Those Suspected Citizens

A year after the Citizenship Amendment Act, citizenship screening still scares Bengali Hindus, as evident from the panic over the 'anti-migrant drive' and voter list revision

- By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

RUSH Adhikary’s detention in Maharashtra’s Pune, along with his wife, sister, brother-in-law, a friend and three minors, must have come as a facepalm moment for Shantanu Thakur, the junior minister for shipping in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet

They are all from West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, the district Thakur comes from. One of the detainees, Bibek Goswami, is a voter of Bangaon parliamentary constituency that Thakur has represented since 2019.

When they were detained over July 2 and 3 as suspected Bangladeshi nationals, they not only submitted their Voter ID, Aadhaar and PAN as proof of nationality but also identity cards issued by the minister-led faction of All India Matua Mahasangha (AIMM), the presently-split apex body of the Matua religious sect.

The AIMM membership cards were signed by Thakur himself. But the police in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-governed Maharashtra did not recognise any of these documents as proof of their Indian nationality.

For over a year, Thakur has been claiming that Hindus need not worry about papers during any citizenship screening drive, as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 ensures citizenship to every Hindu of Bangladesh origin who entered India on or before December 31, 2014. The CAA offers citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from India’s Muslim-majority neighbours-Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

In March 2024, when the Union government started implementing the CAA by notifying the Citizenship Amendment Rules, despair spread among a section of Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, including Thakur’s own community.

The Matuas mostly have their roots in Bangladesh and many of them have got their Indian identity documents through various illegal means. They have been the key advocates of the CAA, hoping for a permanent solution to their questionable citizenship.