India’s citizenship laws: The path to the Assam Accords

It took India as many as eight years to formulate and enact its first Citizenship Act, 1955. The root of the citizens versus outsiders’ movement can be traced to this one neglected remark by Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri in the Constituent Assembly debates in 1949: “Already I have been to Cachar and I have seen in that district, from which crossing the Barak river you come into India, there is trouble., this district of Cachar will be entirely one of district of Pakistan, and who will be responsible for giving one district which should have been kept in our province and which was retained after a good deal of fight but which will be sent to Pakistan?” The Eastern Frontier question Along its northern border, India negotiated a free movement agreement with Nepal in 1950, allowing all Indian and Nepalese citizens to freely live and work in either country. The government in 1950 passed the Undesirable Immigrants Bill, giving it power to expel any person or class of persons who entered Assam and whose stay was “detrimental to the interests of the general public.” Muslims were not mentioned specifically, but the law noted that the Act would not apply to any person migrating due to disturbances or fear of disturbances — thus, the East Bengali Hindus. The impact of the Bangladeshi Liberation movement and Assam Accord The pace of migration only sped up with the Bangladeshi Liberation movement, leading up to a point “where their presence became ‘illegal,’” observed Ms. Roy. The communal tone of the protests was highlighted by Partha S. Ghodh in a paper: “The massacre of about 4,000 Muslims at Nellie, the assembly elections that brought the Hiteshwar Saikia-led Congress Party to power, and the passage of the Illegal Migrants Act by Parliament when all the members of Parliament from Assam were on a boycott — all in 1983, clearly indicated that the matter of Bangladeshi migration was much beyond the simple logic of Indians versus foreign.” The current that culminated in the signing of the Assam Accords originated in 1980.