Yet Again, Anti-Assam
In our editorial titled “Aliens must be Out” last Thursday, we had harped on the need for an error-free NRC in Assam and cited the chief reason as to why the issue of an updated NRC was so vital: “The issue is not serious because it was high time an updated NRC in technical terms was put into effect in the State; the issue is extremely serious because it deals with the very survival of an indigenous people. It is a matter of human rights, above all. One cannot leave an innocent indigenous people at the mercy of hostile and religiously absolutist marauding aliens.” Now let us add to this the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 that the BJP-led Union government seems to be desperate to convert it into a law so that illegal Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh could be granted Indian citizenship. The reason cited for such a move is persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh at the behest of Islamist forces in that country. No doubt, this is true. Hindus constituted about 30 per cent of East Pakistan’s (now Bangladesh) population at the time of Partition. Statistics available now give different figures as to their population in that country, but if averaged, it comes to around 10 per cent. That is, the diminution of the Hindu population in Bangladesh since 1947 till now is by 20 per cent! This is a whopping figure in demographic terms – ask any demographer. The sole reason attributed to such steep decline of a population – the largest religious minority in Bangladesh – is religious persecution, or their systematic elimination in their own land of birth just because they were born as Hindus in a state dominated by Muslims and the latter could do nothing as a fascist section among them went about launching brutal assaults on the former as to compel them to either surrender their faith or flee their motherland. This is substantiated by a whole lot of genuinely secular intellectuals and journalists in Bangladesh. One should read Bangladeshi writers like Taslima Nasreen and Salam Azad to get introduced to that reality.