[Assam] Fakruddin Ali Ahmed was a 'bat-kotia' of Bangladeshi vote bank?

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*"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."*
*http://www.newindpress.com/Column.asp?ID=IE620050716003054&P=old*<http://www.newindpress.com/Column.asp?ID=IE620050716003054&P=old>
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*An anti-national law declared unconstitutional*

S Gurumurthy
Most people in the country, including many who have been initiated into
public affairs, know little about `IMDT'. 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
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 minorityism.

*http://www.newindpress.com/Column.asp?ID=IE620050716003054&P=old*
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