[Assam] A sermonic deliverance from the pulpit with a myopic knowledge on Assam and the Assamese? People from ‘The Scotland of the East’ should know that Scotland in on course to have an Independent Sovereign identity splitting from Great Britain’. O’ Luce!

[Bartta Bistar]

Northeast Echoes

PATRICIA MUKHIM

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070820/asp/northeast/story_8208508.asp





Assam's 'other' victims

In the build-up to India's 60th year of Independence, Ulfa massacred not
less than 29 innocent non-Assamese victims. Knowing the lay of the land
better than anyone else, Ulfa chose distant Karbi Anglong for its senseless
killings.

It is no news that Karbi Anglong is one of the most neglected parts of
Assam. One reason could be the profile of its ethnic community. The Karbi
people do not fall into the unembellished and classic definition of
"Assamese", as understood by those who claim to be direct descendants of the
Ahom rulers or of the Brahmin class who came over from Kanauj to settle in
the Brahmaputra valley.

Rarely has an event taking place in this remote frontier captured the minds
and hearts of parliamentarians as the recent massacre has. Admitting the
motion, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee termed it a "very serious
matter".

Not a single parliamentarian from the Northeast spoke up on behalf of those
killed. But this is hardly surprising. Those who understand the Northeast
also know that even killings have an ethnic face.

Protests are loudest when killings affect the majority community. When it
happens to minorities, it usually does not evoke any compassion.

Combat zone

To an impartial observer, Assam in the last few weeks seemed like a combat
zone where the shots were called by Ulfa. They could throw bombs wherever
they chose, kill any target they chose and got away with all of these
damages. The state was virtually an apologetic onlooker.

Tarun Gogoi appears confused and ill at ease and does not seem able to get
his act together, his standard argument being that there are not enough
forces to contain Ulfa's butchering spree.

Of course, his reactions would have been different if the killings had taken
place in one of the Upper Assam districts. Those murdered in Karbi Anglong
have no political constituency. Their lives are expendable and like Gogoi
himself admits, they are soft targets. But when have militants ever done
target practice on hard targets? Most of these hard targets are politicians
and Ulfa sympathisers, anyway.

It took the visit of no less a dignitary than the Union minister of state
for home, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, for new strategies to be developed and for
the killings to temporarily subside. But many wonder now whether it is the
right thing for the chief minister to head the Unified Command. Is he
equipped to provide the leadership in a counter-insurgency operation of the
scale that is called for in Assam? Is the killing of 29 people in a span of
a few days not a human rights violation?

Tough measures

Politicians never make good leaders because they cannot take hard decisions.
Yet at this juncture, some really tough measures are called for. The
compulsion to please all people all the time has taken our country to its
nadir. Political equivocation has created ample space for agent provocateurs
and anti-national forces to operate in an unrestrained manner. The war
against terror must be fought like one. There can be no compromise when it
comes to providing security to the common man. Assam is undeniably a large
state with some far-flung areas that have been left to languish in the
political and economic wilderness. Karbi Anglong is not the only district,
which experiences an apology of governance. Let us have the grace to admit
that the bulk of resources are cornered by the traditional "Assamese"
strongholds, namely, Guwahati, Sivasagar, Jorhat, Dibrugarh and Tezpur.

Even the commercial town of Tinsukia and its periphery are in a kind of
economic limbo. Jhalukbari, which is Himanta Biswa Sarma's constituency and
which includes the silk hub of Assam, Sualkuchi, seems to have just emerged
from the backwoods.

People speak with some amount of respect for what their representative has
done in terms of activating the community health centres and hospitals and
making them perform. But Sualkuchi is still too sleepy to meet the huge
demand for Assam silk with its ethnic designs. If the constituency of a
powerful cabinet minister has a profile like Jalukbari beyond the
Brahmaputra, and if the minister is happily unaware of the tribulations of
his most critical constituents — the weavers — then there is something
seriously problematic with his role as a public representative and policy
maker.

This brings me to the point of my contention. Karbi Anglong has only four
MLAs in a House of 126 elected representatives. Of the four, only one is a
minister and the other a parliamentary secretary. Important portfolios in
the cabinet, irrespective of the pecking order are firmly entrenched among
the "Assamese" gentry. Assam has never had a tribal chief minister and
perhaps never will. This time the Congress allied with the former Bodoland
Liberation Tigers (BLT) chief Hagrama Mohilary under the banner of Bodo
Peoples' Progressive Front (BPPF), which has a dominant sway in Lower Assam.
But because numbers matter, a tribal even from Bodoland will find it hard to
get a toehold in the government hierarchy. Where do the Karbis stand in this
pecking order?

Like it or not, the Assamese will continue to patronise their tribal
colleagues, giving them the crumbs of office. Otherwise, it would have been
fit and proper to give the second most important portfolio to an alliance
partner. Would the Karbi Anglong massacres have been allowed to happen if a
tribal from that district or from Bodoland held the home portfolio? If truth
be told, it took the state more time than necessary to respond to the
killings. Why?

Biased attitudes

Few will raise this pertinent question in the Assam Assembly because as
stated earlier, those killed have no political clout, unlike the
Bangladeshis who form a formidable votebank. Assamese hegemony and
patronising attitude towards those who do not speak their language is alive
and kicking. A true blue Assamese cannot think beyond what he conceives is
the nucleus of his origin, which is also Ulfa's hub.

Why would an Assamese bother about what happens in Karbi Anglong unless
he/she is a newsperson and what happen is of news value?

Sadly, after all the horrendous killings, Gogoi is back to offering the
olive branch to Ulfa. How do you explain this blow-hot, blow-cold attitude
of the chief minister?

In fact his indecisive stance has created a jarring cacophony, particularly
among security forces. Ulfa's rejoinder to chief minister Tarun Gogoi's
peace missive is predictable.

They have turned it down on the hackneyed argument that Gogoi made no
mention of sovereignty as a talking point with the Centre. Ulfa should read
Edward Luce's article where he cogently argues that the "traditional
legalistic definition of sovereignty should give way to a more sophisticated
understanding of power in a frighteningly interdependent world". Those who
want peace cannot split hairs. But who says Ulfa wants peace?

*(The writer can be contacted at patricia17 at rediffmail.com)*

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