Modi’s Mass Muslim Detention Scheme-By Serene Kasim & Saurav Sarkar
On August 31, the right-wing Hindu Indian government labeled 1.9 million of its residents as stateless. The official purpose given by the government was to root out undocumented people. But it is widely known that the true motivation was to displace Bengali Muslims from the northeastern Indian state of Assam. This was made obvious in speeches and promises made in the run-up to the recently held national elections that brought the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government back to power for a second consecutive term.
A noxious act in and of itself, the implications of the roundup are likely to be even more consequential for the future of the Indian polity, furthering a project of isolating and punishing Muslims while expanding detentions of undocumented people, Muslims, and others.
The instrument stripping 1.9 million people of rights is the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a now-arcane institution that was created in 1951 to identify who belonged to India at the time. It was reincarnated in 2014 and completed its work in Assam this year. 1.9 million people amounts to 6 percent of the total population of Assam and is two times the number of Rohingya refugees in neighboring Bangladesh.…
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/09/india-narendra-modi-bjp-assam-bengali-muslims-displaced
SEE ALSO:
- Explained: Why ‘final NRC’ is not final – By Abhishek Saha (Sep 23, 2019, Indian Express)
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/national-register-of-citizens-assam-nrc-final-list-6018982/ - Even Before NRC, Mumbai’s Bengali-Speaking Muslims Spent Years Trying to Prove Citizenship – By Sukanya Shantha (Sep 26, 2019, The Wire)
https://thewire.in/rights/mumbai-bengali-speaking-muslims-citizenship-detention - NRC exercise in West Bengal is a terrible idea – Editorial (Sep 26, 2019, Times of India)
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/nrc-exercise-in-west-bengal-is-a-terrible-idea/ - The litmus test for free speech – By Markandey Katju (Sep 16, 2019, The Hindu)
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-litmus-test-for-free-speech/article29424636.ece
