IRS Roundtable Expresses Concern Over Statelessness Of Bengali Muslims In Assam

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Sep, 2025) Speakers at a roundtable organised by the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) on Monday expressed concern over the growing dispossession and forced statelessness of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, India.

They said that discriminatory policies, arbitrary legal practices and systemic marginalisation under the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government had created a humanitarian crisis with serious regional and international implications.

Ambassador Jauhar Saleem said that India, despite portraying itself as the “world’s largest democracy,” had deprived nearly 1.9 million people of citizenship through the 2019 National Register of Citizens (NRC).

He added that foreigners’ tribunals often exploited minor clerical errors to declare people stateless, with entire families, including children, being denied their basic rights.

He termed the measures a violation of international human rights law, noting that citizenship—the foundation of all other rights—was being eroded in Assam.

Ambassador Naela Chohan observed that the manufactured statelessness was rooted in ethno-religious discrimination.

She said the Bengali-speaking Muslims, despite having lived in Assam for generations, were being branded as “illegal” and subjected to arbitrary evictions and deportations.

She warned that such policies deepened poverty, fuelled insurgencies and eroded human dignity, adding that Hindutva-inspired exclusion was systematically marginalising Muslim communities.

Dr Natalie Brinham compared the situation of Bengali Muslims in Assam with that of the Rohingya in Myanmar. She said both groups were being dispossessed through manipulated citizenship and identity systems.

She described the process as “mass citizenship stripping” and characterised it as a deliberate state-led effort to criminalise communities with deep roots in their homeland.

Asad Shabbir drew attention to the propaganda environment, saying that senior BJP leaders had referred to the Bengali Muslims as “termite infiltrators” to justify their exclusion. He cautioned that such rhetoric normalised dehumanisation and spread Islamophobia across India and South Asia.

Mukhlees Ur Rehman spoke about the harsh ground realities, including arbitrary detentions, forced deportations and families stranded in no man’s land. He warned that the crisis could destabilise the region, pointing out that Bangladesh had already expressed concerns over possible spillover effects.

The participants urged the international community, human rights organisations and neighbouring countries to take urgent notice of the issue.

They said India’s actions violated Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, undermining its international standing.

The rountable concluded that unless India abandoned exclusionary practices and shifted towards inclusive governance, the crisis would deepen, threatening stability in Assam and the wider South Asian region.