INDIA’S IMMIGRATION QUANDARY
Can India ignore ‘illegals’ abroad, but move against ‘foreigners’ without being accused of practising double standards?
TWO processes at work for long place India on horns of dilemma that it cannot easily resolve. Its citizens are being accused of entering illegally or overstaying abroad, while it has just determined, tentatively though, that four million living on its soil in Assam may not be its citizens.
Can India ignore “illegals” abroad, but move against “foreigners” without being accused of practising double standards?
Both issues are sensitive, involving law and diplomacy and in Assam’s case, also sovereignty, demography, religion, inter-state relations — and politics, with parliamentary polls coming.
For over two millennia, India has had invaders and explorers, conquerors who killed and ruled from its northwest, traders who came by the sea and turned colonisers and priests who proselytised.
Many made India their home — and a cross-cultural cauldron that it is today.
Migration in the last two centuries that accelerated during the British colonial era has millions seeking greener pastures in distant lands. Many stayed on, but have maintained distant ties down the generations, unable or unwilling to shed the “Indian” label.
Thirty million view it as asset or liability, depending upon their success in their chosen homes and their perception of India.
If success stories abound, so does blowback as a consequence of this twin process. It has accelerated with de-colonisation, globalisation and now, its current “nationalistic” reversal. Welcome facilitator to some Indians, visa is a weapon against others.
Still under colonial rule, Jawaharlal Nehru enunciated an approach for Indian diasporas, anywhere. He encouraged those living in then Malaya and Singapore to organise themselves and seek better life. The message was that they should be good citizens wherever they are.
But he had to “accept” settlers from Ne Win’s Burma. Tamils returned from Sri Lanka, many after centuries. “Africanisation” hounded many Indians, particularly from Idi Amin’s Uganda.
Besides Nepal, northeastern India has settlers from Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand. Migration from densely populated Bengal was an organised movement during the British era. Now a festering dispute, where and from when does one draw the line?
Human migration is baffling. I have seen Ugandan Indians thrown out of British High Commission in New Delhi desperately fighting to get British citizenship, which most did.
Workers — and Indians are definitely not unique — don’t want to return, not even from West Asia’s conflict zones. Ask a person who has pawned home and farm to get a job abroad.
That, of course, is no excuse to enter illegally or overstay. At the India-Malaysia Track II Dialogue some years back, my positive take on bilateral ties was met by late Mahani Zainal Abidin, then Chief of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), with a discomforting reminder: “30,000 Indians are overstaying”.
Back home, Assam’s crisis stems from a Supreme Court order and alacrity with which the present government wants to implement the Assam Accord signed in 1985 to meet the demand of the Assamese who want to oust the “foreigners”.
The apex court ordered and monitored preparation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that includes those who can prove that they arrived in Assam prior to March 24, 1971, before neighbouring East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, declared independence. There is no estimate how many of 10 million who came to India during 1971 returned.
The exercise involving a complex population mix divides, families, including those who have lived for generations in Assam. It is difficult to detect a “foreigner” when a food ration card and residence certificate can be easily procured.
The government insists the NRC is provisional with scope for appeal and rectification. The Election Commission (EC), too, assures that those excluded will not be automatically disenfranchised. It will be a long process unlikely to be completed soon, assuming it will not be challenged legally and affected people will not protest.
As per the Accord, “foreigners” detected are to be deported to Bangladesh. But Dhaka does not accept that any of its citizens have gone to Assam illegally. As a wise diplomatic move, Delhi has kept Dhaka in the loop and has assured that deportation is not on the cards.
Why, then, is the hurry and why the tension? Circumventing government and EC assurances, fears are stalked by the likes of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah who called, in Parliament, those excluded “infiltrators” and invoked the spectre of “national security”. This is an euphemism for Muslims, also the reason why India does not accept the Rohingya.
Indian journalist Shekhar Gupta who reported it, recalls: In the killings of 1983 in the Brahmaputra Valley, about 7,000 people died. A little over 3,000 of these were Muslims slaughtered in Nellie in a few hours early on Feb 18 morning. The rest were scattered all over, and mostly Muslims. In the three places, those killed were almost all Hindu — and by fellow Hindus.
“The attacking Hindus were Assamese-speaking, those massacred were Bengalis. The linguistic and ethnic hatred was as vicious as the communal bloodlust. Where the two impulses got rolled into one, as in Bengali Muslim enclaves like Nellie, the story was simpler as Assamese Hindus killed Bengali Muslims. Everybody was at everybody else’s throat. The BJP, and a well-meaning Supreme Court, have stirred the same deadly cocktail.
“In 1985, 33 years ago, Rajiv signed the Accord with Assam agitators, promising the NRC on this basis. For various reasons, the NRC wasn’t made until now. Two more generations have grown since. Can you deport or disenfranchise them now?” he asks.
Migration from densely populated Bengal was an organised movement during the British era. Now a festering dispute, where and from when does one draw the line?
The writer is president of the Commonwealth Journalists Association (2016-2018) and a consultant with ‘Power Politics’ monthly magazine