The Statement of Objects and Reasons in the Bills seeking to disqualify ministers – including CMs and the PM — who are imprisoned for 30 days or more when accused of crimes that carry a sentence of five years gives a lofty justification for a legally and ethically dubious law: “It is expected that they [elected representatives] rise above political interests and act only in the public interest and for the welfare of the people.”
As a principle, this sentiment is perhaps the only unobjectionable part of the proposed laws. But what the Bills miss is that a leader need not break laws, or even be accused of a crime, to act against the people he is meant to represent and protect. That a government can, through notices, announcements and dog whistles, and a weaponised state machinery, become an instrument of exclusion and violence. For the starkest of examples, we need look no farther than Assam and its chief minister.
On Thursday, Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that, except for Scheduled Castes, Tribes and tea garden workers, the government will stop issuing Aadhaar cards to adults in the state. The main reason for this, according to the CM, is unsurprising: “infiltrators”/“Bangladeshis”. This latest move comes days after the Assam government put forth a policy that eases granting arms licences to “indigenous” Assamese in “vulnerable” and “remote” areas. The examples of such regions cited by Sarma are places where Bengali-speaking Muslims are present in significant numbers. The ruling party and its Chief Minister have also raised the bogeys of “land jihad”, “love jihad” and “fertiliser jihad”, to name a few. At their heart, all of these policies have one thing in common: They seek to appeal to the fear and insecurity in people rather than their trust.
Migration has been an issue in Assam since Partition and Independence. The cultural anxieties around migration and the loss of indigenous identity are real and will find echoes across cultures and geographies. But let’s be clear – talk of ghuspaithiye and outsiders, of making national and cultural identities terms of abuse, will not address the problem of illegal migration. In fact, it is not meant to. Rather, it is part of an ideological project that follows a logic that India sought to leave behind when it first made its tryst with destiny. And in service of that project, governments are breaking the fundamental social contract with citizens.
Take the policy of selectively arming people. If citizens in Assam are indeed in danger, or there are areas where they are more vulnerable to crime, whose responsibility is it to protect them? Is law and order in Assam to become a cottage industry, and the state merely a supplier of subsidised raw materials for people to commit violence? Governments are meant to have a monopoly over violence, exercised through the due process of law. This essential facet of what makes a state, it seems, can be diluted when it comes to minority communities.
The fact is that making “Bangladeshi” a term of abuse, and targeting Bengali-speaking Muslims – including Indians – is counterproductive when it comes to dealing with illegal migration. A host of complex historical, economic, geographical and cultural factors are at play in the movements of people, connected for centuries, across real and imagined lines created 79 years ago. Addressing these factors requires the governments of both the host and destination countries to cooperate in good faith. Is demonising Bengalis and Muslims an act that moves the conversation forward? Obviously not.
A cynical justification for the politics of Himanta Biswa Sarma is that it has legs and is rewarded by the people. It is certainly the case that the policies and politics in Assam are not unique, but just another facet of a broader story. After all, the Prime Minister, in his Independence Day speech, said, “As part of a deliberate conspiracy, the demography of the country is being altered. Seeds of a new crisis are being sown. These infiltrators are snatching away the livelihoods of our youth. These infiltrators are targeting our sisters and daughters. This will not be tolerated.” Sarma, arguably, is following this lead and his politics have been endorsed by the people, in election after election. And his divisive rhetoric has made him a national figure.
The problem with such a worldview, one that seeks to justify attacks on minorities in the name of the ostensibly besieged majority, is that it is of a piece with the worst aspects of the Subcontinent’s history. It hides the suffering of those who have the least in broad, prejudiced terms. An “infiltrator” who is a danger to sisters and daughters, who commits “land jihad”, is easy to hate. The real people behind these words, less so.
Among the hundreds of Bengali migrant labourers detained across India was Sunali Bibi. From Birbhum district in West Bengal, Sunali Bibi was picked up in Delhi, where she and her family worked as ragpickers and domestic helpers for the last two years, and pushed across the border from Kurigram in Assam. She was eight months pregnant and living on the streets of Dhaka when she was arrested by Bangladeshi authorities. Her crime? Being an illegal migrant with Indian identification papers.
Every Prime Minister of India has extolled this country’s diversity, including Narendra Modi. Part of what makes this a strength is that identities in India are not qualified; they are concentric. People in India do not identify, by and large, as Bengali-Indian, Gujarati-Indian, Tamil-Indian, Muslim-Indian or Hindu-Indian. Rather, we are Bengali and Indian, Assamese and Indian, Christian and Indian. The desperate attempt to qualify the rights of Sunali Bibi and millions like her follows not the logic of the Constitution, or even any “civilisational” ethos that isn’t blindly parochial. Rather, it mimics the ethos of Partition.
Maybe, just maybe, the greatest danger so many citizens face is not the bogey of the ghuspaithiya. It’s the worldview that believes that a certain kind of citizen doesn’t belong in her own country.
aakash.joshi@expressindia.com
Maybe, just maybe, the greatest danger so many citizens face is not the bogey of the ghuspaithiya. It's the worldview that believes that a certain kind of citizen doesn't belong in her own country (PTI Photo) 
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