Bharat Bhushan: In Assam and Kashmir, BJP's saviour act could spark civil wars // The first glimpse of new detention centres for ‘foreigners’ in Assam
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has warned that there could be
“bloodbath and civil war” in the country over the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. It would
be foolhardy to dismiss this as a knee-jerk reaction to the threat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) implementing NRC in
her state. The BJP came to power
on a security agenda of making India immune to internal and external threats –
but its policies have initiated processes that will probably increase
instability. In its pursuit of a unitary state the Modi government may in fact
have created conditions for potential civil war in Assam and Jammu
and Kashmir. The party and its government seem to have become victims
of their own narrative.
If in J&K, the safeguards protecting state residents have been taken away unilaterally, in Assam too the bureaucracy, executive and an active Supreme Court under Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, have simply wrested away citizenship rights. For the 19 lakh people left out of the National Register of Citizens, democratic power sharing has no meaning for those whose citizenship itself has been put in doubt. One can well imagine nearly two million people running from pillar to post to prove that they are citizens of India. They are expected to produce documents to prove their citizenship at a time when top leaders in government cannot even produce their graduation and school leaving certificates in public.
The BJP obsession with
illegal Bangladeshi immigrants extends beyond Assam. In 1995, along with its
ideologically fraternal party, the Shiv Sena, it attempted to expel
Bengali-speaking Muslims from Mumbai. The BJP has made similar demands for
deporting Bangladeshis and Rohingyas from Delhi as well. The proximate reason
the BJP’s hype about “outsiders” in West Bengal are the state elections in
2021. It hopes that by polarising the electorate to repeat its performance in
Assam. The BJP’s local units are now demanding an all-India version of the NRC,
possibly in the form of the National Population Register, not only in Delhi but
in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra and Karnataka. The
Union Home Ministry also favours an NRC like
process in all states.
Contrary to the claims
that Assamese xenophobia is essentially secular, and opposes all “outsiders”
(read, Bangladeshis), regardless of their religion, the BJP government in the
state is very upset with the outcome of the NRC exercise
in Assam for leaving so many Bangla speaking Hindus out of its ambit. According
to some unofficial estimates Hindu Bengalis could constitute more than half of
those excluded. It therefore wants the NRC list reviewed.If in J&K, the safeguards protecting state residents have been taken away unilaterally, in Assam too the bureaucracy, executive and an active Supreme Court under Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, have simply wrested away citizenship rights. For the 19 lakh people left out of the National Register of Citizens, democratic power sharing has no meaning for those whose citizenship itself has been put in doubt. One can well imagine nearly two million people running from pillar to post to prove that they are citizens of India. They are expected to produce documents to prove their citizenship at a time when top leaders in government cannot even produce their graduation and school leaving certificates in public.
However, as in J&K
so also in the case of those rendered suddenly stateless in Assam, there is not
an iota sympathy from their fellow citizens in the rest of India. A psychic
numbing of the country seems to have taken place with people losing their
capacity to feel the pain of their fellow citizens. They appear to have bought
into the government’s argument that these are minority populations that must be
permanently policed and can never be trusted. So public morality is unmoved by
a state clamp-down on some 90 lakh people in the Kashmir Valley for more than a
month. It seems acceptable for the state to tell the 19 lakh disenfranchised in
Assam they should be grateful for being given a legal process to rectify their
situation going right up to the Supreme Court when everybody knows that the
judicial process is punishing, being labyrinthine, expensive, and slow.
The mental state of
the affected communities of Kashmiris in J&K and of the “stateless” in
Assam is now likely to be traumatised and shaped by fear, insecurity, and
perceived indignities. In both cases their sense of identity has been questioned
and their self-perception as victims has been aggravated despite Prime Minister
Narendra Modi paying frequent lip-service to “Vasudhaiva kutumbakam “(the world
is one family) being a core Indian belief.
Feelings of victimhood
among Kashmiris and those left out of the NRC in Assam may not lead to
immediate violence but there is no denying that the feeling of being persecuted
can encourage acts perceived as “retributive justice”. In J&K, the trauma
is to a collective “Kashmiri” identity that identifies itself as a
‘nationality’ and is already at loggerheads with the Indian state. The
clampdown on the entire population has made the trauma deeper and generalised.
The collective ordeal of confinement experienced by the people will change the
psyche of the Kashmiris. Support for retribution will be perceived with greater
sympathy given the increasingly fragile mental and psychological experience of
living under siege.
This process may not
unfold as rapidly among those excluded from the NRC, but the feeling in Assam
will be no less traumatic if families are torn apart as some are declared
citizens and others are bundled into detention centres. It has the potential to
change the delicate social balance in that state. Polarisation of Assamese and
Bengali and between Hindus and Bangla-speaking Muslims could turn Assam into a
tinder box. Both in Assam as well
as in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley, communities will increasingly
perceive themselves as victims of the failure of constitutional and legal
safeguards. They will see also the apathy of their fellow-citizens who have
watched their plight as bystanders. If there is a leadership that can tap into
the fragile mental state of the aggrieved people the situation can easily spin
towards violence.
Walter Langer
analysing the making of Adolf Hitler wrote, “It was not only Hitler, the
madman, who created German madness, but German madness that created Hitler.”
His diagnosis is apt for today’s India as well. The ruthless and heartless
behaviour of the Indian State has been made possible by the collective malaise
that seems to have afflicted its citizens.
