My take on the Citizenship Act 2019 and Protest by the Assamese people worldwide

The emotions are high and fears griping the minds of the Assamese people. In such volatile time we must not lose our objectivity.

We are doing the protest against providing citizenship for the Bangladeshi immigrants (illegal + legal post CAB). We want government to take actions so that Assamese people’s interests are protected.

There are many misconceptions and some people with vested interest are trying to miss guide the people within and outside Assam, so it is important we don’t forget why we are doing the protest and what we want to achieve.

The citizenship amendment act 2019 provides citizen to those refusies who came to India before 31^st December 2014. So, this act doesn’t make thing worse then what we currently as some people are saying.

To understand why Assamese people are so fearful about our language, you have to go back to the British era when Bengali language was imposed on us as an official language. Our ancestors had to fight to change the official language of Assam to Assamese. The Bengali speaking people in Assam is increasing drastically (some already existed since independence + some are illegal immigrants) as per 2011 census data. So, fear is real, we don’t want to keep fighting for our basic rights, we want to focus on our growth and think about our future.

There is no iota of doubt that the protest started with true intensions by the people and student unions. However, some political & religious parties intervened to give a political and religious colour to it. As a result there was vandalism, destruction of public properties which we all must condemn together. The protest will weaken if we allow these people to hijack this protest. To keep the protest stronger, we must keep them at arm’s length. Administration didn’t manage the situation effectively, but we all know when there is chaos people make mistakes and government must take required actions to address it.

The citizenship is a central subject; we can find solution only by working with the central government and not going against them. Last 40 years we are living with these problems and every passing year solution of this problem become more complex. We have seen all political parties ruled our state and center and what those governments have done till now. We have to ask this question to ourselves that who is actually working for a solution. Recently NRC (National Register of Citizens) was implemented, there were flaws, but it was a positive step towards the solution. Our choices are not between good and bad, but between bad and worse. So, make you choice carefully, or else we may need to live with this problem for another few decades.

Those who follow the prime minister will know that he clearly said in the election rallies that CAB will be implemented. We all trusted our local political leadership and Prime minister thinking that our concerns will be address before the CAB becomes a law. I think this is where our leaders failed us. They could not provide a clear plan with time line to solve these problems and all of us are hurt and protesting as we all fear that we lost the WAR.

We are part of this great nation and can’t think only about ourselves. We need to give careful thought about the nation’s views and concerns. In my view we can’t reject the CAB totally, we have to accept the CAB in principle and continue our protest till our leaders find and implement the solutions to protect our interests. We must distinguish these two aspects to ensure our message  is correct to the outside world. There is another important reason, Assam is a very small state with 14 Lok sabha(lower house) seats out of total 545, so politically we are very insignificant and can’t negotiate harder. I am not suggesting that we accept anything less than what we deserve, but should not forget our limitations as well.

When we continue our protest, we must not forget that there is a huge loss to the economy and to the state treasury. So, while we continue the protest, we need to ensure the business/offices are functional, this will only impact us no one else (Contribution of Assam’s GDP to national GDP is not in top 15 states). One of the options is that we can continue the protest on none working days (Saturdays & Sundays). All of us know that the visit of Japan’s Prime minister has been postponed which is not a good news for us (probably the first head of states visiting Assam from a developed nation). It has many economic importance and we need to ensure it is not postponed indefinitely.

The structure of Assamese society is diverse and complex. There are already two autonomous councils (Karbi & Bodo) which includes 7 districts to protect the indigenous people and its cultures, 3 districts where Bengali speaking Assamese people have majority. There is a huge influx of Bangladeshi immigrants in 9 out of 23 remaining districts where Muslim population have majority and it is spreading further. So, the solution is very complex.

The ideal solution is that we stop new illegal immigrant to come to Assam (India) and send back all those illegal immigrants who came earlier. As we all know there were lot of efforts till now to stop new illegal immigrant to come to Assam and NRC helped to achieved that.  The identification of the existing illegal immigrants is a challenging task and all of us aware of it from the NRC exercise. However, there is some progress. The other aspect is to protect the rights of the indigenous people as part of Assam accord clause 6 which talks about Constitutional, Legislative & Administrative safeguards of Assamese people. Government is already working on it, we must demand for a time bound solution from the working group. Additionally, we can support the government by providing ideas to address these problems. Mizoram, Manipur have inner line permit, this could be another option. However, that will hamper economic growth.

