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I am not qualified in law. However, I am familiar with the laws of our land because long ago, as a bureaucrat, I had prepared countless briefs for several attorney generals. I may not measure up to the Olympian human level in the eyes of our higher judiciary, but I don’t think I am a “cockroach“. Maybe I am a sheep – not a helpless, bleating sheep, but a protesting, questioning one, if ever there were such a thing.

My protests and questions are based on the presumption that, as a citizen of this country, I have the right to question both the government and the judiciary when I fear that my very existence is being threatened. My protests and questions may lack a legal patina, but they come from a genuinely bewildered citizen.

The Indian government has not released any reliable statistics relating to undocumented immigrants in India.  Every available figure is at best guesswork. There is a 2018 statement by our home minister that the government had identified 40 lakh such persons in Assam. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has claimed that in West Bengal, the figures range from about 50 lakh to one crore. Going by the BJP’s narrative, let us assume it is one crore. Thus, if the BJP is to be believed, the maximum number of undocumented immigrants in India is likely to be around 1.4 crore, which works out to just 1% of our total population – a problem primarily confined to two states.

Is it justifiable, in a country that prides itself on being democratic, to treat every citizen with suspicion just because successive governments have been unable to control immigration? What we are witnessing is 1.4 billion citizens being subjected to a potentially repressive and totally unsettling bureaucratic scrutiny, simply because the state cannot determine which of the remaining 1% are legal. In a true democracy, my citizenship – barring exceptional cases – is not bestowed. It comes to life when I am born and is inalienable from me. It is the very core of my being. It is who I am. No government that calls........

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