In a growing India, some struggle to prove they are Indians
As India's population explodes, some cannot prove they are Indian citizens (to grow to get bigger / to struggle to have difficulties)
L’Inde a récemment dépassé la Chine en devenant l’état le plus peuplé au monde. Au nord-est, dans la région de l’Assam, enclavée entre le Bhoutan, le Bangladesh et la Birmanie, cela a ravivé des politiques anti-migratoires, portées par le gouvernement du Premier ministre Narendra Modi. Près de deux millions de personnes, soit plus de 5 % de la population de l'Assam, risquent d'être déchues de leur citoyenneté si elles ne sont pas en mesure de prouver qu'elles sont indiennes. Le problème ? Le « registre des citoyens » ne recense que les personnes qui peuvent prouver, documents à l'appui, qu'elles ou leurs ancêtres étaient citoyens indiens avant 1971, année de la naissance du Bangladesh.
Krishna Biswas is scared. Unable to prove his Indian citizenship, he is at risk of being sent to a detention center, far away from his modest hut built of bamboo wood that looks down on fields lush with corn. Biswas
1. scared afraid / unable incapable / citizenship nationality / to look down on here, to have a view of / lush luxuriant / corn maize /
says he was born in India’s northeastern Assam state. So was his father, almost 65 years ago. But the government says that to prove he is an Indian, he should furnish documents that date back to 1971.
2. For the 37-year-old vegetable seller, that means searching for a decades-old property deed or a birth certificate with an ancestor’s name on it. Biswas has none, and he is not alone. There are nearly 2 million people like him — over 5% of Assam's population — staring at a future where they could be stripped of their citizenship if they are unable to prove they are Indian.
3. Questions over who is an Indian have long lingered over Assam, which many believe is overrun with immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. At a time when India is about to overtake China as the most populous country, these concerns are expected to heighten as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government seeks to use illegal immigration and fears of demographic shift for electoral gains in a nation where nationalist sentiments run deep.
4. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has promised to roll out a similar citizenship verification program nationwide even though the process in Assam has been put on hold after a federal audit found it flawed and full of errors. Nonetheless, hundreds of suspected immigrants with voting rights in Assam have been arrested and sent to detention centers the government calls “transit camps.”
5. Fearing arrest, thousands have fled to other Indian states. Some have died of suicide. Millions of people like Biswas, whose citizenship status is unclear, were born in India to parents who immigrated many decades ago. Many of them have voting cards and other identification, but the state’s citizenship registry counts only those who can prove, with documentary evidence,