Election in Pincodes: Citizenship quandary deepens fault lines of identity

The cacophony this generates has only gotten sharper over the past month as a bevy of politicians hit the campaign trail, attempting to connect to each of the 70,000-odd residents of this ancient town in lower Assam that sits at the head of a confluence dominated by the mighty Brahmaputra. Roads have become more congested as street-corner canvassing takes hold, and motorbike rallies are zipping through its few avenues. Even the calmness of the night is now pierced by loudspeakers blaring campaign songs, often fitted on rickshaws and autos for maximum outreach.

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But the election fever hasn’t gripped Sahida Bibi. The gentle lapping of the Brahmaputra water on its shore here is undisturbed, and the 53-year-old says no candidate or their supporter has reached the village.

“No one has approached us. But we will go out and vote,” she said, determined to make her voice heard on an issue that most of her fellow countrymen take for granted but one that has upended her life – citizenship.

It was a month after the Assam assembly polls in April 2011, when she and her twin sons, who were just a few days old at that time, were arrested on charges of being foreigners, and put in a detention centre in Kokrajhar district. The arrest came 13 years after a foreigners’ tribunal, a quasi-judicial body, declared Bibi a foreigner in 1998 in an ex-parte order. At the time, Bibi claims, she didn’t even know of the modalities of what that could entail.

A month-and-a-half after her arrest, one of Bibi’s sons, Nazrul, died in the detention camp from respiratory complications, allegedly aggravated due to lack of medical facilities. Though she was declared an Indian 10 months later in March 2012 after the Gauhati high court directed the tribunal to hear her case anew, the loss was irreparable.

Her husband, who sold off the family land to fight the legal battle, died soon after. Today, Bibi makes a living by rolling bidis at a factory near her home. Her other son, Nabizur Islam, studies in Class VI in a nearby school. “I still have nightmares about those days in detention when I had to lose my son,” said Bibi.

She is not alone. In Assam, a person can be declared a foreigner if they or their ancestors fail to show that they were residents of the state or another part of the country before March 24, 1971, a date fixed by the Assam Accord of 1985. Those who fail to prove their ancestry and location are sent to detention centres. But sometimes documents aren’t enough. Bibi’s father was included in the 1951 National Register of Citizens, which was prepared to detect illegal immigrants in Assam, and his name was also present in electoral rolls prior to 1971. Yet, she found herself the subject of an investigation, and eventual detention.

“Cases like this are common in Dhubri, where people get tagged as foreigners and spend time in detention centres. While some are able to prove their citizenship, others are not that lucky and some even die while in detention. In many of these cases, people fail to get the notices sent to them to prove their citizenship and they are declared foreigners in ex-parte judgements passed by the tribunals,” said Masud Zaman, a senior advocate in the Gauhati high court.

This thorny question of citizenship and illegal immigration has animated Assam’s politics for close to half a century. It is these concerns that fueled the six-year-long Assam agitation between 1979 and 1985 and led to the deaths of thousands of people, before the tripartite Assam Accord drew a line under the violence.

Yet, anxieties simmered, especially in lower Assam, which shares a proximate (and sometimes porous) boundary with Bangladesh. The revised National Register of Citizens was ordered to allay these concerns. When it was made public in August 2019, it left out 1.9 million applicants, putting a question mark on their citizenship. The two-step process that was monitored by the Supreme Court was mired in bureaucratese and allegations of opacity, leaving all sides dissatisfied. The final list is yet to be notified by the Registrar General of India and a slew of petitions against it are pending in the top court. This maze of litigation has prevented unsuccessful applicants from taking measures to get their names listed.

This is an unfolding humanitarian story in Assam, one that has sharply pitted the ruling BJP-Asom Gana Parishad alliance against the Congress and parties such as the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF). But this time, citizenship is also a key theme in the general elections due to the BJP’s push for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA — it fast-tracks citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian communities who entered India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh on or before December 31, 2014 – and its repeated invocations of the bogey of the undocumented migrant to underline its muscular national security credentials.

