GUWAHATI: The Chakmas and the Hajongs staged a protest in New Delhi on Tuesday against their alleged racial profiling by the Arunachal Pradesh government through a special census.
On August 15 last year, Arunachal Chief Minister Pema Khandu had announced that the Chakma and the Hajong settlers would be relocated outside the state. Chakma organisations claimed that training of government enumerators in this regard was scheduled for Tuesday at Diyun circle under Changlang district.
The protestors submitted a memorandum to Union Home Minister Amit Shah with a set of demands.
“In clear violations of the directions of the National Human Rights Commission against racial profiling, Arunachal government officials sought to conduct the illegal census. The Chakmas and the Hajongs shall not participate in any such illegal census,” Rup Singh Chakma, president of the Arunachal Pradesh Chakma Students’ Union, said.
He claimed the Chakmas and the Hajongs, who migrated during 1964-1969, are the citizens of India as per the Indira-Mujib accord of 1972 and Section 5(1) of the Citizenship Act of 1955. Those who are born in India are citizens by birth too, he further claimed.
Santosh Chakma, general secretary of the Committee for Citizenship Rights of the Chakmas and Hajongs of Arunachal Pradesh, said the Arunachal government started racial profiling to keep the pot boiling.
“There is no law in India which can make particular citizens stand in the queue for census solely based on their Chakma or Hajong ethnic origin and the same is prohibited by Article 14 of the Constitution of India,” said Suhas Chakma, a Chakma leader.
By seeking to conduct the special census, the state government is destroying communal harmony and cordial relations between the Chakma-Hajongs and the other communities, he alleged.
“There is a need for immediate interventions from the Home Minister to bring some sanity to this organised targeting of the worst victims of the descendants of the partition of India,” he added.
In their memorandum to Shah, the protestors demanded that the census is immediately stopped and abandoned. Further, they demanded an end to the “repression” of people belonging to the two communities.
The protest was staged at Jantar Mantar by the members of some Chakma and Hajong organisations.
Displaced by a dam in the then East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh), the Buddhist Chakmas and the Hindu Hajongs were resettled in Arunachal during 1964-69 by the central government.