By Irudhaya Jothi

Ragabpur, Dec 9, 2019: Human Rights Day is celebrated everywhere on December 10.

This year the Dalit and Adivasi women of different associations in West Bengal gathered on December 9 to celebrate the Human Rights Day.

Sampurna Nari Kalyan Sangathan along with Nari Mukhti Chetana Sangathan and Pratyasha Nari Sangathan have decided to celebrate the day in 24 Parganas (South) and Hoogli districts of West Bengal.

Udayani Social Action Forum the Social, wing of the Calcutta Jesuits, birthed these associations.

Sujata Chiti, secretary of Sampurna Nari Kalya Sangathan, after presenting the human rights violation all over India, lambasted the rape cases being reported on a daily basis as Human Rights violation. She also condemned the encounter killing of the accused in Hyderabad saying, “Have we lost all hope in our judicial system?”

She also demanded scrapping the of Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) which was tabled in the Lok Sabha and hotly debated on December 9.

Citizenship in India is based on the non-negotiable principles of equality and non-discrimination.

India, when it became Independent in 1947 had firmly rooted itself in an inclusive and composite nationhood, and in 1950, accepted that people of all faiths, creeds, castes, languages and genders, are equal as citizens of the country.

The past six years have seen political moves to fundamentally assault and redefine this Constitutional basis of both Indian nationhood and citizenship.

This is seen in the newly drafted Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019, and hurriedly passed India-level NPR-National Register of Citizens (NRC) process.

The CAB promises to entertain requests for refuge and citizenship to all those ‘persecuted minorities’ from three Islamic countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who reached India before either 2014 or later.

The amendments by giving special privileges to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jain, Parsis and Christians from these three countries, single out Muslims for exclusion.

For example, neither the Ahmadiyas, who are undoubtedly persecuted in Pakistan, nor asylum seekers like the Rohingyas from Myanmar or Tamils from Sri Lanka have any place in India.

The CAB, 2019, is at odds with Constitutional secular principles and a violation of Articles 13, 14, 15, 16 and 21 which guarantee the right to equality, equality before the law and non-discriminatory treatment by the Indian state.

Through the process of enlisting for a National Population Register (NPR) and thereafter a National Register of Citizens (NRC), the present government appears intent on causing huge upheavals within Indian society.

Assam has, especially since 2013, been reeling under the impact of this ill-conceived exercise. Apart from the huge material costs, the human costs have been immeasurable.

Death, families torn apart; detention camps and foreigners’ tribunals; fear, the specter of statelessness – this is what the ordinary people, especially minorities, Dalits, women, children and the poor have had to suffer and continue to suffer. The worst impacted are women and children.

A nation-wide NRC will unleash widespread division and suffering among people across the country – rather than address the critical needs, from food security and employment to the annihilation of discrimination based on caste, community and gender, to the freedom to speak, worship, and live as our diverse people choose.

Today 1.9 million people live a broken existence in Assam with the sword of statelessness hanging over them. Does the rest of India want to tread this path?

The Indian government seems intent to replicate an Assam like trauma on the entire Indian people. While the government has announced that the NPR survey would begin from April 2020 onwards, there has been no public debate and clarity –in parliament or elsewhere–on the criteria of inclusion and exclusion within this ‘register’ once its begins.

Neither has there been any deliberation on the documents that will be required and demanded as standards of poof. There is also complete silence on the ‘cut-off date’ that will be used as the bottom line.

The Indian citizenship law grants citizenship by birth to all born before 1987. After that date apart from the citizen’s birth, the requirement is that one parent needs to have been born in India before 1987. After 2004, there is an additional qualification that neither parent should be an illegal migrant.

Given this calibration in existing law, what is or will be the criteria for inclusion and exclusion in the NPR/NRC? In a constitutional democracy can such an exercise be shrouded in secrecy?

Indian society is stratified with the ‘document’ being the privilege of the moneyed and few. Internal migration, natural and manmade disasters particular affect and target marginalized and displaced populations who have to struggle to produce these standards of proof.

Human Rights Day as in the past years celebrated at Ragabpur St.Xavier’s college on December 8 and at Udayani training center at Pandua on December 10.