THE National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam has now cast its shadow over neighbouring West Bengal. Even as a sense of fear and uncertainty is fast spreading across the length and breadth of the State, the ruling Trinamool Congress is gearing up to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the issue. In an unprecedented show of solidarity, all the major political parties in the State, except the BJP, joined hands to pass a resolution in the Assembly on September 6 opposing the NRC exercise in Assam and resolved not to allow it to take place in West Bengal.
Speaking on the resolution, which was tabled under Rule 185 of the Rules of Procedures of Conduct of Business of the House, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said: “We do not accept the NRC. What has happened in Assam can never happen in Bengal.” She pointed out that the reason behind the NRC exercise in Assam was the Assam Accord of 1985 signed by the Centre and the leaders of the Assam Movement. But in West Bengal no such agreement exists, and hence there is no basis for carrying out an NRC. “The NRC implementation is nothing but an attempt to divert the attention of the common people from the economic crisis in the country,” she said. She also thanked Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for opposing an “NRC-like exercise” in Bihar.
The Left parties and the Congress also spoke out against the NRC during the debate. “This is not a Hindu-Muslim issue. Many Hindus have been left out in Assam. This is about victimising poor people who cannot produce the necessary documents,” said Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sujan Chakraborty. All India Forward Bloc MLA Ali Imran Ramz called the resolution “historic” and said that the State had sent a message to the country that “West Bengal is, was and will remain secular”.
The BJP opposed the resolution, with the leader of the BJP Legislature Party, Manoj Tigga, bringing up Mamata Banerjee’s earlier stand on the issue of infiltrators. He reminded the House that on July 21, 1993, Mamata Banerjee, the then leader of the State Youth Congress, led a rally demanding “no voter card, no vote”; 13 Youth Congress activists were killed in police firing at the rally. He also recalled how on August 4, 2005, she stormed out of the Lok Sabha when she was not allowed to raise the issue of “illegal infiltration from Bangladesh” for debate in the House.
On September 12, Mamata Banerjee led a procession in protest against the NRC. Referring to State BJP president Dilip Ghosh’s claim that there were two crore infiltrators in the State, she said: “Try touching even two citizens of Bengal.... It has been 72 years since Independence, and still we have to provide proof of our identity. Why?” Mamata Banerjee was back to her combative, street-fighting ways for the first time after receiving a jolt in the Lok Sabha election earlier this year. The camaraderie of a few days before with the Left and the Congress was also abandoned as she lashed out at both her old adversaries in order to consolidate support against her new one. “The CPI(M) and the Congress have no support in Bengal. Trinamool is the only party that can take on the BJP,” she said.
This is not the first time the Trinamool and the BJP have crossed swords over the NRC issue. Ever since the exercise started in Assam in 2018, the two parties have been going back and forth over it, and it was an important issue in the 2019 Lok Sabha election in West Bengal where the BJP emerged as the principal opposition to the Trinamool. Mamata Banerjee tried to project the NRC in Assam as an anti-Bengali issue, alleging that Bengali-speaking people of Assam were the primary targets. She called it a “ Bangali khedao movement” in the guise of an NRC, referring to the violent “ Bongal kheda ” movement to drive out Bengalis from Assam in the 1960s.
The BJP accused Mamata Banerjee of playing communal politics by supporting infiltrators, who it claimed accounted for a substantial portion of her support base. During an election rally in Alipurduar in March this year, BJP president Amit Shah focussed on the implementation of the NRC in West Bengal. “Mamata ji is under the impression that the infiltrators will see her through in this election…. The Narendra Modi government will return to power, and we will bring the NRC. Each and every infiltrator will be ousted from the State,” he said. At the same time, he said non-Muslim “refugees” will be allowed to stay.
Spreading panic
Even before an NRC has been officially announced in Bengal, a sense of panic has apparently already started taking root in the State.
According to Mohammad Quamaruzzaman, chairman of the All Bengal Minority Youth Federation, after the Assam exercise, the Muslims of Bengal are “terrified”. “All of a sudden, they are all panicking about their documents, about their fathers’ names being misspelt and such matters. We request the State government here to facilitate the process by which people can obtain the papers required to submit for the NRC exercise when it happens here,” he told Frontline .
He emphasised that the Muslims in the State were not willing to get involved in the political duel between the Trinamool and the BJP on the issue. “We are not saying we are against the NRC. Let it take place. We are all from here.... Just as no Hindu left India to go to Bangladesh after Independence, we believe no Muslim came to settle down in India from Bangladesh. Just a small number of people, driven by poverty and hunger, may have crossed over to India, but it is not fair to use them as an excuse to do politics,” said Quamaruzzaman. He pointed to the protests in Bangladesh and Pakistan against the treatment of Muslims in India as a matter of shame for the country. “We always thought that the Muslims of India were better off than those in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and yet today they are protesting against the way the Muslims of India are being treated by their own government. It is not just a shame for Muslims of India but also a shame for India itself,” he said.
It is not just Muslims who are concerned. After around one lakh people from the Gorkha community were left out of the NRC list in Assam, the Gorkhas of West Bengal, the majority of whom are situated in the hills of north Bengal, are also worried. According to Harka Bahadur Chhetri, president of the Jana Andolan Party and one of the most respected politicians from the Darjeeling Hills, many in the hills are confused about the NRC and have approached local leaders for guidance.
“What I find surprising is that nobody is talking about the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the governments of India and Nepal, which clearly says that the two governments will grant, on reciprocal basis, to the nationals of one country in the territories of the other the same privileges in the matter of residence, ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce, movement and other privileges of a similar nature. But they will not be able to take part in politics. So even in the case of Gorkhas who do not have the necessary documents, the 1950 treaty protects them from being treated as infiltrators. The Central government should pay heed to that,” Chhetri told Frontline .
He feels that if the NRC is indeed implemented in West Bengal, there will be chaos because of the landholding pattern in the Darjeeling Hills. “Most of the people of the region are lessees, particularly in the tea gardens, where they have been living for generations. They do not have any legal documents, not even documents relating to lease, which lie with the tea garden owners; yet the Gorkhas have been living in the region since the 1830s,” said Chhetri. He and his party are doing both ground-level and historical research to counter the NRC with “arguments based on facts and evidence”.
However, Neeraj Zimba, leader of the Gorkha National Liberation Front, who, backed by the BJP, won the Darjeeling Assembly seat in a recent byelection, said that he did not understand why some of the people from the Gorkha community were expressing fear. “Certain political forces backed by the Trinamool are spreading disinformation about the NRC in Bengal to create panic among the people of the hills. The NRC is not under the State government or the Central government. It is under the purview of the Supreme Court of India. The Gorkhas don’t have to worry about the NRC; they have to worry only about the TMC [Trinamool Congress],” Zimba told Frontline .
Zimba emphasised that the Centre must make it clear that “not a single Gorkha from West Bengal will be excluded from the NRC”. Zimba and BJP Lok Sabha MP from Darjeeling Raju Bista even met Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on September 11 on the issue. “The Chief Minister assured us that not a single genuine Indian Gorkha will be left out. In Bengal, the Gorkhas need not worry. It is the immigrants, the Bangladeshis and the Rohingya who should be worried. I do not know why the Gorkhas are worried,” said Zimba. It is just a matter of time before the people of the State find out whether there is indeed any cause for worry.
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