Qn April 10 ... representatives of the Centre and the All-Assam Students Union sat down for a meeting in Guwahati and evolved, what both sides called, a definition of the indigenous people of the State ... The definition ... those whose names figure in the 1951 National Register of Citizens and their descendants. And for the seven districts in Assam where the NRC is not available, (those who figure in) the electoral rolls of 1952 would be taken as the basic document.
The stage.is set for a major confrontation and possibly a legal battle. too.
The search for the definition was necessitated by the AASU demand for 100 per cent reservation of Assembly and Lok Sabha seats in the State to the indigenous people ... This (aspect) found an echo in the Assam Accord of 1985, clinched between the AASU and the Centre.
Clause V1 says: "Constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people." ...
In the present case, the dispute is over the new cut-off date of 1951 (NRC) and 1952 (voter list) to determine who would be regarded as the indigenous people. Already, the Assam Accord provides for a March 25, 1971 cut-off date for. detection ... Now, it seems the Centre has agreed to push back the cut-off date by another 20 years.
Minority organisations such as the United Minorities Front say it would go totally against the interests of the post- partition migrants and the riot-affected people from parts of Assam who had fled to East Pakistan only to return later.
An estimated 3,00,000 Muslims from western Assam fled to East Pakistan in 1950 in the wake of a communal riot. Following the Nehru-Liaquat Pact later that year, these people returned to Assam. They were returning in batches till about 1952, by which time the exercise of, preparing the NRC of 1951 as well as the voter list of 1952 got over. The names of this category, the absentee Muslims, therefore, did not figure in the two documents.
There is another category whose names apparently do not figure in the NRC of 1951: the Bengali Hindu refugees from East Pakistan. Large-scale influx of this group began only in 1950 and continued thereafter. These are the displaced persons and the Assam Act XV1 of 1951 made elaborate provisions for granting rehabilitation loans, thereby formally welcoming them back ...
Illegal infiltration as a problem in Assam cannot be deried. As early as June 27, 1962, Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking to the Assam State Committee of the Congress in Parliament, said: "You refer to Pakistani infiltration. This is perfectly true. But you will appreciate that this infiltration from Bengal to Assam has been taking place for a very long timepast ... this infiltration should be stopped and effectively dealt with ... Probably it will be difficult now to deal with illegal immigrants who came before 1952. We might, therefore, fix 1952 as the date of our enquiry."
The AASU or even New Delhi may now find Nehru's 1952 cut-off date proposal handy. But the document that is proposed to be taken as a reference point to: determine who a native of Assam is, is the. 1951 NRC whose justifiability in court is a matter of debate. Legal opinion varies on whether the NRC can at all be accepted by as a piece of evidence to prove a person's claim to Indian citizenship.
The former Chief Justice of the Assam & Nagaland High Court, P. K. Goswami, in a judgment (ILR, Assam & Nagaland, 1970), said: "This document (1951 NRC) is not a public document within the meaning of Section 74 of the Indian Evidence Act." He further said the National Register of Citizens was a contemporaneous register prepared by the officers appointed under the Census Act in the course of census operations. If so, Section 15 of the Act will make such records of census not open to inspection, nor admissible in evidence ...
... Census of 2001 could indeed be a testing time for the mainstream Assamese. Going by the sub-national fervour that has gripped the Bodos, the Karbis, the Misings and many others and their,systematic attempt at retaining their distinct tribal identities, it is unlikely that these groups would identify themselves as Assamese-speaking during the next census. This poses a real threat of the Assamese (as distinct from the people of Assam) being reduced to a minority in the State ... The Assamese society; (sociologists) reiterate, is the result of assimilation of Aryan and Tibetan-Burman migrants, among others.
(Even if) some of the Assembly and Lok Sabha seats may be reserved for the indigenous people. It. would then have to be seen who are voters ... After all, organisations such as the AASU still maintain that the voter list in Assam contains names of a large number of illegal Bangladeshi settlers.
The last thing Assam needs at this juncture is a fresh bout of politics over the citizenship issue. It is easy to define who is a citizen and who is not. But, it is extremely difficult to define who the indigenous people of a particular place are and who the aliens are. Caution, therefore, must be the catchword of the Government before it tries to fish in the Brahmaputra's troubled waters. (Source: The Hindu, 24 April, 2000)
