Stories that Matter

 Story published in PARI, https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/in-meghalaya-cultivating-at-the-countrys-edge/

 https://www.institutesi.org/resources/monthly-bulletin-march-2021   When and why did you become interested in citizenship rights issues? Illegal immigration has been a perennial socio-political issue in Assam. It resulted in a spectrum of policies and practices in legislations, executive policies, judicial orders for detection and deportation of illegal immigrants since partition in 1947.  These actions enacted from time to time are reminiscent of the colonial legal process based on the colonial understanding of ‘alien’. The process bears reflection of dominant racial and cultural norms together with the claims of civilizational superiority of the ‘Assamese’. Any non-conforming community to this criteria is regarded as ‘outsider’, an ‘Other’ [Bohiragoto in Assamese] and is subjected to persecution, censorship, social stigma, prolonged incarceration and virtual statelessness.   In 2008, I was researching for a project on Understanding Impunity in India, when I started d