in this Accord.
Of over 3.29 crore
applicants, 2.89 crore made it to the list. More than 40 lakh have been
excluded, among them 2.48 lakh doubtful voters, declared foreigners and their
descendants. The NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela has repeatedly clarified
that the excluded people (except the doubt voters and foreigners) are not
foreigners, and will not be deported or detained. They can appeal with further
proof from August 7, 2018. Yet those excluded
cannot understand why they didn't make it on the list in the first place. Ahmed laid out an
array of paperwork that he submitted while applying for the NRC. He has legacy
proof: his father's name appears in the first NRC draft drawn in 1951, and in
several voter lists after that. The NRC calls these List A documents, which
establish ancestral presence before 1971. For List B documents that prove that
Ahmed is his father's son, he submitted birth certificates, school and college
certificates, and land documents. It should have been a
breeze, even if he was not an Indian solider.
In a conversation,
Shamsul Hoque, a senior non-commissioned officer for 35 years in the Air Force,
repeated his date and place of birth thrice with increasing emphasis: First
January 1961 in Barpeta, India. When he came home in 2014 after retirement, he found
that he was marked a doubtful voter. Doubtful voters, disenfranchised during
electoral roll revision, and people declared foreigners by the 100 Foreigner's
Tribunals in Assam, were automatically excluded from the NRC process.
"There was no
investigation before I was marked 'D'," said Shamsul, but as a soldier,
"and a genuine Indian", he said he felt confident about going to
court. A Foreigner's Tribunal declared him "not a doubtful voter or a
foreigner" in 2016—he read those words to mean "Indian". "And yet, my
entire family is not on the NRC," said Shamsul. His daughter, an IT
professional, and son, a cruise line manager, both live in the United States of
America. "What will happen to their lives if they are stripped of their
Indian citizenship?"
Enamul Haque, a
29-year-old from Barpeta and a sepoy in the Uttarakhand Army Service Corps
today, is also not on the NRC. Oddly, his parents and siblings are included.
Honorary army captain Sana Ullah, from Barpeta, served for 30 years in Manipur,
Kashmir, Ladakh and Madhya Pradesh—he and his three children are not on the
NRC. Former army sergeant
Mohiruddin Ahmed, also from Barpeta, said that he did not expect much more than
a life of respect and peace when he retired after a 26-year-long service.
"But now, is the country I served saying that the entire basis of my
existence is a lie?" he asked.
Another officer, a
Bengali Hindu soldier, did not make it to the final draft of the NRC. He agreed
to meet this reporter initially, but refused afterwards. Under the condition of
anonymity, he said on the phone that he was afraid that "too much
highlighting" might be counterproductive. "I shouldn't think this
way, but I have to think of my children... I hold some hope that the BJP
government in Assam will not penalise Hindus."
The retired soldier
has documents that show his family was ancestrally from India. But his hope for
leniency stems from the BJP-led central government's attempt to pass The
Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, which seeks to provide citizenship only to
non-Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries. Indigenous Assamese groups
have opposed the bill for trying to regularise Bengali Hindu immigrants who
might have entered India after 1971. While the bill is yet to be tabled in
parliament, it has managed to drive a wedge between Bengali-speakers in Assam. "It can look like
the drama of documents and clerical errors sometimes," said Ahmed.
"But that's not all it is. It is narrow-minded bias. Why spend Rs. 1200
crores of public money in determining who's Indian, when all that matters is
what community I'm from?"
The retired soldiers
are all torn between a bravado about their Indian-ness and the helplessness of
belonging to communities the Assamese mistrust. Hoque said he had insisted that
his children join the army because of how secular it felt, and how honoured he
was to call himself an Indian soldier. He started to say once more that he was
born in India, but stopped to laugh. "I am tired of proving it."
