The final draft list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, which was released on Monday, has opened a Pandora’s Box of problems for both the Centre and the State government. The list was drawn up as part of a Supreme Court-monitored exercise to identify — and eventually disenfranchise — illegal migrants (primarily from Bangladesh) living in Assam, and it has controversially left out the names of more than 40 lakh people (out of 3.29 crore applicants) from the list on the grounds that they could not establish documentary proof of their Indian citizenship prior to 1971, when Bangladesh was born. Admittedly, this is not the last word on the subject: those who have fallen off the map can still lodge claims and objections before the final NRC is published, perhaps by this year-end.
Yet, anecdotal accounts of how families have been cleaved apart — with some members making it to the draft NRC list and others not — show up the fallibility of the exercise. Given the myriad difficulties in establishing one’s identity owing to paperwork and technological frailties, this has the potential to heartlessly disenfranchise even bona fide citizens.
All this is not to deny the gravity of Assam’s problems with illegal migration, which date back to the late 1960s, when people from erstwhile East Pakistan fled to India to escape persecution. Unfiltered illegal migration has skewed the demographics of Assam (among other North-Eastern States) and soaked its politics in blood — most virulently in Nellie in 1983. Down the ages, India has, of course, provided a haven for persecuted communities, and has emerged richer and stronger for the assimilation of heterogeneous populations. But it’s fair to say that porous borders — of the sort that India has — don’t advance the cause of robust nationhood in modern nation-states. Doing nothing is clearly not an option, but given the tardiness that underlies it, the draft NRC list will only serve to reopen old wounds, particularly since political formations on all sides are standing by to profit from the polarisation it will inevitably entail.
Venky VembuAssociate Editor