The last has not been heard on the Pahalgam attack. When 27 unsuspecting innocent civilians were executed in the Baisaran meadow on April 22, 2025 and news of Hindu men being singled out started breaking, anger seethed. And rightly so. Eventually, revelations of the attackers being Pakistani army regulars in military fatigues started doing the rounds; a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba affiliate claimed it as victory in their path towards Ghazwa-e-Hind and later retracted. The government of Bharat vowed to counter this with diplomatic and kinetic measures. Pahalgam had to be avenged.
One seemingly minor detail that might have escaped scrutiny if social media had not been buzzing with activity is the reaction to the government’s move on visa cancellation for all Pakistani citizens living in India. As soon as the visa cancellation was formally announced, the law and order machinery was inundated with a peculiar problem – the issue of Indian women holding Indian passports and citizenships married to Pakistani men! Not only this, many such women – as per reports – have been living in India with their children – obviously Pakistani citizens owning to their father’s nationality. Unofficial reports on social media also claimed that quite a substantial number of these children were even enrolled in schools in India. Unsubstantiated reports have put the number of women married to Pakistani nationals at between 83,000 to over a lakh, with dizzying numbers coming in from Punjab, Kashmir, and even Delhi.
These mind-boggling numbers put the finger on a number of contentious questions, primary among them being the existence of legal loopholes which were being exploited and attuned to suit the needs of these women married off in Pakistan. How were they being allowed to remain Indian citizens, bearing Indian passports – and even Aadhar Cards – while being married to Pakistani nationals? How were these women being allowed to stay in India for extended periods of time, unchecked? Were they taking advantage of the various welfare schemes rolled out by the Indian government? A more insidious suspicion arose – were these large number of women in marital relationships with Pakistani nationals enablers of the well-knit terror ecosystem that exists in India, fully funded and supported by Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment? What is heartening is that the developing situation has made the case for the immediate rollout of the National Register of Citizens or NRC even stronger. The time has never been more opportune.
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is meant to be a register of all Indian citizens whose creation was mandated by the 2003 amendment of the Citizenship Act, 1955. Its purpose is to document all the legal citizens of India so that the illegal immigrants can be identified and deported. It has been implemented for the state of Assam starting 2013–2014. The Government of India announced plans to implement it for the rest of the country in 2021, but it has not fructified yet. According to the Citizenship Rules, 2003, the central government can issue an order to prepare the National Population Register (NPR) and create the NRC based on the data gathered in it. The 2003 amendment further states that the local officials would then decide if the person’s name will be added to the NRC or not, thereby deciding their citizenship status.
Authorities in Maharashtra and Delhi-NCR have been cracking down on illegal Bangladeshis. The revelations are shocking. They enter from the unfenced, porous borders along West Bengal and their papers (including fake Aadhar cards and Voter IDs) are immediately handed to them. A well-oiled machinery exists whereby these immigrants are aided to settle in different parts of the country. Several instances of the involvement of many illegal immigrants in stone pelting, rioting and other anti-social activities, as has been claimed by the national security establishment.
Besides Indian women in cross-border marital relationships with Pakistani nationals, law enforcement bodies have unearthed hordes of illegal Pakistanis and Bangladeshis from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi and so on, which strengthens the argument in favour of the NRC. During the UPA government, Sriprakash Jaiswal, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, made a statement in Parliament on 14 July 2004, saying that “12 million illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators were living in India”, and West Bengal had the most with 5.7 million Bangladeshis. This number undoubtedly spiraled. More recently, the current NDA government has put the figure at around 20 million. According to the 2001 census, 3,084,826 people in India came from Bangladesh. Extrapolating the census data for the state of Assam alone gives a figure of 2 million. Figures as high as 20 million are also reported in the government and media. According to the Union Government, there were 10565 Rohingya families in India as of 2015. According to several datasets and experts, this number can be extrapolated to arrive at a figure of over a million immigrants. The Indian security establishment has stated on a number of occasions that “Some Rohingyas sympathizing with many militant group’s ideologies may be active in Jammu, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mewat and can be a potential threat to internal security”.
The modus operandi of these Indian woman – Pakistani man alliances remain pretty straightforward. Indian women are married off to Pakistanis quite routinely with the option of returning to India to birth children and even raise them here. It is still early days to link these cases of – and I say this with some responsibility – ‘marital jihad’ with the well-entrenched terror network but the possibilities are rife and cannot be ruled out. So, the question to be asked is – are we opening up legitimate Indian citizens to mortal danger by allowing these marital relations to thrive and carry on?
The NRC will potentially safeguard India on two fronts. One, it will lay bare the exact number of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslims living in India on fake identity papers so that appropriate action might be taken against them, namely, detention and deportation. Two, it will identify – possibly – the criminal and illegal routes used by these immigrants to enter and remain in India. Particularly in the case of those perpetrating marital jihad, the NRC will ensure the enumeration of all such cases with appropriate deportations and other allied actions. Moving forward, proper rollout of the CAA will fast-track the long-term visas of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs and others into Indian citizenship securing for them a life of dignity and equal rights.
Policy makers must consider the dangers of allowing this rather treacherous practice from carrying on – from giving cover to potential terrorists, the sheer scale of the racket must scare the daylights out of everyone. Several questions are being asked in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack. The information being unearthed now is invaluable in directing the policy towards a successful NRC. The benefits are many. Marital jihadists will be openly called out. Whether these ties are established within or outside of family and clan, any Indian woman marrying a Pakistani national must be liable for the cancellation of her Indian passport forthwith. As we are splashing about in dark waters at present, the need for an authoritative NRC becomes the need of the hour. These cases of marital jihad are a real and palpable security risk.
The NRC will identify troublemakers and provide legal provisions for their deportation, thereby removing national security risks, however minor. A nation’s security concerns and its ability to respond to threats – internal and external – shape its national power requirements. Successful NRC is therefore, as outlined by Hans Morgenthau, a need for India’s national security and national power. For national power is not only determined by military means. The rot within needs to be weeded out and thrown away. The sooner the policymakers start perceiving this as a significant measure of national volatility, the better it would be for India’s national security environment.
