This article was written before 30th July and published in Sanhati when the second NRC draft was released. 4 million people risk losing their citizenship as per the second draft. Silence from progressive quarters has only got louder.

The lack of outrage in progressive quarters over NRC updation or detention of suspected foreigners is worth mulling over. Do they not see that perfectly innocent people are being incarcerated on dubious grounds by the Foreigners’ Tribunals? Or, that people are going bonkers trying to procure the right NRC papers, and killing themselves when they are unable to? Most of the unfortunates are Muslims – 70% of those lodged in detention camps are Muslims. Some, though Hindu, speak Bengali. But the considerations of religion and language were important to the blood and soil politics-propagating rightists. Not to the left, who stand by the marginalised. Indeed, should they err, it better be on the side of the weak. Or, so one thought. Unfortunately, as a friend put it, it has become hard to distinguish the position of the left from that of the right. What explains the want of empathy?

There are probably four reasons behind this. One, the broad rightward shift in the political climate. Manifestations of this rightward shift are evident at the national and international level. From Trump to Brexit to our very own Modi Sarkar, son of the soil politics is the zeitgeist. So it has been in the state. During the Assam Movement the left parties had an independent mind to not give in to xenophobic sentiments. They paid a price with the lives of their comrades, but stuck to their stand. Forty years hence, the enfeebled left is incapable to articulate a position which foregrounds working peoples’ politics. Left liberal voices outside political parties have been bought over by a shrill nationalist narrative. This narrative absolves the State and its military highhandedness, as well as rapacity of capital. Instead, it puts the blame on migrant labour for loss of natural resources, culture, and the persistent backwardness of the region. A coalition of son of the soil political forces of different shades and ambit, led by the BJP, won the 2016 assembly elections handsomely. The call to protect the indigenous – defined in terms of Assameseness, or Hinduness, or different tribal ethnicities – against the encroachers (read migrant Muslims) provided the glue to the coalition. The ineptitude and corruption of the previous Congress governments made the victory easy.

Second, fear of extreme nationalist forces. It is worth recalling that the NRC updation was not the brainchild of the Supreme Court. In 2005 the then Congress government under Tarun Gogoi started the process on a pilot basis. The implementation, unsurprisingly, created havoc at the grassroots, especially among the migrant settler communities. Protests by the AAMSU (All Assam Minority Students Union) led to police firing and killing of four youths. The government took a reasonable decision and shelved the project. However, after the fateful judgement by the Supreme Court to update the NRC, there has not been much murmur. Why? It is possible that a part of the silence is out of fear of the majority. To be sure, the political forces which led the Assam Movement are a spent force today. The AGP and AASU are either riding piggyback on the BJP to stay politically relevant, or are clutching at the straw supplied by the Supreme Court. They do not have the strength to create and lead a movement. What makes them potent however is that they are acting in collusion with the establishment. And the character of the establishment has been shifting to the right.

Third, the disconnect of organised politics from the reality at the base of the pyramid. Economic inequality has been rising all over the world, including India. The opinion makers’ lived experience is getting distant from those they think they empathise with. The inability to gauge the consequences which invasive policies wrought on the lives of the marginalised follows from this. Urban talking heads, living in the citizens’ world which is fortified with internet, Aadhaar, voter id, PAN card, bank account and other such passports to legitimacy, do not grasp the helpless anxiety of not finding one’s name in the list of legitimate citizens. Or, the agony that visits a daily wage earner migrant Muslim man when served a notice by the Foreigners’ Tribunal. In their world, if such an eventuality befalls, whose possibility is remote, it is taken care of swiftly. The opinion makers are legitimate by default. The innocent wonderment often heard from this quarter is, “If they are not Bangladeshi let them prove, no?” In the legitimate citizens’ world, everything can be proved. And everything ought to be proved, too.

Fourth, veneration of the judiciary. Veneration of powerful men, and powerful institutions, is part and parcel of the hierarchical society that is India. Limited spread of democratic values contributed to it. The veneration of the judiciary, and technocrats in general, has also to do with the debasement of organised politics. Organised politics has been losing the high ethical ground which it secured during the anti-colonial struggle. This loss of legitimacy is well deserved as well. What fills the vacuum is an interesting question. The strength of civil society has been weak. It does not have the wherewithal to reflect popular will and make it count. For those who pull the levers of the neoliberal economy, a vibrant democratic polity is a bother anyway. It slows things down in red tape, when not wasting resources in profligate populism. The debasement of politics is something that the captains of industry will not lament. Instead, neoliberalism promotes technocrats. Technocrats are endowed with special, and many a time, mysterious knowledge. They are not answerable to the pesky public. In our unquestioning obeisance to judiciary and other such technocrat-run institutions we resort to selective suspension of disbelief. The rubber stamping of Emergency by the Supreme Court is papered over. Putting the onus on the accused to prove that she is not a Bangladeshi, the updation of the NRC — both these decisions baffle common sense, if not do violence to the principle of natural justice. Both echo an ominous majoritarian impulse. Both are going unquestioned by a people tutored on the infallible benevolence of technocrats.

Some Q & A on NRC. Might sound repetitive and self evident . But people need to be told, because some know too little, some know it all wrong and some are deliberately being informed all wrong.

Is the NRC exercise anti Muslim and anti Bengali?

A. No. Because amongst the people who failed to make it to the final DRAFT are people from different religious, ethnic and social backgrounds. While the cases of retired army officer Azmal Haque and descendants of Former President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed’s names missing from the draft are making repeated rounds in the ‘national media’, not many have heard of the case of Gauripur Royal family’s Prakritish Chandra Baruah, former MLA. This ‘untold list’ is long, diverse and illustrious too!

