Why Millions in India Risk Losing Their Citizenship
People wait at a window as officials check for their names on the National Register of Citizens at a government office in Guwahati, Assam.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/BloombergOfficials in Assam -- a lush, tea-growing state in northeastern India -- have published an updated citizenship registry for the first time in decades. About 1.9 million people’s names have been left off the list. Anyone who can’t prove they are living in the state legally risks being stripped of his or her citizenship and potentially deported. The state government, run by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, says the move is needed to identify illegal migrants. Critics accuse it of pushing a Hindu nationalist agenda that seeks to clear out Muslims.
Illegal migration has been a source of ethnic conflict and political unrest in Assam for decades. When Bangladesh declared independence in 1971, leading to a war with Pakistan, many families fled across the border into India to escape the fighting, settling in Assam. Some were granted citizenship, while others never registered. BJP president Amit Shah, Modi’s home affairs minister, promised at a rally in 2018 to purge the voter list of “infiltrators.“