History and politics

Surrounded on three sides by the Brahmaputra and Gangadhar rivers, Dhubri has been an important part of Assam’s history for centuries. Considered the gateway to Assam, the Muslim-majority district has an eclectic mix of people and is an important business centre.

The region shares a 61km boundary with Bangladesh, most of which is along the Brahmaputra as it enters the neighbouring country and is filled with numerous chars (sand bars) making it difficult for security forces to patrol and easier for undocumented immigrants to cross over or smuggle goods ranging from cattle to drugs.

The Dhubri Lok Sabha seat is one of the three among 14 in Assam where Muslims are in majority; since Independence, it is one of a handful of constituencies across India where the parliamentarian has always been a Muslim. Before last year’s delimitation exercise, which saw a massive redrawing of boundaries of the state’s 126 assembly and 14 parliamentary seats, there were 10 assembly constituencies across three districts under the Dhubri Lok Sabha seat. But now it has 11 assembly seats – four new ones added and three old ones removed – spread across five districts.

Delimitation has also increased the number of voters in Dhubri. In 2019, the constituency had 1,858,566 voters. But now it has jumped to 2,643,403 — a 42% increase in five years. This has caused fevered speculation around the possibility of gerrymandering and its potential impact on voting patterns this time around.

For over three decades between 1971 and 2004, Dhubri was a Congress stronghold. But since 2009, Badruddin Ajmal, the perfume baron who founded the AIUDF in 2005 with a mass base among Bengali-speaking Muslims, many of whom migrated to the region from erstwhile East Pakistan, established a vice-like grip on the seat.

This time, the 68-year-old three-time MP is facing a tight contest with former Congress minister, Rakibul Hussain, and Jabed Islam of the AGP, a partner of the BJP.

The Congress hopes to take advantage of the twin underlying currents in the debate on citizenship – language and religion – and blames the state government of having targeted Muslims under the guise of controversial drives such as those against child marriage.

“People in Dhubri have been facing atrocities by the BJP government under various charges including child marriage, fake encounters and even razing of houses on minor grounds. That’s why this time voters have decided to back Congress so that they can live in peace and with self-respect,” said Congress candidate Hussain.

In his campaign rallies, Hussain, who hails from Nagaon district and represents the Samaguri seat in the assembly, highlights an alleged alliance between the AIUDF and the BJP, underlining how Ajmal never took up causes such as NRC or foreigner tribunals.

But it’s not easy to unseat the man whose businesses are the financial engines of the town.

“The Congress is investing a lot of money and resources in Dhubri, but Ajmal will win comfortably in the end. People in Dhubri are aware how leaders of Congress’s alliance partners in Assam — Raijor Dal and Assam Jatiya Parishad — wanted 100% reverification of the NRC. It shows that they question the identity and citizenship of Bengali speaking Muslims. Therefore, voters won’t back Congress,” said Md Aminul Islam , an AIUDF lawmaker.

A proxy battle

The question of citizenship is an election issue on the ground largely in two states. In West Bengal, the Matua community – a quasi-religious sect comprising largely of Dalit people who moved to India from erstwhile East Pakistan around the time of Partition and for roughly two decades afterwards – is one of the targeted beneficiaries of CAA.

And in Assam, a state where tensions have simmered over questions of indigeneity, language and religion, citizenship is a key campaign issue throughout the province, especially in the Bengali-speaking Barak valley and tracts of lower Assam, where Bengali-speaking Muslims live in large numbers.

But the figure of the illegal immigrant has a national footprint. In rally after rally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah have spelt out the “no-nonsense” approach of the BJP government to illegal immigration, contrasting that with the Opposition’s allegedly lax stance. The Opposition, in turn, has alleged that this is a proxy attack on Muslims.

