The debate on “illegal migration” in Assam must be understood against a long history of cross-border movements, colonial settlement policies, and post-Independence anxieties crystallised during the Assam Agitation and the 1985 Assam Accord. While citizenship verification exercises like the NRC sought legal clarity, they also deepened precarity. Today, these tensions have taken a troubling turn with Assam’s new policy of distributing arms licences to “indigenous” communities in border and Muslim-majority districts.
Critics warn that this move echoes the unconstitutional Salwa Judum experiment in Chhattisgarh, which the Supreme Court struck down in Nandini Sundar v. State of Chhattisgarh (2011) for outsourcing policing to civilians. By privileging contested notions of “indigenous,” the Assam policy risks entrenching exclusion, militarising identity, and displacing the State’s constitutional duty to ensure law and order. Historical lessons and past conflicts—such as the 2012 Bodo–Muslim clashes—show that arming civilians under communal lines only sharpens divisions and fuels cycles of violence.
At stake, therefore, is not just the question of migration, but whether the State safeguards vulnerable citizens through accountable institutions or shifts responsibility onto fractured communities. As legal, humanitarian and historical perspectives all underline, Assam’s challenges demand dialogue, equitable governance and professional policing—not the normalisation of armed identities.
