NRC in Assam or the talks doing rounds for the rest of India is nothing but to target Indian Muslims and make them second class citizens or slaves. The Assamese themselves are not original inhabitants as they had also migrated but they treat all others as foreigners who had migrated from other place to Assam. In India too, a majority of the people who are now citizens had migrated from other countries from time to time then why only the Muslims are targeted and why the establishment turns blind eye to non-Muslims either in Assam or elsewhere,” said Ravi Nair, Executive Director, South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre while addressing a public meet organised by JIH at its headquarters in the Capital on August 31.
Nair, after elaborating the history of migration in India and foreigner’s agitation in Assam, said that migration is a worldwide phenomenon and in India there are more than 40 crore migrant labourers across India. According to him, in case of Assam neither the Congress nor the BJP can claim high moral grounds. He questioned how the Rajiv Gandhi Assam Accord can be termed as a secular agreement when it is said to have been done in the backdrop of the Nellie massacre.
On the tribunal examining the veracity of the citizenship, he said the people at the helm of affairs are not competent enough and the tribunals should have been headed by retired judges who could have applied their minds without any bias or prejudices. Nair also raised question as to how the people can provide papers of two or even three generations when every year during floods hundreds and thousands of villages get washed away. Under those circumstances, will they protect themselves and their children or preserve documents?
While replying to a question raised by S.Q.R Ilyas, president of Welfare Party of India, as to what will happen to them who failed to prove their citizenship in the Tribunal, he said they can move the High Court and then the Supreme Court. But the problem is there are people in the High Court who are biased on this issue and how many of them can really afford to move to the Supreme Court, he added.
In his concluding remarks, he said when you cannot fight your case in courts then the only option left is to fight on the streets but that should be in a peaceful and democratic manner.