Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is a danger to the Northeast

By: Ami Natung

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is a bill aimed at helping Hindu and other minorities communities from neighboring Muslim majority countries to get citizenship in India.

By looking at the very implication of the CAB itself, we can sense a threat to the culture and linguistics of the indigenous people of North-East India.

Personally, I strongly oppose the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, because it is in so many ways harmful and a threat to the tribal people living in the areas.

If the supreme court grants the Citizenship Amendment Bill, the indigenous people will lose their identity which is a very big deal as nobody will ever want to lose one’s identity, one’s culture and share their homeland with illegal immigrants of people from some overpopulated countries. This Bill leads one to ask: Is India or mainly North-East some kind of dumping ground?

There are many tribal people still struggling to get jobs, education and finding it hard to make ends meet but instead of focusing on them, the government wants to accept those illegal immigrants.

If the CAB is passed it will become even more difficult for the tribal or indigenous people to survive on their own land. Due to overpopulation and more competitors, they will suffer from unemployment and lack of jobs.

The present BJP government only wants to give those illegal immigrants the advantage of CAB for their political benefits, so that those people will vote for them in the future elections and it can be assumed that the politicians agreeing to grant CAB are considering those illegal immigrants as a vote bank.

Granting CAB will heavily affect the people of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam especially. The Indigenous people fear to lose their identity since there is already an existing example in Tripura, where the indigenous Kokborok people are slowly being deprived of their rights due to an influx of alleged migrants.

Instead of welcoming more and more people to India, the government should instead focus on how to develop and educate the people who are already living here.