South Asia is really going to the dog. Or so it appears these days. Just when we thought that we had seen enough of a pogrom directed by the Rakhine extremists and Burmese authorities against the Rohingyas of Arakan state of Burma (Myanmar), we are forced to witness yet another massacre of Bengali Muslims in the state of Assam.
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Assam, located next to Bangladesh on
the north-east corner of India, has a long history of recurring violence
targeting minority Bengali-speakers. In 1983, the Nellie massacre,
during Indira Gandhi’s ruling in India, was carried out with crude
weapons in a matter of a few hours, and left some 5,000 people dead. The
killers didn’t even spare young babies.
At the heart of Assam’s troubles is a
debate over the “infiltration” by outsiders, which has led to ethnic
tension between the state’s so-called indigenous population and the
Bangla-speaking people who have settled there for generations.
Overlooked in this debate is the fact that all these territories were
once part of British India with people – both Assamese and Bengali –
living on either side of today’s border that separates Bangladesh
(formerly East Pakistan/ East Bengal) from the state of Assam in India.
The Assamese were mostly illiterate people and as a result, many
Indians, mostly from the province of
Bengal, were brought in to work as engineers, doctors, administrators, clerks,
railway workers and other government related jobs. Many of the Bangla-speaking
farmers were also brought in to boost rice production in the area,
especially around the chars (river islands). Having lived there for
generations, these so-called migrants are as Indian (in today’s
parlance) as the ethnic Assamese or the tribes-people in the state.
Unfortunately, the ensuing change in
demography, rivalry for land, dwindling natural resources and
livelihood, and intensified competition for political power between the
ruling party and the separatists has added a deadly force to the issue
of who has a right to Assam. It is all about xenophobia. Successive
Congress governments have used Assamese/Bengali Muslims as little more
than a vote bank without recognizing their rights.
After the Nellie massacre and 1983
elections, India’s federal government tried to placate local sentiments
by signing an accord with the All Assam Students Union (AASU) in 1985
which was leading the pogrom against the Bangla-speaking settlers there.
The hard-line Assamese, however, later described the 1985 accord as a
“betrayal” and decided to wage an armed campaign against India to secede
from India.
Twenty nine years after the Nellie
massacre, a group of the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)
is now negotiating with Delhi, asking for more concrete protection for
indigenous populations against what they falsely describe as “relentless
illegal migration from across the border”.
The Bangla-speaking people in Assam have
also become more assertive these days with the formation of the Assam
United Democratic Front under a charismatic leader which seeks to
protect the rights of minorities and their periodic ousting from
settlements through violence. In 2011, it emerged as the main opposition
to Assam’s ruling Congress party, winning three times the number of
seats won by regional Assamese parties and the Hindu nationalist BJP,
which promotes Hindutva.
It is this emerging political prowess of
the Bengali people in Assam, which is being exploited as a boogeyman by
the ruling Congress party and the Hindu extremists, to promote or be
indifferent to periodic rioting that engulfs the region. Four years ago,
the Indian Army had to be called in to stop blood-letting. More than 100
Bengali Muslims were killed in one such raid at Bansbari, a makeshift
camp for displaced Muslims, in 1993.
The latest pogrom has affected four
districts of western Assam, where the Bengalis (mostly Muslims) are
pitted against tribes-people such as the Bodos, Rabhas and Garos. In
Kokrajhar, the Bodo heartland, Muslims are regularly attacked by Bodo
separatist rebels and this periodically erupts into full-scale riots.
This latest conflict has left about 40 dead (all Bengali-speaking
Muslims) and displaced tens of thousands.
As noted by Indian political commentator
Aijaz Zaka Syed, “As usual, Muslims were caught in the deadly games of
the Congress and assorted separatist groups. Our Hindutva benefactors
added fuel to the fire by raising the specter of invasion by Bangladeshi
Muslims. The same drama is being re-enacted today with consequences that
could be even deadlier. Yet, unlike in the past, this conflict isn’t
communal or religious in nature. It’s an economic struggle for the land
and dwindling natural resources.”
In this latest pogrom, entire villages
have been burnt down while the state administration remains curiously
clueless and indifferent. Delhi insists Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi
is “monitoring the situation” and doing everything possible to restore
peace. “This is little comfort to the community, though, which
increasingly lives in fear, worrying the worst may be yet to come. Gogoi
is yet to visit the affected areas. Not even a flying, whirlwind tour
for the cloistered satrap,” writes Syed.
If the local Assamese administration and
the federal Indian government are serious about the well-being of
Assamese/Bengali Muslims as well as other communities living in Assam,
they should take steps to cool down this simmering volcano that erupts
from time to time. Lasting peace in Assam cannot happen when xenophobia
is promoted. Period.
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By Dr Habib Siddiqui
Thank You For Reading
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