The Union government’s recent implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) through notification of Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024 (CAR) has made it imperative to rethink the questions of citizenship and identity in post-colonial India.
The CAA intends to convert religiously persecuted non-Muslim refugees hailing from neigbouring Islamic states from ‘illegal migrants’ into ‘citizens’. Most of the intended beneficiaries happen to belong to the lower caste Matua-Namasudra community of West Bengal and also of Assam to a lesser extent. Accordingly, CAA involves a complex interplay between the politico-legal identity of citizenship and the social identity of caste. While the roots of this interconnection are considerably embedded in the historical evolution of idea of citizenship in post-colonial India, its contemporary dynamics are located in the politics of Hindu nationalism.
The Namasudras, mainly concentrated in Eastern Bengal in pre-partition times, unlike their more affluent upper caste counterparts could not migrate in the immediate aftermath of partition. But later owing to rising incidents of religious tension and frictions they felt compelled to migrate. They did so at different intervals throughout the decades following partition, with the largest exodus happening in 1970-71 during the Bangladesh liberation war.
While migration continued, the legal qualifications for citizenship became more and more stringent in response to the political situation in the country and in the neighbourhood. Faced with a refugee crisis, the Government of India in November 1971 decided not to grant citizenship to those who migrated since March 25, 1971 on account of the Bangladesh liberation war, effectively making them permanent refugees. On top of that, the 2003 amendment to the Citizenship Act converted them into infiltrators by categorising all migrants without valid travel documents as illegal migrants.
Since then, Namasudra refugees have regularly been suspected of being ‘Bangladeshis’ or illegal infiltrators during registration for the electoral rolls and issuance of documents like passports and caste certificates. Moreover, beginning with the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1986 citizenship qualifications have become more and more descent centric in lieu of birth centric, making it even harder for next-generation descendants of these refugees to acquire Indian citizenship.
It is this gradual transformation of the legal idea of citizenship that prepared the ground for present politics. While the Trinamool Congress (TMC) was first to see the electoral potential of the Namasudras, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) quickly outsmarted the TMC by devising a potent and effective political mobilisation strategy specifically tailored to the Namasudras. It set into motion a ‘politics of memory,’ which in pursuance of the broader template of Hindutva began to mobilise them not as a lower caste group but as a persecuted group of Hindu refugees, by invoking their collective memory of religious persecution. CAA was the principal tool of this ‘politics of memory’; it was not simply a legislative measure but also a political discourse, highlighting the religious persecution of Hindu Dalits in an attempt to marry politics of caste with the politics of Hindutva.
But what got lost in the short-term political calculation were the immense complexity of the citizenship cum refugee question and the enormous practical difficulties of achieving a satisfactory resolution in this regard. The lack of understanding about these issues and political shortsightedness made political leaders promise citizenship through CAA with the production of no or minimum documents. As a result, the initial euphoria over the notification of CAA quickly evaporated when the documentation requirements for citizenship application became clearer.
Most problematic is the requirement of producing documents issued by the government of Afghanistan/Bangladesh/Pakistan in support of the applicant’s nationality. Many fleeing violence and adversities could not bring such documents. Further, it is imprudent to expect their second and third generation descendants to presently have custody of these documents. In order to avoid the suspicion of being Bangladeshis, many are also believed to have destroyed these documents upon their arrival in India and consequent acquisition of Indian government documents like voter card and ration card. Furthermore, the requirement of self-certification by the applicant of his/her nationality or country of origin through an affidavit is tantamount to a confession of being a foreigner and hence, by implication, rejection of an application will imply affirmation of the applicant’s foreigner status.
In view of these difficulties, the Namasudra leaders of the BJP are now asking the community members to apply for citizenship only after a new government takes charge post national elections. They are promising to do away with the requirement of furnishing proof of nationality. It seems that BJP’s smooth-sailing Namasudra outreach has suddenly hit a roadblock. The present crisis reveals the limits of the ‘politics of memory,’ which fuses the politics of caste with the politics of Hindutva with the help of the politico-legal instrumentality of citizenship. More importantly, the current conundrum conveys a crucial political lesson that – citizenship is an enormously complicated and vexed issue equipped with the potential to unleash a pandora’s box, if employed simply as a political tool towards a political end.
Ayan Guha is a British Academy International Fellow at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, UK. He is the author of the book The Curious Trajectory of Caste in West Bengal Politics: Chronicling Continuity and Change (Brill, 2022).
BJP Promise of 'No Nationality Proof' for Namasudra in CAA Outreach Hits Roadblock
25
0
03.04.2024
The Union government’s recent implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) through notification of Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024 (CAR) has made it imperative to rethink the questions of citizenship and identity in post-colonial India.
The CAA intends to convert religiously persecuted non-Muslim refugees hailing from neigbouring Islamic states from ‘illegal migrants’ into ‘citizens’. Most of the intended beneficiaries happen to belong to the lower caste Matua-Namasudra community of West Bengal and also of Assam to a lesser extent. Accordingly, CAA involves a complex interplay between the politico-legal identity of citizenship and the social identity of caste. While the roots of this interconnection are considerably embedded in the historical evolution of idea of citizenship in post-colonial India, its contemporary dynamics are located in the politics of Hindu nationalism.
The Namasudras, mainly concentrated in Eastern Bengal in pre-partition times, unlike their more affluent upper caste counterparts could not migrate in the immediate aftermath of partition. But later owing to rising incidents of religious tension and frictions they felt compelled to migrate. They did so at different intervals throughout the decades following partition, with the largest exodus happening in 1970-71 during the Bangladesh liberation war.
While migration continued, the legal qualifications for citizenship became more and more stringent........
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