The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) was left with no other option than to break its ties with the BJP following the decision of the Narendra Modi government to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 on Tuesday. This has led to the AGP pulling out of the BJP-led coalition government in Assam. An AGP delegation led by its president and Assam minister Atul Bora and a few of his close confidants had been camping in New Delhi since last Saturday obviously hoping to be able to dissuade the Union government from passing the Bill. However, by Monday morning it became clear that the NDA government at the Centre was adamant on passing the Bill even against the wishes of several organizations and the people of Assam. When Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh made it clear that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill would be tabled and passed on Tuesday despite the opposition from Assam, Atul Bora told Singh that there was no option for the AGP but to quit the alliance in Assam.
Apart from the fact that the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 comes as a major blow to Assam and the Assamese people, it also violates the Assam Accord which stipulated that the foreigners who came to Assam after the midnight of March 24, 1971 would be detected and deported. One cannot be expected to forget so soon that the BJP came to power in Assam with the promise of implementing the Assam Accord. Nor can one overlook the fact that everyone expected the present Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who was once a president of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), to play a major role in implementing the Assam Accord. The BJP possibly thinks that it can afford to break promises made to the people earlier and to take an arrogant, anti-people stand because it can remain in power in Assam even without the support of the AGP. In the 126-member Assam Assembly, the BJP has 61 MLAs and is thus just three short of a bare majority. However, even with AGP with 14 MLAs withdrawing support to the government, the BJP has the support of the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) with 12 MLAs and an Independent who supports the ruling alliance. So the withdrawal of support from the AGP with 14 MLAs is unlikely to affect the BJP’s prospects of continuing in power in Assam. But this begs the question of how far any political party can go in breaking promises made to the people.
Perhaps it is because the BJP is not very sure of coming back to power in Assam at the next general elections that it has been prompted to rely much more on the votes of Bangladeshi Hindus that are bound to come entirely to the BJP if it grants citizenship selectively (on the basis of religion) to illegal migrants from Bangladesh who came to Assam after March 24, 1971 as well to about four or five million more Hindus from Bangladesh for whom the red carpet can be spread now. It will take only a month or so for the BJP to get the names of all such newcomers included in the voters’ list after granting them instant citizenships. There cannot be a more definite means of ensuring the creation of yet another vote bank where everyone votes for the ruling political party without fail just because they have been blessed with Indian citizenship.
This is a quick-fire means of winning elections with a few million foreigners imported from another country and turned into Indian citizens. As former Union Home Secretary GK Pillai has rightly said, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 will go against the Assam Accord and the NRC update. In fact, it will turn the highly expensive NRC update process into a totally pointless exercise. But what is far more alarming for the people of Assam is that if the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is implemented in Assam, it will totally destroy the Assam as we know it and pose a major threat to the Assamese language and culture. And this is a step being taken by an elected government in a democracy without the consent of the people who are about to be directly affected by a newly imposed black law. How can a democratic government assume the moral right to take such high-handed draconian steps against its own people? Here is a case of a government actively engaged in unleashing an anti-people law solely for electoral gains—totally against their wishes. Is it at all surprising that there should be violent protests and demonstrations of anger? And who is responsible for all this if not the government itself?
It is clearly understood that the adverse effects of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 will be more clearly felt in States like Assam, Tripura, Bengal and the other States of the Northeast that will have to bear the brunt of large-scale immigration of foreigners. What is, however, a heartening development is that Meghalaya has rejected the Bill outright and that even allies of the BJP like the Shiv Sena and the Janata Dal (United) have decided to oppose the Bill. They may well be aware that the Bill is not likely to affect the mainland States of the Indian Union. But they must be waking up to the fact that undemocratic and anti-people measures like the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 could well be extended to other areas of public life and could seriously jeopardize our freedom and human rights through unilateral decisions that are totally undemocratic and ones that make the world’s largest democracy look more like a banana republic or a dictatorship.