Sometime around 2017, Falu Miya and Jahedul Islam were summoned to a foreigners’ tribunal in Assam’s Barpeta district.
Foreigners’ tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies unique to the state that rule on citizenship matters.
The two men from the Bengali-origin Muslim community in Assam had been accused of being “illegal migrants” by the border wing of the state police.
But neither of them turned up for the hearings in Barpeta. Eventually, the tribunal declared Miya and Islam as foreigners in ex-parte orders – rulings pronounced in their absence.
Both their lawyers blame one man for convincing them to stay away from the proceedings – Faruk Khan, a maverick activist from the Bengali-origin Muslim community.
“When he was arrested last year, Falu Miya told them that Faruk Khan had advised him that he would get relief without going to the tribunal,” Akhtar Hussain, Miya’s counsel, told Scroll. This was confirmed by Miya’s sons.
Hussain added: “He had the documents [needed to prove himself a citizen], and I told him to go to the hearings repeatedly. But he chose to listen to Faruk Khan.”
Jahedul Islam’s counsel Mohibul Islam, too, claimed that he had been similarly advised by Faruk Khan. “Before the arrest, Jahidul Islam made a video in Faruk’s presence saying he would not contest the case before the tribunal,” Islam said. “He was misguided by Faruk.”
Khan told Scroll that Islam and Miya did not fight the cases because he had told them to do so – as did many others. “But only a few were arrested and sent to detention,” he said.
Since 2022, the 48-year-old entrepreneur has been travelling to the homes of those flagged as “illegal migrants” by Assam’s complex foreigner detection mechanism and asking them to boycott the foreigners’ tribunals. Many of those are from the Bengali-origin Muslim community, who are also referred to as Miya Muslims.
“I tell people not to respond to FT notices and hundreds of people have listened to me,” Khan told Scroll.
He argued that the odds are so heavily stacked against the Bengali-origin Muslim community at foreigners’ tribunals that it does not make sense to appear before it.
“Even if we submit the right documents, the FTs don’t accept it,” Khan alleged. “Many are sent to the detention centre despite spending lakhs to fight their cases.”
Khan added: “This is not a legal issue, but a political one. It has to be solved politically.”
He pointed out that the Assam government had recently decided to withdraw 28,000 cases pending against members of the Koch Rajbongshi community in the state’s foreigners tribunals. Similarly, in 2021, the Assam government had issued a notification ordering the border police not to forward any case against Gurkhas to the foreigners’ tribunals. It also decided to remove the D-voter tag from 20,000 members of the Gurkha community who had been marked out as “dubious voters”.
“Why don’t the Gurkhas need to go to FTs anymore? Because of a political decision taken by the government,” Khan said. “We need a government that will withdraw the cases” against the Bengali-origin Muslims.
While lawyers like Hussain and Mohibul Islam criticise Khan for misleading their clients, a Guwahati-based lawyer defended him. “He represents a parallel movement outside of all the legalese,” said the lawyer. “[In Assam], the state has successfully translated majoritarian politics into the language of law. To my mind, Faruk Khan sees things as they are, and is not convinced by this language.”
The lawyer continued: “When he asks people not to respond to notices from the foreigners’ tribunals, it is because he knows the citizenship determination mechanism is rigged. In that sense, he is an anarchist.”
An activist from the Bengali-origin Muslim community, who has followed Khan’s journey, added: “Like many civil rights activists before and after him, he is advocating for civil disobedience against unjust and oppressive laws of his time.”
A D-voter activist
Over the years, Khan, who runs a small pickle factory in Barpeta town, has acquired the identity of a D-voter activist.
Like the foreigners’ tribunals, the concept of a “doubtful” or D-voter is exclusive to Assam. It emerged as a category in 1997, when the Election Commission of India carried out what it described as an “intensive revision” of the state’s electoral rolls in response to “apprehensions expressed from various quarters that the electoral rolls were infested with the names of foreigners/illegal migrants”.
By the time the revision ended, as many as 3.13 lakh voters had been designated as “doubtful” or D-voters and their right to vote suspended. There are 118,134 D-voters in Assam at present.
Khan’s mother, 76-year-old Tahamina Khatun, was one of those declared a D-voter.
In July 2019, Khan filed a Right to Information request with the Election Commission of India, asking “who put the D-sign against his mother's name in the voter list and under which provision of law”.
The Election Commission in its response had said it has “no information with them”, Khan told Scroll.
It referred the case to the state government, which in turn referred it to the Barpeta district administration, which too said it has no record of why Khatun was tagged as a D-voter. Khan said his investigation revealed that a spelling error had led to her citizenship being called into question.
In 2020, Khan formed the D-voter Mancha or platform to fight for the rights of those disenfranchised like his mother.
Soon after, Khatun, along with 25 more people from Barpeta moved the Supreme Court, contending that their names have been arbitrarily included in the D-voter list.
