India set to implement controversial nationwide citizenship count

Munawar Zaman
Press TV, New Delhi

Few months ago India carried out an exercise called a national register of citizens in the northeastern state of Assam. Nearly two million Bengali origin people were excluded from the list. The government maintains it wants to crackdown on illegal immigrants. The government views them as a threat to national security and a drag on country’s resources.

Amid concerns the exercise is a deliberate attempt to target the minority Muslims, the country’s home minister says his Hindu nationalist government will implement the exercise across the country. Activist fear of appalling consequences and call it a threat to country’s social harmony. They say the move is directed at Bengali and Rohingya Muslims in particular, the home minister has, however, assured of no discrimination based on the religion. After partition in 1947 and 1971, a huge number of refugees from Bangladesh arrived in India after breaking away from Pakistan.

Since the emergence of Hindu nationalist government of BJP in 2014, Muslims have increasingly been marginalized. Hate crimes, mob lynching, criminalizing instant divorce among Muslims, the Kashmir lockdown and handing over a disputed mosque land to Hindus were some of the events signifying the repression of the minority community. The country’s Prime Minister Modi, however, has dismissed this fear as Imaginary.

Critics view such measures as divisive and a political hysteria; they say it’s an attempt to intimidate minority communities. Rights activists are alarmed at the measure, saying millions of lives will be at stake which can destroy the secular, democratic and republic structure of the South Asian country.

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