B. Besides, as different reports are gradually emerging, people from districts like Dhuburi, Goalpara, Barpeta etc (Muslim majority districts in proximity to Bangladesh) have mostly found themselves included in the final draft. Is this a moment of vindication or victimisation for them then? Is it hard to understand then, that for these people from these ‘usual suspicious belt’ often at the receiving end of chauvinism, NRC was seen as a much needed mechanism of validation and one that they have been actively mobilising in favour of? Yes, you heard it right. Please put it in your record that Muslims in Assam (besides other groups) had actively campaigned for a fair NRC.

Is the perspectives of the tribes/marginalised ‘indigenous’ groups missing from the whole debate?

Very much. Because who bothers about the opinion of a handful people, no matter however much they are a victim of partition and a colonialism that continued for them much after independence? Who bothers to know more about the ecological plot, the narratives of landlessness and internal migration, when you have to ‘fight’ textbook enemies like ‘communalism’, ‘linguistic chauvinism’?

Will the NRC process lead to human rights abuse?

Totally possible. And what will be new for a region whose modern history is constituted through violations of all possible rights? Trapped in a post colonial tragedy, history pits people against people, aspirations against aspirations, survivals against survivals. It will it be the state, its institutions and mechanisms that will fail if NRC is made into an excuse of abuse and a channel for a humanitarian crisis. But will it necessarily collapse into a humanitarian crisis? That very much depends on how the media, civil society, ‘all concerned voices’, people in general, keeps a vigil on the government and the state based on the RIGHT FACTS rather than hyperbole and selective demagoguery.

Bottom line is that there are complexities in this country that cannot be fit into ideological straightjacket or ready to serve linear narratives. Should the empathy for the stateless (although let us remember 40 lakh is a ‘draft figure’, yet to be finalised and there is no ‘official’ position on the ‘punitive measures’ to be taken) not essentially co-exist with empathy and concern for those coerced into sharing resources and habitats to waves and waves of immigrants? People here often ask, what is the ‘rest of the country’/ ‘the concerned voices’ doing about sharing the ‘burden of immigration’ from the Northeast? Where were these rabble-rousers, ’fact finders’ when the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016 was proposed and Assam was reeling under protest? Or perhaps feeling for both (the one’s seeking a home and the one’s losing their homes and fields) compromises one’s ‘politics’?

1. One precondition and a feature of any genocide is an unshakable belief that such is not possible. Not just in the minds of the victims but also of the perpetrators. It might surprise many that Nazis did not think of, or plan to, kill all the European Jews and Roma. (Nor did they actually managed to kill all of them. A quarter of the European Jews survived). This is very reassuring, isn’t it?

Calling this inconceivability it a precondition for Genocide might SOUND like a circuitous argument, but it isn’t. Denial, in every sense of the word, is a constitutive element of ethnic cleansings and Genocides.

2. A Dalit Marxist comrade of mine likened the so-called North-Eastern states would be for Hindu Nazis what Eastern Europe was for original Nazis. As these tangled geographies and histories demonstrated, time and again, all parties in an internecine fight, as an understandable response to an unchosen condition, have reasons to indulge in their aggression for self-protection, acts of vengeance, preventive attacks. In this communitarian Hobbseanism, balance sheet usually highlights the most successful criminal, who does more what everyone is doing. This is a situation where the most self-less tend to be most fanatical, intransigent and murderous.

3. If the explosion of the stupidity, refusal to reason, concern for others, consequences of one’s preferences for others and elsewhere on facebook commentators is any indication and reflective of the sensibilities on the ground, the next government at the center is either BJP again or the next government does not fundamentally change the situation (asserting the residents are by definition citizens), the North-East is going to be our Balkans.

I am not referring only to the open murderous slogans and demands from the people Hindu Nazi party and its affiliates. As in the case of Balkans and Balkanization, the poets and cultural creators who sung the praises of every day and the innocence of life, the humanist Marxists who struggled to break out of the rigidities of totalitarianism, the good samaritans, with their rather limited but genuine ethics of care who paved the way and participated in the mass murder and mayhem. Right in the middle of the European map, in the late twentieth century.

4. Citizenship lists are not like census data collection, population transfers are not like displacements of development projects, dislocations, and relocations and statelessness such demographic engineering projects, basically the fantasies-turned-policies “cumulatively radicalize”, until the point of no return when the only rational solution to the mess created is to dispose of the people off the horizon.

Utmost criminality unseen by the unconscious complacency in the minds of the shrill advocates in defense of the Registry is the idea that none wants to kill anyone. If Genocide is about “with an intent to destroy…”, there is not yet a genocide in Assam, surely not any progressive or nationalist in his wildest dreams thinks of such a possibility. But the groundwork for ethnic cleansings and Genocide is laid and the unstoppable process begins more likely when no one wants such outcome.

Deleting the huge number of humans off the face of the earth is not as easy as delisting them from the registry. As Hilberg and later many others demonstrated, the physical destruction of humans begins with a mere definition of them.

Threatening millions of humans with the stripping of their citizenship and extending it to the whole country is exactly like the issue of Nuclear weapons, it is all others who have more, in fact, all, stakes.

5. What is most deadly is not even the monstrous registry and its eventual extension everywhere in India, but the response of the loudest and the poetic of the Assamese progressives and nationalists. While laying out the infrastructure of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Assam as well as everywhere else, they rightly deny that they don’t want mass murder.

To repeat, for a mass murder to happen, you don’t need an intention or a plan to want it, the suitable conditions created for it to occur for something else is enough. In fact, a non-murderous idea actually helps and hastens the process far better.

BANGAL

I was born in Assam and have been raised here. Today, I practice as a lawyer here. Most of my friends have been from the Assamese community. As a child, I never felt any different from any other person in Assam except I looked a little different from some maybe. My parents spoke Bengali at home whereas the majority language was Assamese. Both the languages came naturally to me. I can’t say the same about the present day but as a child my mother tongue was often presumed to be Assamese. And many had otherwise also commended me on how well I spoke the language. There is nothing to be surprised here because, like I said, I was born and raised here and made friends here.

