Citizenship for Bengali Hindus will be difficult despite favourable laws

Silchar: On March 11, the Indian government, ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), announced the rules for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Passed over four years ago in 2019, the CAA awards first-track citizenship to migrants from six religious communities — Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, and Buddhists — who came to India facing religious persecution in their native land of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. 

The Muslims are, however, excluded from the CAA legislation. This led to sweeping protests in 2019 in the country in many states over the act’s “discriminatory nature” and for being “anti-Muslim”. 

The protests also turned violent in many parts as deaths were reported from alleged clashes between the protesters and security forces. 

The number of people who died across India in these alleged clashes with the security forces varies.

However, according to a 2020 report published by The Hindu, over 30 people died in anti-CAA agitation across the country in the anti-CAA agitation, including five in Assam. 

But fast forward to 2024, the announcement of the CAA notification, though, has given a fillip to the protests, they are now mostly watered down and sporadic amid beefed-up security measures and a crackdown on protesters.

But for the communities who are going to benefit from the CAA, the announcement meant an end to years of waiting for Indian citizenship in refugee camps. 

“This is like real Ram Rajya for us,” a Pakistani Hindu refugee living in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur was quoted by PTI saying after the CAA announcement. 

For Matuas, a community of Hindu Bengali refugees in West Bengal who came from east Bengal and later named east Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the CAA notification rang in as their “second Independence Day”. 

And, so was the case for 78-year-old Monindra Das, a Bengali Hindu, in Assam’s Katigorah, a village on the fringes of the Indo-Bangladesh border in the Cachar district. 

In 2015, Das was first declared a “foreigner” by a Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) in Silchar, the administrative headquarters of Cachar. 

It was an ex-parte order, meaning he did not appear for two hearings, so the FT bench declared him a foreigner. 

Now out on bail after spending two years in a detention Center in Silchar from 2019 to 2021, Das reports to the Katigorah police station every Monday.  

The only way his life can have a turnaround is through citizenship under CAA, he told EastMojo.

“If Modi [Prime Minister Narendra Modi] brought a law [CAA] that could relieve me of my years of suffering, then I cannot thank him more,” Das, who is now frail, said, folding his hands.

“We live or die, Modi is our only support.”

However, while there is a celebration in Das’s household over the announcement of the CAA rules, on the other side of the Barak River that flanks Das’s house, there is still a simmering protest against CAA in the Assamese-speaking Brahmaputra Valley. 

The Assamese nationalist groups who are spearheading a rather lukewarm protest against CAA think the law will open doors in Assam for an illegal influx from Bangladesh which will be a “threat to the indigenous identity of Assamese”.

The Janus-faced rules

In the meanwhile, the rules announced under CAA are courting mixed reactions with experts saying the rules are not going to help the Hindu Bengali migrants in Assam, especially those Bengali Hindus among the over 19 lakh people altogether who were left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). 

The NRC was a state-wide updation exercise of the 1951 NRC in Assam, carried out in 2015 to identify illegal immigrants in Assam. 

Of the 19 lakh people excluded, seven lakh were Muslims, and five lakh were Bengali Hindus, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told News Live. 

Additionally, two lakhs were Assamese Hindu groups, including Koch Rajbongshis and other sub-classes, and 1.5 lahks were Gorkhas. 

Sarma, however, did not give the figure of the rest of the 3.5 lakh people and the community they belong to. 

The rules for CAA which followed the completion of NRC are divided into two sections: schedule IA and schedule IB.

As per rules under Schedule IA, an applicant who wants to apply for citizenship through CAA provisions has to furnish documents such as a passport, birth certificate, educational certificate, and land or tenancy record among others of them or their parents from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan. 

The rules under schedule IB also ask the applicant to produce documents related to their entry to India before 31 January 2014 among others. 

Santanu Borthakur, a senior advocate practising in the Gauhati High Court, told EastMojo that there is little likelihood that these rules will help the Bengal-origin Hindus obtain Indian citizenship under new CAA rules.

“These rules are like chimera,” Borthakur said. 

“The documents that the government is seeking under Schedule IA rules such as a copy of passport, birth certificate, and identity documents among others issued by the government of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, I do not think 99% of the Bengali Hindu population have them.”

These rules also make no provisions for any relaxation, he added. 

“These are mandatory rules, meaning they have to abide by them.”

Most people that we spoke to in Bengali-speaking Barak Valley also echoed a similar sentiment. Most did not have the documents mentioned in Schedule IA and Schedule IB.

Abhijit Choudhry, who is an advocate with the human rights movement, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), told EastMojo, “I have seen the documents of 20,000 people across Assam who are marked doubtful voters and are declared foreigners by the FTs. Of these 20,000 people, only 2-3 people have some of these documents.”

