India’s NRC

After the disaster that was the Indian government’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam, Home Minister Amit Shah wants to conduct the same exercise nationwide. Last time, due to “errors” they left war heroes and established political leaders from Assam, including some from the BJP, off the list — effectively saying, wrongly, that the government did not recognise them as Indian citizens. With the stakes even higher this time, those who saw the incompetence with which the Assam exercise was done would not accept anything less than a general or a government cabinet member being certified “not Indian”.

Critics say the NRC effort is just a part of the BJP’s deep-seated bias against minorities, especially Muslims, and the campaign threatens to further marginalise them. The BJP denies this, but why else would Modi and the BJP fear innocent migrants? Surely the number of Indians leaving the country should be of greater concern. During Modi’s time as PM, some 800,000 Indians have legally migrated to the US, with the Indian-origin population doubling to 2.7 million. Many more have entered illegally, as the hundred deported every week would suggest.

Why do so many Indians want to flee the BJP’s economic paradise? According to a recent report in the Arizona Republic, the sudden arrival of families from India, for example, could reflect rising persecution against religious minorities, including Sikhs, Muslims and Christians, in that country under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist.” The report notes that some Indian migrants have died en route and goes on to add comments from Randy Capps, Director of Research for US programmes at the Migration Policy Institute. “Indians have been seeking asylum for years now... Many of them are religious minorities, Sikhs in particular... They are fleeing religious persecution in many cases so their motive on the surface doesn’t appear to be economic,” he said. Further proof that even middle and upper-class Indians aren’t safe unless they are the right religion.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 22^nd, 2019.

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