But let me confess, I never liked studying Assamese in school. I disliked Hindi as much. Bengali was not a part of any of my schools’ curriculums. I can somehow manage to read in these languages. Being bred in English-medium schools and having been taught the English alphabet before anything, English was most convenient for me.

It was probably around my mid-teens that for the first time I was called a ‘Bangal’. I had heard the word before at home when my father would diminutively refer to my mother as so. Though meant as an insult, it never carried much venom. I never even wondered it meant then. But when it was directed at me, I felt it sting. And I have felt the same sting on every occasion that someone has called me so. I did not know what it meant for long. I learnt that Bengalis of East Pakistan/East Bengal origin were colloquially called ‘Bangals’. It gradually became more frequent to hear the word amongst circles of ‘friends’. And I started avoiding these circles for I felt very vulnerable there. As if being Bengali was a natural disadvantage and I could do nothing about it. I feared being called a ‘Bangal’. I hated the term. I even remember grabbing the collar of one of my dear friends when he called me that. I could grab his collar only because he was one of my dear friends. Today too, I hear the term occasionally and it still stings as much.

Until a couple of years ago, I was an ignorant wastrel, though my parents had little to waste and I had little objective. In 2016, I luckily got the opportunity to intern at the Human Rights Law Network, an organization that provides legal aid to the poor either for free or at minimal charges. I was in my second year of law studies then. I liked my workplace. It allowed me to travel and there was always something to do. Sometimes, I could offer a solution to a client who had a problem and it felt nice.

One of my seniors did an enormous amount of litigation at the Foreigners’ Tribunals. I did not initially know what these cases were about but I gradually learnt because I worked closely with her. Her clients never stopped pouring. These clients were visibly from the lowest rungs of society. I learnt that their citizenship was under question before the Tribunal. I gradually learnt about the intricacies of how these Tribunals functioned and today I know they are gauntlets. The Tribunals are apparently essential for ridding Assam of foreigners and imperative to the state’s social scheme of things. Around 458000 cases have been referred to the Foreigners’ Tribunals in the last 25 years. Presently, over 1.8 lakh cases are pending before these Tribunals.

I’ll tell you about the functioning of these Tribunals and I’ll try to tell you how the present legal scheme of things is what I believe a systemic deprivation of human dignity of millions of people. For my convenience, I’ll write in points:

The first step in identifying a foreigner is to suspect a person as one. At present, there is no transparent methodology laid down for raising such suspicion. Under the earlier prevailing provisions of the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983, there was unfettered power granted to any random citizen to make an application, accompanied by an affidavit and a fee of Rs. 10, to an Illegal Migrants (Determination) Tribunal to try a person against whom the applicant has suspicion.

Power was also granted to the Central Government to refer individuals to the Illegal Migrants (Determination) Tribunal on the ground of suspicion. This power of the Central Government had been delegated to the Superintendent of Police (Border) of each district. One leash on the exercise of these powers by the Superintendent was the requirement of an enquiry to be made against the suspected person prior to a referral to the IMDT. What was meant to be a check had in fact given rise to an endless chain of illegality in the form of forged enquiries. The hundreds of clients that I have come across have all told me that they have never been subjected to a proper enquiry. And none of the hundreds of suspects that I have met has ever testified to a genuine enquiry made against him/her. But there has no finger yet been raised against any of these enquiries.

JALAL SHEIK

Jalal had come to Guwahati sometime in 2011/12 to earn his livelihood. He rented a cycle-rickshaw and rode it for about a week ferrying passengers in the Bhangagarh area of Guwahati. One day, he had to drop a patient-passenger at the Gauhati Medical College & Hospital. The patient insisted that Jalal take the rickshaw inside the campus and drop her at the absolute entrance of the hospital’s building. Jalal did so but while coming out of the campus, he was stopped by a couple of personnel from the Bhangagarh Police Station which is situated inside the campus of the hospital. The policepersons rebuked Jalal for bringing the Rickshaw inside the hospital’s campus and one of them demanded an amount of Rupees One Thousand as fine. Jalal did not have the money and the policepersons then directed Jalal to fetch his elector photo identity card. Jalal had to leave his rickshaw at the police station and returned some time later with the identity card as demanded. The policepersons simply kept a copy of the identity card with them and let Jalal go. Jalal was never questioned about his citizenship.

Jalal soon left Guwahati as he found other work. One day, he received a notice from the Foreigners’ Tribunal No. 2 of Kamrup(M) which directed him to appear before the Tribunal and prove his citizenship, and on failing to do so, the Court would proceed ex-parte against him which basically meant that the Tribunal would hold him as foreigner without hearing him. Jalal had no choice. He appeared on the day specified in the notice and made arrangements with a lawyer to represent him. He could only pay an amount of Rupees Four Thousand to the counsel. He had no more money. Jalal’s counsel submitted a Written Statement on behalf of Jalal before the Tribunal and on multiple other occasions sought adjournments from the Court on various grounds. Jalal knew little. He is illiterate. On every date fixed, he watched his counsel go into the courtroom, come out and tell him his next date. On every such date the counsel demanded Jalal to pay more money. Jalal could not pay, he had no money to pay. Eventually, the counsel stopped seeking adjournments and the Tribunal proceeded ex-parte and declared Jalal as a foreigner. Initially, Jalal did not know what had happened. Until he was told what exactly had happened. He was now facing an impending detention. It was then that someone from the hundreds of suspects that appear before the Tribunal to prove their citizenship told Jalal about some lawyer who represented these ‘foreigners’ free of charge. The lawyer was Debasmita Ghosh.

Jalal approached Debasmita and I was assigned the task of preparing his case. On obtaining certified copies of his case record, it surprised me then when I found that there were two enquiries made against Jalal within a span of two months. But surprisingly, the enquiry officer was the same and both enquiries were against Jalal but the two enquiries spoke two different stories replete with ten fingerprints of Jalal for each enquiry. When I asked Jalal, he said his fingerprints had never been taken by the police and documents relating to his citizenship had never been sought. Nor any related question related to his citizenship had ever been asked. And he did not know any of the persons who eloquently spoke about him in the report.

