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Comment by yumraj | Hacker News Reader

For the record, these people should never have been citizens in the first place.

These are the folks who came through porus border from Bangladesh illegally.

Some may well have, but given my country is so well known for the correctness of its paperwork and documentation (not) many would be caught in the crossfire, especially the uneducated and the poor. Many in the current govt believe that india is essentially a hindu country and some 'purification' is in order. The problem isnt the fact that they could be Bangladeshis. The problem is that they are Muslims, had they been Hindus the government would have fallen over themselves to make a case for giving them citizenship. If one reads pro hindutva magazines, for example, swarajya thats exactly what they champion.

This is not a Hindu-Muslim issue. This is a Assamese-Bengali issue. Numerous Hindus have not been included (or excluded depending on the frame or reference).

There are more muslims simply because of the bulk infiltration from Bangladesh which is a muslim majority nation.

> This is not a Hindu-Muslim issue

Yes, this is being done as per Assam accords signed by Govt of India in 1985, and the current Assamese Chief Justice Gogoi is the one who is implementing it by sidelining the current BJP state govt. Gogoi kickstarted this even when he was in the High Court.

Yes thats the opportunistic pretext

If their families have been there since 1938, as is the case for one of the people mentioned in the article, where would you suggest they are citizens?

OP isn't wrong, but it's also Assam's fault for not properly maintaining it's border. Once you start making people stateless several generations removed from those who did cross illegally, that's on them.

The border in question wasn't even a border in 1938 because that predates the partition of India. Bangladesh, the country that certain Indian political factions are claiming these people are from, only came into existence in 1972 and mainly just recognises people who were permanent residents there in 1971 as citizens.

> If their families have been there since 1938

But they hadn't been. Don't base your opinion on a single article. A lot of process was followed after decades of issues and finally on the order of Supreme Court.

In fact, the number of people identified by most counts is order of magnitude smaller than what it should have been.

And there are millions of them ?

Yes.

Estimates of the number of Bangladeshis in India vary widely. A census carried out in 2001 by the Indian government estimated there were 3.1 million Bangladeshis residing in India, based on place of birth and place of last residence. A different 2009 estimate claimed that there were 15 million Bangladeshis who had taken residence in the country. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladeshis_in_India

This whole debacle is fascinating.

It doesn't bode well for the future if/when mass immigration due to climate change happens.

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