NRC

TESTIMONIES

darrang

BARPETA

CACHAR

JORHAT

HOJAI

HAILAKANDI

SIVASAGAR

KARIMGANJ

KAMRUP

DISTRICT

Barpeta

Testimony Of

Zainab and Siddique Ali

Zainab Khatun’s name is on the final NRC list. But her husband, Siddique Ali Habibul’s name is not. Siddique worked in Shillong in the neighbouring state of Meghalaya as a hawker selling clothes. He returned to his village in Barpeta when the NRC was being updated, submitted all the necessary documents, and once his name appeared on the first draft on 31st December 2017, returned to Meghalaya to his work.

On 30th June 2018, the final draft of the NRC was released. Siddique Ali was shocked to learn that his name had been excluded from this list. This time he returned to file his claim, and hasn’t gone back. The trauma of being called a foreigner in his own homeland, and the anxiety of being deported doesn’t allow him to sleep. He hides himself whenever he hears a knock or a stranger's voice. “He has practically stopped eating,” said his wife, Zainab Khatun. “He walks around all night saying, “Galaye dori debo (I want to kill myself)".

They have had to hire a lawyer and pay a fee of Rs. 50,000 to help challenge his wrongful exclusion. Despite this, Siddique Ali’s name remained missing from the final list that was released on 31st August 2019.

Siddique Ali was not home the day we visited. He had gone to the market with their last possession. “He has gone to sell our cow,” Zainab said.

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Amaila Khatun

Feroza Khatun

Alimuddin's family

Foreigners' Tribunals (FTs), which, in a sense have the last word on whether or not someone is a citizen, are only quasi-judicial bodies. The only qualification to be a judge at the FT is to have passed the Bar examination and have ten years of legal practice at any level. In contrast with such minimal requirements for appointment, the perks of the job are many – government housing, a car and large monthly allowances.

In 2015, the Guwahati High Court was ordered by the Supreme Court to set up a special bench to monitor the functioning of the FT. More recently, another scrutiny committee was set up, comprising the District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police (Border) among others, to verify the validity and legality of the opinion of the Tribunal. Despite these checks, FT judges seem to define the scope of their jurisdiction, including inventing new categories such as ‘projected parents’ that have no legal definition.

For those declared foreigners by the tribunal, there is no way they can file an appeal against this at the tribunal itself. The Foreigners' Tribunal (Amendment) Order dated May 30, 2019 clearly states:
(7) Persons against whom a reference has already been made by the competent authority to any Foreigners' Tribunal shall not be eligible to file the appeal before the tribunal.
(8) If an FT had already given opinion about a person earlier as a foreigner, such person shall not be eligible to file an appeal to any tribunal.

What this means is that the only recourse in such a case is to file a Writ Petition in the High Court. The High Court need not review the proceedings by which the order was reached. The order given by the FT is usually very minimal with barely any mention of the procedure followed to decide inclusion or exclusion. (put image of copy with relevant section highlighted). To put it bluntly, the FT judge gets to decide the fate of someone’s citizenship by whatever logic they deem fit.

In its report ‘Designed to Exclude’, Amnesty International noted that Foreigners' Tribunals were dismissive, used offensive and derogatory language, and their judgements were filled with biases. In fact, they also pointed out that “an analysis of the affidavit filed by the Government of Assam in the Guwahati High Court shows that on an average, any member (of the FT) who declared foreigners in less than 10% of their disposed cases, stood the risk of being axed.”

“No reasons were given for the termination (of my contract) but when I filed a case before the High Court challenging my termination, it came to light that the (State) government’s stand was that my disposal of cases was high but my declaration (of foreigners) was less.”
- Kartik Ray, Former Judicial Officer, Foreigners’ Tribunals, Assam

Although there are no legal or official sanctions for this, for some reason, persons noted as illegal immigrants are, unlike all others, made to appear barefoot in court.

In February 2020, when union Human Resource Development minister Ramesh Pokhriyal tabled education data in the Rajya Sabha, it was revealed that Assam has the highest dropout rate in both primary and secondary school in the country.

While the dropout rate is 10.1% in primary school, this increases to 33.7% in secondary school. For girls, it is over 35%. While the overall literacy rate of the state is 63%, in the Char-Chapori region it is as low as 19.31%.