I soon figured the forgery, prepared an ambitious petition demanding Rupees Ten Lakhs as compensation before the High Court for Jalal and disciplinary action against the enquiry officer. I also sought for setting aside of the ex-parte order passed against Jalal. Debasmita argued the case and the High Court simply set aside the ex-parte order and directed Jalal to appear before the Tribunal and prove his citizenship. That’s that. When the High Court did not care about forged enquiries, of course the Tribunal did not too.

Here is one occasion where the same police station had forged two different enquiries against the same person. There are many other cases where different police stations have initiated enquiries against the same person each without knowledge of the other pending enquiry. This is simply because the enquiry does not actually happen. If the enquiries had been genuine, the person being enquired against would have at least informed the enquiry officers of the other enquiry against them.

Presently, after the IMDT Act was declared unconstitutional (for laying the burden on the State to prove a person’s illegal residence in India and ironically for being too lenient on the suspect), there is a cloud over the procedure of the enquiry against suspects. Nevertheless, the Border Department of the Assam Police is continuing with the enquiries about which the suspects themselves know little. It is pointless to show your documents to the enquirers even if they inform you about the enquiry. They initiate the enquiry with the objective of making a reference and not to actually inquire.

REFERENCE

Once a reference is made, the Tribunal issues notice to the person to whom the reference pertains. Now some Tribunals (like the ones of Morigaon district) have evolved the practice of issuing notice to all family members of the person against whom the reference pertains. Now, the Foreigners’ Tribunals are governed by the Foreigners’ Order, 1964. The Order lays down the procedural aspects of the Tribunals. The Order only lays down a limited number of provisions regarding the procedure to be followed by the Tribunals and as regards the rest, it grants liberty to the Tribunals to innovate its own procedure, subject to the objective of arriving at an opinion regarding the citizenship of such person against whom the reference is made. This I sometimes think is appalling considering the fact that Tribunals do not have established systems like the civil courts and it is a Tribunal whose procedural aspects have not been concretised yet that has been cast the responsibility of determining matters as critical as one’s citizenship. Even some of the written procedures of Tribunals are not followed for reasons of sheer impracticability.

Now as regards the issue of notice, the law is clear that notice must be issued to only such persons against whom reference is made as the Tribunal only has jurisdiction to opine on the citizenship of such a person against whom a reference has been made. Thus, the practice of issuing notice to entire families despite reference being made against only one of them is illegal. Moreover, this part is important in the light of the fact that despite belonging to the same family, the grounds of citizenship may vary from one family member to another. Suppose, in a family of five, father had migrated to India in 1966 and gotten married in 1970. Of their three children, the first one was born in 1974, the second in 1982 and the third in 1989. In such a case, the citizenship of the father has to be decided as per Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, the citizenship of the mother would depend upon her own father’s/mother’s citizenship/residential status and she may either be a citizen by birth or may be governed by the provisions of the Assam Accord incorporated in Section 6A of the Citizenship Act. The citizenship of the first two children would be decided in accordance with Section 3(1) whereas that of the third child would rely on Section 3(2) of the Citizenship Act. Thus, it is clear that an enquiry against one person cannot suffice in forming an opinion on the citizenship of such person’s family members and thereby separate enquiry against each person is necessary. Only, on the basis of such an individual enquiry can an opinion be formed about a person’s citizenship and accordingly a reference made. And on the basis of such a reference, a Tribunal can give an opinion on the citizenship of only that particular person against whom the reference has been made.

NOTICE

Once a notice is issued, the suspect (hereon referred to as the proceedee) is bound to appear before the Tribunal or he will be declared foreigner without even being heard. An order passed without hearing the proceedee is called an ex-parte order. Now to appear before the Tribunal, the suspect has to engage a lawyer. An imbecile may argue that the Foreigners’ Order, 1964, permits one to appear personally without a lawyer. The members heading the Tribunals are judicial officers. The reply of the proceedee is expected in the form of a Written Statement. His evidence is initially taken in the form of an evidence-on-affidavit and he is cross-examined by a public prosecutor where one has been appointed and members heading the Tribunals are also free to ask any question to the proceedee in line with Section 165 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. It is quite impossible for an illiterate fragile proceedee to do these without the assistance of a lawyer.

So engaging a lawyer is imperative. There are few lawyers who are well versed all aspects of Foreigners’ law. In Guwahati itself, I regularly come across lawyers who do not know what the basic law of citizenship actually says. I have come across numerous flawed judgments too. Some people who were born much after 25^th March, 1971, and were even held to be born in India have been declared by the Tribunal as foreigners of the stream of 1966 to 1971 only because their parents were held to have migrated during that period {Section 6A(3) of the Citizenship Act, 1955}. Even I have assisted some such ‘foreigners’ in getting registered before the Foreigners Regional Registration Office.

As regards the question of a lawyer’s professional fees, a good lawyer understandably does not come cheap. But for the usual proceedees of Foreigners’ Tribunals, any lawyer does not come cheap. I have also observed that some of the lawyers charge much more than what they would have charged from a client who is much better positioned than the proceedee; simply because these lawyers are otherwise not doing quote well professionally and the proceedees are vulnerable, so the lawyers see it as an opportunity to exploit the proceedees (bluntly speaking) and earn a quick buck. Often, the proceedees try to pay whatever the lawyer demands by selling their essential belongings. I have also come across proceedees who have sold their land to pay the lawyer’s fee. The proceedees are usually desperate to get their cases over with because it is not just any other case but a question on one’s citizenship. Such a question has dire implications, one important one being on the mere fundamental free existence of the person. I have also read about people who have killed themselves for not being able to pay the lawyer’s fees. One such dead man is Abola Roy of Dhubri district, who apparently belonged to the Koch-Rajbongshi community and earned his livelihood through daily wage labour and whose wife was marked as ‘D’ voter and had to thereby prove her citizenship before the Tribunal. Abola killed himself because he could not afford a lawyer to represent his wife. Then there’s Gopal Das, a farmer from Udalguri district who killed himself because he could not afford to rid himself of the ‘D voter’ tag {Mitra N. (July 10, 2018); “No money to prove his wife’s citizenship, Assam man kills self”; The Times of India}.

