A year after the National Register of Citizens was published in Assam , no community in the state seems satisfied with the results. The sta...
A year after the National Register of Citizens was published in Assam, no community in the state seems satisfied with the results. The stated aim of Assam’s NRC, a list of citizens living in the state, was to sort Indians from undocumented migrants. To make it to the list, applicants had to prove they or their ancestors had lived in the country before midnight on March 24, 1971, the eve of the Bangladesh War. Over 19 lakh residents of Assam failed to convince authorities and now face the prospect of statelessness. Quite apart from pitching this vast number into legal precarity, the NRC exercise has failed to address any of the anxieties that it was meant to resolve once and for all.
The demand to update the 1951 National Register of Citizens came from Assamese nationalist groups, which had launched an anti-foreigners’ agitation in the 1980s. It stemmed from fears about the “bhumiputra” or “sons of the soil” being swamped by the “bahiragat” or “outsiders” – mostly believed to be undocumented migrants from Bangladesh – who encroached on land, influenced political futures as they entered the electoral rolls and threatened to erase Assamese culture. The updated NRC has failed to dispel these economic and...
