ECI complicates Indo-Nepal ties

The Election Commission of India’s revision of electoral rolls in Bihar will complicate Indo-Nepal relations, and alienate those in the Tarai region of the neighboring country who have linguistic and ethnic affinities with the people of Bihar and UP. This danger has risen because of the ECI singling out Nepalis as among those non-citizens whose names will be excluded from the final electoral rolls of Bihar.

Popularly known as the Madhesis of the Tarai or Madhes, their relationship with similar cultural groups in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh has endured because of cross-border marriages. It’s the women who cross the border on marriage — Madhesi women wed in Bihar (and east Uttar Pradesh) and, conversely, Bihari women in Nepal, in incredibly large numbers.

Madhesi women married in Bihar seldom initiate the legal procedure to acquire Indian citizenship. They don’t do so because Nepalis, under the Indo-Nepal Treaty, 1950, can reside in India, own property, take up private and government jobs, barring in the Indian Foreign Service, without acquiring citizenship. These privileges Indian citizens, too, enjoy in Nepal.

But vote the Madhesi woman can’t migrate to Bihar after marriage, for only Indian citizens can. Yet they do possess documents to enrol as voters. Nobody had objected, not even the State. There’s consensus on usurping citizenship, based on the cultural idea that a wife is a member of her husband’s family — and, therefore, also of the nation to which he belongs. The State’s exclusive right to determine citizenship or belonging is consequently denied.

The ECI’s decision to link citizenship with voter enrolment introduces an irritant in the Indo-Nepal relationship, largely because the two countries have different citizenship laws. In India, a foreigner married to an Indian citizen can acquire citizenship through registration after residing in India for seven years.

In Nepal, a foreign woman (not man) married to a Nepali citizen can acquire citizenship after filing an application to the chief district officer, submitting her marriage certificate issued by the local body concerned, and providing proof of having initiated the procedure for relinquishing her existing citizenship. This is called matrimonial naturalised citizenship, which is granted swiftly.

A naturalised citizen in Nepal can vote, contest in elections, and hold all posts other than a handful mentioned in Article 289 of the Nepal Constitution. Such rights the Madhesi woman in Bihar can only enjoy after the expiry of seven years, if the ECI were to insist that only individuals with proof of citizenship can enrol as voters.

A powerful constituency in Nepal has always rooted for introducing the seven-year waiting period, as in India, for acquiring matrimonial naturalised citizenship. In 2019, when the Nepali government crafted a bill to amend the Nepal Citizenship Act, 2006, one of its clauses introduced the seven-year waiting period. The argument was that seven years were required for a foreigner to adjust to Nepal’s culture and develop loyalty to the nation This clause was fiercely opposed by Madhesi politicians, with one of them, Upendra Yadav, arguing, “Why should a woman who sacrifices everything to become part of a Nepali family be deprived of Nepali citizenship for seven years?”

In 2023, the Nepal Citizenship (First Amendment) Bill was passed, but without the seven-year waiting clause. This was hailed as a triumph of the Madhesi movement. Some, though, alluded to India’s hidden hand behind the reversal, evident from Communist lawmaker Bishal Bhattarai’s remark: “Who did the government sign a deal with to remove the seven-year system from the Citizenship Bill?”

The possible disenfranchisement of Madhesis, even though legally correct, will have political parties in Nepal cite the ECI’s procedure to demand the introduction of the seven-year waiting period. Madhesis will clamour against it, for this will disincentivise cross-border marital ties, and eventually disrupt familial and cultural ties across the border. India will be guilty of hypocrisy if it were to now argue against a waiting period for matrimonial naturalized citizenship in Nepal.

No data exist on cross-border marriages. Rakesh Mishra, executive director of the think tank North South Collectives, said to me, “My sources in Nepal’s Home Ministry say at least 10,000 foreign women acquire naturalised citizenship annually.” They would be predominantly Indian. The count of cross-border marriages will be far higher than 10,000 a year as marginalised communities with a high incidence of child marriage can’t register such marriages and, therefore, can’t apply for citizenship. As in Nepal, so in India, the cumulative number of Nepali women married in India would be thousands upon thousands.

Underlying the phenomenon of cross-border marriage is another story — since the 2021 Nepal census shows Yadavs constitute 4.5 per cent and Muslims 4.86 per cent of the country’s population, it’s the women from these two communities who’d be married in Bihar in substantially large numbers. They now run the risk of being disenfranchised. Remember also that Yadavs and Muslims constitute the mainstay of the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress-Left alliance.

From this perspective, the relook at the citizenship status appears to be an ECI ploy to tilt the playing field in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal (United) alliance, complicating, in the process, India’s relations with Nepal, and upending socio-cultural practices that unite a people despite the borders dividing them.

The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste
Pre Published at : Mid Day

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