'Married before 18, didn't attend school': NRC may put many women at risk
'Married before 18, didn't attend school': NRC may put many women at risk on Business Standard. That Shorbhanu's identity got entwined with that of her husband of 30 years is not good enough now, at least not to be a part of the final draft NRC
Latest News Sipping tea between mouthfuls of muri (puffed rice), Hussain Ahmad Madani prodded his mother to respond to my queries. She interjected with “What more do I say? What is there to say?” Some silence, a faint smile – and then she mumbled to me, “We can only wait till July 30 and see what happens.” July 30 is an important day not just for Hussain’s mother Shorbhanu Nessa, but for many other women from the poorest and most disadvantaged sections of Assam, particularly those belonging to the Bengali Muslim community. On that day, the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is being updated in the state since 2015 following a Supreme Court order, will have its final draft ready. The NRC is being updated by the Registrar General of India as per the citizenship cut-off date of March 25, 1971, exclusive to the state, agreed by the Centre in its Accord with the students’ body All Assam Students Union to end a six-year-long antiimmigration agitation in 1985.
These women are in a peculiar situation. They are rather a reflection of the position that a large section of poor women in not just Assam but in many parts of the country find themselves in, thanks to the social injustice and inequality handed out to them by a patriarchal society. Shorbhanu, mother of five grown-up children, never went to school, never owned any property, never had a bank account; she was married off before she turned 18. “Everything is with my husband,� she said. That her identity got entwined with that of her husband of 30 years is not good enough now, at least not to be a part of the final draft NRC.
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