PERSPECTIVES
Discourse of Doubt
Understanding the Crisis of Citizenship
in Assam
Nazimuddin Siddique
The citizenship crisis in Assam
is unfolding through two
major mechanisms, namely the
National Register of Citizens and
the “Doubtful voter” (D-voter).
While the NRC has attracted
much of the public attention,
the process of categorising
D-voters is largely functioning in
a silent manner and has caused
unprecedented damage to the
lives and livelihoods of millions
of marginalised people of the
state. The D-voter is a political
tool solely based on baseless
doubts and is used by the
government to deprive lakhs of
marginalised people of a series of
constitutional, political and social
rights, including the right to vote.
Nazimuddin Siddique (nazim10dream@gmail.
com) is an independent researcher, formerly
with the Department of Sociology, Gauhati
University, Guwahati.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 9, 2019
I
n the Goalpara district of western
Assam, on 30 June 2017, some of the
local people were leading a protest
march. The protesters were able to march
only a few hundred metres before they
faced a blockade by a group of armed
police and jawans of the Central Reserve
Police Force (CRPF). While the protesters
were peaceful, the police, without ask-
ing any questions, forcibly snatched the
main banner from the protestors, held
the collars of a few protesters, and then en-
quired whether they had any permission
to hold the protest. In response to this, one
of the protestors replied that they had
informed the administration. On hearing
this, the police started beating the people
brutally. Following this, the mob of pro-
testors got dispersed. However, a small
group of people got back together and
started pelting stones at the police. At that
moment, the police opened fire promptly
on the unarmed protestors, which resulted
in the death of a young man. Herein, the
police without adhering to the proce-
dures of the rules of engagement to dis-
perse the mob such as blank-fire, use of
rubber bullets and tear gas, etc,1 directly
shot a person dead.
The protest on 30 June 2017 was orga-
nised against the long-standing atroci-
ties unleashed on the people of the state,
especially on the minorities, through
a state-constructed mechanism called
“Doubtful voter” (D-voter). Under this
phenomenon of categorically marking the
people as D-voters, the identity of lakhs
of people in Assam has been jeopardised,
thereby acutely affecting their survival in
the state. This has brought forth a crisis of
the citizenship of the minorities in the state.
Therefore, the article attempts to discuss
the oppressive structure of the D-voter
category and how this mechanism has
vol lIV no 10
impinged the lives and livelihood of a
large number of people in Assam.
Deconstructing the ‘D-voter’
D-voter is a category that surfaced on the
electoral rolls of Assam on 10 December
1997. Sanjib Baruah terms this category
as “an indigenous way of handling the
controversy on the enfranchisement” of
the alleged foreigners (1999: 160). This
category was contrived by the Election
Commission of India (ECI) under the
advice and collaboration of the then Asom
Gana Parishad (AGP) government, to dis-
enfranchise those citizens who are alleg-
edly “doubtful immigrants” from Bangla-
desh. Initially, about 2.35 lakh names were
labelled as D-voters. As per the latest offi-
cial statistics, there are 1,25,155 D-voters,2
a majority of whom are Muslims and some
are Hindu Bengalis and Koch–Rajbongshis.
The people who are marked as D-voters
have been deprived of a series of rights,
including voting rights, which is a funda-
mental right in any democracy. A depri-
vation of this seriousness of a large num-
ber of citizens is institutionalised and
sanctified by the state.
This marking in the electoral lists,
which shakes the very existence of citi-
zenship of an individual, is done in a com-
pletely arbitrary and anomalous manner.
Allegedly, the border policemen of the state
have been pressurised by their superiors
to mark approximately 10–20 people as
doubtful citizens3 in every village,
especially in lower Assam. Individuals are
arbitrarily marked as doubtful without
any systematic enquiry; no notice is issued
against people by the police officials before
marking them as doubtful citizens.4 As a
consequence, in many instances, one or
two member(s) of the family would be
marked with the letter “D,” while the rest
of them remain undoubted Indians.5 For
instance, in a family if one female is
marked as a “doubtful” citizen, it is not
necessary that all her family members
such as her parents, children or her hus-
band, if any, would be marked as D-voters.
