
'A nightmarish mess': millions in Assam brace for loss of citizenship - akbarnama
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/30/nightmarish-mess-millions-assam-brace-for-loss-of-citizenship-india
======
rootw0rm
what madness. if you're born on the wrong side of an imaginary line and make
your way across...and just try to exist...someone can hold you in a cage
forever. it's insane how many people think this is okay.

~~~
yumraj
Name one country, at least one which is doing well economically better than
its neighbors, which has open borders and anyone is allowed to go there and
gets citizenship just by entering there.

~~~
tim333
Quite a few of those in Europe. Germany - Poland/Romania etc for example.
Generally you have to live a place about a decade to get citizenship though.

------
pm90
What in the world. First the Rohingya's, then the Kashmiris and now Assam. It
seems like minorities are being systematically targeted all across the
subcontinent.

~~~
gregimba
The common denominator seems to be these are majority muslim groups. A
religious minority is being systematically targeted in multiple places.

------
qazpot
These people never had a citizenship to begin with, so they are not losing
citizenship, they were breaking the law by being illegally in the country.

~~~
pm90
That is a stupid argument. They're _people_ , sure they don't have the
paperwork, but they've built homes and a life for themselves. Why disrupt
that? What is the goal here? Its not like India is so small that there isn't
space for more people.

~~~
qazpot
> hey're people, sure they don't have the paperwork, but they've built homes
> and a life for themselves. Why disrupt that?

They have settled here illegally.

> Its not like India is so small that there isn't space for more people.

Actually yes India already has a population problem the last thing it needs is
illegal immigrants further contributing to the problem. Although this is not
politically correct but these people also have the very large number of
children because of their religious teachings.

~~~
pm90
The fertility rate is actually dropping a lot. In total, these are a few
million people. Even if they had a ridiculous number of children, they would
still not make any significant demographic difference. They would provide the
country with more labor though.

~~~
talonx
>>Even if they had a ridiculous number of children, they would still not make
any significant demographic difference.

But they do. The "demographic difference" here is being made because India is
vastly more varied culturally than you might be aware.

------
yumraj
For the record, these people should never have been citizens in the first
place.

These are the folks who came through porus border from Bangladesh illegally.

~~~
blincoln
If their families have been there since 1938, as is the case for one of the
people mentioned in the article, where would you suggest they _are_ citizens?

~~~
cameronbrown
OP isn't _wrong_ , but it's also Assam's fault for not properly maintaining
it's border. Once you start making people stateless several generations
removed from those who did cross illegally, that's on them.

~~~
makomk
The border in question wasn't even a border in 1938 because that predates the
partition of India. Bangladesh, the country that certain Indian political
factions are claiming these people are from, only came into existence in 1972
and mainly just recognises people who were permanent residents there in 1971
as citizens.

------
thrawaw3234432
This is what happens when you let something rot for electoral gains. Without
historical knowledge, it is easy to take the humanitarian cause, but with it,
things become complicated (like every conflict zone), which is perhaps why
"liberal" outlets conveniently forget to talk about them (think Israel,
Palestine, Jewish exodus from Middle East, Europe).

The year 1971 was when a party from East Pakistan won the state elections;
this was rejected by the Punjabi-dominated Army, which started killing
Bangladeshis by the millions. A letter by the US Ambassador (in Dhaka,
Kolkata?) was completely ignored by Nixon and his henchman, Kissinger. This
led to a genocide, which took a religious turn (as it always does), and Hindus
were killed and raped en masse. The exodus, which was merely a repeat of the
one following partition, led Indira Gandhi (a brutal dictator in her own
right), to help create an independent state of Bangladesh.

The refugees were never repatriated, and the open border meant easy passage
for people. Governments from states neighbouring Bangladesh have encouraged
Muslim voters to illegally emigrate to bolster their electoral majorities;
this is not a contentious fact in India. Indeed, the communists even killed
over 5000 Hindu refugees using state police in Marichjhapi, in order to secure
their vote share in the decade after the war; there is, as usual, a total
silence to the brutal state-sponsored genocides by the Left.

There is however a strong distaste for the trespassers, and this is indeed
along religious lines. Bangladesh is also a breeding ground for the global
Jihad, and this is precisely why Myanmar too reacts the way it has. In India,
Muslim majority areas are often ... erm ... not exactly places where
minorities are left in peace (Kashmir, Ramanathapuram, Bhatkal, Malda, tons of
districts in Bengal, Bihar, UP). Having this many Bangladeshis, being
supported by corrupt political elites, is not exactly a problem it needs right
now. India in particular has one too many Kashmirs brewing, and unlike the
Christians and Muslims who have historically either been "harvesting" lands by
one means or the other, India's natives have no real homeland. Not even India,
which constitutionally discriminates against Hindus.

Letting a wound fester, sadly, has its consequences. The instabilities caused
by the jihadis has grave consequences to India's economy and culture, and it
has every right to deport illegal immigrants.

~~~
srean
Barring a few exaggerations here and there, your comment is very accurate,
knowledgeable and also uncontroversial. I am a little surprised that this
required a throwaway handle.

Regarding exaggerations Marichjhapi death toll, the unofficial one, was around
a thousand at max. Official one of course is ridiculous -- 2. If you are
insinuating that Muslim population in Malda, West Bengal are up to no good,
thats patently false because I have eyes on the ground there.

Hope you comment more on HN.

------
devoply
In a country of 1.4 billion let's deport 1 million for shits and giggles to
appease Hindu nationalists. You know what Indian Muslims should do to punish
Modhi is simply have 1 extra child. Similarly the legal Mexican immigrants in
the US should do the same to punish Trump. Make Hindustan Great Again.

~~~
qazpot
> Indian Muslims should do to punish Modhi is simply have 1 extra child

Indian Muslims have been having more children than any body can afford long
before Modi came in power. Going by your logic Indian Muslims seems to be
punishing India. I would like to point out that India Muslims have 7-8
children as part of their religious teachings.

~~~
devoply
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth)

> Growth rate of Muslims has been consistently higher than the growth rate of
> Hindus, even since the census data of independent India has been available.
> For example, during the 1991-2001 decade, Muslim growth rate was 29.52% (vs
> 19.92% for Hindus)[19] However, Muslims population growth rate declined to
> 24.6% during 2001-2011 decade, in keeping with the similar decline in most
> religious groups of India.

As the West has learned if you wish to control a population then you must not
make them a poor underclass... Poor underclasses always produce more children
than richer classes.

But yeah it's true India's Muslims have been growing faster than India's
Hindus. My point was this is not going to fix that and it's simply an insult
to human rights to be punished using the same methods being used to attack it.
By growing the population even more.

In another words to fix the population issue you need to move everyone up the
economic ladder so that they become self-indulgent individualists who stop
caring about religion and their community and starting caring about themselves
and enjoyment of their lives. At which point they will stop having children
and the population will shrink. Without anyone suffering from anything except
lonliness.