Another significant expense involved is the expenditure on procuring documents to prove one’s citizenship. How does one prove his/her citizenship? It can be done by proving the existence of his/her ancestors in the state. Now how can one prove such existence? That can be done by proving the existence of one’s ancestors in the electoral rolls. Where does one get decades-old electoral rolls? Such electoral rolls can be found but it has become necessary to present certified copies of such electoral rolls to prove their authenticity in line with the provisions relating to public documents in the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. In order to procure certified copies of electoral rolls from Election Offices, the proceedee again engages a lawyer who charges for himself and for the staff at the Election Offices. Many Tribunals require about seven to eight certified copies of different electoral rolls to be somewhat satisfied of the proceedee’s claim of citizenship and each one, on an average, costs about Rs. 700-1000. So it involves an expenditure of Rs. 5000-7000.

There is also a cost in Tribunals akin to the cost of getting files moved in Government offices. It is often a pain dealing with some of the staffs in our courts and Tribunals. If you want a certified copy of any case record, you have to pay a considerable amount. One particular Tribunal I know of requires the proceedees to take bail on their first appearance. Getting a bail bond executed in that Tribunal is again an expense-filled process.

It is also common to seek adjournments in Tribunals. Sometimes the lawyers haven’t got their fees, sometimes the proceedee hasn’t been able to procure all documents and sometimes the proceedee is just not concerned about his case. Some Tribunals had started imposing fines (or costs) amounting in hundreds for each such adjournment and the proceedees were compelled to pay such costs.

The opportunity cost incurred by a proceedee in appearing before the Tribunal must also be kept in mind. The proceedees are more often than not working on piecemeal basis and appearing before the Tribunal costs them their day’s wage in addition to the expenses on travel. Then there is the expense of witnesses that the proceedees bring to the Tribunal. These witnesses come from different districts (usually their native villages) and the proceedee has to bear the cost of such witnesses’ travel, stay and food.

So the expense of litigating in a Foreigners’ Tribunal, without the involvement of a middle-man, is in multiples of Ten Thousand per proceeding and often much more. Cases that require to be taken up to the High Court require at least another few Ten Thousands.

PROCEEDING

Let us now look into the actual proceedings before a Tribunal. No matter how intra vires our Constitution it may have been held to be by our apex court, our High Court and the executive, a Foreigners’ Tribunal often functions on the borders of communalism. Hindu Bengalis and Muslim Bengalis are the chunk of the proceedees and the rest few comprise of Koch Rajbonghis, Garos, Hajongs and Assamese Muslims. The proceedees are questioned about who their great grandfather and great grandmother(s) were, where they resided and how many children they had and often when each of these children was born. Then come the grandfather and grandmother and similar questions which include naming siblings of the grandfather. The proceedees are asked about the children of the grandparents and the sometimes even the year of their parents’ births. Then the proceedees are asked when his/her parents got married and when each of his/her brothers and sisters were born. The proceedee is also expected to accurately know where his/her grandparents lived, from where to where and when their ancestors had migrated. And all these accounts of the proceedee have to conform to the answers of the proceedee’s witnesses and any discrepancy between them often has dire consequences.

Answering such questions is often a herculean task for the proceedees and their witnesses who are usually illiterate and unaware. They make inadvertent mistakes and these mistakes decide their fate.

And it is not just verbal accounts that must be cohesive but such accounts must also conform to the documentary evidence that has been laid before the Tribunal. One of the most common discrepancies that can be identified is the age mentioned in electoral rolls. Such age only on the rarest of occasions tells the true age of an elector. The ages recorded are often absurd with even discrepancies to the range of the age of an elector being recorded as more than his father’s or mother’s. Then there is also the problem of slight variations in names from one document to another. This is more common amongst Muslims whose surnames often vary from one record to another. These discrepancies can often lead to actual citizens being declared as foreigners.

DETENTION

Let us now look into the fate of a proceedee who has been declared a foreigner. The proceedee is liable to be put in detention camp. Assam does not have detention camps but parts of the state’s jails have been designated as detention camps and foreigners are kept there. And they remain there for India has no deportation agreement with Bangladesh. There are several rights violations that go on in these detention camps and little is known publicly about what actually goes on inside these camps. An article written by Harsh Mander based on his fact-finding in such camps is one of the first written accounts of the conditions in these detention camps.

Regarding the condition of detention camps, Harsh Mander, a Special Monitor for Minorities of the National Human Rights Commission visited two such camps in January, 2018, and wrote a poignant account of the conditions of people in such camps. In his words, the “detention centres lie on the dark side of both legality and humanitarian principles.” He observed that most of the persons deemed foreigners had been detained on the basis of “ex-parte orders”. For those who did receive the notices and appeared before the Tribunals, many had sold their meager properties and taken large loans to hire lawyers to steer them through the process. Many of the lawyers were poorly qualified or had deliberately led them down. About the majority detained on the basis of ex-parte orders, he writes, “As a humane democracy, we provide legal aid even to people accused of heinous crimes like rape and murder, but in this case, without even committing any crime, these people are languishing in detention centres as they cannot afford legal services.” 

Mander says the condition of detainees is worse than prisoners. He gives a tragic account of the camps, stating how the detainees are in much greater confinement than other “citizen prisoners”. About women detainees of Kokrajhar jail, he says these women have not been allowed to move outside a confined space of maybe 500 square metres for close to a decade. 

