Weaponising Citizenship in India – By Arijit Sen and Leah Verghese

The government of the Indian state of Assam plans to set-up ten detention centres in addition to the existing six situated inside jails to incarcerate ‘foreigners’.  The ‘hunt’ for ‘foreigners’ has been going on in Assam for many years but the process is in the spotlight in lieu of the recent protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 (CAA). 

The paranoia about illegal immigration has reached a fevered pitch in and outside the state. Elected representatives in the Indian states of Karnataka and Manipur expressed the desire to carry out similar exercises in their states. Ministry of Home Affairs of India has directed states to build detention centres in every city or district which has a major immigration post. In this post we discuss detention centres in Assam and the process that marks individuals as foreigners.

The conditions in detention centres in Assam are horrific. They are located within prisons where there is no separation between detainees and convicts. Detainees are kept in crowded cells where they are unable to sleep out of anxiety and stress. Some of them are unaware about why they are being treated as criminals. Assamese activist Akhil Gogoi (at present in preventive detention for participating in protests against the CAA) reported that human beings are treated worse than animals inside these centres.…

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