By Tirthankar Mitra
KOLKATA: Several BJP candidates in Nadia and North-24-Parganas are harbouring grave doubts about their electoral success after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured members of Matua community that they will be given Indian citizenship and adding for good measure that ‘this is Modi’s guarantee”. The prime minister was addressing an election rally at Bongaon, the heart of the Matua community in Bongaon on Sunday.
The prime minister’s words appear to be a pointer to the fact that the grant of citizenship to all the Matuas is still undecided. Sources in the saffron camp stated that instead of galvanising the party rank and file, the prime minister’s words have made party activists and candidates chary of the way Matuas would vote on April 29, the last day of two-phase election in West Bengal.
One must not lose sight of the fact legitimacy of the electoral process comes under strain as the citizenship issue remains unresolved. The nature of democratic inclusion is under question.
The support of the second largest Scheduled Caste group in the state, the Matuas can make or mar the electoral fate of nominees in 40 to 50 Assembly constituencies. Large sections of the community crossed over to India during the Indo-Pak conflict in 1971 giving birth to independent Bangladesh.
The Matuas form 17.4 per cent of the total population of West Bengal. Their presence is spread over the districts of Nadia and North-24-Parganas. This community is a key voting bloc in the refugee belt spread in and around the international border with Bangladesh. Small wonder, it’s support is keenly sought by both Trinamool Congress and BJP. Citizenship is not an abstract legal status in the border districts of West Bengal. It is a lived uncertainty.
Thousands of Matua families who trace their migration to Partition upheavals and 1971 War, the promise of becoming a citizen of India is always a dream. The status of being stateless individuals is appalling to them. But the promise of belonging has remained frustratingly incomplete. It has been decades that the Matuas have come to India, but the line between resident and citizen is still being negotiated.
Now post SIR and uneven implementation of Citizenship Amendment Act has led to a situation where the right to vote is contingent rather than guaranteed. The system sends a grim signal when individuals find their name missing in the voters list despite living in an neighbourhood for generations.
It is small consolation that names of some of the family .members of the individual whose name is missing from the voters list finds place in it. This is a suggestion that the citizenship instead of being a settled fact is subject to administrative interpretation. This is the backdrop of the core demand of the Matua community legal- recognition and documentation. Both remain unevenly addressed.
Leadership fragmentation have further complicated the picture. The Matua community is divided with Santanu Thakur, a minister of state in the Union Cabinet towing the saffron line while the other faction led by Rajya Sabha MP Mamatabala Thakur is enjoying the backing of the TMC camp. This has diluted the community’s collective leverage. The common demand for citizenship is being articulated through partisan loyalty.
To make things worse, the prime minister’s words have stoked the fears of statelessness among the Matuas. They are more likely to support Trinamool Congress in the battle of the ballot as this political outfit nearer home has made all the right sounds of support and cooperation.
The prime minister’s words are ominous for the Matua community. They are music to the ears of the Trinamool leadership who are smelling poll victory. Fears have been generated. They cannot be dismissed as mere misinformation.
The place of the Matuas in the polity is in doubt if the prime minister’s words are anything to go by. The community members whose names figure in voters list will exercise their franchise on April 29 to remove the constitutional challenge and the cost of deferring resolution on fundamental rights. (IPA Service)