Or, in an other case, a son/daughter could
be identified as the “doubtful” citizen,
while their entire family, including their
parents, could be undoubted citizens. Many
25
PERSPECTIVES
serving and retired military and paramili-
tary personnel too have become the vic-
tims of this mechanism (Islam and Hus-
sain 2017). Doubting the citizenship of
these serving and retired military per-
sonnel, who are mostly Muslim, has
spawned widespread controversy in the
region. Hitherto, the Ministry of Defence
has not taken any action to protect the
dignity of these in this context, serving
and retired soldiers. The D-voter catego-
risation can be removed from the voter
list only after an order by the Foreigners
Tribunals (FTs) or by a court of law. The
high court of the state in an order has
made it clear that the civil courts of the
state do not have jurisdiction over the
cases regarding D-voters.6 Presently,
Assam has 100 FTs to deal with the cases
of the D-voters. The tribunals were set up
in the state under the Foreigners (Tribu-
nals) Order of 1964.
The phenomenon of the D-voter can-
not be understood in isolation without
understanding the long-standing citizen-
ship question of Assam, which came under
the focus during the peak of the infamous
Assam Movement. The flag-bearers of the
movement argued about the presence of a
massive number of suspected “illegal im-
migrants” from Bangladesh in the state.
The political elites with the help of bour-
geois media developed a “fear psychosis”
in the minds of the common Asamiya
people. Following this, Asamiya people
raised their voice against the alleged “il-
legal immigrants” of the state. The critics
of the movement call it “chauvinist and
undemocratic in content and proto-fas-
cist in its methods” (Guha 1980: 1707).
The movement inconclusively concluded
with numerous deadly massacres of the
minorities in places such as Nagabandha,
Kampur, Chaparmukh and Chaulkhowa.
The most infamous in this series of mas-
sacres was the Nellie massacre where
more than 4,000 Muslims, mostly women
and children, were butchered to death
in a single day (Hussain 1993; Mander
2008; Siddique 2014). Though the move-
ment ended, the harassment of the mi-
norities continued unabated under the
garb of targeting “illegal immigrants.”
In 1983, the Indira Gandhi government
introduced the Illegal Migrants (Deter-
mination by Tribunals) (IMDT) Act to
26
safeguard this section of marginalised
people from unnecessary harassments
to some extent. One of the main features
of the act was that it was the responsibil-
ity of the complainants to prove or sub-
stantiate their claim, if they complain
claiming someone to be a foreigner. This
act was valid only for Assam and, in
2005, the Supreme Court quashed it.7
After the quashing of the act, the crisis
of citizenship of the minorities in the
state deepened further.
Agonising Legal Battles
In the previous section, we have discu-
ssed how the method of marking individ-
uals as D-voters is utterly arbitrary and
unsystematic. To one’s surprise, the tag of
D-voter thus imposed on an individual’s
name can only be removed through an
order by the FTs. In case any FT finds an
individual to be doubtful, it immediately
throws them into jail, officially termed as
a “detention camp.” At present there are
about 900 D-voters, and about 2,000 de-
clared foreigners languishing in the jails.
It would not be out of place to accentuate
that the jails have been used as detention
camps in Assam. The government at pre-
sent is using six jails, namely, Kokrajhar,
Goalpara, Tezpur, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, and
Silchar for the imprisonment of D-voters.
The legal battles to prove one’s citizen-
ship and to get rid of the “D-voter” tag is
not easy and is fraught with unending
hurdles, and the economic incapacity of
the victims makes it all the more painful.
The intricacies in fighting these cases are
manifold and varied. Most of the names of
the people in the voter lists spanning
across various decades do not unerringly
match with each other, due to minor
spelling mistakes, typing errors, or bec-
ause of the errors in the surnames. For
instance, a person’s name is mentioned in
the voter list of 1965 as Joylal Shaikh,
while in the voter list of 1960 his name is
mentioned as Joynal Abedin, and again
in the voter list of 1993 the same person is
mentioned as Joynal Ali.8 It must be
underscored here that such name-related
anomalies are rampant in the voter lists.