In Dhubri, a town largely dominated by Bengali-speaking Muslims, this debate has cast an all-too-real shadow. For months, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma repeatedly said that the BJP didn’t want votes from “miyas” for the next 10 years, using a pejorative term that refers to Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam. “When elections come, I will request them (miyas) not to vote for us,” Sarma said in October last year.

In March, Sarma again said that the BJP will win 13 of the 14 seats in Assam, but not Dhubri. “We don’t want to win there (Dhubri). Whether they offer garlands or criticise me, we don’t want to win there. I will not even go there to campaign,” the CM said.

That changed on Thursday when Sarma travelled to Dhubri for the first time during this campaign and addressed three public meetings at Gauripur, Bilasipara and Golakganj, three of the 11 assembly seats under the Lok Sabha constituency.

Pitched campaign 

Lost in this polarised environment are a host of other local issues that shape the lives of residents.

Twenty-year-old Abdul Baten will vote for the first time in these elections at Chala Kura-Part II village in a sandbar (char) on the Brahmaputra around 12km from Dhubri. Though he was born there, Baten and his family shifted to the Madhusoulmari village on the outskirts of Dhubri town 12 years ago after nearly 20 bighas of their land was lost due to erosion.

“We were forced to move out as our land had disappeared because of erosion. We had to rebuild our lives in the new place. These days my three elder brothers are engaged in small businesses while I work in a timber shop. There are many more families in the ‘chars’ who have lost their lands and had to shift elsewhere,” said Baten.

Along with annual floods, erosion of land along the banks of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries is one of the major problems faced by millions in Assam. According to studies, the state has lost around 7-7.5% of its total landmass (around 4,000 sq km) since Independence, resulting in hundreds of villages and small towns disappearing, and rendering thousands homeless every year.

Another first-time voter, Samim Ali, is pursuing his graduation from Gauripur PB College. But instead of staying back, he wants to leave his village and his family comprising his father (a tailor), mother, two younger brothers and a sister.

“Lack of jobs and opportunities is one of the biggest issues in Dhubri. I wanted to join the police, but since my height isn’t enough, I will look for a 3rd or 4th grade government job,” said the 20-year-old.

Citizenship is also tied to everyday troubles in the region. Take Akbar Ali, a 35-year-old resident of Majerchar Chalakura village, a sandbar on the Brahmaputra located 8km from Dhubri town.

“Getting a land patta (a legal document detailing ownership and registration of a plot) is my most important concern. We have 12 bighas of land in char, but despite running around for the past few years, I haven’t been able to get the patta,” said the man who owns a small shop selling plastic furniture.

The state government has a flagship scheme called Mission Basundhara, which allows regularisation of land held by farmers and other occupants without having any pattas. As per the rules, a person or family should be residents of Assam for at least three generations – a condition similar to the NRC – and have been in continuous occupation of a plot for a minimum of three years.

Akbar Ali says he is eligible under the scheme but that his claims remain pending. The Opposition says that the BJP government is targeting Bengali-speaking Muslims without any proof. Sarma’s response, though, is categorial – Bengali-speaking Muslims can’t avail benefits of Mission Basundhara as they aren’t indigenous to the state.

As the polling day of May 7 nears, thousands of migrant workers are pouring back into town from all parts of Assam and the rest of the country. But Abubakkar Siddique won’t be one of them.

The 35-year-old, who hails from Adabari village, was declared a foreigner by a tribunal in Jorhat in 2016 which held that the documents he possessed, including a voter card, were not sufficient to prove that he is an Indian. Siddique spent nearly three-and-a-half years in a detention camp in Jorhat before his family could secure bail in March 2020 after selling their land. The conditions of bail stipulated that Siddique will have to present himself every week at the Sadar police station in Jorhat, 500km away from Dhubri. “I worked in Jorhat as a construction labourer when some people came to the site one day and demanded we prove we are Indians. Despite my papers, I failed,” he said.

He now works as a mason in Jorhat, pining to meet his ailing father, a wife and three children. But a trip requires at least four days and ₹3,000. Siddique has neither money nor time. “I don’t know how my life ended up like this.”