Parents in NRC, 7-yr-old bears 'Bangladeshi' taunt

GUWAHATI: Seven-year-old Somiara can't fathom why her parents are not "Bangladeshis" but she has suddenly become one in the eyes of her friends. "The other kids have started calling me a Bangladeshi. Are they (police) going to take me away? I am not a Bangladeshi," she said, looking askance at her father as tears streamed down his face.
The day after Assam's "final" NRC cleaved the state into the haves and have-nots of a six-year citizenship race, Somiara wasn't the only kid in Assam to wake up to the complexities of an identity crisis.
Her father Subal Ali, a daily-wage worker from Chenga in Lower Assam's Barpeta district, is in the NRC. So is her mother. "When my wife and I are part of the NRC list, how can our daughter be rejected? If we are both Indians, how can our daughter be a foreigner?" Ali said.
While the exact number of children excluded from the final NRC hasn't been made available yet, at least one child rights organisation has expressed concern over hundreds of children across the state becoming "collateral damage" in the "war against foreigners".
Miguel Das Queah, executive director of the Universal Team for Social Action and Help, said the government must "honour India's commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child".
"Violation of children's rights cannot be treated as collateral damage or be considered acceptable in pursuit of an exercise deemed to be in national interest. The government should protect children from all types of physical and mental abuse without discrimination," he said.
Queah fears that children like Somiara might be traumatised for life because of the stigma being attached to not figuring in the NRC. "We have set up a fact-finding team that will begin work in mid-September and travel across the state to meet the affected children. We will prepare a roadmap to deal with the situation and submit it to the government," he said.
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References

1. ^{^} NRC (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

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