“Amit shah, India’s home minister, calls them ‘termites’ and ‘infiltrators’. The government will hunt them down and throw them into the sea, he thunders. Unfortunately, it is not just the standard bluster from a nativist politician railing against illegal immigration,” The Economist said in an article.
Discussing the situation in the Indian state of Assam, it said the supposed illegal immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim. “The purge is therefore exacerbating sectarian tension in a state that saw bloody Hindu-Muslim riots as recently as 2012, when some 400,000 people were displaced.”
But Shah still considers the campaign in Assam against illegal immigrants such a success that he wants to replicate it throughout the entire country.
The article said that last year bureaucrats in Assam, which has a population of about 33 million, produced a list of more than 4 million of its residents whom they consider foreigners, without any right to live there. A further 100,000 people were deemed non-citizens in June.
What would happen to them, if in case of deportation? “In practice, neighbouring Bangladesh, from which they are said to have migrated, will not accept them, since in most cases there is no evidence that they are anything other than Indians too poor and uneducated to navigate the complex bureaucracy of citizenship.”
“But even if the threatened mass deportations never take place, the process of declaring people aliens, and hauling lots of them off to internment camps, is not only a rank injustice, but also a threat to stability.”
Indigenous Assamese have long complained that they are being swamped in their own homeland by migrants from Bengal. In colonial times, there was such an influx, since there were no borders to stop poor Bengalis moving north in search of a better life. Assamese nationalists, pointing to Bengalis’ ever higher share of the state’s population, insist the flow of migrants continues to this day, even though the Muslim part of Bengal has become a separate country, Bangladesh.
Muslims make up a third of Assam’s population. The state’s shifting demography is mainly the result of a higher birth rate among Bengalis already in Assam, not migration. But that has not stopped the ruling BJP from vowing to collar lots of illegal immigrants.
The law the government is eagerly enforcing requires all residents to prove that they or their forebears were in the state by March 24th 1971. That is a big hurdle for poor farmers and itinerant workers, especially women, many of them illiterate. Suspects can be denounced as non-citizens by anonymous tips, an invitation to abuse. There have been lots of mistakes, such as a decorated war hero who was declared not to be Indian.
Some 3.7 million of the 4 million people declared illegal immigrants are challenging their designation. There has been a spate of suicides tied to adverse rulings.
And the hunt for illegal immigrants is openly anti-Muslim. Some Hindus have been caught in the dragnet, but Shah says they do not need to worry, since the government has drafted a bill to make it easy for Hindu refugees to claim citizenship. Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Sikh refugees can too—just not Muslims.
Anything that polarises voters by religion benefits the BJP, especially in nearby West Bengal, where Muslims are over a quarter of the population and it is locked in a political knife-fight the Trinamool Congress.
West Bengal is one of the places where Shah has railed against termites. But it is not phantom foreigners, rather the BJP, through its stirring of sectarian tensions, which is gnawing away at the foundations of Indian democracy.
Discussing the situation in the Indian state of Assam, it said the supposed illegal immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim. “The purge is therefore exacerbating sectarian tension in a state that saw bloody Hindu-Muslim riots as recently as 2012, when some 400,000 people were displaced.”
But Shah still considers the campaign in Assam against illegal immigrants such a success that he wants to replicate it throughout the entire country.
Also read: Modi’s Re-election Projects A Troubled Future For India And The World
The article said that last year bureaucrats in Assam, which has a population of about 33 million, produced a list of more than 4 million of its residents whom they consider foreigners, without any right to live there. A further 100,000 people were deemed non-citizens in June.
What would happen to them, if in case of deportation? “In practice, neighbouring Bangladesh, from which they are said to have migrated, will not accept them, since in most cases there is no evidence that they are anything other than Indians too poor and uneducated to navigate the complex bureaucracy of citizenship.”
“But even if the threatened mass deportations never take place, the process of declaring people aliens, and hauling lots of them off to internment camps, is not only a rank injustice, but also a threat to stability.”
Also read: What if BJP Wins Elections? Modi’s Sectarian Politics Will Make Bigotry the Defining Ideal of the Republic
Indigenous Assamese have long complained that they are being swamped in their own homeland by migrants from Bengal. In colonial times, there was such an influx, since there were no borders to stop poor Bengalis moving north in search of a better life. Assamese nationalists, pointing to Bengalis’ ever higher share of the state’s population, insist the flow of migrants continues to this day, even though the Muslim part of Bengal has become a separate country, Bangladesh.
Muslims make up a third of Assam’s population. The state’s shifting demography is mainly the result of a higher birth rate among Bengalis already in Assam, not migration. But that has not stopped the ruling BJP from vowing to collar lots of illegal immigrants.
Also read: In Modi’s India: Gujarat Riots Whistleblower Gets Life Term For ‘Murder’, Rapper Charged With Sedition Over Posts Against Adityanath
The law the government is eagerly enforcing requires all residents to prove that they or their forebears were in the state by March 24th 1971. That is a big hurdle for poor farmers and itinerant workers, especially women, many of them illiterate. Suspects can be denounced as non-citizens by anonymous tips, an invitation to abuse. There have been lots of mistakes, such as a decorated war hero who was declared not to be Indian.
Some 3.7 million of the 4 million people declared illegal immigrants are challenging their designation. There has been a spate of suicides tied to adverse rulings.
And the hunt for illegal immigrants is openly anti-Muslim. Some Hindus have been caught in the dragnet, but Shah says they do not need to worry, since the government has drafted a bill to make it easy for Hindu refugees to claim citizenship. Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Sikh refugees can too—just not Muslims.
Anything that polarises voters by religion benefits the BJP, especially in nearby West Bengal, where Muslims are over a quarter of the population and it is locked in a political knife-fight the Trinamool Congress.
Also read: ‘Modi and Yogi have messed it up’: Muslims Talk about Leaving a UP Village as They Fear Things Will Get Worse if BJP Wins Second Term
West Bengal is one of the places where Shah has railed against termites. But it is not phantom foreigners, rather the BJP, through its stirring of sectarian tensions, which is gnawing away at the foundations of Indian democracy.