Another kind of abnormality that rem-
ains in the voter lists is related to the age
of the individuals. In a large number of
cases the fieldworkers/officials of the
MARCH 9, 2019
ECI, recorded the ages of the voters erro-
neously. For instance, the age of an indi-
vidual in the voter list of 1965 is men-
tioned as 19, but the age of the person in
the voter list of 1970 is mentioned as 35,
when the same should have been 24.
These government-created anomalies in
most of the cases emerge as a huge im-
pediment for the victims in proving their
citizenship in the FTs. The most unfortu-
nate victims in these cases are women.
These women, by and large, belong to a
socio-economically weaker section of the
society and have been the victims of child
marriage.9 After marriage, in most of the
official documents including the voter
lists, the names of their husbands are, by
and large, used as the guardian’s name
and, in the process, the official docu-
ments of these women become some-
thing which is devoid of their parents’
names. Moreover, these women, under
the influence of social coercion, adopt the
surnames of their husbands. A significant
number of women also migrate to newer
constituencies from their original constit-
uency, owing to their marriage. These
women in a new setting with new sur-
names, become more vulnerable and fall
prey to the doubts of the election officials.
Most of these women are either illiterate
or early school dropouts, and therefore,
they could not appear in the board exams
and so do not possess a board certificate
or an admit card10 wherein their parents
names are mentioned. Thus, most of
these women do not have any official
document where their names are linked
to their parent’s names. However, the irony
is, the FTs while scrutinising the D-voter
cases of these women, seek only those
documents that establish linkage to their
parents, which is indeed difficult for the
victims to produce. These women can
produce the panchayat certificates where
their names are linked to their parents
respectively; however, the FTs are largely
reluctant in accepting that kind of docu-
ment. And, therefore, these women remain
in deep risk of imprisonment.
A significant number of the East Bengal-
origin Muslims11 of Assam live in the chars,
and are subjected to repeated riverbank
erosions, which force them to migrate
from one place to another. Shifting of
the living space brings variation in
vol lIV no 10 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

their present address contrary to that
mentioned in their official documents,
which ultimately becomes a cause of fur-
ther complication in proving their citi-
zenship in the FTs.
In recent times, a large number of peo-
ple from the poorer sections of Assam
have been working as migrant workers
in many cities of south and north India.
Many of them are marked as D-voters in
the voter lists. As they do not reside in
their permanent homes, many of them
remain unaware of the notices issued by
the FTs against them. This section of
people in many instances fail to appear
in the respective FTs, at the specific time
as per the orders. However, whenever
these migrant labourers visit their vill-
ages, or appear before the FTs after rec-
eiving the delayed notices, they are arbi-
trarily arrested and thrown into jails.
Most of the people are jailed because
they fail to prove their linkage to their
parents or with their grandparents. This
legal battle to prove one’s own self is a
sickening affair. Many poor people, even
after trying their best to prove their citi-
zenship, fail to satisfy the FTs, which in-
evitably results in detention. These people
then languish in the jails, waiting for their
families or, in some cases, villagers to gath-
er money to appeal in the higher court.
Many of them fail to get justice even in
the high court. One such case is that of
Moinal Mollah. His entire family was
labelled as D-voters, but later all of them
were declared as Indians by an FT, except
for Mollah, who the same FT declared as a
foreigner. He was not able to get justice
even in the Gauhati High Court, and
finally his family had to move to the
Supreme Court for justice. Finally, the Court
declared him an Indian, expunging the
choreographed shadow of doubt off him.12
It must be emphasised that the family
could move up to the Supreme Court only
with the legal aid of some lawyers and civil
society organisations. Not every family
can afford such a long and unceasing bat-
tle and thus are forced to languish in jails.
