NL Interview: Abhishek Saha on his book and Assam’s NRC crisis

Abhishek Saha covers Northeast India for the Indian Express, based out of Guwahati, Assam. He previously reported from Kashmir for the Hindustan Times and won a Ramnath Goenka Award for his coverage of the unrest there in 2016.

He sits down with Nidhi Suresh to discuss his book, No Land’s People: The Untold Story of Assam’s NRC Crisis, and the urgent question of citizenship in the state.

Narrating his encounter with a police officer asking whether Abhishek was listed in the contentious National Register of Citizens, the journalist highlights the contradiction between the government’s claims regarding the NRC exercise and the reality on the ground.

The conversation also covers the problem of people held in Assam’s detention centres being rendered stateless, the financial burden of the legal processes required to prove citizenship, how response to India’s new citizenship law in Assam differed from that of most Indian liberals, and the difference in reporting as an “insider” and an “outsider”.

Watch.

Text by Aadi Jain.