No Land’s People indicts India’s NRC process
India’s northeastern state of Assam drew the attention of international media in August 2019, when a citizens’ register excluded nearly two million residents, effectively rendering them stateless. The National Register of Citizens (NRC), a labyrinthine bureaucratic exercise carried out under the supervision of India’s Supreme Court, was aimed at identifying undocumented immigrants in the state bordering Bangladesh….
More than two years later, the status of the 1.9 million excluded people is in limbo as the legitimacy of the NRC list has been questioned by the Assamese parties….
A new book, No Land’s People, published earlier this year by HarperCollins, tells the stories of people of Bengali descent, both Hindus and Muslims, who have been seen as outsiders. Their citizenship has been under question for decades. Written by Abhishek Saha, an Indian journalist, the book delves into how a bureaucratic exercise was billed as a solution to a sociopolitical problem that dates back to British colonial rule more than a century ago….