There are no guidelines or instructions from the Centre or the state about the rights of detainees and the detention centres are administered under the Assam Jail Manual. The state does not make any distinction, for all practical purposes, between detention centres and jails, and thus between detainees and prisoners charged with or convicted of crimes. Jail authorities selectively apply the Assam Jail Manual to them, denying them benefits like parole and waged work that prisoners are entitled to under jail rules. 

Men, women and boys above six years have been separated from their families. The report goes on talk about how the arbitrary, indefinite detention in conditions similar to prisoners is in violation of international laws and how the fundamental rights, especially the most sacrosanct rights guaranteed through Article 21, is under threat in the light of the upcoming NRC which can possibly render lakhs stateless. And India has no policy regarding how these stateless are to be dealt with.

So, the truth about detention camps has been let out. Much is there in the report and to understand the gravity of the situation, I sincerely urge people to go through the article and the full report if that ever gets published.

The only legal remedy available to detainees, whether detained via ex-parte orders or otherwise, is to take up the matter before the High Court. As mentioned earlier, charges for taking a case up to the High Court usually ranges in many multiples of ten thousand and sometimes in lakhs. Thus, irrespective of how legally strong an argument could be made and how erroneous the judgment of a Tribunal might be, many are likely to be deprived of an opportunity to approach the High Court because they cannot afford it. Such people, in all likelihood, could be genuine citizens but without an opportunity to prove it.

DILIP BISWAS

Here, let me tell you about the case of Dilip Biswas, his wife and two minor daughters. Dilip Biswas ran a small business in a little kiosk in Mayong village where he sold biscuits, tea and poori-sabji. The headman of his village often visited his shop and demanded food free of cost. One day, an irritated Dilip Biswas refused to provide free food to the headman and an altercation between the two took place. Vindictively, the headman went to the local police station and contrived with an inspector of the border department and a direction to enquire was obtained, an enquiry report was made up and submitted against Dilip Biswas. Subsequently a reference was made against Dilip to the Foreigners’ Tribunal, Morigaon. The Tribunal, instead of issuing notice to only Dilip Biswas, issued notice to his wife and children too. Dilip and his family received notice of the proceeding quite late and much after the date mentioned in it for appearance. By the time they went to the Tribunal, an ex-parte order had been passed against them. Dilip sprung to action then and hired a local lawyer to approach the High Court who got the ex-parte order set aside and Dilip and his family were made to appear before the Tribunal again to contest the reference. The same lawyer represented them and lost. To me, the judgment was erroneous and the case was poorly argued by the lawyer. But for his services, the lawyer had charged over Rupees Two Lakhs. Dilip paid by selling off all his land and some of his brother’s too. And at the end, his family ended up in detention camp and has been there since 2011. While Dilip is lodged in Goalpara jail, his wife and two daughters are in Kokrajhar jail. Through some means, Dilip’s brother came to know about the Human Rights Law Network in 2017 and approached them. The Tribunal’s order has now been challenged before the Gauhati High Court but the detainees still remain in jail. Bail was not granted on the first day and the case has not been listed again.

SO?

Someone mentioned to me that there is xenophobia prevalent is Assam. Maybe or may not be but there sure seems to be some suppressed hatred against a particular country, maybe even a community and underneath it all a feeling of threat. Understandable some may argue it to be, but the basic truth is thousands of innocents are suffering. And there is no compensatory mechanism to ease the pain of these innocents. Even without meddling into the social and political aspects, the legalities involved are questionable. The procedure of Tribunals and view of its Members vary from one to another. Unlike civil courts and High Courts, Tribunals are not as well established and are relatively new. Now who will compensate for the discrepancies in our system? Who will compensate a person declared as a citizen by a Foreigners’ Tribunal for the months of litigation and tension that he/she had to go through? Who will compensate a migrant labourer who has left his job in Kerala and stayed in Assam for months without employment only to get done with the proceeding against him before a Foreigners’ Tribunal? There may not be a conclusive solution to all these problems and some may argue that the need of the hour is to identify foreigners but the least our State could do is to show some concern.

Article 21 of the Constitution of India guarantees to all persons the right to life and personal liberty. Flowing from this fundamental right is a gamut of human rights including the right to be treated with dignity, the right to a fair enquiry and the right to legal representation. But these rights appear to be under serious threat and are being violated.

Why are judges scrutinizing the poor and illiterate so minutely? As a matter of fact, the electoral rolls contain endless mistakes. The mistakes in recording ages in electoral rolls are common and this mistake is irrespective of one’s community. These electoral rolls were never meant to be proof of one’s age. There is an apparent propensity to err not on the side of humane caution but on the side of jeopardizing innocent poor.

To add salt to wound, a recent order of the High Court says that the principle of res judicata does not apply to proceedings before the Foreigners’ Tribunals. This implies that one reference after another can be made against the same person to the Tribunal by the Central Government if the latter is not satisfied with the opinion of the earlier Tribunals. The order does not even state that the referring authority has to give sufficient grounds why it does not accept the opinion of the earlier Tribunal. But contrary to its own view, the order goes on to say that if a person has already been declared a foreigner, then there is no need of referring him again. Thus, if a Tribunal’s opinion is favourable for the referee, a subsequent reference may be made against him in contrast to the provisions of res judicata and the conventional writ appeal. But where a proceedee is declared a foreigner, the proceedee is only left with the option of writ appeals before the High Court.

I’m often afraid, angry and frustrated and so is my mother. She tells me she was born here and has worked her entire life in a Tribunal (the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal) and tells me emphatically that she is the most hard-working in her office. I believe her because I have grown up seeing her bringing home work everyday. She rarely misses office because she tells me her office would not function without her and the public would suffer. Today, I hope that she would not receive a notice from some Foreigners’ Tribunal dictating her to appear and prove her nationality. I am optimistic and hopeful that she wouldn’t because we aren’t really poor. But I’ll tell you that we are vulnerable and fearful with enough reasons to feel so.