As a state we have achieved some successes to address this historic problem, few more steps need to be taken. We have to continue the protest without impacting (economically & politically) ourselves.  We have not lost the WAR, CAA is a temporary blocker, but has national importance so we should support it as long as our leaders provide a clear path to address our concerns as part of ASSAM accord clause 6.

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ASSAM Accord and NRC

National Register of Citizen is a register of all legal residents of India. This was first prepared after independence  in 1951 census. Today NRC is discussed across the country and this is in the context of Assam.

What is the issue and why Assam required to go through the process again?
Assam is a border state, it is connected to Bhutan in Northern and Bangladesh in western boarder. Before the independence in 1947, Bangladesh  was part of India. There were demands to include Assam with Pakistan(Bangladesh was East Pakistan, later became an independent country in1971). But there were protest by local and central political leaderships to keep Assam with India and Assam remains with India.

Bangladesh is connected with Assam's border in two districts Karimganj and Dubery. There was no physical border between Assam(India) & Bangladesh(I think work is still ongoing  to put fencing). After independence, there was a continuous influx of people from Bangladesh to Assam by illegal means. That issue became alarming when the rate of population growth of this illegal migrants were faster than the local population. This started impacting the social and cultural flavours of the people of Assam(avoiding the details of the impact to keep politics away). The local population started feeling threat to their existence as these illegal immigrants started having political representation as well. 

What Is Assam Accord?
To recognise, illegal immigrant issue as a problem and find solution by the authority, the people of Assam started a movement. This movement was lead by the student union and the civil societies started in 1979. Many lives lost during this movement and it continued for 6 years. On 15 August 1985 a memorandum of  settlement was signed named ASSAM  ACCORD between Central government of India and representative of people of Assam. One of the key point was to identify and deport the illegal immigrants who came after 1971.

Implementation of NRC
Since 1985 there was no official actions taken due to various reasons. In 2010 a pilot project was initiated in two circles of Kamrup and Barpeta districts. However, it was stopped after few weeks due to violent protest by the illegal immigrants. Civil societies of Assam went to supreme court and honourable supreme court directed the central government to reinitiate the NRC process in Assam under their supervision in 2013. As per the directive of the honourable court, all immigrants entered Assam from Bangladesh after 24 March 1971 is classified as illegal immigrant. Most people outside Assam didn’t know about this issue. It got attention of the country when the first draft of the illegal immigrant published on 30 July 2018 where over 40 lacs people were identified as illegal immigrant( though local population thinks number should have been much more). The final draft was published on 31 August 2019 with 19,06,657 people identified as illegal immigrants.

The people’s sentiment in Assam
There are two groups, indigenous people of Assam and  illegal immigrants. The indigenous group believes that the cut off date  to identify illegal immigrant should be 1951 not 1971. Second, they believe the implementation process is flawed and this process is going to make many illegal immigrants as legal citizen of the state.

The illegal immigrant group is very organise, they are playing victim and giving a religious twist to it as all these people are Muslims. They believe giving religious twist to it will gain support from muslim population from across the world.

My take on this issue....
The illegal immigrant issue from Bangladesh is a threat to the indigenous people of Assam. This issue is no longer an issue only to Assam, these illegal people spread across to other parts of India with legal identification documents. The challenge is that it is becoming difficult to identify such people.

This is a legacy issue since independence of India. So, the solution is not simple and it requires support from government, society and political parties. To stop further influx of illegal immigrant at the border, goverment needs to develop proper infrastructure along the border which is shared by other states like West Bengal, Tripura and Meghalaya.

Bangladesh is a neighbour, there are international consequences of any action taken by India. So, sending back all these people may not be a doable solution. In that case, we should provide them all human rights, but restrict them from few citizen rights, like owning property, voting or any political activities, marrying to citizen of India etc. This will discourage them and some of them may move back to their origin by themselves.

The NRC implementation in Assam has many flaws. If you want a perfect implementation, you have to wait forever. There will be questions and discussions on the cut-off date, the flaws in the process and the politics of it. Even then this is a step towards the solution.