Upamanyu Hazarika: ‘The NRC is a subversion’

Interview with Upamanyu Hazarika, Convener, Prabajan Virodhi Manch.

EARLIER this year, he made headlines for hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party during his Lok Sabha campaign. Contesting as an independent candidate from Guwahati, Upamanyu Hazarika took a dig at the ruling party, saying: “Just like this empty office, the promises of the BJP are also empty.” The sentiment does not seem to have changed much, except that now he blames both the Congress and the BJP for the NRC (National Register of Citizens) muddle in Assam. Arguing that all that the khilonjiya  (indigenous Assamese) needed were a few measures to safeguard their land and resources, he is dissatisfied with the NRC. Opposing the proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill, he says, “We have taken the burden of foreigners for so many years. Not any more.”

A senior advocate at the Supreme Court, Hazarika was appointed by the Supreme Court as the court commissioner in May 2015 to study the situation along the Indo-Bangladesh border in Assam. He submitted his report later that year. He was in New Delhi as a panelist at the launch of the book Assam: The Accord, The Discord  by Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, where he spoke on behalf of the indigenous people of the State, expressing fears of the local people slipping into a minority in the coming decades. Excerpts from an interview:

You say the NRC is seen through the prism of foreigners’ or migrants’ agony. Where does that leave the indigenous people and their aspirations?

The sole aim and objective of the NRC seems to be to document the migrants’ anguish. It is a culmination of the over-40-year-old Assam agitation. The Assam Accord, signed under the auspices of the State and the Central governments, is not worth the paper on which it is written because a foreigner is an offender of the Foreigners Act, and it is the responsibility of the state to identify a foreigner and deport him. A foreigner will never come and tell you he is a foreigner. At that time, in the 1980s, it was the Congress that stood to gain, now it is the BJP.

The NRC’s objective was to identify and detect foreigners. Today, you are identifying citizens and in the process filtering out foreigners. Therefore, [you are] giving an opportunity to all people to participate [in the exercise] to become citizens of India. Given the subversion and corruption prevalent in the system, we have a result which proves that it is certainly not the most ideal method to identify the foreigners. That is the reason [why] it has resulted in all this distortion. The whole thing now has become a Hindu-Muslim issue. Definitely there have been goof-ups by the administration and personnel ill-equipped to handle things of this magnitude. It has resulted in all these distortions.

The entire exercise was meant to safeguard the ethnic identity of the Assamese people. When did that take a back seat and the politics of polarisation take centre stage?

The ethnic issue has always been there. For the north-eastern people, the indigenous and ethnic identity is primary, the religious identity secondary. Our indigenous Muslims identify themselves as indigenous first, Muslims later. [It’s the] same for the Hindus. I have seen it from close quarters. I contested the Lok Sabha election this year and travelled the length and breadth of the State. I found that in Barpeta district, Muslims are in a majority but only some 15 per cent of them are indigenous Muslims, the rest are migrants. The indigenous Muslims retain their identity and identify themselves as part of a larger Hindu-Muslim umbrella rather than [display] sectarian identity. I was a student when the Assam movement was going on. The communalisation actually started with Indira Gandhi who, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, capitalised on baser instincts and did vote bank politics. Nehru and Gandhi appealed to the highest morality among the majority; she did not. As we got down to vote bank politics, there was a paradigm shift. Unfortunately, earlier, until the 1970s, the Congress had tall leaders who stood for indigenous identity regardless of religious identity. Later on, a whole lot of ordinary leaders came, who looked at the Muslims of Assam only in terms of votes. 

Let me give you another example. The Chakmas went to Arunachal Pradesh in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite a Supreme Court judgment giving them citizenship rights, the Arunachal government still has not given them those rights. The reason is that if you give them citizenship rights, they get a 10 per cent vote share straightaway. The State has a population of 13 lakh; the Chakmas are 1 lakh. They will become the second largest tribe. The entire politics changes. The demographic composition changes. It is the same in Assam.

When you talk of Indira Gandhi and her role in promoting vote-bank politics in Assam, you cannot ignore the role played by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah in bringing about a communal polarisation in the State since 2016.

See, this is national politics. In national politics as it is playing out today, religion occupies an important role. Earlier, it was the subtext, now it is the [main] text. Regardless of the communalisation of the whole issue, and the political gains of whichever party, the Congress or the BJP, the criterion for deciding on citizenship, monitored by the Supreme Court, did not have much of an impact. Funnily enough, despite all the Hindu drum-beating by the BJP, more Hindus were excluded from the NRC than Muslims. 

The Muslim population has shown a 10 per cent increase in 30 years, which is akin to the growth between 1911 and 1941 due to victimisation. Post-1971, Assam seemed less and less attractive to Hindus because of the language issue. In a demographic study that she conducted, the JNU scholar Nandita Saikia found that post 1971, there was an organisation of Hindus from the Brahmaputra valley. They were the Bengali Hindus who came from the higher economic and social strata. There was a direct language conflict with the local elements, which was not the case with Muslims.

It is also said that the Muslims who came to Assam from Bengal adapted themselves to the Assamese language and culture whereas the Bengali Hindus built little islands of Bengal in Assam. Is it true?

Yes, it is true at least with the early migrants, but not anymore. Those who came here until Independence came out of need. Post the creation of Pakistan, there was no significant migration. It started changing with the creation of Bangladesh. Bangladesh happens to be a Muslim-majority country. So regardless of everything, more migrants from there happened to be Muslims. The point is today we have got caught in divisive politics. The endeavour of the Congress was to get the Muslims in, the endeavour of the BJP is to get the Hindus in. Nobody is really concerned that a large number of foreigners got in.

You claim that the ethnic population of Assam is in danger of becoming a minority by 2040. As of Now, the immigrants are 25 per cent of the entire population of the State.

Now I would say by 2050. There has been a subtle change. Earlier, Muslims used to state Assamese as their mother tongue, now they say Bengali. All this complicates the equation. 

Is it not sufficient that the migrants, whatever their religion or region, are Indians?

Yes, ideally that should be [the case]. But in the changing demography and language demography of the State, indigenous Muslims are only 5 to 7 per cent. By those figures, including the numbers of immigrants, Assam will become a Muslim-majority State by 2051. 

Are you not in danger of echoing what Amit Shah says?

It is not a question of echoing or repeating. It is a question of our culture getting submerged. The point is nobody goes by the language figures. The Muslims say they are Assamese [in order] to get citizenship. The Hindu migrants always give Bengali as their language. 

Amidst all this, the Central government is planning to push through the Citizenship Bill. What is your view on it, as the Bill clearly distinguishes between Hindu and Muslim migrants?

Our stance has remained consistent. We have taken the burden of so many foreigners. Not any more. We have no issues as long as no burden is passed on to us. Today, my primary aim is to protect my State. I have to see how do I save our own people.

Is it not much easier to save ethnic identity by having the first right over the resources? For instance, in Gujarat, you cannot buy property without the district magistrate’s approval.

Yes. That is all I seek. The NRC is a subversion.