2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) imperative for both the province of Assam and the Central Government to have the power to expel ‘undesirable immigrants’. 117 The Central Government acted swiftly, again through ordinance, on 6 January 1950. 118 Within a fortnight of the Constitution of India (with its promise of secular citizenship) coming into effect, identical provisions were introduced through a Bill in Parliament. The Undesirable Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Bill (‘Undesirable’ was later removed) conferred upon the Central Government the power to expel any person or class of persons who had come into Assam and whose stay was ‘detrimental to the interests of the general public’ and allowed it to delegate this power to the Provincial Government. 119 Again, religion was not expressly mentioned, but a proviso restricted the operation of the Act against any person who on account of disturbances or fear of disturbances had come to India. The interests of both were not identical, however. The Provincial Government was increasingly opposed to any Bengali migration, particularly after Sylhet was jettisoned in 1947. However, for the Central Government, East Bengali Hindus had to be protected and allowed refuge. What comes through very strongly in the three days of debate occasioned by this Bill is the palpable fear aroused by the possibility of Muslim migration into Assam. Member after member made a clear religious distinction between disloyal persons whose stay would be detrimental to Assam’s peace and security and those who had come to India as ‘unfortunate refugees’. 120 Sardar BS Man argued that ‘any person now resident in Pakistan … or territories now included in Pakistan had no business to come and settle here’. His next remarks made it clear, however, that this did not apply to non-Muslims from Pakistan, who were there ‘by the mere drawing of a line on the map of India’. 121 T Hosain, a Muslim League member who had taken his seat in Parliament after the Partition (most Muslim League members had boycotted the Assembly before Partition; some subsequently joined it), went further in suggesting that the law was not communal, but based on nationals versus non-nationals, between Hindus in ‘fear’ of their lives and nonIndian, ‘undesirable’, potentially dangerous Muslims. 122 The movement of Bengali Muslims into India was seen as part of a wider conspiracy against India, compared to the movement of raiders in Kashmir aimed at incorporating Assam into Pakistan to provide ‘Lebensraum’ to East Bengal. 123 By reworking this as a question of national security, a sizable group of parliamentarians argued for exceptional remedies. Some even went so far as to argue that harbouring Muslims who had emigrated from Pakistan was ‘treasonous 117 ibid. 118 Ornit Shani, How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (Cambridge University Press 2018) 58. 119 Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Bill 1950 (India) s 2. 120 India, Parliamentary Debates, Provisional Parliament, 8–10 February 1950, 314 (Gopalaswamy Ayyangar). 121 ibid 318 (Sardar BS Man). 122 India, Parliamentary Debates, Provisional Parliament, 8 February 1950, 331–33, see especially 332. Tajamul Hussain’s interventions, first in the Constituent Assembly and then in the Provisional Parliament, seem to be a complete repudiation of the logic of the Partition and were perhaps motivated by his attempt to distance himself from the Muslim League’s erstwhile support for Pakistan. This was only partially accepted; the same page of the Debates has him being asked to ‘communicate directly with the Pakistanis’. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, the promulgator of the Bill, said that Hussain’s speech ‘was a little more emphatic than it need have been’: ibid 338. 123 ibid, the term was actually used in the Debates: India, Parliamentary Debates, Provisional Parliament, 10 February 1950, 438 (Thakurdas Bhargava). 226