Ever since India’s National Registry of Citizens (NRC), intended to identify ‘genuine’ residents, was begun in Assam in 2015, there have been calls for implementing it in other states. The trend has particularly intensified after the Bharatiya Janata Party was elected to power for the second time in May this year. Thus, while Indian home minister Amit Shah declared at a seminar in West Bengal the government’s intention to conduct one in that state, party leaders in Delhi and Karnataka also called for ones for their areas.

The one taking place in Assam, however, has a long history. Faced with the demands of the Assam Agitation in the 1980s, the chief grievance of which was the large and increasing presence of Bengali speakers in that state, it was agreed to update the National Registry of Citizens.

As long as Assam was ruled by the Indian National Congress and the regional Assam Gana Parishad, the registry was kept on the backburner. It was realised that it would be a monumental task involving massive resources in manpower and finances. Moreover, carrying out a registry risked alienating a large part of the congress Bengali vote-bank, both Hindu and Muslim. It was perhaps also understood that even if such an exercise was carried out, there were few viable means to deal with the millions of people who would find themselves deprived of citizenship.

In 2015, prodded and monitored by the Supreme Court, work finally started on the registry. Such a massive undertaking was bound to have problems. People claimed their documents were not considered owing to such things as spelling mistakes in their family names. There were allegations of two sets of standards, one for those assumed to be genuine residents, and another for those of suspect origins. Many families saw some of their members excluded from the list; several war veterans and kin of former political leaders were equally excluded.

The final list was published last September. This excluded some 2 million people. Few were happy about the outcome. The Assamese organisations felt the number of excluded citizens was too low. The right-wing media claimed that many illegal Bangladeshi migrants had forged documents or bribed the officials. The Muslim Bengali organisations claimed for their part that a lot of genuine residents were left out.

The only recourse open to those excluded now is the foreigner tribunals. Despite the home minister’s rhetoric, what will happen after is less clear. The existing detention centres house only a few thousand inmates, the harsh conditions of which were the subject of a petition in the Supreme Court. There is the talk of building more detention centres, but no one knows how long and in what conditions people would stay there. It is noteworthy that no agreement regarding any possible repatriation has been reached with Bangladesh, the putative origin of the migrants. Nor is Bangladesh likely to accept any sizeable number of expelled Bengalis from Assam.

It is keeping in mind these apprehensions and in line with its ideological commitment to making India the ‘natural home of Hindus’ that the previous BJP government had introduced the Citizenship Amendment Bill in 2016. This bill sought to fast-track citizenship to all persecuted people from the subcontinent, barring Muslims. This was the carrot dangled to the Bengali-speaking Hindus from Assam threatened with the loss of statehood. However, facing stiff opposition in the north-eastern states and without approval from the upper house of the parliament, the bill lapsed.

The call for a nation-wide registry with its implicit threat of ejecting undesirable foreigners must be seen in the broader context of right-wing politics. Historically, anti-immigrant rhetoric has been a common theme among the right-wing populist parties across the world. Today, it is Trump, with his threat to build the wall. However, he is not the only one. It is the thread that unites the leaders and supporters of the British National Party in the UK, the Rassemblement National in France, as well as the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany. It includes such populists as Victor Orban of Hungary and Matteo Salvini in Italy, known for their outspoken anti-immigrant rhetoric.

In the right-wing world-view, immigrants are blamed for a host of ills. They’re seen as endangering security, prone to crime and in a general way threatening the ‘normal’ way of life. A frequent refrain of the right-wing parties, one which resonates with a wider audience, is of migrants stealing jobs from locals and enjoying government largesse.

A similar kind of rhetoric is used to denounce Bangladeshi migrants. There is little talk of jobs being stolen for the simple reason that the Bangladeshis who are here mostly do jobs few want to do. Nor are they reproached of appropriating government services, paltry as they already are. Instead, the main charges against them are of endangering ‘national security’ and seeking to effect demographic change in the border states.

For a long while, the focus was on Assam. But the focus has now shifted to West Bengal. There are no credible figures of migrants in Bengal or the country as a whole, but it’s clear that the vast majority of these are economic migrants. There is no indication that any number of them are motivated by concerns other than prospects of life slightly better than what they left behind. But by their religious and national affiliation, they fit nicely the image of the ‘other’ and all that it comes with, so assiduously cultivated by the right-wing.

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