View from the margins: How a Mumbai realtor is helping NRC-scared Muslims in India rectify their documents.

• Published date: 16 April 2024

It was nearly 11pm when Sajeed Sheikh walked into the community centre he runs in the suburb of Jogeshwari in northwestern Mumbai, but the room was bustling with activity.

Sheikh, with the help of volunteers, began arranging for foodgrain to be distributed among poor families in the neighbourhood during Ramazan, a month of prayer, charity and fasting. Instructions about the logistics flew thick and fast, but so did anxious questions - about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the contentious law that had been implemented just two days earlier.

Queries ranged from the practical to the conceptual. Will all of India be made to apply for inclusion in the National Register of Citizens (NRC)? What documents could be needed for it? Was the CAA in keeping with India's commitment to secularism?

With the Lok Sabha elections around the corner, and given the distinct possibility that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may return to power, the volunteers in Jogeshwari are not the only ones who fear that the Act, in conjunction with a nationwide NRC, could be used to harass and disenfranchise Muslims. There are many.

The NRC is meant to be a record of all bona fide Indian citizens, which could be used to identify and deport undocumented immigrants. The CAA provides a fast track to naturalisation to refugees from six religious communities - except Muslims - who fled Bangladesh, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

When the NRC was updated in Assam a few years ago, it had unleashed a Kafkaesque nightmare. Around 32 million people had to provide identity documents to prove that their roots were firmly in the state. Over 1.9m people who ostensibly could not do so were left out of the register. Many of...