In wake of Union Home Minister and BJP President Amit Shah’s recent statement renewing the government’s commitment to bringing about the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), the All Assam Students Union (AASU) has warned against taking any steps in the direction.
Shah had on Tuesday at a rally in Kolkata said that the government was determined to conduct National Register of Citizens (NRC) across India after passing the CAB. This clearly did not go down well with the AASU, an influential student body that was behind the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985 and update of the NRC in Assam thereafter.
AASU president Dipanko Kumar Nath said, “Time and again we’ve made it clear that Assam and other States in the Northeast are not dumping grounds for Bangladeshis. Because of its comfortable strength in the Parliament, the government at the Centre is ignoring the wishes and aspirations of the people of Assam and the entire Northeast. The government is out to impose the CAB on us.” He added, “The cut-off year – March 24 midnight, 1971 – doesn’t discriminate between Hindus and Muslims. The Assam Accord asserts the cut-off date, without making mention of any religion. If the BJP goes ahead with imposing the CAB on Assam and the Northeast, it will have to hit the roadblock of the indigenous people of this region.”
AASU general secretary Lurin Jyoti Gogoi said, “AASU would never accept violation of the Assam Accord.” He added that the student body “will be forced to launch a democratic movement if Center tries to impose the bill against the wishes of the people.”
The AASU’s anti-‘outsider’ stand is what spearheaded the campaign for updating the NRC. However, it is in sharp contrast to the CAB that offers Indian citizenship to Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Christian and Parsee refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. This is because AASU does not want any Bangladeshis, including Bangladeshi Hindus, to be granted citizenship.
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