'A nightmarish mess': millions in Assam brace for loss of citizenship

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/30/nightmarish-mess-millions-assam-brace-for-loss-of-citizenship-india

by akbarnama • 7 years ago

43 31 7 years ago

theguardian.com

yumraj5• 7 years ago

For the record, these people should never have been citizens in the first place.

These are the folks who came through porus border from Bangladesh illegally.

blincoln• 7 years ago

If their families have been there since 1938, as is the case for one of the people mentioned in the article, where would you suggest they are citizens?

cameronbrown• 7 years ago

OP isn't wrong, but it's also Assam's fault for not properly maintaining it's border. Once you start making people stateless several generations removed from those who did cross illegally, that's on them.

yumraj5• 7 years ago

If their families have been there since 1938

But they hadn't been. Don't base your opinion on a single article. A lot of process was followed after decades of issues and finally on the order of Supreme Court.

In fact, the number of people identified by most counts is order of magnitude smaller than what it should have been.

srean3• 7 years ago

Some may well have, but given my country is so well known for the correctness of its paperwork and documentation (not) many would be caught in the crossfire, especially the uneducated and the poor. Many in the current govt believe that india is essentially a hindu country and some 'purification' is in order. The problem isnt the fact that they could be Bangladeshis. The problem is that they are Muslims, had they been Hindus the government would have fallen over themselves to make a case for giving them citizenship. If one reads pro hindutva magazines, for example, swarajya thats exactly what they champion.

yumraj5• 7 years ago

This is not a Hindu-Muslim issue. This is a Assamese-Bengali issue. Numerous Hindus have not been included (or excluded depending on the frame or reference).

There are more muslims simply because of the bulk infiltration from Bangladesh which is a muslim majority nation.

johnchristopher2• 7 years ago

And there are millions of them ?

yumraj5• 7 years ago

Yes.

Estimates of the number of Bangladeshis in India vary widely. A census carried out in 2001 by the Indian government estimated there were 3.1 million Bangladeshis residing in India, based on place of birth and place of last residence. A different 2009 estimate claimed that there were 15 million Bangladeshis who had taken residence in the country. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladeshis_in_India

qazpot3• 7 years ago

These people never had a citizenship to begin with, so they are not losing citizenship, they were breaking the law by being illegally in the country.

AdrianB12• 7 years ago

Hard argument to make for that, see USA where this is a mainstream topic for decades.

pm903• 7 years ago

That is a stupid argument. They're people, sure they don't have the paperwork, but they've built homes and a life for themselves. Why disrupt that? What is the goal here? Its not like India is so small that there isn't space for more people.

qazpot3• 7 years ago

hey're people, sure they don't have the paperwork, but they've built homes and a life for themselves. Why disrupt that?

They have settled here illegally.

Its not like India is so small that there isn't space for more people.

Actually yes India already has a population problem the last thing it needs is illegal immigrants further contributing to the problem. Although this is not politically correct but these people also have the very large number of children because of their religious teachings.

rootw0rm• 7 years ago

what madness. if you're born on the wrong side of an imaginary line and make your way across...and just try to exist...someone can hold you in a cage forever. it's insane how many people think this is okay.

makomk2• 7 years ago

Even being born on the right side of the line is not enough in this case, even if you can prove it - India does not have birthright citizenship like the US. Also, people have apparently been declared non-citizens without even being given the chance to prove otherwise - including an Army veteran employed by their own border force: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48523963

In reality, India seems to be holding people in cages forever simply for being members of the wrong racial group, nothing more or less.

AdrianB12• 7 years ago

My college colleague who crossed the border illegally from her country in Europe (she was a citizen) to the neighboring country in Europe was shot to death. I think she would have preferred some prison time instead. Laws are laws, some are insane, but most people agree that obeying laws is good and enforcing laws is good.

rayiner• 7 years ago

It’s not an “imaginary line.” It’s the line between different political entities—different democratic polities. Who is allowed to be on which side of the line determines who gets a say in your shared governance. The borders in the region between Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan reflect real and meaningful divisions between groups of people who don’t want to be lashed together in the same polity and exercised their right to self determination to sever ties with each other.

