CAA: BJP Wants to 'Save' Bengali Hindus in Assam but There Are Technical Issues

AASU stages a protest after the central government notified the rules for implementation of the CAA, in Guwahati, Assam.

(Photo: PTI)

In January 2019, when the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was first passed in the Lok Sabha, Assam saw widespread protests against the proposed law and the BJP. The next month, however, the Bill lapsed after it was not presented in the Rajya Sabha. Despite stiff opposition in Assam during that period, the saffron party promised to bring the Bill back after returning to power. And they kept their promise.

After sweeping the national elections in the Northeastern region, they reintroduced the Bill. The Bill was finally passed in Parliament and became an Act in December of that year. This led to protests marked by chaotic violence and arson. Subsequent retaliation by security forces left four dead in Guwahati. The BJP and its allies, however, overcame the damage of the anti-CAA agitation to register a decisive victory in the 2021 state elections. 

The CAA makes it easier for migrants belonging to six non-Islamic religions — Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians — from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to apply for Indian citizenship. The amendment’s purported aim is to easily grant Indian citizenship to those who have faced religious persecution in the three neighbouring Muslim-majority countries.

When the Modi government explored the possibility of combining the CAA with a pan-India NRC, it triggered widespread protests and heated debates as to whether the state could use the duo to snatch away the citizenship of Muslims.

As the well-known scholar of citizenship, Niraja Gopal Jayal points out the threat of the nationwide NRC coupled with the CAA showed that ‘the fig leaf of illegal immigration is being used to bring the citizenship of all Muslim citizens into question’ (emphasis original). However, in the face of protests —mainly led by Muslims — across the country against such a CAA-NRC combo plan, the BJP-led government eventually stepped back from any further rhetoric about it.

The BJP Has Been Very Vocal Against the Exclusion of Hindu Bengalis

In Assam, which has a long history of migration from what is now Bangladesh and opposition to it, the CAA ran into more troubles. Here, the Act sought to alter the very definition of the ‘foreigner’ based on religion, as opposed to the longstanding dominant Assamese nationalist narrative that has historically opposed both Hindu and Muslim migration from what is now Bangladesh.

The protests in Assam — led from the front by the Assamese nationalist student and youth organisations, and a peasants’ rights organisation — primarily opposed the provision of allowing Hindu ‘Bangladeshis’ into Assam through the new law and not the exclusion of Muslims or the supposed threat to the foundations of Indian secularism as was the argument of the protests elsewhere.

Instead, the argument was that the CAA threatens the culture, language and identity of the ‘indigenous’ Assamese people by allowing migrants from Bangladesh. 

Moreover, in Assam, where unique citizenship determination exercises are underway — the currently stagnant National Register of Citizens (NRC) and ongoing cases at the Foreigners’ Tribunals (FTs) — the CAA contradicts the now-accepted cut-off date to determine an Indian citizen in Assam. Citizenship determination exercises in Assam, both the NRC and the FTs, use 24 March 1971, as the cut-off, as per Section 6A of the Citizenship Act.

The particular Section was inserted into the country’s Citizenship Act following the six-year-long movement to ouster alleged ‘illegal’ migrants from Assam and led to the signing of the historic Assam Accord of 1985. But the CAA allows for granting citizenship to unauthorised non-Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India till 31 December 2014. 

Over 19 lakh people stand excluded from the NRC published in 2019.  Till December last year, around 1.6 lakh people have been ‘declared’ as ‘foreigners’ by the FTs and 96,000-odd people are marked as Doubtful in the state’s electoral rolls. These figures have overlaps owing to the entangled nature of the parallel citizenship determination processes in Assam. For instance, ‘declared foreigners’, people whose cases are pending at the FTs, and ‘doubtful voters’ and their descendants were excluded from the NRC as per rules. There is no official religion-wise data to say what percentage of people struggling in these exercises — that is trying and failing to prove ancestry in Assam before 24 March 1971 — are Hindus.

The BJP has been very vocal against the exclusion of Hindu Bengalis — a core voter base of the party — from the NRC. The party has consistently maintained that the CAA would be a panacea for the Bengali Hindus excluded from the NRC.

Just a day after the notification, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the press that the CAA would only benefit those (read non-Muslims) who had applied for the NRC and have been left out — and no one else. Here, an obvious question comes up: why would people who are anyway already eligible for Indian citizenship via Section 6A provisions need to go through the mechanisms of the CAA to gain citizenship?

A possible answer could be that citizenship determination systems have not always been fair to one and all. It has been well documented now by the works of journalists, academic researchers, and human rights lawyers and activists that the processes of the NRC and FTs have suffered from several structural and functional issues, which have often led to bona fide Indian citizens — including both Hindus and Muslims — being stripped of or be deprived of their citizenship rights.