The “Axom Sahitya Sabha” recently communicated to the public through the media that it must be made compulsory to know Assamese for everyone to live and work in the state. Well, my friends in Bangalore complain that the local folks there dislike it if they don’t speak Kannad. Are we tit for tatting now?

I have travelled much of the state for work but I have always been apprehensive of telling people my surname because they judge. When people know my surname is ‘Dey’, I often feel that I no longer belong to this state even though I hardly know much about any other part of the world. It’s a tragedy I believe which is as poignant one as any.

I respect one’s love for a language and one’s rich knowledge of it and its history but I also believe such love and knowledge is much different from reverently identifying oneself as indigenous to a particular land in a globalised world and the latter is narrow-mindedness to me. For the sake of humanity, all must learn to separately identify the two. In the words of George Carlin, “Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth’.

Those who are demanding that NRC should be rolled back, should seriously think about the full implications of what they are saying. (Here I am not talking about those people who have some criticism about this or that aspect of the NRC process, but who at the end of the day, believe that NRC can and should be saved).

If NRC is rolled back, this is what is going to happen.

1.

The Border Police, Election Commission and Foreign Tribunals will continue to arbitrarily suspect and send notices to random individuals from the most marginalised communities in the state. These authorities will keep asking people to prove their citizenship, or else face detention and deportation. Till the time they prove their citizenship, their citizenship rights – such as voting rights or the right to avail benefits from various welfare schemes of the government – will be kept on hold. Bengali Muslims and Bengali Hindus will be the chief victims of this process as it has always been the case.

2.

Xenophobes will continue to harass Bengali Muslim workers who come to the cities in search of livelihood. The latter will continue to live in fear because if they try to resist such harassment, Border Police will be called up by the xenophobes and the workers will end up spending Rs. 50,000 each in employing lawyers to fight their cases in Foreign Tribunals and the Guwahati High Court. The xenophobes will go scot-free.

3.

Due to the lack of any definitive mechanism to identify proper citizens vis. a vis. foreigners, the Assamese people will continue to believe in all sorts of fantasy figures about illegal immigrants in their state. Xenophobia thrives in such an atmosphere. On the other hand, if NRC is allowed to run its full course, it will show that there is a sizeable population of proper Indian citizens who are Bengali and the Assamese people cannot hope to deprive them of their citizenship rights and send them away to Bangladesh. This may give birth to specific demands for constitutional safeguards to Assamese people, but it will not lead to the negative demand that the ‘Bangals’ should be expelled from the country!

4.

After reading so far, you will probably argue that just like NRC, Foreigners Tribunals and Border Police too should be disbanded and IMDT Act should be brought back. In that case, this is what is going to happen: each spike in the growth rate of Bengali speakers will be taken as a proof of increase in the number of illegal Bangladeshis in the state by the native communities. Probably you already know that there has been a continuous decline in the growth rate of Assamese speakers (and a continuous increase in the growth rate of Bengali speakers) in the state over the last few decades. To be sure, the pattern moves in a zig-zag fashion but the overall direction has not changed. So each census result will lead to civil war like situation, between the Assamese and the Bengali communities.

5.

Now, if you say – what about those who are going to be excluded by NRC – then I will be ready to talk, discuss and try to find an ethically defensible and politically feasible solution, together with you. But the arguments above should at least make you think twice about the real problems in taking an altogether anti-NRC position, given the fact that no alternative has been offered so far.

In the contested terrain of NRC, one voice which seems to be missing is that of the tribes of Assam. This statement by some of the key Tribal intellectuals and activists seeks to amend that.

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We have heard about NRC since the last few days and from so many commentators that it has become difficult to make sense. Everything seems to be repeated ad nauseam that opening newspapers, or any social media site or to look at figures, raises confusions for most people. Some of the commentaries are coming from experts, but many are coming from people who are merely concerned. Some of these concerns are misplaced, some genuine and some malicious.

There is no doubt that under the current political regime suspicions of malpractice is tremendous. Also, in any enumerative exercise of this magnitude the issues of error coupled with official chaos can and has led to fears. One is reminded of the reactions of people to early census, when they were anxious about losing children, wives, castes, professions and land. So, let us be clear that NRC is a much more complicated process, which stems from a long struggle, but it is not an exercise done by a community. It is an exercise by the state which has been sanctioned by the top judiciary of the country.

We cannot let our history to be charted by communal forces, and likewise we cannot allow our voices to be buried by the liberal din of concerns suddenly overflowing from the globe that buries all historical understanding of a situation.

As a part and parcel of colonial administrative policy of maximising revenue by ‘developing’ what colonial capitalism viewed as ‘non-productive land’, the Commons of indigenous tribal communities of Assam were converted into an open sanctuary for ‘industrious’ peasants from east Bengal. In this process of opening up the Commons of indigenous tribes, the colonial authority found an ally in a section of caste Hindu Assamese landed elite who were too eager to get rid of the revenue burden that had come upon them because of Zamindari Land Settlement in the western part of Assam, i.e., the erstwhile undivided Goalpara district.

Paper work can be a dangerous thing. Colonial India generated this concept of paperwork for everything – land, people, communities etc. Such legal structures were alien to the local peasantry, especially the tribal communities. The legal rigmaroles of land revenue regimes resulted in colossal land dispossession throughout the twentieth century.

The continued loss of tribal Commons compelled their nascent middle class to form their own organizations demanding restrictions on migration, and there lies the genesis of tribal lobbying and later formation of political bodies like the Tribal League in Assam. With increased lobbying and demands from tribal political organisations the colonial administration had to introduce provisions like the Line System and later Tribal Belt and Block system to contain encroachment of the tribal Commons. These systems enacted to safeguard the tribal lands proved to be inadequate and to further compound the problem, the migration of east Bengal peasantry continued. We cannot call them illegal immigrants at that point since Bengal constituted a part of British India. Like many communities who were assisted in their movements by the British, like the Nepalis, Bengali Babus, these peasantries were offered easy terms for settlement and cultivation of the valley. The history of colonialism accommodating migrant communities in its regime is also a brutal history of land dispossession and loss of Commons.

