ISI INTENSIFIES CAMPAIGN TO SABOTAGE ASSAM NRC

way as took place during 1989-91 in Kashmir. A special effort has been launched by ISI proxies since 2015 to ensure that as many media outlets as possible carry false reports on India, while ignoring the situation in Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, there are also several campaigners who are working entirely independent of the ISI, but are active for reasons of personal conviction. A noted crusader for the right of migrants to settle in India, Harsh Mander, has several times warned international agencies and tribunals that “detention centres are be- ing prepared for lakhs of innocent people” because of religious reasons. He recently resigned as Special Monitor from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) because the agency refused to act on the basis of unsubstantiated information and wild allegations against authorities in India, but instead demanded proof of the many charges made by Mander. Others are asking why Harsh Mander has been silent not only on the situation in India’s neighbourhood, but in Europe, where the Roma as well as Muslim refugees are suffering discrimination on a scale unprecedented since the 1939-45 war across the world and its aftermath. Mander’s silence on Europe is disturbing those who wish to see the same standards applied across the board, rather than selectively. It is claimed by those familiar with his activities that former bureaucrat Harsh Mander “has an obsession with the Narendra Modi government and wants to discredit it globally”, although there is no evidence to back the oft-repeated claim that he is serving as a catspaw for the Congress party in its campaign against the Modi government. This effort acquired a new edge after Rahul Gandhi took over as Congress president.

A particular focus of the ISI is to try and send in hundreds of thousands of more Rohingyas into India via Assam and Bengal. In the latter state they get a much warmer welcome, thanks to the policy adopted by the Bengal government of welcoming rather than discouraging migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh. Several of the representations and news reports being sent to global agencies (including by the ISI-funded campaign to ensure immediate citizenship to all illegal immigrants) give particular attention to the Rohingyas, whom they wish to see resettled in India on a mass scale. False reports with morphed images have been circulated by ISI fronts purporting to show rapes and massacres of members of the minority community in Assam since Sonowal took over as the Chief Minister, the intention being to portray Assam as a “cauldron of hate”. The Delhi Press Club was the venue for a report by the Students Islamic Organisation of India made public on 23 June 2018. This alleged that “over three million will face deletion from the National Register of Citizens” purely on grounds of faith. Among those who have jumped on the Instant Citizenship bandwagon is S. R. Darapuri ( former IGP, Uttar Pradesh), who released alarming figures about the situation in Assam on 13 July 2018. It must be added that several of those active in the Instant Citizenship campaign are unaware of the ISI’s involvement in parallel movements working with the same objective as themselves. Both Mander and Darapuri are sincere citizens who have somewhere along the line begun to believe that their government is unreliable and even dangerous. Darapuri in particular has a record of working in defence of the rights of the underprivileged even while he was in service, and before he became a leading supporter of the “Instant Citizenship” campaign, effectively on behalf of illegal migrants.

Meanwhile, the ISI is activating its growing number of India-specific modules to create violence and mayhem not only in Assam, but in nearby states once the NRC gets completed and made public. The intention is to inflame the situation on communal grounds so as to create mindsets calling for a fresh partition of what is left of India after the partition of 1947. This is despite the fact that almost as many Bangladeshi Hindus as Muslims will be left out of the NRC in Assam because their entry was illegal. Fake news is being deliberately manufactured to generate fears and tensions such that they may explode into violence, as a consequence of which it is expected that Government of India will instruct the Assam government to scrap the NRC, and regularise the flood of illegal immigrants the way more than 13 million have already found refuge, many in Bengal but in other states as well. The ISI operation to sabotage the NRC is hitting high gear, and Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will, as a consequence, find it increasingly difficult to implement the pledge of his party to ensure that the NRC gets completed soon so that genuine citizens get separated from illegal settlers of whatever faith through proper identity papers.