Most villages in the region only have a primary school. There is one secondary school for every 4 or more villages. Given the challenging terrain, access to schools is not always easy. Often children have to walk long distances on roads which are full of silt and sand for a major part of the year. Sometimes the journey to school involves a 15-minute-long boat ride that costs 5 or 10 rupees each way.

For girl children, with the added responsibility of housework and concerns of safety, access to schools becomes more difficult. What’s more, there is a very low percentage of female teachers in the region, which adds to parents’ hesitation in sending their daughters to school.

Residents of the Char villages have been demanding secondary schools in each village and also colleges in the vicinity so that their children can access education. In Kamrup, access to schooling is slightly better than certain parts of neighbouring Barpeta and Darrang. However, given the many social, economic and logistical hurdles, the number of girls who make it to high school is still very low. Over 200 primary schools in Kamrup do not even have a girls’ toilet.

Since state-run regular government schools continue to be inaccessible to many children in the Chars, Madarsa schools and Maktabs play an important role in providing access to education. In the early ‘90s, as a part of a drive to universalise elementary education, the state government relied on the long standing work done by Maktabs in providing access to education and converted several of them into ‘Alternative Schools’.

The programme included training of the existing Maktab teachers called Janabs, provision for teaching-learning materials and some token grant for running the centres. No remuneration from the state was given to the Janabs for this additional work. Through community mobilisation, the Janabs were convinced to take on the responsibility of teaching additional school curriculum at the Maktabs.

In December 2020, Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that the government has “finally decided to reform the education system and make it secular.” What this meant was that all Madarsas will be converted to regular schools, and Islamic studies subjects and the name Maktab would be dropped. He also shared that the government has approved converting Sanskrit tols into centres for learning of Indian heritage and civilisation. “We are basically going to run courses on Indian civilisation [in the Sanskrit tolls]…It will be different from history. The curriculum will be prepared from a civilisational point of view.”, he said.

My Mother by Rehna Sultana

I was dropped on your lap my mother
Just as my father, grandfather, great-grandfather
And yet you detest me, my mother,
For who I am.
Yes, I was dropped on your lap as
a cursed Miyah, my mother.

You can’t trust me
Because I have somehow grown this
beard.
Somehow slipped into a lungi
I am tired, tired of introducing myself
To you.
I bear all your insults and still shout,
Mother! I am yours!
Sometimes I wonder
What did I gain by falling in your lap?
I have no identity, no language
I have lost myself, lost everything
That could define me
And yet I hold you close
I try to melt into you
I need nothing, my mother.
Just a spot at your feet.
Open your eyes once mother
Open your lips
Tell these sons of the earth
That we are all bothers.
And yet I tell you again
I am just another child
I am not a ‘Miyah cunt’
Not a ‘Bangladeshi’
Miyah I am,
A Miyah.
I can’t string words through poetry
Can’t sing my pain in verse
This prayer, this is all I have.

Write Down ‘I am a Miyah’ by Hafiz Ahmed
Translated by Shalim M. Hussain

Write
Write Down
I am a Miya
My serial number in the NRC is 200543
I have two children
Another is coming
Next summer.
Will you hate him
As you hate me?
Write
I am a Miya
I turn waste, marshy lands
To green paddy fields
To feed you.
I carry bricks
To build your buildings
Drive your car
For your comfort
Clean your drain
To keep you healthy.
I have always been
In your service
And yet
you are dissatisfied!
Write down
I am a Miya,
A citizen of a democratic, secular, Republic
Without any rights
My mother a D voter,
Though her parents are Indian.
If you wish kill me, drive me from my village,
Snatch my green fields
hire bulldozers
To roll over me.
Your bullets
Can shatter my breast
for no crime.
Write
I am a Miya
Of the Brahamaputra
Your torture
Has burnt my body black
Reddened my eyes with fire.
Beware!
I have nothing but anger in stock.
Keep away!
Or
Turn to Ashes.

I Beg To State That by Khabir Ahmed
Translated by Shalim M Hussain

I beg to state that
I am a settler, a hated Miyah
Whatever be the case, my name is
Ismail Sheikh, Ramzan Ali or Majid Miyah
Subject - I am an Assamese Asomiya
I have many things to say
Stories older than Assam’s folktales
Stories older than the blood
Flowing through your veins
After forty years of independence
I have no space in the words of beloved writers
The brush of your scriptwriters doesn’t dip in my picture
My name left unpronounced in assemblies and parliaments
On no martyr’s memorial, on no news report is my name printed
Even in tiny letters.

