If You Weren’t Here Before 1971, You’re Not a Citizen

[phands]

No....not the US...yet, but India...

If You Weren’t Here Before 1971, You’re Not a Citizen

A new policy in India displays imperialism's disastrous aftershocks—but also the way in which legal language is increasingly used, around the globe, to mask what is in fact ethnic cleansing.


By RAFIA ZAKARIA


August 2, 2018

If “these people” don’t return home “like gentlemen,” a provincial legislator in India said Tuesday, “they should be shot.” T. Raj Singh, from India’s dominant and right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, has a seat in Telangana province. The “illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingya” he thinks deserve to be shot are almost all Muslim. And Muslims, in the BJP’s Hindu fundamentalist view of things, have no place in contemporary India.

In the United States, the Trump administration has drawn fire for its “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, which includes a new office investigating previously naturalized citizens for evidence of fraud and then stripping them of citizenship. India, however, is leagues ahead. Earlier this week, the country unveiled a new draft of its “National Register of Citizens,” a controversial citizenship audit which identifies whom the BJP considers true citizens. According to the project’s novel mechanics of exclusion, some four million Indians along the Bangladeshi border, most of them Muslim, will be stripped of Indian citizenship for having insufficient proof that they resided there prior to Bangladesh’s independence. Cloaked in legal language of treaties and cutoff dates, it’s just the latest measure towards an all-Hindu India. “Only then,” Singh said Tuesday—i.e. once the Muslims have gone home—“will our country be safe.”

As you can see, the USA now has that new office of getting rid of brown people...think we'll head the same way as India?

 

[repoman]

They must be getting ready for when Bangladesh one of the lowest lying countries in the world is submerged by sea level rise.

That is a terrifying thought. Damn.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

While it's definitely onerous I can see how they might feel this way. India was partitioned into Hindu and Muslim areas because the Muslims wouldn't coexist. With that sort of history it's understandable that they're afraid of bringing back the old problems.

 

[bilby]

While it's definitely onerous I can see how they might feel this way. India was partitioned into Hindu and Muslim areas because the Muslims wouldn't coexist. With that sort of history it's understandable that they're afraid of bringing back the old problems.

Yeah. a minority unilaterally refusing to coexist is a major problem in many conflicts.

 

[DrZoidberg]

While it's definitely onerous I can see how they might feel this way. India was partitioned into Hindu and Muslim areas because the Muslims wouldn't coexist. With that sort of history it's understandable that they're afraid of bringing back the old problems.

Nope. The Hindus were afraid of Muslim violence. The Muslims were afraid of Hindu violence. So they both decided to strike first as a proactive defence. The whole situation is tragic really. And is the fault of the British. They used Muslim-Hindu ethnic conflicts in order to better control India. I'm not saying things went swimingly before this. But yeah... Nothing is made better by simplifying too much