The judges in FTs too are facing random
interference from the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP)-ruled government in the state.
The state government forwarded many
cases, where the FTs had declared the
D-voters as Indians, to the high court for
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 9, 2019
reviewing. As many as 19 judges faced
termination of their service, allegedly
for not satisfying the government (Sar-
ma 2017). The chief minister of Assam
briefed the members of the FTs, and re-
minded them of nationalism while carry-
ing out their duties. The government
proposed to put CCTV-cameras in 91 out
of the 100 FTs to strictly monitor the
functioning of the FT members. Coercion
by the state government in these forms
have definitely hampered the non-parti-
san functioning of the FTs.
Perils of Official Stigmatisation
Most of the people marked as “D-voters”
are mired in deep poverty, and their pov-
erty incapacitates them to buy justice.
This section of the victims of “doubt” can-
not afford to hire lawyers, which results
in their failure to appear timely in the FTs.
The police in most of instances arrest
such people and lock them up in jails for
months and, in some cases, for years.
Many of the legal battles to prove citizen-
ship turn into a failure owing to the inex-
perienced handling of the lawyers, for
good lawyers are a distant dream for
most of them. There are instances where
the victims of “doubt” are forced to sell
even the small plots of lands or other
properties they ever possessed while pur-
suing the state-imposed legal battles.
This has resulted in landlessness and
homelessness of thousands of families.
The official stigmatisation of the D-voter
has multidimensional impacts not only on
the victims, but also on their families. The
impacts are not limited to the socio-eco-
nomic arenas, but touch the psyche of the
victims as well. The victims always suffer
from fear and looming insecurity that
intensely hampers their ability to lead a
normal life. Saukat Ali, whose mother is a
67-year-old D-voter, narrates,
My mother has been living in a state of deep
fear since her name has surfaced as a D-voter.
Our home is in a village and if she hears the
sound of any vehicle approaching our home,
even in the mid-night she runs with all the
strength she has at this age from the home in
order to evade arrest.13
Persisting anxiety and apprehension of
being jailed has been taking serious toll
on the health of the victims. Spending
sleepless nights, loss of appetite, and de-
pression have been the new normal for
vol lIV no 10
PERSPECTIVES
these victims. Not all the people can en-
dure these immense pains and miseries
and, therefore, a few of them have com-
mitted suicides (Assam Times 2017). Sui-
cides relating to the state-enforced D-
voter crisis are numerous in the state,
but unfortunately a significant number
of them are going unreported. These sui-
cides are not mere suicides, but need to
be viewed as the systemic murder by the
oppressive state structure.
A large number of people have been
imprisoned in the D-voter cases. Not to
mention that most of them definitely
are not foreigners and many of them are
under trials. The victims include men
who often are the breadwinners of their
families, and women who are homemak-
ers and many of them are breadwinners
too. Sudden absence due to imprisonment
of the breadwinners from their respec-
tive families brings immense misery to
the family members, and in many cases
ruptures the families. In most of the cases,
the women who are imprisoned have
children to look after. These children are
separated from their parents during the
period of the forced imprisonment of their
parents. Many of these children in the
absence of their parents suffer serious
setbacks and psychological damage. Sci-
entists in the United States have raised
the alarm that these impacts could be
deep-rooted and irreversible, and some
even termed it “child abuse” (Lussenhop
2018). The sagas of these children in the
absence of their parents and vice versa
are deeply mournful and heart-wrench-
ing. Motiur Rahman, a 35-year-old wage
labourer, whose wife has been in jail for
the last 11 months, says,
I have four children, out of which three were
going to school and the fourth one is three
years old. Since the arrest of my wife, all of
them have stopped going to school to sup-
port the functioning of the family. I have
gradually become clueless. What will I do?