Besides, you haven’t yet decided what to call me -
Am I Miyah, Asomiya or Neo-Asomiya?
And yet you talk of the river
The river is Assam’s mother, you say
You talk of trees
Assam is the land of blue hills, you say
My spine is tough, steadfast as the trees
The shade of the trees my address…
You talk of farmers, workers
Assam is the land of rice and labour, you say
I bow before paddy, I bow before sweat
For I am a farmer’s boy…

I beg to state that I am a
Settler, a dirty Miyah
Whatever be the case, my name
Is Khabir Ahmed or Mijanur Miyah
Subject - I am an Assamese Asomiya.Sometime in the last century, I lost
My address in the storms of the Padma
A merchant’s boat found me drifting and dropped me here
Since then I have held close to my heart this land, this earth
And began a new journey of discovery
From Sadiya to Dhubri…
Since that day
I have flattened the red hills
Chopped forests into cities, rolled-earth into bricks
From bricks built monuments
Laid stones on the earth, burnt my body black with peat
Swam rivers, stood on the bank
And dammed floods
Irrigated crops with my blood and sweat
And with the plough of my fathers, etched on the earth
A…S…S…A…M

Even I waited for freedom
Built a nest in the river reeds
Sang songs in Bhatiyali
When the Father came visiting,
I listened to the music of the Luit
In the evening stood by the Kolong, the Kopili
And saw on their banks gold.
Suddenly a rough hand brushed my face
On a burning night in ‘83
My nation stood on the black hearths of Nellie and screamed
The clouds caught fire at Mukalmua and Rupohi, Juria,
Saya Daka, Pakhi Daka - homes of the Miyahs
Burnt like cemeteries
The floods of ’84 carried my golden harvest
In ’85 a gang of gamblers auctioned me
On the floor of the Assembly.

Whatever be the case, my name
Is Ismail Sheikh, Ramzan Ali or Mazid Miyah
Subject - I am an Assamese Asomiya.

The word 'Miyah' in Urdu means gentleman. Over the years, in Assam, it has become an offensive slur used to refer to Bengal-origin Muslims settled in the Char-Chapori region who are violently discriminated against and constantly othered. The topi-dhoti-daadi Mussalman who doesn’t belong, he is the ‘hated Miyah’ that Khabir Ahmed talks of in his powerful poem I Beg to State That, written in the aftermath of the Nellie Massacre.

Recently, Miyah poetry has been the centre of great accusation and controversy. In 2016, Dr. Hafiz Ahmed, penned a poem, Write down I am a Miyah. This sparked a whole new spate of poems that shaped Miyah poetry into a new literary genre and movement, that seeks to not only recoup the word Miyah, reclaim a language but also to reconstruct memory. The poems remind people that at a time when the State ruthlessly reduces people to numbers and renders them stateless, the ‘dirty settlers’, Miyahs, too, are human.

Backlash for this movement came from all quarters, not least from the so-called progressive literary leaders of Assam. The Miyah poets were accused of being xenophobic and ‘a threat to the Assamese people and national security’. FIRs were filed against several of them under sections of the Indian Penal Code that pertain to criminal conspiracy, promoting social enmity and insulting religion – all for writing poetry.

Literary giants like Hiren Gohan, who have shared the stage and taught, supported and promoted some of these poets too, turned against them accusing them of being anti-Assamese and working under the diktat of the Hindu Right. All this, it seems, stems from the fear that if Miyahs assert their identity and write in the Miyah dialect, the movement will lead to a Miyah language movement and eventually a struggle for a Miyah land.

The irony, however, is that more than 80% of Miyah poetry is written in the Assamese language. In fact, a lot of literary research in the Assamese language is done by the members of the Char Chapori Sahitya Parishad, of which Dr. Hafiz Ahmed is President. He asks, “My question is, those who have filed FIRs against us, do they love Assam more than we do? I have been beaten by a mob because I wanted to promote Assamese and yet I have not given up.”

Rehana Sultana, one of the only women Miyah poets, writes in her powerful poem, My Mother, “I bear all your insults and still shout, ‘Mother! I am yours!’” She was trolled on social media, sent threats of rape and called a prostitute for her writing.

Click here to read these poems.