That is, of course, not a defense of the specific measures India is undertaking. But to deny India’s right to police it’s border is to deny Indians’ their self determination. (And I say that as a Bangladeshi. If the shoe were on the other foot, Bangladesh would react no differently.)

yumraj5• 7 years ago

Name one country, at least one which is doing well economically better than its neighbors, which has open borders and anyone is allowed to go there and gets citizenship just by entering there.

tim333• 7 years ago

Quite a few of those in Europe. Germany - Poland/Romania etc for example. Generally you have to live a place about a decade to get citizenship though.

devoply2• 7 years ago

In a country of 1.4 billion let's deport 1 million for shits and giggles to appease Hindu nationalists. You know what Indian Muslims should do to punish Modhi is simply have 1 extra child. Similarly the legal Mexican immigrants in the US should do the same to punish Trump. Make Hindustan Great Again.

qazpot3• 7 years ago

Indian Muslims should do to punish Modhi is simply have 1 extra child

Indian Muslims have been having more children than any body can afford long before Modi came in power. Going by your logic Indian Muslims seems to be punishing India. I would like to point out that India Muslims have 7-8 children as part of their religious teachings.

devoply2• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth

Growth rate of Muslims has been consistently higher than the growth rate of Hindus, even since the census data of independent India has been available. For example, during the 1991-2001 decade, Muslim growth rate was 29.52% (vs 19.92% for Hindus)[19] However, Muslims population growth rate declined to 24.6% during 2001-2011 decade, in keeping with the similar decline in most religious groups of India.

As the West has learned if you wish to control a population then you must not make them a poor underclass... Poor underclasses always produce more children than richer classes.

But yeah it's true India's Muslims have been growing faster than India's Hindus. My point was this is not going to fix that and it's simply an insult to human rights to be punished using the same methods being used to attack it. By growing the population even more.

In another words to fix the population issue you need to move everyone up the economic ladder so that they become self-indulgent individualists who stop caring about religion and their community and starting caring about themselves and enjoyment of their lives. At which point they will stop having children and the population will shrink. Without anyone suffering from anything except lonliness.

pm903• 7 years ago

What in the world. First the Rohingya's, then the Kashmiris and now Assam. It seems like minorities are being systematically targeted all across the subcontinent.

gregimba• 7 years ago

The common denominator seems to be these are majority muslim groups. A religious minority is being systematically targeted in multiple places.

thrawaw3234432• 7 years ago

This is what happens when you let something rot for electoral gains. Without historical knowledge, it is easy to take the humanitarian cause, but with it, things become complicated (like every conflict zone), which is perhaps why "liberal" outlets conveniently forget to talk about them (think Israel, Palestine, Jewish exodus from Middle East, Europe).

The year 1971 was when a party from East Pakistan won the state elections; this was rejected by the Punjabi-dominated Army, which started killing Bangladeshis by the millions. A letter by the US Ambassador (in Dhaka, Kolkata?) was completely ignored by Nixon and his henchman, Kissinger. This led to a genocide, which took a religious turn (as it always does), and Hindus were killed and raped en masse. The exodus, which was merely a repeat of the one following partition, led Indira Gandhi (a brutal dictator in her own right), to help create an independent state of Bangladesh.

The refugees were never repatriated, and the open border meant easy passage for people. Governments from states neighbouring Bangladesh have encouraged Muslim voters to illegally emigrate to bolster their electoral majorities; this is not a contentious fact in India. Indeed, the communists even killed over 5000 Hindu refugees using state police in Marichjhapi, in order to secure their vote share in the decade after the war; there is, as usual, a total silence to the brutal state-sponsored genocides by the Left.

There is however a strong distaste for the trespassers, and this is indeed along religious lines. Bangladesh is also a breeding ground for the global Jihad, and this is precisely why Myanmar too reacts the way it has. In India, Muslim majority areas are often ... erm ... not exactly places where minorities are left in peace (Kashmir, Ramanathapuram, Bhatkal, Malda, tons of districts in Bengal, Bihar, UP). Having this many Bangladeshis, being supported by corrupt political elites, is not exactly a problem it needs right now. India in particular has one too many Kashmirs brewing, and unlike the Christians and Muslims who have historically either been "harvesting" lands by one means or the other, India's natives have no real homeland. Not even India, which constitutionally discriminates against Hindus.

Letting a wound fester, sadly, has its consequences. The instabilities caused by the jihadis has grave consequences to India's economy and culture, and it has every right to deport illegal immigrants.

srean3• 7 years ago

Barring a few exaggerations here and there, your comment is very accurate, knowledgeable and also uncontroversial. I am a little surprised that this required a throwaway handle.

Regarding exaggerations Marichjhapi death toll, the unofficial one, was around a thousand at max. Official one of course is ridiculous -- 2. If you are insinuating that Muslim population in Malda, West Bengal are up to no good, thats patently false because I have eyes on the ground there.

Hope you comment more on HN.

'A nightmarish mess': millions in Assam brace for loss of citizenship

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