Further information and analysis Background The Indian state of Assam, with its strong indigenous culture, has experienced immigration throughout its history, with large Bengali populations being moved as labour under the colonial period, as well as mass migration during partition in 1947. Postindependence, migration between East Bengal (now Bangladesh), West Bengal and Assam continued, with a significant number of persons seeking refuge in Assam during the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971. With migration and the alleged dilution of indigenous Assamese culture dominating the state’s politics, violence and discrimination against the Bengali minority sparked the Nellie massacre of 1983. A relative peace was achieved through the striking of the subsequent Assam Accords of 1985, which committed to the identification and deportation of foreigners. Discrimination and dehumanisation The intersectional discrimination evident in the NRC process, which contravenes Indian and international standards of nondiscrimination and equality before the law, are of deep concern. Muslims of Bengali descent have been disproportionately impacted. Undocumented women and their children were compelled to rely on 'panchayat (village council) certificates' to establish their citizenship. While these certificates were more readily accepted in the case of ethnic Assamese applicants, minorities were required to produce additional documentation. This reflects discrimination between those deemed ‘original’ and ‘non-original’ inhabitants that has characterised the NRC process, with the latter subject to differential criteria and arbitrary rejections on a mass scale. Contributing to these concerns is the wider context of rising Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment. This has been reflected by rhetoric of senior government officials, including references to ‘infiltrators’ and ‘termites’. The controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill also remains a government priority which, if passed, would avail non-Muslims left off the NRC list an expedited pathway to citizenship, while excluding Muslims. Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Melbourne Law School Popular Education and Action Centre (India) Pusat Komas (Malaysia) Red Comun N Rencontre Africaine des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO) Restless Beings Rights Now Pakistan Rights Realization Centre Rohingya Human Rights Network (Canada) Rural Consumer Organization (RCO) Ruwad alHoukouk FR Sabah Human Rights Centre (Malaysia) Salam for Democracy and Human Rights Save the Children South Africa Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town SMILE Myanmar Society for Human Rights & Prisoners Aid (SHARP) (Pakistan) South Asia Collective Southern Africa Litigation Centre Southern African Nationality Network Statelessness Network Asia Pacific (SNAP) The 50/50 Group of Sierra Leone The Brunei Project Tirana Legal Aid Society (TLAS) (Albania) Together 4 Good Transparency International - Initiative Madagascar Union of Stateless Malaysians (USTMY) United Stateless (USA) University of Liverpool Law Clinic Staff West African Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons Network Woman Welfare & Consumer Association Malaysia Women’s Refugee Commission World Council of Churches, Commission of the Churches on International Affairs Yayasan Chow Kit (Malaysia) Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights Zimbabwe National Council for the Welfare of Children Evidentiary burden Requiring individuals to prove their citizenship by providing documentary evidence dating back over 50 years, and excluding applicants on the basis of not being able to fulfil this evidentiary burden that sits solely on them, is an act of mass-arbitrary deprivation of nationality, contrary to Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At best, it is an act of bureaucratic malpractice that renders the right to a nationality a hollow promise. Everyone’s nationality would be vulnerable to review and revocation by this standard, particularly in a state like Assam, where about 30% of the population is illiterate and lives below the poverty line. Citizens and residents who lack documentation due to state failures to provide documents they are entitled to, have been doubly penalised through their consequent exclusion from the NRC. Most significantly, historically poor birth registration rates, despite an obligation under Article 7 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child to immediately register every birth, denied numerous applicants of a critical piece of evidence to establish their citizenship. Similarly, many people who possessed the required documents, have nonetheless been penalised due to the administrative errors