PERSPECTIVES Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 9, 2019 vol lIV no 10 25 Discourse of Doubt Understanding the Crisis of Citizenship in Assam Nazimuddin Siddique Nazimuddin Siddique (nazim10dream@gmail. com) is an independent researcher, formerly with the Department of Sociology, Gauhati University, Guwahati. The citizenship crisis in Assam is unfolding through two major mechanisms, namely the National Register of Citizens and the “Doubtful voter” ( D-voter). While the NRC has attracted much of the public attention, the process of categorising D-voters is largely functioning in a silent manner and has caused unprecedented damage to the lives and livelihoods of millions of marginalised people of the state. The D-voter is a political tool solely based on baseless doubts and is used by the government to deprive lakhs of marginalised people of a series of constitutional, political and social rights, including the right to vote. I n the Goalpara district of western Assam, on 30 June 2017, some of the local people were leading a protest march. The protesters were able to march only a few hundred metres before they faced a blockade by a group of armed police and jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force ( CRPF ). While the protesters were peaceful, the police, without ask- ing any questions, forcibly snatched the main banner from the protestors, held the collars of a few protesters, and then en- quired whether they had any permission to hold the protest. In response to this, one of the protestors replied that they had informed the administration. On hearing this, the police started beating the people brutally. Following this, the mob of pro- testors got dispersed. However, a small group of people got back together and started pelting stones at the police. At that moment, the police opened fire promptly on the unarmed protestors, which resulted in the death of a young man. Herein, the police without adhering to the proce- dures of the rules of engagement to dis- perse the mob such as blank-fire, use of rubber bullets and tear gas, etc, 1 directly shot a person dead. The protest on 30 June 2017 was orga- nised against the long-standing atroci- ties unleashed on the people of the state, especially on the minorities, through a state-constructed mechanism called “Doubtful voter” ( D-voter). Under this phenomenon of categorically marking the people as D-voters, the identity of lakhs of people in Assam has been jeopardised, thereby acutely affecting their survival in the state. This has brought forth a crisis of the citizenship of the minorities in the state. Therefore, the article attempts to discuss the oppressive structure of the D-voter category and how this mechanism has impinged the lives and livelihood of a large number of people in Assam. Deconstructing the ‘D-voter’ D-voter is a category that surfaced on the electoral rolls of Assam on 10 December 1997. Sanjib Baruah terms this category as “an indigenous way of handling the controversy on the enfranchisement” of the alleged foreigners (1999: 160). This category was contrived by the Election Commission of India (ECI) under the advice and collaboration of the then Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government, to dis- enfranchise those citizens who are alleg- edly “doubtful immigrants” from Bangla- desh. Initially, about 2.35 lakh names were labelled as D-voters. As per the latest offi- cial statistics, there are 1,25,155 D-voters, 2 a majority of whom are Muslims and some are Hindu Bengalis and Koch–Rajbongshis. The people who are marked as D-voters have been deprived of a series of rights, including voting rights, which is a funda- mental right in any democracy. A depri- vation of this seriousness of a large num- ber of citizens is institutionalised and sanctified by the state. This marking in the electoral lists, which shakes the very existence of citi- zenship of an individual, is done in a com- pletely arbitrary and anomalous manner. Allegedly, the border policemen of the state have been pressurised by their superiors to mark approximately 10–20 people as doubtful citizens 3 in every village, especially in lower Assam. Individuals are arbitrarily marked as doubtful without any systematic enquiry; no notice is issued against people by the police officials before marking them as doubtful citizens. 4 As a consequence, in many instances, one or two member(s) of the family would be marked with the letter “D,” while the rest of them remain undoubted Indians. 5 For instance, in a family if one female is marked as a “doubtful” citizen, it is not necessary that all her family members such as her parents, children or her hus- band, if any, would be marked as D-voters. Or, in an other case, a son/daughter could be identified as the “doubtful” citizen, while their entire family, including their parents, could be undoubted citizens. Many