While it’s apparent that the proposed nation-wide NRC is a key tool in alienating Muslims, many will ponder on whether or not to participate in it. There are a variety of arguments set forth by different people as to how Muslims should respond to it.

The proposed exercise of nation-wide NRC is a blatant attempt by the Sangh to further harass and isolate the Muslims of the country. What had been a winning political strategy, is now an in-your-face move to strip the Muslims of their citizenship and basic human rights.

Unlike the NRC in Assam which required documents before March 24, 1971, it is believed that the cut-off date for the Nationwide NRC has been pulled back to the 1950s.

The irony is delicious; in a country where the Prime Minister cannot produce his own University degree from 1978, Muslims are expected to produce records more than half a century old.

The basics of NRC

The National Register of Citizens was conceptualized in 1951 following the census conducted that year. In 2013, it was restarted under the guidance of the Supreme Court of India. NRC update was carried out under The Citizenship Act, 1955, and according to rules framed in the Assam Accord.

Assam students had been agitating against the ‘influx’ of Bangladeshis into Assam. The agitation against the ‘Bangladeshi’ immigrants often turned violent, resulting in the massacre of Bengali speaking Muslims; the most famous being the Nellie massacre of 1983 which claimed over 10,000 lives in a series of state-wide incidents of brutal killings. The Tiwari commission report on the Nellie massacre is still kept a close-guarded secret by the government. There was not a single conviction when then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi dropped all charges as part of the Assam Accord. The latest violence occurring in 2014 where Bodo Militants massacred over a hundred Bengali speaking Muslims in a long chain of violence.

In 2013 the process of NRC update was restarted at the orders of the Supreme Court of India. The NRC was published finally in 2018 where it excluded close to 2 million people and declared them as foreigners.

To the utter dismay of the BJP, a large number of the excluded people were Hindus.

Coupling NRC with the CAB

The Citizenship Amendment Bill will amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to ostensibly protect persecuted minorities who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship, who have been, otherwise staying as illegal immigrants.

The bill effectively excludes Muslims on the basis of religion. While many have argued that the bill violates Article 14 of the Fundamental Rights but it should be remembered that the judiciary has been thoroughly compromised and expecting the SC to declare the bill once passed as ultra-vires is way too much optimism.

The NRC coupled with the Citizenship Amendment Bill is designed to strip as many Muslims of citizenship as possible.

Their experiment has ensured that they close all potential loopholes:

As their experiments with NRC have come to a close and they have been crucial lessons for the Hindutva Project.

The first one is that Muslims of Assam were already under the sword of NRC and as a result, they had been maintaining their documents for generations. The Muslims from the rest of India never had such necessity hence have not been this steadfast in keeping such documents. And pushing the date further back to the 1950s makes it all the more difficult.

The second and the most important lesson learned was that Hindus as well will fail to produce documents as proof of their citizenship. The poverty and dispossession cut across religious lines so it was no surprise that among the 2 million excluded in the NRC, a sizeable chunk included Hindus.

To mitigate this problem, this regime has introduced the Citizenship Amendment Bill which will effectively exclude non-Muslims from the NRC for whatever the frivolous reasons.

The malice of the government is apparent. What’s revolting is that it is all executed under the garb of protecting the persecuted minorities of the neighborhood.

If granting refuge to persecuted minorities was the aim of this regime, they would have certainly included the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar who are the most persecuted group in India’s neighborhood. Interestingly the Tamils of Sri Lanka have not been included either.

Sheltering the refugees was never the agenda. It is a masked activity to turn as many Muslims of India stateless as possible. Just another step in the Grand scheme of the Hindutva Project.

Do note that the Citizenship Amendment Bill violates the Assam Accord as well because as per Assam accord, the Bengali speaking ‘infiltrators’ had to be identified and deported, but the BJP being a Hindu nationalist party wants to exclude Hindus from such exercise. But it looks like the regime might try to pacify the Assomiya Nationalists by sacrificing the Bengali Hindus as well along with Bengali Muslims.

Towards a dystopian future.

The crux of NRC is that anyone failing to produce required documents as proof of citizenship shall be stripped of citizenship while at the same time the Citizenship Amendment Bill saves other citizens such as Hindus who might also be unable to produce the same.

Everyone must be getting the idea towards which direction India is heading to. Ethnic cleansing doesn’t begin overnight. It is meticulously crafted over a long period of time, by identifying the target, dehumanizing them, dispossessing them and when they are pushed to a level of extreme vulnerability, only then the final blow is struck. By this time the victims are in no position to defend themselves and submit to the fate, the tyrants have decided for them.

What should be done now?

There are three possible alternatives that can be adopted to tackle this situation and their consequences thereof:

1. Toe the line

Comply and play directly into the hands of this regime while throwing your fellow people under the bus to save yourself. Many urban educated Muslims might choose this alternative to save themselves. While these urban educated Muslims exist in a very small number, it will be a large, poor group of underprivileged and marginalized Muslims who will bear the brunt of this exercise. Harassment, displacement, and incarceration will be widespread as a consequence.

While these privileged Muslims might be able to save themselves, for the time being, the regime, once done with the rest, will certainly pull their attention back to the leftovers and this time their privilege won’t save them.

2. Take the legal route

The game has been rigged against Muslims from the beginning. You can’t fight for justice in a skewed system. Mounting costs of litigation will affect the savings of many. As per an estimate, the litigation cost was over Rs 7,600 crores in Assam only. The snail-paced legal system will drag on for decades, the regime will hatch new schemes, and the individuals fighting this will burn up their savings.

A pooled fund might be a good idea to fight legally for the sake of putting up a fight.

3. Civil Disobedience

The final and the most effective. BOYCOTT NRC. The state cannot incarcerate 200 million at the same time. And be assured that this civil disobedience cannot be a success without a centralized leadership.

The regime will try to make an example of some so that others may fall in line — denying voting rights to education, public employment, and even incarceration. Without a centralized leadership, the movement will become unsustainable and cripple like dominos.

The leaders won’t drop from the skies. They will emerge from amongst the masses. And beware of native informants who might appear as allies but would want nothing but to cripple the movement from within.

You cannot win against the state. But you must make sure you make the cost of victory too high so as the victory becomes meaningless. A pyrrhic victory.

The more you cede the territory to the tyrant, the more you will embolden them and the more excesses shall be committed as you shall be perceived weak.

Never cede an inch to the tyrant. Never.