Why does India strip its Muslim citizens of citizenship?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - India has recently stripped nearly 2 million of its citizens, mostly Muslims, in the state of Assam for ethnic cleansing aimed at Muslims, the New York Times article said on Friday.

The newspaper said in an article by journalist Anis Ahmed that the Indian government stripped 1.9 million citizens of Assam state in the north-east of the Muslim-majority country of Indian citizenship last month under the pretext of combating irregular migration, although the vast majority of those affected by the procedure are citizens born in India. Most of them live outside their borders.

The dangerous action threatens the security of India and South Asia, paving the way for ethnic minorities in other countries to be stripped of their citizenship and left without a homeland.

Without nationality and without homeland
The author criticized the authorities' method of census and inclusion in the national registry of the state of 33 million people.

The process of registering the population had many flaws and was highly biased and politicized, and the fact that the vast majority of those excluded from the population register and subsequently stripped of their citizenship as Muslims referred to the measure as tantamount to ethnic cleansing and not simply a census.

Although the Indian authorities claim that those dropped from the population register are Bangladeshi immigrants, they have no evidence to prove that, according to the writer.

Systematic targeting
The writer believes that the latest action is one of the rings of systematic targeting followed by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has spared no effort since his election in order to target and tighten the Muslims in India, has closed the Kashmir region and abolish the autonomy enjoyed by him.

He pointed out that the Indian government is not doing much to deny itself the charge of targeting Muslims, has described the Bharatiya Janata Party Chairman Amit Shah in a speech before the general election earlier this year, described the migrants as infiltrators, and termed "termites" and threatened to throw them in Bay of Bengal.

In July, Shah vowed at a parliamentary session to deport those he called "illegal immigrants living on every inch of this country in accordance with the law."

Where do they go?
He pointed out that stripping nearly two million Indians of citizenship raises many questions, perhaps the most urgent is where to go so many people who found themselves overnight without a homeland?

According to the writer, India plans to build large concentration camps to be a prison for thousands of citizens who stripped of citizenship. The remarks of some officials are a lot of confusion about the post-stripping of citizenship, most of whom are not known to be a country other than India, where a minister of Assam suggested sending them to Bangladesh.

The author concluded that Bangladesh, which has good relations with India, has so far remained silent about what is happening in Assam, and that what India will do next on its citizens who stripped them of nationality will determine the reaction of Bangladesh and may pose a threat to the neighborly relations between the two countries.