Around four million residents of a northern Indian state are at risk of losing their citizenship. The government has published a register of citizens, and to be included, people must prove they came to India by March 24, 1971.
That is two days before Bangladesh declared independence which led to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to India - many of them settling in Assam.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP government plan to remove those they deem "foreigners" from Assam state, although local officials are assuring those recently designated as foreigners that they will not be immediately deported.
Al Jazeera's Paul Chaderjian reports.
