When courts must act like emergency responders, something is deeply broken in the state’s treatment of its most vulnerable.

Two women. Two States. Two different religions. But one common crisis — citizenship in modern India.

On June 24, 2025, the Supreme Court stayed the deportation of Jaynab Bibi, an Assamese woman wrongly declared a “foreigner”. On the same day, the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir ordered the repatriation of Rakshanda Rashid, a 63-year-old housewife who had been deported to Pakistan after living in India for nearly four decades.

These decisions come not as policy corrections but as judicial interventions — the courts acting not as arbiters of law, but as last-resort saviours. And that itself is a worrying sign.

Courts as Emergency Responders — A New Normal?

In both cases, the courts acted with urgency, putting human dignity and constitutional protection ahead of bureaucratic stubbornness. Justice Rahul Bharti in the Rashid case said it plainly: sometimes the court has to act “SOS-like”, when the system fails to do so.

But the need for such urgent action reveals a systemic truth — the process to determine who belongs in this country is deeply flawed, inconsistent, and often hostile to the poor, the unlettered, and the marginalised.

That a woman like Jaynab Bibi, with generations of ancestry in Assam and official documents in hand, must go all the way to the Supreme Court to prove she’s not a foreigner, is a telling indictment of our internal borders — both literal and psychological.

When Documents Don’t Prove Identity

The Foreigners’ Tribunal in Assam has long been criticised for its opaque procedures and frequent disregard for evidence. In 2024, the Supreme Court in Md. Rahim Ali vs State of Assam made it clear: suspicion is not a substitute for legal proof. Yet, this caution is often ignored in Assam’s fraught landscape, where identity is judged not by documentation, but by name, religion, and place of origin.

The process, as it currently stands, disproportionately targets Bengali-speaking Muslims, especially women, many of whom lack access to legal aid or digital records. This institutional suspicion is not incidental — it is baked into the political narrative.

Citizenship by Religion — The CAA Legacy

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 further complicates the situation. By offering a path to citizenship to only non-Muslim minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, the CAA introduced a religious filter to what was once a secular identity framework.

This sends a chilling message: citizenship is no longer about belonging — it’s about belief.

People like Rakshanda Rashid, who applied for Indian citizenship in 1996, remain in limbo. Despite living in India for 38 years, raising a family here, and having a valid visa, she was deported following a sweeping crackdown after the Pahalgam terror attack in April. The High Court had to remind the Centre — human rights are universal, not conditional.

The Human Cost of Political Rhetoric

Behind these policies lies rhetoric — toxic, polarising, and sometimes violent. Statements by senior BJP leaders, including Chief Ministers like Yogi Adityanath and Himanta Biswa Sarma, frequently target minorities as “infiltrators” or “invaders”. These labels are not just inflammatory — they are weaponised to justify harsh legal action and administrative apathy.

For people on the margins — whether poor Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam or Pakistani-born housewives in Jammu — this rhetoric turns the very question of identity into a daily anxiety.

Who Gets to Belong?

The Indian Constitution promises equality, dignity, and the right to life. So does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which India helped draft. But as the Jaynab Bibi and Rakshanda Rashid cases show, these ideals often don’t survive contact with the ground reality.

In today’s India, citizenship is no longer just a legal status — it is a battle for recognition, fought one court order at a time.

And that is not how a healthy democracy should function.

What Needs to Change

These cases are not anomalies. They are symptoms of a citizenship system in urgent need of reform.

We at TheTrendingPeople.com believe:

• The Foreigners’ Tribunals must be overhauled, made transparent, and monitored for fairness.
• The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) must be revisited for its discriminatory exclusions.
• Citizenship applications like Rashid’s — pending for decades — must be fast-tracked and decided on merit, not prejudice.
• Leaders must cease inflammatory language that dehumanises entire communities.

Most importantly, the burden of proof must shift back to the state — it is the government’s duty to prove someone is a foreigner, not the citizen’s responsibility to repeatedly prove they belong.

Final Thought: Courts Should Not Be the Last Line of Humanity

The fact that two High Courts had to step in to prevent a wrongful deportation and an unjust exile in 2025 should set off alarm bells. Courts are meant to interpret law — not intervene to preserve basic human rights because the system failed to.

If we must rely on “SOS-like” orders to uphold citizenship rights, we must admit: something is deeply wrong with how citizenship itself is being defined and defended.

In a democracy, belonging should not need court protection. It should be a given.