However, for those who possess some documents that certify their migration from Bangladesh, the ambiguity over the validity of these documents remains unresolved. 

Take for example the case of Monindra Das, quoted previously, who has a relief certificate given to his father, Raichand Das, in 1964 when his family crossed the Bangladeshi border and took refuge in Dolchera, a quaint border village, on the Indian side in Cachar. 

This is the “only thing left for us to get Indian citizenship,” Das told us in his tumble-down house. 

But the path to citizenship for Das despite his document, according to experts, is still uncertain.

“Nowhere do the rules mention that a refugee or relief certificate is a valid document to obtain Indian citizenship,” Choudhry explained.

“The possession of such documents will not help people to be eligible for Indian citizenship,” he added. 

‘I will never apply’

Barely one km from the Indo-Bangladesh border in Katigorah is Anjali Rai’s home. 

Rai was born and raised in Katigorah and does not know “what is on the other side of the border.”

“Then why does the government ask us to show documents from Bangladesh,” the 50-year-old asked, with visible reluctance. 

Her reluctance towards the new law [CAA] stems from her understanding of the laws and pitfalls of applying for citizenship through the CAA. 

“The rules want me to provide documents from Bangladesh to be eligible for Indian citizenship under this law,” Rai said, who was left out of the NRC. 

“So, how can I show documents from a country I have never been to?”

Her dilemma surrounding the CAA is one that experts feel is prevailing among the Bengali Hindus. 

Anti-NRC activist, Kamal Chakraborty from Silchar, says that Bengali Hindus like Rai find themselves in a catch-22 situation. 

According to him, their reluctance towards citizenship application through CAA betrays the dual-faced nature of these rules. 

“The rules are clear for them,” he said. 

“These people are first fighting their cases in the FTs, proving themselves as Indians. And, now they have to show documents to prove themselves as Bangladeshis. They will be incriminating themselves if they apply for citizenship through CAA.”

Rai agrees with Chakraborty. Indian citizenship through the ways of showing Bangladeshi documents is never on her mind.

“Even my brother who took his life will not apply for citizenship this way,” she said, her voice fading. 

Her brother Arjun Namshudra took his life in 2013 after he was declared a D-voter. 

She added: “My father and forefathers lived and died here and I live and will die here.”

“I can never be a Bangladeshi to be an Indian.”

So far only one person from the Barak Valley has applied for citizenship through CAA, Sarma said.

The discord 

The Bengali civil society groups both in the Brahmaputra and Barak Valley have been divided on the new CAA rules. 

Amritlal Das, the general secretary of Sara Asom Bengali Oikyo Monch, a collective organisation for Bengali-speaking minorities in Assam, says that there is indeed a need for CAA, “but the citizenship for Bengali Hindus should be unconditional given their partition history in Assam.”

That the Bengali Hindus should be given “unconditional citizenship” is a view that is shared by these linguistic Bengali organisations in Assam cutting across political ideology.

These organisations also feel that the Bengali Hindu community — a strong electoral support for the saffron party in the state — is let down by the BJP-led government both in the Center and the state. 

“The CAA rules that the government framed are not made for Bengali Hindus. These rules are a trap to mark out the Bengali Hindus living in India,” said Sadhan Purakaystha of the Silchar citizenship advocacy group, Citizens’ Rights Preservation Committee.

Purakaystha also added that some of Sarma’s recent statements to the media expose “the actual design of these rules”.

Amid anxieties and protests over CAA by Assamese nationalist groups, Sarma has recently said that he will be the first to resign “if a single person who has not applied for NRC gets citizenship.” 

Days later, he said, “It has been four days since the rules for implementing the CAA were notified. There is not a single application on the portal in Assam.” 

Sarma’s statements can be in the context of placating the anger of these Assamese nationalist groups, according to Purakaystha and others. 

“He is trying to appease the sentiments of the Assamese Jatiyotabi (Nationalist) groups,” Purakaystha said.

“The CAA is a 100% betrayal by the BJP,” he added.

Other Bengali Hindu groups in Assam affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the parent organisation to India’s ruling BJP — also echo Purakaystha’s views.

While the CAA is a welcome move for the Hindu Bengalis “we are yet to figure out who the idiot is who framed these rules this way,” said a member of the RSS-affiliated All Assam Bengali Hindu Parishad (AABHA) on condition of anonymity. 

“In the meanwhile, all those who want to apply for citizenship cannot even turn to the next page of the application form without submitting these documents.”

When asked to comment on Sarma’s recent statements, they added, “Himanta Biswa Sarma is busy appeasing the Assamese nationalists.”

“The CAA is nothing but a lollipop for the Bengali Hindus. We demanded unconditional citizenship, but these rules are not going to help the Hindus to get citizenship at all.”

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