Whether to go to court or to go searching for
work? If I do not go to work, my children will
have to go to bed with no food. In last eleven
months I have already spent about `40,000
in the endevour to release her from the jail,
but to no avail. How will I get more money to
take the case forward?14
Production of Doubt and Fear
In postcolonial Assam, especially since
the last few decades, a discourse of doubt
has been unleashed by the political elites
27
PERSPECTIVES
with the sturdy and ceaseless collabora-
tion of the Assam media. “Doubt has be-
come a permanent feature of Assam’s
public discourse” (Ahmed 2014). The dis-
course of doubt is about the presence of
a huge number of alleged “illegal Bang-
ladeshi immigrants” within the Assam.
The media of the state has successfully
put in extra efforts to build and stren-
gthen the discourse, and has turned it
into an extraordinarily powerful tool
that justifies any form of subjugation
and oppression of the minorities. In con-
temporary times, the discourse of doubt
in Assam has metamorphosed into such a
powerful tool that anyone can be hum-
iliated, arrested, physically attacked, put
into jail, or even killed because of sheer
doubt. It is not only the frenzied mob that
is involved in the business of doubt, but
the entire state machinery. The phenom-
enon of the D-voter is one living example
in this context, out of too many instanc-
es. Families can be forcefully evicted in
Assam without any resettlement or reha-
bilitation in the name of such doubts.
People can be put in jail for years under
the shadow of doubt.
On 25 November 2017, a few villages
were evicted by the government under
the setting of doubt. And the media too
did not pay much heed to the doubt-
sponsored eviction administered by the
state. In another instance, in the first
week of December 2017, one more eviction
drive was carried out of the tholuwa (local)
people in Amchang forest, whom the
government officials claimed to be forest-
land encroachers. This particular evic-
tion, however, attracted massive con-
demnation across the state and received
widespread media coverage. While both
the evictions, discussed here, are equally
inhumane, the response of a major section
of people and media was deeply con-
trasting because the former eviction was
of East Bengal-origin Muslims and was
equipped and empowered with the dis-
course of doubt, while the latter was not.
The fear of a section of Asamiya peo-
ple about the presence of a large number
of alleged “illegal immigrants” in Assam,
has been continuously gaining ground
because of the higher growth rate of the
Muslim population in the state (Table 1).
During 1971–91, the population growth
28
rate of Hindus and Muslims in Assam was
41.89% and 77.42% respectively.15 Many
in the state have been deliberately attrib-
uting this high growth of the Muslim popu-
lation to “illegal immigration” from Bang-
ladesh. But, on delving deeper into the
question of the Muslim population growth
in Assam, we find that the growth of the
Muslim population in the state is not out
of proportion especially in comparison to
many other states of central and western
India, such as Maharashtra (80.15%),
Madhya Pradesh (80.76%), Karnataka
(68.05%), Rajasthan (98.29%), Odisha
(70.97), etc.16 Mannan (2017) argues
that if the growth of the Muslims of Assam
is linked to the “illegal immigration”
from Bangladesh, then how would one
explain the growth of the Muslims in
these states, where the rate of growth of
Muslim population is much higher than
Assam? Now let us look into the popula-
tion growth of the Scheduled Castes (SCs)
and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Assam.
Though the Hindu population growth
rate in the state is 41.89%, the population
growth rate of SCs and STs of the state is
81.84% and 78.91%, respectively, which is
much higher than that of Muslims.17 Now,
the question arises, what is the reason be-
hind the high rate of population growth
among the SC and ST populations in As-
sam? Is it a consequence of “illegal immi-
gration” from another country? The an-
swer remains, as Mannan (2017) expli-
cates, that the growth of the Muslim pop-
ulation, together with the SCs and STs in
the state is fundamentally because of the
widespread poverty, illiteracy, and social
backwardness of the people of these mar-
ginalised communities. Therefore, the
growth of the Muslim population in
Assam is not associated with the “illegal
Table 1: Muslim Population of Assam
Year Muslim Population in Assam (%)
1901 12.40
1911 16.69
1921 19.41
1931 23.41
1941 25.72
1951 24.68
1961 25.26
1971 24.56
1991 28.43
2001 30.92
2011 34.22
Source: Census of India, 2011.
