The word refugee has become quite common. The name of at least one refugee crisis is at the tip of each and every person's tongue. Nevertheless, it's important to accurately understand what a refugee and a refugee crisis is. A refugee crisis is when a large group of persons are displaced from their home country and have nowhere to go. Every minute, 20 people around the world are displaced. They lose their homes, they have no place to go to, no country to belong to.
You may have heard of the Syrian refugee crisis or the Rohingya refugees, or refugees from Afghanistan. But what if I told you that something similar is happening in India. In Assam. A move by the Indian government may make over 4 million people stateless, and it's important to understanding the situation in Assam and how it has the potential to turn into a refugee crisis.
In an attempt to identify illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, the Indian Government has established a register. This register, called the National Register of Citizens, is a list of people who can prove they came to Assam by 24th March 1971 a day before Bangladesh declared Independence. While India says this is to prevent illegal immigration, it can also be analyzed as a move against ethnic minorities, mainly the Bengali speaking minorities. While everyone has submitted their documents, 4 million people have been excluded from the list. No one faces immediate deportation in order to avoid violence, but this move can be seen as an effort to expel the minorities from Assam.
What makes the crisis even scarier is its similarity to the Rohingya Crisis of Myanmar. The move can be seen to target the Muslim minority and the NRC is being used by Assam Hardliners and Hindu hardliners to expel the Bengalis. According to the Citizenship Bill of 2016, Hindu people of Bangladeshi origin are said to have permission to stay in the country under the federal statute that allows Hindus who face persecution in their home countries to seek shelter in India. It is hard to not look at this issue through the lens of religious persecution. Is this a method to purge out the Muslim population? Is this kind of persecution in a secular nation acceptable?
Another way to analyze this move is to look at it as Assam's way of maintaining the identity of its indigenous population. Anti-migrant sentiment has long existed, even since the time of British colonials have been opposing the move of people from other states into their country.
Now, what does this really mean? It means that there are 4 million people who may be deported, without a country to go to. These people have been living in our country for years, some for generations. They consider themselves Indians, and it is sad to see our country deporting people that consider themselves a part of this country. India might find itself in a crisis with lakhs of people stateless, without citizenship and without rights in this country. This is a serious threat that may cause a further rift between Muslims and Hindus and will lead to escalating tensions in other parts of the country.
The NRC is a massive exercise that each and every community signed up for, but it has failed to be reliable. So what next? While there is no imminent threat of deportation, any news of such could trigger a situation similar to that of the Rakhine province and could severely escalate tensions in Assam. Viewing it simply as a legal problem could lead to deportation, however, this is a humanitarian problem.
Bangladesh isn't ready to accept them, and even if they were, these people have no homes. The problem of the NRC is rooted in our inability to accept the diversity of this country.
In a diverse country of different cultures, there exist a lot of minorities, and the persecution of one of them is something that shouldn't be accepted. The Assam Crisis is a refugee crisis in the making, and the escalation of tensions will not do India or its neighboring countries any good.
