चौतारी-चिन्तन

It would be facile to see the gunning down of five Bengali men in Bisonimukh-Kherbari , near Tinsukia in Upper Assam, on November 1 as an isolated act of violence or even another of the periodic eruptions against non-Assamese people in the State. The context is crucial here. The killings both symptomize and deepen the fault lines between the Assamese and Bengali communities because of the ongoing exercise to update the National Register of Citizens as well as the Centre’s plan to secure parliamentary passage for the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. At the heart of the schism is the fate of those eventually left out by the updated NRC. Four million didn’t make it to the final draft published in July, and while the final numbers will be known only when the elaborate process of claims, objections, and verification draws to a close, there are certain known knowns at this point already. The ‘illegal’ Muslim immigrant, unfortunately, has few speaking on her behalf. But her Hindu c...