Highlights
The NRC is yet another device to put an already beleaguered community -- the Muslims in their place.
Amit Shah has repeatedly said no migrant who is “Hindu, Christian or Buddhist will be expelled from India.”
If the terror and disruption caused by the original National Register of Citizens (NRC) was already not bad enough, Indian citizens in Assam and other parts should brace themselves — the Narendra Modi government has taken a decision to conduct another NRC.
Interestingly, Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh premier, is currently in India. The NRC was briefly bought up by Sheikh Hasina, but Modi apparently reassured her it was an “internal matter”.
His hyper powerful Home Minister, Amit Shah describes Bangladeshi migrants as “termites”.
How is that possible when alleged Bangladeshi infiltrators have to be sent back is something which most analysts are wondering about.
This means that the NRC is yet another device to put an already beleaguered community — the Muslims in their place. India has already started construction of camps, which will house the illegal settlers.
Secondly, Shah has repeatedly said no migrant who is “Hindu, Christian or Buddhist will be expelled from India.” This leaves only one settler group at risk.
At this point even blowing the dog whistle is not required.
This kind of religious-based identification of the Indian citizen is explicitly against the Indian Constitution, but these days, with a full majority and an Opposition in disarray, the Modi government is least bothered with constitutional values.
Targeting Muslims
What these open challenges have done is ensure that Muslims across Assam and West Bengal are terrified. And with the BJP’s threats to use the NRC across India, Muslims, even those who have lived in India for generations, are terrified.
I have a Muslim friend, a very senior police officer. He was born in Lakhimpur Khiri, a district in Uttar Pradesh. He tells me that he gets terrified calls from his father, saying that when he was born birth certificates were not issued.
Remember, he is in the Indian Police Service (IPS), a group considered extremely powerful in India, who works in the heart of the establishment, but his father is terrified.
This is the reality of many Muslim families — a lot of them simply don’t have the paperwork to prove that they are Indian citizens. Yet they have lived in India for generations.
And today they are terrified. And have reason to be. Detention of illegal migrants is becoming a grim sunrise industry. The first detention camp in Assam in Goalpara is almost ready.
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According to the government it will house 3,000 illegal migrants and will cost Rs45 crores. Interestingly, a senior Intelligence Bureau official is the virtual contractor of the pilot camp.
The Intelligence Bureau of India can do any job its political masters mandate.
The Assam government has asked the Centre, as I report exclusively for Gulf News, that it wants to build ten more such camps.
So imagine the grim possibilities -- such detention camps built across India as the NRC promised by the BJP will be implemented everywhere.
A fresh NRC will be underway, as the data provided by this one was disappointing. The myth of crores of Muslims coming across from Bangladesh was exploded.
This has not deterred Shah -- he simply wants to do it again. And meanwhile, he regularly compares “ghuspetias” (infiltrators) to “deemak” (termites) who are a fifth column in India.
Yes, the poorest human beings barely able to eke out an existence are “termites”. As long as they give Shah divisive slogans and a straw man to attack, he is happy.
