Shoaib Daniyal - Red tape is being weaponised in India to declare millions stateless

By Dilip -
Anti-immigrant hysteria is sweeping the world: it has powered Trump, enabled the Brexit vote and is roiling the politics of continental Europe. And while the damage done by this politics has been well documented in the west, one country rarely discussed in this regard is India. Yet millions are about to be declared stateless in the country on the grounds that either they or their ancestors came over as undocumented migrants from India’s eastern neighbour, Bangladesh.

Currently, the north-eastern state of Assam is updating its National Register of Citizens: a supposed listing of genuine Indian nationals. Anyone who does not find their name on this NRC will be branded an illegal migrant. The NRC released a draft list in 2018 that declared more then 4 million people to be foreigners. The final list is expected on 31 August.

As in other places across the world, Assam is using the fig leaf of migration to target minorities. The NRC is widely seen as a means to harass Assam’s Bengali speakers, who share their ethnic identity with Bangladeshis. This in spite of the fact that there are more than 83 million Bengalis who are Indian citizens and Bengali speakers have lived in Assam as long as any other ethnic group. This ethnic targeting in Assam merges with the prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism. Modi and his party, the BJP, paint a picture of Muslims from Bangladesh swamping India. Sound familiar?

Illegal migration was a key issue in the May general elections, which the BJP swept. While campaigning, the party president even went so far as to call migrants “termites”. This hysteria means that even India’s courts have taken an exceedingly illiberal turn. Rather than act as a check on executive excess, the judiciary has itself pushed the NRC hard, leading a shocked legal commentator to declare: “The supreme court has transformed itself from the protector of the rule of law into an enthusiastic abettor of its daily violation.”.. read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/15/india-millions-stateless-assam-red-tape-illegal-immigrants

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