The Assam Question: Who Am I?

Wrongful detentions multiply as deadline for publication of final NRC nears in Assam.

- Abdul Gani

Madhubala Mandal has trouble sleeping. Every time she closes her eyes, all she can see is a dark, dinghy cell and long, lonely nights spent searching for an ans­wer to the biggest question of her life: “Who am I”? Madhubala, 59, was released from a detention centre in Assam recently, nearly three years after she was picked up from her vil­lage in Chirang district on suspicion of being a foreigner. And the pain just refuses to go. “The government has ruined my life. I was kept in the det­ention centre for three years wrongly. Who will compensate that time? I have lost my eyesight. I can’t eat properly and I can’t even stand for five minutes. The nightmares don’t let me sleep,” Mandal tells Outlook at her residence in west Assam’s No. 1 Bishnupur village, about 150 km west of state capital Guwahati.

Madhubala’s story is not an exception, though. As Assam sets about to update an official document—the National Register of Citizens (NRC)—to weed out all those suspected of being undocumented migrants, tales like that of Madhubala have multiplied. Like that of a former army officer who was also sent to a detention centre before the authorities realised their mistake. Or that of a centurion who was wrongly detained for weeks. Madhubala’s arrest was also found to a case of mistaken identity—the police were looking for a woman named Madhubala Das, who, incidentally, died many years ago in the same village.