Rohingya row: Crucial litmus test for Assam

The final outcome of the Rohingya episode in India could shape the contours of the future policy on illegal migrants in the country whose numbers are swelling every year.  The Centre has indicated that it was against allowing the Rohingya to stay in the country. The matter comes to an end if the Supreme Court rules in favour of the community’s stay in India. But the government could still be in a quandary if the judgement makes a case for their deportation. Where will they be deported to? They are neither going to be accepted by Myanmar, nor by Bangladesh, and the latter appears to be upset over New Delhi’s initial silence on the turmoil in Arakan.

This will have a reverberation in Assam where a hectic exercise is on to identify illegal migrants with the update of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The task is expected to be completed by the year-end after many deadlines missed in the past. There are two vital issues about the register that is pending with the apex court — the validity of the certificates issued by gaon panchayats as documents to establish citizenship and if the cut-off date of March 24, 1971 is acceptable for Assam when the rest of the country is governed by a different law for citizenship. Therefore, the possibility of further changes in the norms of the NRC cannot be ruled out at this juncture.

Whatever the judgements, it is safe to assume that many millions would be detected as illegal migrants in Assam who had managed to procure legal documents and land through fraudulent means. This includes both Hindus and Muslims with the latter in greater numbers and found inhabiting reserve forests, grazing lands and riverine areas patronised by politicians for votes. A sizeable percentage among the Hindus are refugees like the Rohingya who have fled persecution in the neighbouring country. Refugees have been streaming into Assam since 1947, which increased during the War of Liberation (1971) following the genocide by the Pakistani army.    There is already a law that allows them to stay in India if they came to the country before 2015. Local organisations are already up in arms against granting citizenship to them in Assam. Can this law override the clause in the Assam Accord concluded by the government which says that all illegal migrants are to be detected and deported from the state?   There are many questions but few answers so far. As it appears from my interaction with officials in the past few months, the government is yet to delve deeper into the topic and understand the gravity of the situation.

A major chunk of the migrants in Assam consists of Muslims who have crossed the border for economic reasons. By no stretch of the imagination can they be equated with the Rohingya. New Delhi had never consistently broached the topic of deportation with Dhaka which was admitted by deputy high commissioner of Bangladesh Mahbub Hassan Saleh to the media at Imphal on August 17, 2012 during a seminar. Bangladesh has never accepted that its citizens have been illegally migrating to India, and so it is unlikely that it will allow the millions to return from Assam. Furthermore, there could be opposition and violence if there are efforts to clear the encroachments from government land and forests. A section among them could easily be lured towards radical ideas and outfits already spreading wings in Bangladesh and Myanmar. The intelligence is apprehensive of a boost to the Islamist movement in the entire region if the pro-Pakistan Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) assumes power in Bangladesh in the next general elections in 2019. It may be recalled that Assam was once referred to in a video released by Al-Qaeda along with Myanmar’s Arakan as the places where Muslims are being persecuted.

Nor can the migrants be transferred to any other part of the country. There are suggestions like issuing ‘work permits’ by organising them into a labour force, which is worth considering seriously. Others feel they should be deprived of Aadhaar Cards and other facilities as a means to force them out of the state without the government’s intervention (Aadhaar Cards will be issued from December in Assam). Answers to such serious matters can come from brainstorming sessions by involving stakeholders and they cannot definitely be decided by a few mandarins in New Delhi, some of whom do not have any inkling about the ground reality in the Northeast.

The author is a senior journalist in Guwahati and author of Rendezvous With Rebels: Journey to Meet India’s Most Wanted Men