Us or them? Fault lines appear in Northeast over Citizenship Amendment Bill

The Centre's push to legislate the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill has stirred up a hornet's nest in the already troubled Northeast. Radhika Ramaseshan assesses the political divide in the region

As the Centre races against time to pass the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, in the Rajya Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is up against a stiff opposition from its allies in the Northeast, with the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) walking out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in protest. 

The Bill seeks to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955, and make illegal migrants of every religious denomination, except the Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship on easy terms.  

On January 29, the AGP and Conrad Sangma, Meghalaya chief minister who heads the National People’s Party, an NDA constituent, convened a meeting of the regional parties in Guwahati to try and check the Centre’s push. “We have sought time from the BJP president and the prime minister before firming up the next course of action,” Atul Bora, AGP president, told Business Standard. 

Incidentally, these parties are members of the North-East Democratic Alliance or NEDA, chaired by BJP President Amit Shah; Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is national convener. The NEDA’s charter obviously doesn’t say so but when the body was constituted, it was based on an idea that it would work as a caucus to “rid” the Northeast of the Congress with the help of the regional entities. 

“After Tuesday’s meeting, it’s clear that the NEDA has unravelled. If the BJP can’t take its allies along on a vital issue that concerns the rights and interests of indigenous people, why have a committee?” said an AGP source. Asked if the other parties were about to pull out of the NDA, the source said, “If there’s no positive word from the Centre, they will decide what they should do.”  

A high-level BJP source said: “Everything can be resolved by talking to the leaders. They are open-minded.” However, a leader of the Janata Dal (United), which associated itself with the regional forces despite being a BJP partner and was present at the Guwahati assemblage, claimed: “The movement against the Bill has gone down to the grassroots. Therefore, we can dictate terms to the BJP.”

The BJP’s zeal to press ahead with the amendment accentuates an issue that besets the party whenever its ideological commitment conflicts with ground realities: In this case, the socio-economic and political contradictions sit uncomfortably in the variegated mosaic making up Assam and the other states.  

For a Congress leader from the Bengali-speaking, Muslim-majority Barak Valley, the Bill drew a new fault line. “Earlier, there was an Assamese-non-Assamese division. The BJP has made it the Hindus versus the Muslims, the Bengali Hindus versus the Bengali Muslims to be precise in order to gain more seats in my region.” 

The BJP’s Mangaldoi MP Ramen Deka bluntly articulated the party’s objective. “We can’t allow Assam to be swamped by Bangladeshi Muslim infiltrators. If the partition was done on the basis of the two-nation theory, why are Muslims coming to India?  We are correcting the wrongs of the past. Religion is the basis because the persecuted Hindu minorities from Pakistan and Bangladesh must get citizenship. It’s our commitment, from the Jana Sangh time.” 

A top regional strategist stripped the Bill of ideological overtones and stated, “If passed, we can protect at least 20 (out of 126) Assembly seats in Upper Assam from the Bangladeshi Muslims and see to it that the demographic balance is rectified in favour of Bangladeshi Hindus. There are 10,000-15,000 Hindus in every such constituency.” 

However, others in the BJP were less forthright than Deka and the strategist. A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) veteran, working in the Northeast, admitted, “It’s difficult to predict the Bill’s fallout for us (in the Lok Sabha polls). The ambience is against giving citizenship to Bangladeshis in general, whether they are Muslim infiltrators or Hindu refugees. People are happy that the NRC (National Register of Citizens) has identified illegal migrants but angry about making the Hindus citizens.” 

Kamakhya Prasad Tasa and Pradan Baruah were elected to the Lok Sabha from Jorhat and Lakhimpur in Upper Assam, respectively.  This region, comprising eight districts, is peopled by the Assamese-speaking communities, which are up in arms against the amendment. Tasa said: “The mainstream Assamese people are scared because they fear the Bill will overturn our social architecture. I have to convince my Assamese voters that Bangladeshi Hindus are not like their Muslim counterparts.” Tasa uses his time to disseminate this message. 

Baruah said: “I tell my voters, the Muslims can go to other countries, but our Hindus have nowhere else to go but Assam.” Both conceded they were mentally prepared to see black flags displayed against them in their constituencies.

Which party benefits from the apparent fiasco over the Bill? The jury’s out. Gaurav Gogoi, Congress MP from Kaliabor in Brahmaputra Valley, said: “The AGP’s credibility is at an all-time low because it was part of the BJP government when the Bill was introduced. Our message is the Bill will be rescinded only when the Congress comes to power in 2019.”
 

Provisions in the Citizenship bill
 

• Amends the Citizenship Act, 1955, to make illegal migrants, who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship
• Says an applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months, and for 11 of the previous 14 years. The Bill relaxes the 11-year requirement to six years for persons belonging to the above-mentioned six  religions and three countries
• Notes that registration of Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) cardholders may be cancelled if they violate law

 
Key Issues

• The Bill makes illegal migrants eligible for citizenship on the basis of religion. This could violate Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees right to equality. The statement of objects and reasons of the Bill does not explain the rationale for differentiating illegal migrants on the ground of their faith 
• Allows OCI registration cancellation for violation of any law that could include minor offences like wrongful vehicle parking

Source: PRS Legislative Research, www.prsindia.org