Does Supreme Court’s Section 6A order alter citizenship test for Bengali Hindus in Assam?
The judgement upholds 1971 as the year of entry, which contradicts the 2014 cut-off introduced by the CAA.
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Last week, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 – a provision added exclusively for Assam, a state with a fraught historical experience of migration.
The section created a path to citizenship for migrants to Assam from erstwhile East Pakistan, now modern-day Bangladesh – as long as they had entered India before March 25, 1971. In the rest of the country, the cut-off date for citizenship is 1951.
The court rejected the petitioners’ contention that the provision had caused a “demographic invasion” in Assam and posed a threat to the “indigenous” citizens of the state.
With the Supreme Court order, the Bengali community in Assam, both Hindus and Muslims, dodged a bullet.
A large number of Bengali Hindu migrants entered India during the 1950s and 1960s in Assam, fleeing persecution in East Pakistan.
“Had the court pushed back the date to 1951, it would have been disastrous for Bengali settlers in Assam,” said Joydeep Biswas, who teaches in a college in Barak Valley. “Even if they had been in the state in 1951, documents [to prove that] are very difficult to come by.”
However, the judgement leaves a complex terrain of questions and contradictions to navigate – especially for the Bengali Hindu community.