Bengalis in Assam Will Find it Difficult to Prove Their Citizenship

The claim that the implementation of the CAA through its 2024 Rules will directly resolve the citizenship challenges faced by Bengali Hindus in Assam overlooks certain constraints brought to the fore by the Rules notified on Monday. It is still unclear as to how exactly the CAA will influence Assam's ongoing citizenship determination processes. The Rules do not provide any specific instructions for Hindus excluded from the NRC, facing citizenship cases in FTs, or marked as Doubtful Voters in Assam. Additionally, some applicants may find it difficult to provide the documents outlined in the Rules.

The application form for registering under the CAA provisions requires three kinds of supporting documents — first a document to prove that the applicant indeed hails from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan; second, to prove that the applicant has entered India before 31 December 2014; and third, an affidavit declaring the religion of the applicant and an ‘eligibility certificate’ signed by a representative of a ‘locally reputed community institution’.

Lawyers and activists point out that for many Bengalis in Assam who are caught in a struggle to prove their Indian citizenship, procuring and producing the first category of documents — listed under Schedule 1A in the Rules — might prove difficult. Many Bengali Hindus in Assam who face citizenship issues are of refugee descent, having migrated during and post-partition and in the two following decades, under dire circumstances, often leaving behind most of their possessions and carrying only essentials for survival.

As a result, they may lack documentation from their time in East Pakistan. Also, documentation practices at that time were anyway nowhere as robust as they are in today’s day and age. Arguably, more recent migrants might be in a better position to furnish such official documents issued in the three countries.

Typically, the documents such families of refugee background in Assam possess, are relief eligibility certificates, refugee registration certificates, migration certificates, and identity cards from refugee camps, which were obtained when they landed in India after arduous journeys. While these documents certify their status as refugees (or descendants of refugees) entering India from East Pakistan, they have not been listed under Schedule 1A of the rules as documents confirming their residence in East Pakistan. 

What Documents Will be Considered as Evidence? And Will Everyone Have Those?

It is unclear whether such refugee-related documents can be considered as evidence under Schedule 1A. The schedule lists nine documents, out of which seven need to be issued by authorities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, such as passports, educational certificates, government IDs, land records, and licenses. Of the remaining two documents, one is a permit issued by the FRRO in India, and the second (point number 8), interestingly, is "any document" that proves the applicant's ancestors were citizens of any of the three countries.

It is uncertain whether refugee documents fall under the category of “any documents”, and only the adjudication processes that ensue after applications are filled will tell how the state accepts or rejects people’s papers. Even if the refugee certificates are covered, there would be a large number of people who may not be able to produce such a document — would they be left out of the ambit of the CAA?

The Bengali Hindus of Assam who find themselves excluded from the NRC or have been ‘declared’ as ‘foreigners’ by the state’s FTs have essentially tried to prove their or their ancestors’ presence in Assam before 24 March, 1971, and failed. Now, as the Rules show, the CAA provisions expect them to prove their ancestry in and migration from Bangladesh to be granted citizenship under the amended law.

Moreover, can someone who is already eligible for citizenship under Section 6A (who can prove ancestry in Assam before 24 March 1971) apply now via the CAA provisions? Can someone whose case is pending or ongoing at an FT, can that person now claim relief via the CAA? On the other hand, it remains to be seen how many post-1971 non-Muslim migrants into Assam — that is those who have entered Assam between 24 March 1971 and 31 December 2014 — come up to apply under the CAA. For them, it would mean giving themselves up as post-1971 migrants into Assam who are not covered by the provisions of Section 6A. The Rules notified on Monday do not mention anything on such questions that are pertinent for Assam.

Notifying the Rules just ahead of the national elections, the BJP has made its political messaging over the CAA very clear. First, they claim to have corrected an alleged historical wrong against refugees and given minority refugees from the three neighbouring Muslim countries what they rightfully deserve in India. Second, as The Indian Express reported on Tuesday, the central government wanted to emphasise to its voters that they have delivered on their promise, ‘jo kaha, voh kiya’. 

Election posturing aside, it appears from the news reports of the celebration by Rajasthan’s refugee communities and West Bengal’s Matuas that the Act might indeed be successful in solving the citizenship issues of certain migrant and refugee communities. But in Assam, despite the arguments that the Act would settle the citizenship battles of Hindus as if like a magic wand, it remains to be seen how the implementation of the law progresses amid a tangle of existing legal and bureaucratic citizenship determination mechanisms.

(Abhishek Saha is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of 'No Land’s People: The Untold Story of Assam’s NRC Crisis'. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)