The largest ever Pandora’s Box on citizenship issue has been opened in Assam. Four million citizens, a staggering 12 percent of the state’s 3.3 crore population, have been left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) draft.
Prateek Hejala, the Supreme Court appointed coordinator of the exercise, says that it is premature to declare all of them as infiltrators as their final status would be determined after due judicial process. But the second man in command of the central government, the BJP president Amit Shah, declared that the NRC would throw out the ghus pethiayas (infiltrators). His colleagues in arms at several places in India are shouting in shrill tones that NRC exercise should be applied to the whole country. This is being said with an eye on 2019 polls. Drowning the whole country in the ocean of suspicion, hate and fear appears to be the last resort of scoundrels. Unfortunately, this is being done without thinking about the consequences of the communalization of the whole country.
There are gross and glaring blunders in the NRC draft. You will find missing the names of the family members of the son of Lieutenant Ikramuddin, the brother of the former president of India Mr Fakhrudddin Ali Ahmad. The name of the wife of former Deputy Speaker of Assam assembly Mr Dilip Kumar Pal is also not there.
Newspapers are reeling out names and details of gazetted officers, police officials, school teachers and even freedom fighters and their family members whose names have been left out. If this is the fate of the well placed people you can imagine what would be the sad plight of the lakhs of the poor, the labourers and farmers who have virtually spent months together with documents to include their names in NRC. It is the dehumanizing crisis of the highest order. It is estimated that the majority of the left out people is of Muslims. Barq girti hai to bechare musalmano par. (The lightening always strikes the Muslims). If the BJP gets majority in 2019 and gets an upper hand in Rajya Sabha also, then it will get the pending Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016 passed, which will grant citizenship to Hindu migrants with the exclusion of Muslim refuge seekers.
This dangerous game which our irresponsible politicians are trying to play is fraught with dangerous consequences to the spirit of the Indian Constitution and the very concept of Indian nation. This is a sure recipe for destabilizing India.