West Bengal: Why SIR can backfire on the BJP

The Election Commission’s announcement of SIR 2.0 has unleashed a wave of panic in West Bengal, with many residents fearful that after decades of living as Indian citizens, they may suddenly be declared ‘illegal migrants’.

So great is this fear that it has reportedly driven several people to suicide. These include Khitish Majumdar (95) from Midnapore, a (so far) unnamed person in Cooch Behar, Pradeep Kar (57) from Khardah in North 24 Parganas and a woman, also from North 24 Parganas where there is a concentration of Matuas.

The fact that many, if not most, of the suicides were Hindus from the Matua community should worry the BJP because the party has assiduously wooed this very community, a large number of whom vote for the party.

Post-1947, the Matuas fled Bangladesh at different points of time, arriving in India over subsequent decades. Despite lacking passports or visas, neither the state machinery nor political authorities required them to register as ‘illegal migrants’. Hindus and Muslims alike were ‘refugees’ already burdened by homelessness and poverty. Political parties helped them find their feet by issuing ration cards, on the basis of which they were able to integrate into society.

A woman, who must remain unnamed in these uncertain times, recalls crossing the border as a child around 1991, “the year Rajiv Gandhi died”. Her family’s first document was a ration card. Over the years, they registered as voters, obtained Aadhaar and PAN cards, opened bank accounts and now benefit from schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar. They have a Swasthya Sathi health card, and her daughter benefits from Kanyashree, a scheme to educate and keep the girl child in school.

This married woman, who supports her family, including a dependent mother and mother-in-law, is worried about SIR and has no clue about how to apply for citizenship under CAA. She has heard, however, that in Bongaon, North 24 Parganas — the stronghold of the Matua community and home to Union minister Santanu Thakur — “camps have been set up where people must pay to fill out citizenship forms”.

While she is not clear what filling the forms will achieve, she is one of many Matuas who fear that filling up the forms would amount to admission that they are indeed ‘foreigners’. “I came from Bangladesh, but I live here now. I have an Aadhaar card and a voter card. What will happen after I fill the form? I will become a nobody. I will belong nowhere.”

The only leader who has consistently promised that no one will be disenfranchised through the SIR is Mamata Banerjee. It is her unequivocal and unambiguous assurance that makes her seem like both refuge from and bulwark against the BJP’s politically driven narrative.

In West Bengal, the BJP has used the bogey of Muslim infiltration to seed fear among Hindus who came across the Bangladesh border, and those receptive to the characterisation of Muslims as ‘invaders’, ‘encroachers’, grabbers of work, women and land, terrorists, anti-nationals and more recently, namak haram or traitors.

Many who fear becoming stateless after decades of legitimate residency in India vote as they do because of their history of naturalisation — some under Congress (post-Partition to 1977), some under the Left and some under the Trinamool Congress. The BJP’s anti-infiltrator campaign, through the weaponisation of the CAA that targets Muslims, serves both ideological and electoral aims. Passing the law was easy; applying different standards on the ground for Hindu and Muslim immigrants is far more complex.

The flaw in the BJP’s strategy is its failure to account for the complex history of people in West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Chhattisgarh.

In Assam, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s campaign portraying Bengali speakers as illegal migrants and his aggressive stance toward Indian and resident Muslims ignores the region’s history — when, under British rule, Muslims from undivided Bengal were incentivised to resettle in what latter became Assam — and of those families who arrived with the Mughals.

The Election Commission’s claim that Assam was excluded from the second phase of SIR due to the ongoing NRC process was dubious, especially alongside Sarma’s political diatribe. The NRC and SIR are not interchangeable; neither can the results of the SIR be substituted by the NRC list, rejected by the Assam government in 2019 because more Hindus than Muslims were deemed ‘alien’.

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar should have come up with a more plausible excuse. An SIR conducted under intense public and media scrutiny would expose the Election Commission’s gerrymandering in Assam, which, according to the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Opposition parties, has redrawn constituencies to dilute Muslim voter clusters. The long-term goal is to secure a lasting BJP advantage by boosting Hindu influence in mixed constituencies.

On paper, the SIR aims to update voter rolls — removing the dead, adding new voters, deleting ‘ineligible’ names. But when identifying ‘illegal migrants’ becomes the focus, even a routine revision of voter rolls can turn into a political weapon.