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The fear of losing citizenship when Assam updated its National Register of Citizens starting from 2015 prompted a death suicide by a Hindu resident sent into a panic by the fact that he could not find the appropriate documents. For Muslim residents, the anxiety is even more accute.

Even educated Muslim women in Assam feel they are living in a nightmare because they have been made vulnerably by constantly having to prove their citizenship. Unlettered, rural women are even more isolated, believing that nobody cares.

Borders are arbitrary but communities belong to the soil. They are constantly moving. Borders arbitrarily drawn by colonial officials and politicians cannot be the basis for dividing people.

These are among the concerns discussed in the latest episode of Yeh Daag Daag Ujala, Karwan e Mohabbat’s discussion series on the state of the republic. It focuses on potential routes to bring peace back to Assam, where the state’s Muslims have been under intense attack by the Bharatiya Janata Party government.

This episode features law professor Mohsin Alam Bhat, historian Yasmin Saikia and lawyer Aman Wadud in conversation with author and peace activist Harsh Mander.

The name of Karwan e Mohabbat’s Yeh Daag Daag Ujala series is a tribute to the iconic poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.