BJP's Hindutva vs regional identity dilemma
It is a bit surprising that the issue of the Indian government's proposed law to give citizenship to six "persecuted" religious minority groups in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and India hasn't got much traction in Bangladeshi media. Why it should have got traction is that the bill, brought forward by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in 2016, to amend the 1955 Citizenship Act has created unrest in all the seven northeastern Indian states, most of which share their borders with Bangladesh. The uproar further sharpened the linguistic, ethnic and communal fault-lines among the communities in the region, particularly in Assam. There had been widespread street protests in all the northeastern states against the bill for almost a week from May 7. In Assam's Barak Valley, including Silchar, people hit the streets in support of the proposed legislation.
People from six religious groups named in the bill would be eligible for Indian citizenship: Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Buddhists and Christians. The Indian Citizenship Act in its current form allows people from the six groups of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to seek citizenship if they have lived in India for 11 of the last 14 years. The amendment bill, tabled in parliament in July 2016, brings down the cut-off mark from 11 years to six years of the 14 years.
What set off the last bout of unrest in the northeast was the three-day visit of the joint parliamentary committee, headed by BJP lawmaker Rajendra Agrawal, to elicit the opinion of a cross-section of the population in the northeast. The committee visited Assam and Meghalaya, the epicentre of the street protests against and for the bill. The committee comprises 16 lawmakers drawn from different political parties.
The bill has once again brought to the fore issues related to ethnic differences in the entire northeast. In Assam, it has additionally triggered the linguistic divide. The Brahmaputra Valley in Assam is dominated by Assamese-speaking people and the Baraka Valley by people whose mother tongue is Bengali. The Baraka Valley is largely inhabited by Bengali-speaking Hindus who found themselves in Assam after the division of Sylhet, one part of which was merged with India.
Supporters of the bill say that in light of the huge human catastrophe brought on by partition, the people of Barak Valley have nowhere to go. Critics of the legislation point out that the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016 militates against the 1985 Assam accord between the Indian government and the leaders of violent agitation against "foreigners" in the state spearheaded by the powerful All Assam Students' Union (AASU) in the late 1970s and through much of the 1980s. One of the main reasons that opponents of the bill have cited is that the Assam Accord sets out that anyone who settled in Assam after March 24, 1971 would be considered a "foreigner."
The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War brought about another round of influx of Hindus into Assam. The launch of Operation Searchlight by the Pakistan army in Bangladesh on March 25, 1971 led to many Hindus and Muslims fleeing the country and taking shelter in India with many of them staying back. There is no official estimate as to the number of people who stand to benefit and gain citizenship if the bill gets parliamentary nod. But a back-of-the-envelope calculation puts the figure between 15 to 20 lakh.
In an article in The Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University, wrote that the bill makes illegal immigrants eligible for Indian citizenship based on their religion. "It clearly violates Article 14 of the Constitution," says Mehta. Article 14 and Article 15 both pertain to the fundamental rights of an Indian under the Constitution which state that there must be equality before the law and there cannot be any discrimination on grounds of religion among others. Article 15 is specific about prohibiting discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. So, by amending the Constitution, if a new provision is added granting citizenship to one religious group, wouldn't keeping other religious groups out of it violate the two abovementioned Articles? This is an argument put forward by those opposing the bill.
What has caused further anxieties in Assam is that the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016 has come at a time when the 1951 National Register of Citizens in Assam is being revised in a long-drawn and difficult exercise that threatens to leave thousands of people, including Hindus and Muslims who have been living in the state since long, "stateless."
The bill has also caused fissures among BJP leaders centred on linguistic lines and strains between the saffron party and its ruling alliance partners in Assam (Asom Gana Parishad) and Meghalaya. AGP leader and former chief minister of Assam has led a procession against the bill. Given these complexities, Assam's incumbent Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has so far been extremely circumspect in reacting to the bill. After all, it is his party, BJP at the centre, which has piloted the bill and wants to be a messiah of religious minorities in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It is a piquant situation for Sonowal. He was one of the key figures in the fight against the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 which was struck down by the Indian Supreme Court in 2005. And now he is under pressure from AGP in the face of a move to give citizenship to migrants from Bangladesh. Incidentally, the bill has been opposed by Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA), BJP's ruling alliance partner in Assam's neighbouring Meghalaya state.
Publicly, Sonowal's refrain so far has been that his government will not do anything that goes against the interests of Assam. As chief minister, he is stating the obvious. Sonowal was once the hero of a movement against illegal immigration into Assam. What will he do now at a time when, as Mehta suggests, "the imperatives of BJP's national (Hindutva) agenda have run against regional identity"? But Sonowal privately is a worried man. Added to his worry is the threat by the anti-peace-talk faction of insurgent outfit United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) led by fugitive Paresh Barua to derail peace in Assam. Obviously, the chief minister does not want insurgency to rear its head again in Assam. That was what brought him to New Delhi where he met Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the issue on May 30. The chief minister was told that the federal government would set up a committee to ensure enforcement of a clause in the Assam Accord that provides for constitutional, administrative and legislative safeguards for— protection, preservation, and promotion of cultural, social and linguistic identities and heritage of Assamese-speaking people. It clearly indicates the BJP-led federal government's determination to go ahead with the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016.
Assam, or the entirety of northeastern India for that matter, cannot afford a dangerous mix of linguistic, ethnic and communal divides as peace has returned there after much effort and development are trying to take wings. So far there is no alternative to sustained talks among all sections of society.
Pallab Bhattacharya is a special correspondent to The Daily Star.
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