In 2022, Khan’s platform wrote to the Assam Chief Minister, seeking abolishing of the D-voter category, withdrawal of all the suspected foreigners’ cases forwarded by the border police and questioned the need for foreigners’ tribunals.
At the same time, Khan started a campaign against the border police and foreigners’ tribunals, urging people to boycott them.
‘Why fight false cases?’
Khan travels from village to village on his motorcycle, selling jars of pickle to fund his fuel costs.
His activism is recorded on his Facebook profile. For example, in February, 2024, he shared a video of his meeting with three women who had been served with foreigners’ tribunal notices.
Khan had travelled 200 km to Gauripur in Assam’s Dhubri district to meet the women on their request.
In the video, Khan asked the women if it was true, as claimed by the foreigners’ tribunal notice, that they had entered Assam illegally from a foreign country. The women denied this. Nor had the border police come to their village to make inquiries and investigate the case, the women said.
“Why should these people fight these false cases?” Khan is heard saying. “I am telling them not to fight these cases or take any tension [sic].”
In his meetings, Khan assures the people that his activism and the case filed by his mother will lead to the end of the D-voter system.
“Trust me,” Khan told a gathering of people in Lengtisinga village in Bongaigaon district. “In the past, nobody has filed a case against the government in this matter.”
Khan argued that even spending vast amounts on lawyers’ fees may not result in their acquittal. He also asked them not to be afraid of being sent to detention camps – as the state government cannot confine them in the camps for over two years, according to a 2002 Supreme Court order.
Khan argues that it is naive to expect a fair trial at the foreigners’ tribunals, when the tribunal members are incentivised to convict more people as foreigners.
“People are being deprived of rights like citizenship on the whims and fancies of foreigners’ tribunals,” he told Scroll. “Silly and minor discrepancies in oral statements are used to declare people foreigners.”
He also questioned the fairness of the process. “The foreigners’ tribunals are not courts but appointed and paid by the government’s home and political department,” Khan told Scroll. “The border police, which alleges that a person is a foreigner, is under the same department. So, the government files a complaint suspecting someone is a foreigner, and the same government decides its fate. That’s why the rulings are also in favour of the government. That’s how 1.43 lakh people have been declared foreigners.”
The politics of citizenship trials stems from the entrenched narrative that Assam has been overrun by foreigners, Khan said.
“Assam saw a huge movement against foreigners, where every Assamese took part,” Khan said. “This movement instilled a misleading narrative that the state has a huge number of foreigners, that Miya [Muslims] are Bangladeshi. But we came here long ago before independence. We are related to the Brahmaputra river, we live on its banks and have a riverine culture. Unfortunately, the Assamese anxiety that their resources are being taken over continues to shape the politics in Assam.”
The social activist, who follows Khan’s work, said that while Khan’s arguments may not make sense to most activists and lawyers, he realises the reality of the people affected by Assam’s citizenship regime. As Khan has often pointed out, “they sell property, cattle, land, take loans to pay the fees of the lawyers, but they still go to jail”.
Khan’s arguments have struck a chord with a section of the Bengali-origin Muslim community, as he shows empathy and listens to their experience, said activists and lawyers.
“He is trying to fill a vacuum as nobody is fighting the issue of D-voters as actively as him on the ground,” Barpeta-based advocate Hafizur Rahman said.
Rahman pointed out that most of the foreigners’ tribunals cases are filed against the poor and uneducated people. “These people are too poor to understand the laws and their consequences. Khan gives them hope, says nothing will happen to them, and people listen. But he has a limited understanding of the law, and he ends up misleading people. ”
The activist from the Bengali-origin Muslim community cited above said that while lawyers take up hundreds of cases of people caught in citizenship trials, they have minimal interaction with their clients, and rarely brief them about the progress in their cases. “But Faruk is always there with the people, meeting and assuring them.”
An unconventional activist
Khan argued that “fighting individual cases” will not lead to anything “as the government will come and file more cases”.
What will make a difference is “political power” and “leaders who have an honest intention to do away with cases against the Bengali-origin Muslims like the BJP government did with Gorkhas and Koch Rajbanshis”, Khan said. “This shows that if the government wants, they can stop harassing us. They can remove all these cases.”
Khan continues to fight for the Bengali-origin Muslim community, when few community leaders speak up for them, the activist pointed out.
“When we did social activism during the updating of the National Register of Citizens, we had constructed a civic space,” he said. “But the state demolished that space efficiently – by making sure our community doesn’t get enough money, filing cases against our people and through media trials. Community activists who were once vocal and active are silent.”
Khan, he said, has a better chance of surviving because he is not a “conventional activist”.
For the thousands caught in Assam’s citizenship trials, Faruk Khan is an unlikely source of hope, he added. “Legal cases not only take away citizenship from people but also their peace of mind. He is able to help by simply showing up in front of the people. He makes them believe that someone has their back.”
