It Is Important To Contextualise The NRC

Errors aside, the process was rigorous, methodical and did not target any particular community.

- Hiren Gohain

The National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was expected to land with a bang in Assam, seems to some as having landed with a mere whoosh. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders are particularly upset as it has belied their hopes of netting a huge number of immigrant Muslims in a dragnet — reportedly, a majority of those left out are Hindus. The All Assam Students Union (AASU) has expressed disappointment, arguing that the numbers did not tally with earlier figures mentioned by the government. Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has even given dark hints of ‘other measures’ in-store to offset the ‘errors’ in the NRC.

On the other hand, former Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta has welcomed it as satisfactory. Pradip Bhuyan, whose PIL galvanised the process of preparing the NRC; The Forum Against Amendment of the Citizenship Bill, which I chaired; and organisations representing immigrant Muslims have also welcomed it, while pointing out that such a massive and complex exercise in a country where official documentation is still at a rudimentary stage is not likely to be foolproof.

Those expressing their disappointment ignore that the rigorous procedures and methodical cross verifications were not put in place to fulfil some people’s fantasies. The previous figures cited by the government in earlier times were not based on any systematic procedure.

Rhetoric and reality

The concerns over the migration of Muslims also mask a social phenomenon. As Dr. Ilias Ali, a surgeon and crusader for family planning, and Abdul Mannan, a retired professor of statistics, have shown, the Muslims’ swelling numbers are the result of widespread poverty, illiteracy, early marriage and lack of birth-control measures rather than migration. However, this is not to deny that some migration did take place.