MARCH 9, 2019
immigration” from Bangladesh (Borooah
2013; Hussain 1993; Mannan 2017).
The NRC Question
The citizenship crisis in Assam is not new
and is further deepening with time. The
National Register of Citizens (NRC), which
was first introduced in the state in 1951, is
in the process of being updated under the
supervision of the Supreme Court follow-
ing a long-standing discourse on citizen-
ship in the sociopolitical setting of the
state. The first part of the draft NRC was
published at midnight on 31 December
2017. In this part of the draft, only 19 mil-
lions names surfaced out of the 32.9 mil-
lion applicants. The second part of the
draft was to be published in March 2018,
but after going through multiple defer-
ments, the same was published on 30
July 2018.18 In this second and final part
of the draft NRC, out of 3,29,91,384 appli-
cants, only 2,89,83,677 individuals’ names
have figured. Thus, a staggering 40,07,707
names of applicants have been left out.
This may be just a big number to the gov-
ernment, but, for the persons who are left
out and their families, this has brought an
unprecedented crisis.
The process of updating the NRC kicked
off with the hope that this mechanism
will help in identifying the de jure citizens
of Assam and will also identify the indi-
viduals who entered the state “illegally”
after midnight on 24 March 1971. While
the work on updating the NRC was under
process, the BJP government at the centre
came up with the Citizenship (Amend-
ment) Bill, 2016.19 Through this bill, the
government’s intention was to amend the
Citizenship Act, 1955 and to award citi-
zenship fundamentally to all the undocu-
mented as well as documented Hindu im-
migrants, inter alia, from the neighbour-
ing countries of India, including Ban-
gladesh.20 This attempt of the BJP govern-
ment, both at the centre and state, at-
tracted sharp criticism from various
quarters, for it aimed to fail the very es-
sence of the much-awaited NRC. The bill
is in contravention of the Assam Accord21
too and is an attempt by the government
to malign the secular fabric of the coun-
try. Moreover, this bill has contributed
in creating a deep fissure between the
Assamiyas and Benagli Hindus, who are
vol lIV no 10 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

already a marginal social group in
Assam. The BJP-led government in the
state came to power promising an Assam
that will be free from the “illegal foreign-
ers,” but the push of the government to
settle these very “illegal foreigners” in
the state on the grounds of religion, cre-
ated a huge uproar in the region. Millions
of people in Assam commenced protest-
ing against the bill under the leadership
of noted scholar Hiren Gohain and Akhil
Gogoi, the leader of Krishak Mukti San-
gram Samiti (KMSS). Subsequently, the
All Assam Students Union (AASU)—the
student organisation that was at the fore-
front in organising the Assam Move-
ment—too joined the protests. The gov-
ernment, however, firmly persisted with
their position to pass the bill in Parliament,
which further generated a slew of protests
in the state, in many forms, including
bandhs, dharnas and processions. These
protests were participated in and support-
ed by people belonging to all the social
groups of the state, across religious and
ethnic divides.
In the face of immense protests, the
government tried weighing alternative
options for the disputed bill to sail through.
Gohain (2018) speculated that the govern-
ment may formulate a new strategy, and
artificially increase the number of Muslim
NRC dropouts manifold. This can satisfy
the preconceived notion of many in the
state about foreigners only being from the
Muslim community. The saffron govern-
ment in the state used this to engineer fear
among the Assamese Hindus, and thereby
gain their support in implementing the
Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
Furthermore, the BJP government in the
state through its ministers and function-
aries, especially through Himanta Biswa
Sarma, left no stone unturned to spread
anti-Muslim fear in the state, and argued
that Assam can only be saved from the
Muslims by settling the Hindus from
Bangladesh in the state, and this can
be made possible by passing the bill in
Parliament. Nonetheless, this communal
agenda of the government did not gain
much ground in the state. Amidst these
protests, the bill was passed in the Lok
Sabha on 8 January 2019, but the same
was not passed in the Rajya Sabha, and
thus it lapsed (Wire 2019). But the ruling
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 9, 2019
BJP, both at the centre and in the state,
are continuing to maintain that they will
end up passing this bill, if they come to
the power again. If the bill is passed by
the BJP then the NRC will virtually re-
main only as an instrument to selectively
check the validity of citizenship of the
Muslims in Assam.
