Most people in the country, including many who have been initiated into public affairs, know little about 'IMDT' (Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunal Act). To capture it briefly, it is a law, a suicidal, in fact, an anti-national law. Can laws be anti-national? Yes, when they subserve the interests of rulers and subvert national interests. IMDT is a classic case of pre-meditated subversion of the nation and its interests by lawful process. In fact, the Supreme Court said so on Monday (July 11, 2005) last.

Look at the constitutional horror that operated on the innocent, non-aggressive people of Assam for two decades and more. 'IMDT' means Illegal Immigrants (Detection by Tribunals) Act. The Indian parliament passed IMDT when Indira Gandhi was the ruler. IMDT was born thus. In the late 1970s, the students of Assam began a non-violent, mass struggle against infiltration from Bangladesh. Infiltration particularly from East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, became massive after freedom. Vote bank politics expedited, even invited, infiltration. It was no secret.

One can recall how poll analysts wrote about the Barpeta Lok Sabha constituency from where late Fakruddin Ali Ahmed was seeking re-election in 1967. Despite the national mood against the Congress, they said, he would win. How? He had got enrolled over a lakh of Bangladeshis as voters! First he trailed by one-lakh votes, but at the end, as predicted, he won! The Barpeta vote-bank politics became the model for all Assam border constituencies. Soon 'seculars' imported this model into West Bengal, Bihar, Delhi, UP and Maharashtra later.

The result, today, according to a verified intelligence report, over 20 million Bangladeshi Muslims are spread across the country not just, but mostly, in Assam holding ration cards to driving licences thanks to 'secular' polity mortgaging national security in return for ballots. Among the millions are hidden like 'needles in huge haystack' extremists and militants targeting India! Yet no one would dare speak against Bangladeshi Muslims without being branded as communal, anti-secular. Secular terrorism blocked all debates on the issue. So infiltration fetched votes, and also strengthened the seculars against communalists (read Hindus)!

Historically Hindus always woke up late. So did the Assamese. With millions of Bangladeshi Muslims illegally in Assam and with thousands entering each day, Assamese culture, language and their national security had already come under threat. Let down by constitutionalism, in the early 1980s students of Assam (All Assam Students Union or AASU) began a truly mass, non-violent movement against infiltration. The whole Assam rose as one but totally peacefully. But the Indira Government tricked the unsuspecting, peaceful AASU into a settlement and cheated the people of Assam by legislating treason on India, the IMDT.

The IMDT made justice stand on its head. The law to detect foreigners that applies to the whole country is the Foreigners Act. It applied to Assam too but before IMDT. Under that law, a person suspected to be a foreigner has to prove he is not. The AASU had urged Governments to make this law more effective. The Indira Government tricked them by offering a special law for Assam, the IMDT. But the rulers stealthily defrauded Assam, acted against India, by slipping a sentence into the IMDT to the effect that where authorities suspect that a person is a Bangladeshi, he is not to prove that he is not; it is the official or the complainant who has to prove that a clear, intended perversion. All sensible nations protect their citizens against foreigners. In IMDT it was the other way round, thanks to the 'seculars'.

But, a Parliament member from Assam doggedly pursued a case against the IMDT law to the Supreme Court. On Monday, the highest court declared the IMDT unconstitutional. It did not stop at that. It did more. The court said that instead of expelling the foreigner, the IMDT became the 'biggest hurdle' even to detect a foreigner. Against infiltrators in millions, in two decades, the IMDT tribunals detected just 10,015 foreigners. Expelled even less just 1481!

The court noted that Bangladeshis were present in millions in Assam and constituted an 'aggression on Assam'. It said more. That infiltration had led to serious internal disturbances in the shape of insurgency in alarming proportions; that local language and culture were being marginalised; that Assamese had been reduced to a minority in the border areas; that infiltration constituted a threat to the security and integrity of the nation; that the Government failed in its duty under Article 355 of the Constitution to protect the people against external aggression and internal disturbances. The indictment is endless, could not have been stronger.

The issue is the ruler's lust to remain in power even through voters recruited from Bangladesh. India may be partitioned again later but that does not matter, as elections have to be won now. In the process they have converted this huge national security issue into a Muslim and a minority protection issue in the rest of India, thus glorifying an anti-national issue into a noble issue of minority protection. In spirit, the Supreme Court has really struck at this anti-national minority.