***Update: Modi is now using citizenship-stripping for his critics.
You may have been forgiven if you missed the news the other day that US President Trump wants to DNA test immigrants. Where does he get this stuff from? Like most of Trump’s ideas, this one comes from abroad, in this case, probably Kuwait, where DNA testing is the idea du jour to sort “real” Kuwaitis from everyone else. Meanwhile, many have long pointed out the similarities between Trump’s idea for a border wall and Israel’s actual border wall. And I have personally long suspected that the “birther” conspiracy theory in the US had its true genesis in the Ivorian “birther” conspiracy of the 2000s, where many prominent Ivorian politicians claimed that President Ouattara was not Ivorian, but rather an immigrant. Stop me if this all sounds terribly familiar.
There is nothing new in politics, but Trump has a particular knack for recycling far-right ideas from other countries and generations. Even “America First” was probably lifted from the campaign of Charles Lindbergh. So whenever far-right nationalists in other countries implement extreme ideas, I look on with fear and wait for the tweet.
What is Happening In Assam?
America doesn’t have centralized, compulsory citizenship registration or national ID cards. Instead, we use a patchwork of government registries, like the social security administration, voter registration, birth certificates, passports and driver’s licenses to establish our identity to various government agencies, as needed. But many countries have centralized lists of citizens and, in some countries like Malaysia, a single card to rule them all and in the darkness bind them, like the MyKad, a chip “smart card” containing everything from your citizenship status to your health records.
India created a centralized registry in the 1950s and updating this “National Registry of Citizens” was a key campaign promise of India’s Prime Minster Modi. Bangladesh became an independent country in the 1970s and many Indians feel there has been too much immigration from Bangladesh in the decades since. Today, the Indian government is requiring that all residents of Assam, which borders Bangladesh and is one of India’s most diverse regions both ethnically and religiously, prove their residence in India prior to 1971. Many families, even those living in Assam for generations, simply can’t do this. NGOs are calling it the biggest mass disenfranchisement of the 21st century. It is unclear what will happen to families left of the list, but government officials have spoken of mass expulsion and detention.
What Does this Mean for Global Nationalism?
Americans without Indian relatives usually don’t pay much attention to Assam, except when they drink tea, but everyone in America should pay close attention to what’s happening in Assam today, because what happens in nationalist states no longer stays in nationalist states. Toxic ideas spread abroad throughout the global far-right movement, absorbed like cancerous particles of radium spewed from reactor 4 in the Chernobyl power plant, invisible and deadly. You might not be paying attention, but I can guarantee you Trump is.
