In the Northeast, a David versus Goliath battle

With political protests erupting in the region against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, the BJP has been put on notice

The tiny States in India’s east, the Davids, have put the Goliath of political parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party, on notice with a carefully aimed slingshot that may hurt the giant.

Why the opposition?

The Chief Ministers of Meghalaya and Mizoram, a representative of the Nagaland Chief Minister, and an ally of the BJP government in Tripura declared their unliteral, united and unhesitating opposition to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill of 2016, which seeks to fast track citizenship to migrants of Hindu and five other non-Muslim groups from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The carefully crafted North-East Democratic Alliance of non-Congress parties in the region has stumbled.

Meghalaya’s Conrad Sangma, who runs a coalition government which includes the BJP, convened the meeting in Guwahati, the region’s political hub, challenging the BJP on its own turf. Interestingly, the Congress, which walked out of the Lok Sabha when the Bill was being passed, was initially muted. Now, it has said it will ask its MPs to vote against the Citizenship Bill in the Rajya Sabha.

Amid the din of street protests across Assam and elsewhere, reference is made time and again to the Assam Accord of 1985, which laid down the criteria, strategy and structure for the deeply troubling ‘foreigners’ issue in the State. The Accord sought to calm a movement against illegal migration that had erupted in bloodshed and confrontation taking thousands of lives between 1979 and 1985. The key concerns that the Accord sought to address, through an agreement of the Centre, the State government and the All Assam Students Union, involved not only illegal migration from Bangladesh but also constitutional safeguards for citizens and economic initiatives for the State’s growth. Such growth would benefit the entire region since Assam, the largest of the eight States, drives the regional economy.

When the BJP came to power at the Centre and in the State, it sought to fast track a key demand of the Accord, the updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), to ostensibly clarify the existence of large numbers of non-Indians in the State. This had been stymied by earlier Congress-led governments. However, a July 2018 NRC draft, which left out four million people, was sharply denounced as prejudiced and flawed. A group of senior retired officials wrote a letter to the Prime Minister drawing attention to what they saw as a deeply problematic process.

The Supreme Court, which has been issuing a set of ad hoc directions for a project it is directly supervising, has given NRC organisers more time to fix the problems. This came after nearly 32 lakh persons filed challenges to their non-inclusion. The Citizenship Bill came plumb in the middle of this, with government officials in Delhi asserting that the Centre is committed to it and that the Bill is being misunderstood.

By excluding Muslims from its ambit, thus making citizenship contingent on religion, the provisions in the Bill appear to be contrary to Article 14, which guarantees “equality before the law or equal protection of the law” in any part of India. The Joint Parliamentary Committee, which assessed the views of stakeholders, political and civil society groups across the country, asked the Intelligence Bureau (IB) for a figure of immediate beneficiaries of the Bill. The IB said there were just 31,313 members of these minority groups staying on long-term visas after claiming religious persecution in the three countries of focus in the Bill. But is it the Centre’s case that this small figure is the sum total of persons that it wants to benefit? This does not appear to be so, according to statements of BJP leaders in Assam, where lakhs of illegal migrants are said to have settled since 1971. However, there are no hard figures, only estimates.

At the heart of the matter is a very simple issue. The 1985 Accord, by which everyone swears, is specific and unique. It is specific to a State (hence the Assam Accord) and an issue (illegal migration), and defines the effort to settle an issue which was swamped by discord. It cannot be undone by legislation that seeks to supersede it. The Accord was sanctioned by Parliament and has acceptance in the State across party lines.

Shifting goalposts

That is why arbitrary efforts and manufactured consent are meeting such resistance. The goalposts are being changed without adequate dialogue. Lack of discussion and transparency are reasons why parts of this sensitive region erupt repeatedly. Delhi does not learn from the past. How could it expect the shifting of political goalposts to be accepted quietly? The Accord placed the cutoff year for deportation of illegals at 1971, when Bangladesh was created. The Bill changes that to 2014. Constitutional rights must be upheld. While the Bharat Ratna to Bhupen Hazarika is overdue and welcome, it cannot detract from the core questions that are being asked.

The words of Mahatma Gandhi to the emissaries of Gopinath Bordoloi, later Assam’s first Chief Minister in Independent India, on December 15, 1946 ring true today. That was when the British Cabinet Mission, through constitutional trickery, sought to impose Bengal majority control over Assam. “If Assam keeps quiet, it is finished. No one can force Assam to do what it does not want to do. It must stand independently as an autonomous unit,” he said.

Assam is speaking as are the peripheries. But is Delhi listening? The act of dialogue presupposes compromise by either side, especially the more powerful.

Sanjoy Hazarika is the International Director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Views are personal

Source: The Hindu, 1/02/2019