Though the drafting of the NRC has
taken place under the supervision of the
Supreme Court, the ground reality is that
it is the state government officials who
are working to update the entire mecha-
nism, and there is a high probability that
the government has adversely influenced
the process. Even the Supreme Court
observed the fact that people cannot
trust the Assam government on the NRC
(Anand 2019). Four special Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OHCHCR) rapporteurs is-
sued a letter to the External Affairs Minis-
ter of India Sushma Swaraj, wherein they
explicitly and categorically expressed
their grave concern over the impending
discrimination the East Bengal-origin
Muslims may face during the updating of
the NRC (Wire 2018).
Out of the 4 million deleted names in
the final draft of the NRC, 1.15 lakh names
are those which figured in the first part
draft, but were not included in the final
part draft (Talukdar 2018). The state co-
ordinator of the NRC, Prateek Hajela has
stated that out of these omitted names,
65,694 are of “family tree mismatch” and
48,456 names are of women who are mar-
ried and have submitted panchayat certifi-
cates, as the link certificate to their par-
ents.22 The question that arises here is, if
the deleted cases were erroneous, why did
their names surface in the first part
draft? On the NRC updation process,
Donthi (2018) asserts,
the system is plagued by inconsistencies and
leaves much room for human error, or for
other mitigating influences such as prejudice
and societal structure.
During the process of updation of the
NRC, though the people arbitrarily marked
as D-voters too could apply for the NRC,
their names have not been included in
the final draft NRC. To one’s surprise, the
names of their family members too have
been excluded from the final draft.
These names will only be included in the
vol lIV no 10
PERSPECTIVES
NRC after their acquittal from the FTs or
courts. Thus, lakhs of names are arbi-
trarily excluded from the final draft. As
all the names of the people of the state
have undergone, as per official claims, a
rigorous process of scrutiny, then why
the D-voters—the category that funda-
mentally surfaced on the very premise of
constructed doubt—need to go through
special scrutiny by the FTs remains a
question.
Where Is the Conclusion?
The above discussed crisis of citizenship of
Assam has ushered in an unprecedented
imbroglio for the minorities of the state.
Depriving lakhs of people of a series of
constitutional, political and social rights,
including the right to vote, that too for
decades, is a manifestation of the im-
paired state of democracy in the region.
The mechanism of D-voter has arguably
been used to bully and intimidate the
minorities of the state, which indicates
the structural injustice directed towards
these marginal social groups. This polit-
ical tool has been used by the state to
harass, deprive and incarcerate hun-
dreds of its own people illegally. Seeing
the current political setting of the state,
it would be extremely premature for one
to believe that the government will ever
prosecute the officials, who arbitrarily
marked the citizens of this country as D-
voters. These questionable impunities
allowed to officials by the government
further embolden and encourage some
of the officials to perform their tasks in
an utterly irresponsible and insensitive
manner. Consequent to such a persistent
irresponsible attitude of some of the
government officials, over 4 million
names have been excluded from the final
draft NRC. Though a major section of
people, including the minorities, were
confident and hopeful about the NRC,
the deletion of lakhs of names from the
final part draft of the NRC has pushed
them into a deep sense of fear and un-
precedented insecurity. The insecurities
of these people have heightened mani-
fold, for the state has a history of multi-
ple large-scale horrendous massacres
(Siddique 2015).
