Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) has caused turmoil in Assam and the northeastern states, areas that come with a history of disturbances along the framework and fault lines of identity politics

The aim of CAA under the current administration seems to be set the way for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. CAA is applicable to the whole of India. But it’s the Brahmaputra Valley where its consequences will be felt the most. CAA is not only a communal law couched as ‘benign geopolitics’, but it also goes against the interest of tribal communities and smaller sub-nationalities in the northeast. It also seeks to damage the fragile consensus developed over the cut-off date for citizenship after decades of bloody movements in Assam on the foreigners issue as well as interethnic skirmishes.

After Independence, Assam was the only state for which a National Register of Citizens (NCR) was first prepared in 1951. That shows the question of demographic change being a serious issue even decades ago for the people of the state. Today’s situation is
not just a matter of religious conflict. That is why identifying it only through a secularist filter lacks clarity.

It can’t be that the central administration was unaware of the consequences of pushing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) to become CAA. It must have known that the new law would antagonise major populations of the Brahmaputra Valley. Protests spilt over to the streets across the region when members of the joint parliamentar committee on CAB visited Assam in January.

So why was BJP in such a tearing hurry to stitch up CAA? Perhaps because it had failed to distort the NRC process in Assam in its favour and, hence, the fear to lose its consolidated vote bank. The broader context of CAA — and NRC — is of a contradiction between safeguarding culture, identity and the politico-economic rights and future of local and indigenous communities, and that of refugees and economic migrants.

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