Citizens’ Rights Preservation Committee, Assam, organised a national convention to bring forth the issue of D-Voters or so called Bangladeshis in Assam. The convention took place at New Delhi in the Constitutional Club of India, on Tuesday, September 6. The CRPC was formed in the year 1979 under the leadership of Kalipada Sen to bring justice to the issue of the so-called illegal migrants in the state of Assam in India.
Various MPs, ex MPs, political leaders, media persons and other dignitaries attended the convention. The whole idea of this convention was to bring this pernicious issue before the people and the central government, which so far has remained oblivious to the miseries and woes of the grief stricken people of the area. But to our surprise, there was none from the mainstream media to cover the issue which in today’s context is of paramount importance. The people who are affected are generally the poor, including both Hindus and Muslims.
The President of the CRPC, Mr. Nripendra Saha presided over the convention and gave a brief introduction of the issue. The committee believes that there has been a large scale violation of human rights in the process of declaring people as D-Voters. For many decades there has been harassment of a large number of people on the grounds of religious and linguistic differences. There were many speakers at the convention to enlighten the listeners about the erstwhile oblivious issue of D-Voters and the first of them was Mr. Kamaluddin Ahmed, a member of CRPC. Mr. Ahmed, in his talk, highlighted the pitiful state of the D-Voters and explained that every Bengali speaking person is seen as a foreigner in Assam. The Bengali speaking has become synonymous with Bangladeshi.
There is a general perception that there are lakhs of Bangladeshis (illegal immigrants) in Assam which are likely to destroy the identity of the Assamese people. Hence the leaders of the Assam movement arouse passion and at the same time hatred against the Bengali speaking people. This fear and hatred is fuelled by giving absolutely absurd figures of the number of Bangladeshis which presumably will make Assamese people a minority in their own state and would destroy their language and culture.
So far there has been no consensus on the exact number of Bangladeshis in the area, some say it is 30 lakhs, others say it is 40 lakhs and the Governor of Assam said it was 90 lakhs in the year 1991. This means that 1 in every 3 person in Assam is a Bangladeshi, which is nothing but an emotional exaggeration without any empirical basis.
On this occasion Mr. Kamaluddin Ahmed released his book titled Assam’s Doubtful Citizens: Fact or Fiction. The book explains the whole of the problem, its genesis and proliferation. The book takes a dig into the issue and comes up with the factual information and follows a rational approach rather than an emotional one.
The exaggeration of the number of Bangladeshis in Assam has led to such an atmosphere that so far thousands of innocent Bengali speaking people were butchered at Nellie, Mukulmua, Chowlkhowa, Gohpur and in many other places. And all this finally led to the Assam Accord which was signed in 1985, which declared all the immigrants who have come on or before 24.03.1971, would be treated as Indian citizens.
A.R. Agwan, Secretary Social Democratic Party of India, drew attention of the listeners towards the conspiracy where people’s name are deliberately put wrong in their voter cards so that they cannot vote, hence stripping them of their constitutional right to vote. These people are not Bangladeshis, but their only crime is that they speak the Bangla language. This whole issue has been politicised and no one is bothered about the people who are suffering.
Another stark fact that popped up in the convention is that between 1997 to 31.1.2011 a total number of 2,21,936 D-Voters cases were referred to the Tribunals and out of these only 5577 D-Voters i.e. about 6.5 per cent cases were found to be foreigners liable to be deported, hence 93 per cent of the cases were fake and false but they were deprived of not only their voting rights but also of all other civil rights for a long period of time. Hence there has been a huge violation of the rights of the people who are very much Indian and the rightful citizens of our country. Still the predicament of the Bangla speaking people is far from the minds and sight of many.