Will the NRC bring a closure to the dis-
course of doubt in Assam? Given the
29
PERSPECTIVES
recent developments, it seems highly
unlikely. The official claim about the
NRC was that it will embrace all the peo-
ple of Assam who or whose forefathers
migrated into the state on or before mid-
night of 24 March 1971, but the reflection
of the claim could not be found in the
newly published draft NRC. Critics have
pointed out that the final draft is deeply
erroneous. Lakhs of families belonging
to the minority communities have found
at least some members of their family
excluded from it. How can some mem-
bers of a particular family be the citizens,
while the remaining others of the same
family are not? What will happen to these
people whose names are omitted from
the final draft NRC? Will these four mil-
lion people be subjected through the
same agonies which lakhs of D-voters
have been enduring for decades? Though
the Supreme Court has assured that every
individual would get a chance to prove
their citizenship in the coming days, it is
not yet certain how this assurance will
play out on the ground. Many are specu-
lating that the situation for these left-out
people will even be worse. Things will be
clearer with the publication of the final
NRC, date for which will soon be declared
by the Supreme Court.
Now that almost 47 years have al-
ready passed since March 1971, one
more question that arises is what will
happen to the people—with their chil-
dren and grandchildren born and
brought up in this country—who came
to Assam after the cut-off date? Will they
be pushed into statelessness forever? Will
they be forcibly put into detention camps
by the state? Or will the government solve
this crisis in a humane way? The govern-
ment does not have any clear position on
this. Amidst all these lingering ques-
tions, it remains to be seen if the citizen-
ship conundrum will ever get resolved
in the state.
Notes
1 The video of the killing can be accessed here https:
//www.youtube.com/watch? v=YSUilIS6yb4.
2 One minister of the present Assam government
informed this to the state assembly in September
2017. See “1, 25,155 D voters in State: Mahanta,”
Sentinel, 5 September 2017.
3 State of Assam v Jeleka Begum, for details, see
Sikdar (2016).
4 See the Fact Finding Report by the Centre for
30
Study of Society and Secularism, https://www.
csss-isla.com/assam-fact-finding/.
5 The appropriate term here should be “Officially
Undoubted” in lieu of “Undoubted,” for the fact
remains that most of the East Bengal origin
Muslims of Assam are doubted as Bangladeshi.
6 See the case of Bahaluddin Sheikh v Union of
India 2013 (3) GLT 264.
7 See the case of Sarbananda Sonowal v Union of
India.
8 See, Sikdar (2016).
9 By and large, the East Bengal origin Muslims of
Assam are mired in deep poverty, the literacy
rate is very low in the community and child
marriage is rampant.
10 The admit card of the board exams are accepted
as a valid document by the FTs up to some extent.
11 To understand more about this social group,
see Guha (1977), Hussain (1993, 1995).
12 Such cases are numerous. For instance, Marzi-
na Begum of Goalpara district was arrested on
the premise of the structural doubt, in Novem-
ber 2016. The government forced her languish-
ing in jail for eight months, and subsequently
she was declared as Indian by the Gauhati High
Court. For details on the Marzina case, see htt-
ps://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/
discriminated-story-assam-bengali-origin-
people-180620101455019.html.
13 Interviewed by the author in Daukhanagar vil-
lage of Chirang district, on 22 August 2017 at
1,135 hours.
14 In conversation with the author, at the Howly
market of Barpeta district, on 14 March 2017 at
1920 hrs.
15 This period is significant for the infamous
Assam Movement started in this period.
16 See, Census of India 1991.
17 See, the Census of India; the data are used
from the period of 1971–91.
18 The entire process of the NRC is monitored by
the Supreme Court. The second draft was
expected in March but that date was postponed
to 31 May. The same was again postponed to
30 June and yet again the apex court extended
the date and ordered that the complete NRC
should publish on 30 July (Hindu 2018).
19 The bill was placed in the Lok Sabha on 15 July
2016, by Rajnath Singh, the Minister of Home
Affairs, for details, see Thakur (2018).
20 The BJP government is proposing to provide citi-
zenship to “illegal immigrants” from Afghanistan,
Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are Buddhists,
Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs by
religion. Muslims are excluded from the bill.
21 For details on Assam Accord, see Hussain (1993).
22 As we have discussed earlier, most of these women
are illiterate women, and do not possess any of-
ficial documents that show their link with their
parents, other than the panchayat certificates.
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