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Muslims’ Mass Deportations Feared As 1.9 mn People Lose Citizenship In India’s Assam

GUWAHATI: Almost two million people in northeast India were left facing statelessness on Saturday after the state of Assam published a citizenship list aimed at weeding out “foreign infiltrators”, in a process the central government wants to replicate nationwide.

A total of 31.1 million people were included in a final National Register of Citizens (NRC), but 1.9 million were deemed ineligible, according to a statement from the Assam government. Most of those excluded were expected to be Muslim.

Assam, an impoverished isolated state of 33 million, has long seen large influxes from elsewhere, including under British colonial rule and around Bangladesh´s 1971 war of independence when millions fled into India.

For decades this has made Assam a hotbed of inter-religious and ethnic tensions. Sporadic violence has included the 1983 massacre of around 2,000 people.

This has led to pressure from those who see themselves as genuine Assamese for a lasting solution — which they hope will come from the NRC released on Saturday.

Only those who can demonstrate that they or their forebears were in India before 1971 could be included in the list.

But navigating the complex process is a huge challenge for many in a region of high illiteracy where many lack documentation.

Members of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi´s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-run Assam — and critics say the NRC process reflects the BJP´s goal to serve only its co-religionists.

In January India´s lower house passed legislation that grants citizenship to people who moved to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan as recently as six years ago — as long as they are not Muslims.

This has stoked fears among India´s 170-million Muslim minority for their future.

Home Minister Amit Shah, Modi´s right-hand-man, has called for the ejection of “termites” and said before the BJP´s thumping re-election victory in May that it would “run a countrywide campaign to send back the infiltrators”.

Those left off the NRC have 120 days to appeal at special Foreigners Tribunals, which the government says are being expanded in number.

The number of errors has also turned some in the BJP in Assam against the process, with Himanta Biswa Sarma, a BJP minister in the state, saying it had left off “so many genuine Indians”.

“We have lost hope in the present form of the NRC,” Sarma told reporters, saying that the party was already mulling a “fresh strategy on how we can drive out the illegal migrants”.