Maulana Arshad Madani of Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind highlighted the plight of the people in Assam and talked about the endeavours of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind in bringing some respite to the sufferings of the people. Maulana talked about the pioneering work of the Jamiat where under the leadership of Fakhruddin Sahab they were successful in making an act where the person whose citizenship has been questioned will not be responsible for bringing the proofs for his citizenship; instead the one who has made the allegations will have to support his allegations with proofs. Hence the act turned out to be a relief for many as it had warded off the responsibility of proving from their shoulders and reposed it on the shoulders of the questioner. The Maulana went ahead and compared the situation of Assam and Bangladeshis as Israel and Palestine issue, where also the citizens of Palestine have been stripped of their basic rights.
An MP from CPM said that Assam is a multicultural state, and snatching away the basic rights from some people would not be right. He said not a single person of our country should be left out and feel that he is not the citizen of India. Another ex-MP from CPM called the governor of Assam, S. K. Sinha communal, partisan and anti-minority.
Syed Shahabuddin, an ex-MP and former ambassador, described the situation of Assam as multiple jeopardy. Shahabuddin felt sad for the sorry state of Assam and its residents and said that Assam is far from Delhi not only in terms of distance, but it is also very far away from our hearts and minds. The deportation of the people cannot take place without any agreement, so even after we declare 2-3 lakh people as Bangladeshi there is no point in putting them in detention camps as the Bangladesh government will not accept them as their citizens.
Kamal Farooqi, ex-chairman Delhi Minority Commission, reiterated that this issue is not a Hindu-Muslim issue, but brought back the attention again towards the statement of the governor of Assam where he exaggerates the number of so-called Bangladeshis and claims it as 90 lakhs. “Out of around 4 lakh people, only five thousand were proved to be immigrants and that too can be because they would not be able to present all the papers that the authorities have demanded from them,” said Farooqi. It should be noted that all the people whose nationality has been questioned are very poor people, living in squalor. These people are so poor that they are oblivious to the legal documents etc. as their whole day is spent trying to eke out and make the ends meet. Mr. Farooqi urged the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh to take some stern actions with regard to the issue that has grown into a monster in his own state Assam, from where he has won. Otherwise Dr. Manmohan Singh is also running the risk of being declared in the list of D-Voters as he himself is not an Assamese.
Ram Vilas Paswan, a Rajya Sabha member, promised to provide a helping hand in the cause. He assured the CRPC President, Mr. Saha and Chief Adviser, Mr. Hafiz Rasheed Chowdhry that he would raise the issue in the Parliament and will do as much as he can in this regard.
The General Secretary of Welfare Party of India, Mr. Qasim Rasool Ilyas said Congress is the real culprit for the prevailing ruckus in Assam.
Mr. Asrarul Haq, MP from Kishanganj, Bihar termed the plight of the people of Assam as 60 years of pain, agony and misery, starting from 1951. He reiterated that it is not an issue of Hindus or Muslims, but it is a matter of justice. He said that Bangla speaking is being considered a crime and demonised, just as wearing Kurta Pajama and a cap has been demonised. Some reports say that every day 6000 people migrate from Bangladesh and enter Assam (which is nothing but an emotional exaggeration). However if we go by this record then every year the number of immigrants would be in lakhs and hence in some years Bangladesh would have been empty, but that is not the case. Corruption is also rampant in Assam, where in order to get the birth certificate to prove the nationality, one has to cough up Rs. 10,000. And these people are poor, generally daily wage workers; hence one can understand how the poor people will manage to be abreast with the documents. Mr. Haq presented himself before the CRPC for any kind of help.
Plenty of cases have come in the convention where people belonging to India, and working in government offices have been declared as D-Voters. In some cases people were earlier not D-Voters but declared in the new list. In many strange cases some from the family are citizens of India and others are immigrants. There are lots of cases where father is a D-Voter, while his wife and children are not and vice-versa. And hence this issue does not affect only the D-Voter, but along with them it dearly affects the family members of that person. The D-Voters and their children are destined to face the problem of jobs, education and in any other sphere.
The convention proved to be an eye-opener for many enlightened people about the sorry state of the people in their very own country, about which they have remained oblivious for half a century.
Finally the CRPC President, Mr. Saha appealed to the democratic forces and well-meaning and right thinking individuals to come forward to play their effective role in bringing peace to Assam and to ensure justice to all.