The question of who is a foreigner

Shibu Soren got convicted, Sanjay Dutt would go to jail, Ganguly returned to Indian side and oh yeah, henceforth, Shah Rukh Khan would be hosting KBC.

In the middle of sensational, crime and the clichéd 24x7 non-stop channel feeds, a very crucial news totally got diminished from the public attention. Especially because we had other juicy aspects in our lives to talk about and more importantly because the media could conveniently camouflage this news among Sorens, Dutts and Khans.

Enough of bantering, let me come to the point. On December 5th, Supreme Court quashed the Amendment to Assam Foreigners Act and said that such an amendment is unconstitutional.

Why am I saying this is important and what does this verdict mean? Here I go.

For quite some time, refugees from Bangladesh have been crossing over to Assam and various other North-East provinces and settling down comfortably. There have been noises made to identify and deport them. Some time this would be taken up seriously and also ignored conveniently. People moving in are Muslims and hence they are a convenient vote-bank for the pseudo-secular parties, the leading one being Congress. For Assamese, they posed potential threat to their sovereignty and also bring in terrorism. For an already militant-affected Assam, influx of Islamic Terrorism would just be the right concoction for disaster.

But for a vote-bank driven Congress, terrorism is absolutely a non-issue. Also, since BJP was gaining foot-hold in Assam, they had to foil BJP’s chances by wresting complete control of Muslim votes. And how do you do this? By declaring that all Muslims in Assam are Indians! Such an announcement would be obviously invalid so they decided to implement IMDT, Illegal Migrants (Decision by Tribunals). This posed the weight of proving someone a foreigner onto the tribunals and not the person. Last year, Supreme Court quashed this act by stating it illegal. Driven to the wall, Congress came back with another weapon, this time by amending the Foreigner’s Act.

According to the Foreigner’s Act, 1964, if someone is accused as non-Indian, the person concerned should prove that he or she is indeed the citizen of this country. Last February, the central government amended this act by exempting Assam from this act. The result is, if you point out someone as foreigner in Assam, it is your responsibility to prove it and not the accused. This would have led to absolute nullification of the Foreigner’s Act in Assam, which means that it became a free state for any immigrant. People from Bangladesh especially, started moving lock stock and terrorists with their double-barrels. BJP’s and AGP’s claim that this is a serious threat to our security fell into deaf ears since the whole of media was busy chanting the Saint Sonia and Manmohan mantra.

Thankfully, the courts weren’t deaf and especially the Supreme Court has time and again, come the rescue of the concerned citizens. Responding to a petition, a Bench in the Apex court ruled that the onus of proving the nationality lies on the accused and a serious initiative should be taken in Assam to identify and deport foreigners. The Apex Court also, lamented that they have sensed a lack of will on the part of the central government. Also, it said that ‘though we would normally desist from commenting, when the security of the nation is the issue as highlighted in the petition, we have to say that the bona fides of the action leave something to be desired’.

The media surprisingly chose to ignore such strong words coming from the courts. It is not the first time that this government has received rap from the courts. I have practically lost count on the occasions the centre government has time and again violated some law or amendment or the other and received from mild-condemnation to serious yelling from the courts.

I’m no BJP fan while I’m criticising the Congress so much. Both these parties have repeatedly shown lack of respect for our constitution and tried to twist it for their vote-bank politics. However, the trouble arises when Congress wants to go to any extent in the name of appeasing minorities and camouflages this under the guise of secularism. This touches the bizarre border of even subtly supporting terrorism. Assam Foreigner’s Act is one such reckless behaviour.

I’m sure even the genuine Indian Muslims would be opposed to refugees and terrorists carelessly crossing the Assam-Bangalesh borders. Besides being plainly illegal, this leads to regional imbalance, economic stagnation, and resource crisis. And of course above all else promotes terrorism.

Because Indira Gandhi’s vote-bank politics, we paid the price in Punjab and still paying in Kashmir.

It appears that it’s the daughter-in-law’s turn to wreck havoc.