A large section of the rights activists and scholars have been critical of the efforts to put together a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, and rightly so. 

What they say about the rationale and the process that has gone into the making of NRC, and the concerns they raise about the prospects that await those excluded and rendered Stateless are real. 

However, where their judgement has erred is in losing sight of the context that has compelled a large section of people in Assam to settle for NRC — a context that has worsened over the years thanks to the apathy and high-handedness of successive state and central governments. 

To begin with, credit should not be given where it is not due. NRC is not, and has never been, a project of the BJP government, either at the Centre or at the state level. 

BJP has tried to own it, fill it with communal rhetoric and make highly rash statements on the need to exercise it across the country. When everything failed, and on realising that the proportion of Hindus among those excluded from the draft list of NRC may be high, it even tried to undermine it by introducing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that would guarantee citizenship to a non-citizen, as long as he or she is a Hindu.