Until the RSS-BJP catapulted Narendra Modi into the political scene in India, the Hindutva was merely a daydream largely nurtured by proponents of mythical Mahabharata. But now that he is there that dream seems to be turning into reality. In less than a month his government not only revoked the constitutionally-granted autonomous status of Occupied Kashmir it has now stripped some two million, mostly Muslims, the residents of Assam, of their citizenship. They are 'stateless' because they are "foreign infiltrators" Modi's right-hand-man Home Minister Amit Shah wants these "termites" out of India and would "run a countrywide campaign to send back the infiltrators". Narendra Modi has the skin of a lizard which keeps changing its colour: he takes pride for by helping these Bengali Muslims and Hindus to cross the border and live in Assam in 1971. Now he wants Muslims among them to leave Assam because they are "infiltrators". The whole charade, enacted in the garb of enlisting on the National Register of Citizens (NRC), came to light on this past Saturday, and the irony of registration is that if the father has been declared citizen his son is not. How more ridiculous a programme can be - even the BJP president in Assam doesn't trust this NRC. "We are very unhappy ... many people with forged certificates were included, while genuine Indians were left out," he says. To others in Guwahati, the NRC may have opened new fault-lines. The option of appeal to contest finding of the NRC is there, but that is too cumbersome to be of any use to a large majority of the adversely-affected people. Six months on India is likely to have more than a million Assamese in detention camps. And, if the Modi establishment's passive reaction to calls of international community to lift the siege of Occupied Kashmir is any gauge there is hardly a possibility that it would listen to UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi, who has called on New Delhi to 'refrain from detaining or deporting anyone whose nationality is not verified through the process'. Modi's move is also a punch in the face of those who risk their lives while trying to rescue the migrants who flee their tyrannical homelands to seek refuge in Europe. Any move that could leave a large number of people without nationality would be an "enormous blow to global efforts to eradicate statelessness," Grandi pointed out in his statement.
But to every thesis there is an anti-thesis, located right in its belly. India is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-faith polity. Leave apart Sikhs, Tamils, Dalits and many other minorities the Muslims alone make about 15 percent of its population. They are in great numbers in Uttar Pradesh and Kerala, where the other day some students brandished the Pakistan's flag as expression of their solidarity with fellow Muslim Kashmiris. Then there are also movements for independence in Nagaland and other north eastern states, as well as in Tamil-majority South India. That there is reincarnation of Jurnail Singh Bhindranwale in East Punjab is a possibility that can translate into a reality anytime soon. Going by the RSS-BJP proponents' campaign for revival of Mahabharata, their campaign is heavy with its child of disintegration. This has happened with many empires which flourished and then disintegrated in this very Subcontinent. To this fateful dictate of history the Modi's India can be no exception. Where will these two million unfortunate Indians go? To prisons in Assam which are already overcrowded; to Bangladesh which is already playing host to three-quarter of a million Rohingya Muslims and says the NRC is an "internal matter" of India; or remain where they have lived for the last half of a century or so. It is good that the UN Commissioner for Refugees has taken notice of this tragedy in the making. But that is not enough; the world owes to these two million human beings moral responsibility that they are not rendered homeless and stateless.