PERSON OF INTEREST

This lawyerturnedpolitician is fighting the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for people’s right to live with dignity

When the first list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was released in Assam in 2018, it excluded 4 million residents. They had to reapply to be included and submit their biometrics. That day, lawyer Aman Wadud got a call from a 77yearold Bengali Hindu retired professor seeking help.

Wadud, 38, defends those Indians with long family histories in this country, who struggle to prove their citizenship in Assam’s quasi legal ‘Foreigners Tribunals’.

It is largely thanks to people like Wadud that we first realised something deeply problematic was happening in the border state. When he helped release Moinal Molla after 2 years, 11 months and 29 days of detention, he posted an image of the frail book binder with the caption: ‘Moinal Molla’s Long Walk to Freedom’. “By then I had read Nelson Mandela, and the post went viral,” he said.

He introduced a wider audience to a dystopian world where the most marginalised were labelled ‘Bangladeshis’ or ‘D (doubtful) voters’ for the tiniest discrepancies in their carefully preserved identity documents; and ‘detention centres’ where people were summarily taken after being declared ‘illegal migrants’, and where they stayed for years, estranged from families. In 2018, the Central government commissioned the country’s largest 15.5 acre Matia ‘transit camp’ in Assam. It opened last year.

People’s rights

Now, after a decade of fighting hundreds of citizenship cases pro bono, Wadud wants to “play a bigger role” and fights all types of constitutional law cases. He has joined the Indian National Congress and was recently appointed joint convenor of the party’s leadership development mission in Assam.

It all has to do with a thought that struck him when the professor called. Wadud told the gent that the country’s top court had ratified the NRC process and that, if he was on the list, he had no option but to submit his biometrics. “There was a pause, his voice choked, he broke down, saying ‘it hurts my dignity, I cannot submit my biometrics’. He said this repeatedly and it made me think, in the 45 years I had been working for citizenship, no one had spoken about dignity.”

Wadud asked clients who had been released from detention centres how the ordeal had made them feel. They listed anger, despair, resignation. Some viewed it as a test from god. “They didn’t speak about the indignity they faced,” Wadud said. “The professor had articulated

The auction is simpler than it looks. North’s fiveheart bid asked for the queen of trumps and South’s sixclub response promised the spade queen plus the king of clubs. The sixdiamond continuation was a grandslam try which South rejected.

South covered the jack of hearts lead with his thoughts in a way I hadn’t heard before.”

That’s around the time he began talking to people about how the state was violating their dignity. “It’s important to talk about constitutional rights to people, they are still very ignorant about their rights,” he added.

Foray into politics

Looking back at his own life, Wadud saw many points where his dignity had been attacked. Like the time a classmate in Guwahati called his teenage self a Bangladeshi. “It was an expression of indignity, to show me I’m not equal, I don’t have the same rights as other students in that class,” he said. When he moved to Bengaluru in 2005 to study law, he spent a large chunk of his money in the city’s bookstores, reading Nehru, Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Benjamin Franklin and Anne Frank.

At first, Wadud wanted to be a dummy’s queen, reasoning that he would make his slam if West started with either the king of hearts or the king of diamonds. When East proved to have both of those kings, the contract was defeated. South should have put some effort into analyzing the opening lead. Would West have led from a king after an auction where his opponents were looking for a grand slam? An auction like this calls for a