[Assam] Another editorial from the Sentinel

[Ram Sarangapani]

Here is a far more serious editorial. Whether one agrees or not with Bikash
Sarmah,  it may be a good exercise to assess where Assam is, after 60 years
of Independence.

There have been vast changes - some good, some just rotten bad. Maybe
netters can weigh in on how the state is doing in say Education, Quality of
Life, Industrialization, Per capita incomes, Cultural/Language/Literature
development, Agriculture, Population movements, Floods, Infrastructural
developments etc, etc. and of course Overall (across the board), how has
Assam fared vis-a-vis to other states and other states in the NE.

--Ram

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*Asom at 60, in Reality — I
THE REALITY MIRROR
Bikash Sarmah
*C OME WEDNESDAY AND WE shall celebrate 60 years of Independence. At 60, how
does Asom look like? Does its look also reflect on the systemic aberrations
that the Indian version of democracy and secularism has overlooked — to the
advantage of politicians for whom politics or party is more important than
the motherland? Or is it that Asom has an exclusivity — an inbuilt mechanism
to inflict wounds on its own soul — that cannot connect to mainland
discourses? How does Asom fit into the Indian federal paradigm?
I am tempted to recall here the Assam Agitation from 1979 to 1985. The
movement, whose cause was as just as anything when it came to a people
threatened by the influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, had the All
Assam Students' Union (AASU) catapult to a hitherto unheard political height
— an instance in democratic India that had students impress upon the country
that the movement was the only alternative to rescue a doomed populace. The
movement was successful in the sense that it could mobilize the Asomiyas
against what would later on be best described as the Islamization of Asom
due only to illegal immigration from Bangladesh and then to the absolutist
design therein, which I have extensively dealt with in the three-part series
entitled ''The Unfinished Agenda of Partition in Asom'' (The Sentinel, June
8, 15, 22, 2007).
During the six-year-long Assam Agitation, there dawned upon the Asomiyas a
bit of realization as to the seriousness of the problem of illegal
immigration from Bangladesh to Asom, and also to the fact of that
immigration being highly political and politicized. Illegal Bangladeshis
were — and still are — crowding Asom because they and their sympathizers in
the State ultimately wanted to storm into the corridors of power at Dispur.
It was not an immigration driven by hunger alone. In one of my discourses in
this column, I have called it ''political immigration'' ( ''Define it as
Political Immigration'', The Sentinel, July 7, 2006). And the fact of
illegal immigration from Bangladesh to Asom was highly — and perversely —
politicized by the Congress at that point of time, which continues till
date, because illegal Bangladeshis were a suitable breed to be called Indian
'minorities' in the pseudo-secular political parlance, which would then
enable them to thrive in the State as a powerful vote bank. The Congress did
not have the motherland as a factor in its scheme of things.
T oday, what are the remains of the Assam Agitation? Just two, perhaps. One,
a political party, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which was the political
offshoot of that fiery agitation and which had vowed to rid the State of
every single illegal immigrant; a party that had promised to bail out the
Asomiyas from the political cruelties of the Congress. Two, the illegal
Bangladeshis themselves. Today, these two remains flourish in their own
ways. One by being blind to the cause of the Asomiyas, and mostly out of
choice — the AGP. The other by virtue of being empowered to live in a State
whose very government has pledged to safeguard the 'minorities' in the name
of 'pluralist' ethos and 'secularism' — the illegal Bangladeshis. Add to
this organizations like the All Assam Minorities Students' Union (AAMSU) and
the All Assam Madrassa Students' Association (AAMSA), and of course a new
political party called the Asom United Democratic Front (AUDF) — notorious
for its genesis just in the wake of the abrogation of the IM(DT) Act by the
Supreme Court in 2005 as though the 'minorities' would be persecuted by the
Asomiyas in the absence of that discriminatory immigration regime. And add
to all this the ULFA's violent ways and its reported camaraderie with
hostile Bangladeshi fundamentalist forces as well as Pakistan's ISI.
At 60, then, Asom not only bleeds — thanks to ULFA's obdurate ways and its
evolution quite detached from the cause of insurgency — but also withers as
the State slips into a state of anarchy. There are temptations though: of
the State being in the reckoning for its suitability as the gateway to South
Asia; of the State being a destination for foreign investors as Chief
Minister Tarun Gogoi would have us believe and celebrate; of the State being
in its infallible march to the league of developed States of the Indian
Union; and so on and so forth. However, the naked truth stares at the
Asomiya society, anywhere, everywhere.
The crux of the matter is that it is Asom where a so-called minorities'
organization, the AAMSU, has the guts to challenge the Asomiyas — of course
in areas where none would challenge the illegal Bangladeshis, such as
Dhubri, Goalpara and Barpeta. The challenge was thrown to the Asomiyas last
month.
I t is Asom where a madrassa organization, the AAMSA, has the guts to ban
the entry of an Asomiya, Samujjal Bhattacharyya, both AASU advisor and North
East Students' Union (NESO) president, in the Barak Valley — as though the
valley is no longer Asom's or the Asomiyas'. The ban was imposed only a few
days ago. It is Asom where the ruling party proves its worth not by coming
to the aid of the indigenous populace, but by certifying all the suspected
Bangladeshis, dumped in the State by a pro-people Arunachal Pradesh
dispensation, as Indian citizens in a manner becoming only of traitors, in
such tearing hurry. It is Asom where ministers do not know what they talk
about when it comes to illegal Bangladeshis.
At 60, Asom has a Chief Minister who certifies all the suspected
Bangladeshis, who have left Arunachal Pradesh for Asom following a stern
directive to them by the All Arunachal Pradesh Students' Union (AAPSU), as
confirmed Indian citizens only to be 'supported' on the floor of the State
Assembly — on Monday — by one of his colleagues in the ministry, Rockybul
Hussain, who says that their 'identification' process is still going on. As
if the Asomiyas are a bunch of fools to believe that! At 60, no wonder,
then, that such 'identification' should make every single illegal
Bangladeshi an Indian 'minority'.
The rest of India may celebrate Independence Day — India at 60, or whatever
be the slogan. In Asom, even if the ULFA allows one to celebrate the day,
the thought of ''Asom at 60, in reality'' must unnerve the sensible Asomiya
soul, for Asom at 60 is only a few years away from being part of a greater
Bangladesh, which obviously means a greater Islamic state since Bangladesh
is not a secular state but a declared Islamic state, and there is no reason
why a greater Bangladesh would declare itself secular — it just will not,
and such examples galore.
Next week I shall conclude by harping on Asom's exclusivity imposed on its
people by mainland India and how it is still assumed to be fitting well into
the Indian federal paradigm.
(The writer is the Consulting Editor of The Sentinel)
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