The situation got further compounded with waves of migration of refugees from East Pakistan which reached a mammoth proportion between partition of India in 1947 and formation of Bangladesh in 1971. The decision of Government of India to settle refugees in Assam was in spite of the fact that the government’s own survey conducted in 1956 showed that there were 12,00,000 absolutely landless indigenous peasants. However, while other regions of India didn’t see large scale migration except for the immediate aftermath of the partition, continued migration, to varying degrees, into Assam even after creation of Bangladesh is a reality that cannot be wished away.

Today, some might argue that the existence of the tribal are well protected with all the Autonomous Councils, reservations etc. The fact that a good many tribal belts and blocks meant to protect the tribal have already been made open is not known to many or wilfully ignored. Even the rules governing the existing belts and blocks have loopholes galore. For example, theoretically, a non-tribal from any region of India can become the Chief Executive Member (the top executive) of Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council just by continuously staying 12 years there due to a faulty archaic rule made in 1952. Attempts to correct the rules are always thwarted by the Governor of Assam, which practically means the Government of Assam.

The Indian mainland, beset with their own conundrums, is generally not bothered with the myriad problems faced by the tribal in Assam and the rest of the Northeast. The ruling establishment or rather the Indian state has always been apathetic to the area beyond the Chicken’s Neck. This continuous negligence on the part of the Indian state has naturally bred resentment in the minds of the people in the Northeast. This resentment has made the whole region into a continuous playing field of conflict situation.

The people of Assam, both tribal and non-tribal, now have disparate histories converging on the claims of citizenship of a modern state. Is the modern state equipped to deal with the pressures generated from such aspirations?

In this historical context, NRC has addressed the underbelly of migration issue in India. Where else in India has a mass of people been granted citizenship after 1949? Lakhs of people who came to Assam between 19^th July 1948 to 24^th March 1971, were included in the NRC draft list as per Assam Accord (Article 6a of Citizenship Act). It has been designed to allay the fears of many groups within Assam. Is it a perfect solution to an issue which has been plaguing a region for decades? No, it is not. What it can do, is give a dignity to many who have lived with the slur of being an ‘illegal migrant’.

According to the Census of 2011 the total population of Assam 31,169,272and out of that, 40 lakhs do not figure in the NRC. As per the 2011 census the Bengali Hindu population of Assam is 91 lakhs which is about 29 percent of the total population, and it is the second largest community.They form a part of the majoritarian Hindu population of the state. According to the 2011 census, there were 10,679,345 Muslims in the Indian state of Assam, forming over 34.22% of its population. It is apparent despite what some sections of public intellectuals and media have selectively focussed that lakhs and lakhs of people with ‘alleged migrant status’ have not been incorporated in the list. Does that mean that somehow each and every individual of majority community and indigenous communities have been incorporated in the list? Whatever reports have been received, many people, irrespective of language, religion or ethnicity, are not in the list. How is it that when people from a certain linguistic community or religious community being left out is seen as a part of a large malicious scheme and while others being left out is seen as a simple bureaucratic error?

A section of people is trying to play the Bengali sentiment against the Assamese sentiment. Hence stories are about Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims whose names got left out. Among others are those who are expressing angst over the issue, equating it with the experience of Nellie. Or worse, it is being equated with Nazi Germany by anyone who has an inkling of global history but none about Assam. The tribals again remain left out of the entire discourse around NRC.

The ongoing process of updating of the NRC was not borne out of state benevolence, it is an outcome of long drawn struggle, a demand for justice in face of what appeared to be the loss of homeland for its own people. However, a section of national media and commentators have painted a picture that NRC is all about allaying the fears of mainstream Assamese people. We want to draw attention to the fact that it is not about the mainstream Assamese people only, the state has numerous small and big tribal groups of people who want their land, resources and livelihood to be secured within a certain legal structure.

Though political schisms exist between tribal political subjectivity and forces representing Assamese ruling elites, yet both tribal and non-tribal people of Assam consider continued migration into Assam as a shared problem that must be adequately addressed.

There is no correct political position to be assumed on this issue, except the one which aims at addressing long standing historical demands without resulting in mass displacement and injury to anyone. More than anything, at this particular juncture, one has to be careful about the BJP and the communal forces it is willing to unleash.

It is clear that there are no ways people can be deported, especially since there are no negotiations which have happened between Bangladesh and India regarding this issue. The state, the government in power, must work constructively work towards bringing a closure to the issue, rather than attempting to reap political mileage by claiming to resolve a decades old issue.

When it is clear that there are no ways people can be deported, then people in Assam should have an informed opinion about it rather than indignation. The Indian government has initiated this process of updating the NRC yet without considering the situation ‘what after NRC’. Neither deportation nor detention camps can be seen as methods of resolution. So, we appeal to all concerned people of Assam, the country and the world to recognise the peculiar predicament of Assam, all its people by trying to arrive at ways in which justice prevails with a regard for its history.

Sd/-

Indibar Dewri (eminent intellectual and veteran trade unionist),
Holiram Terang (Karbi tribal leader and former minister, Government of Assam),
Lal Sing Madar (President, Tiwa Sahitya Sabha),
Dhiren Ingti (veteran Karbi tribal leader),
Amrapali Basumatary (Asst. Professor, University of Delhi),
Dr. Manas Bordoloi (Tiwa Historian),
Nirmala Timungpi (Executive member, Karbi Women’s Association),
Dr. Bidyut Bikash Senapati (Secretary, Tiwa Sahitya Sabha),
Biren Totla (Rabha tribal activist and social entrepreneur),
Jeetumoni Basumatary (Asst. Professor, Cotton University),
James Daimari (Research Scholar, IIT – Guwahati),
Rajya Teron (Karbi filmmaker)

Maulana Bhashani remains a much demonised figure amongst a certain section of North East India for his espousal of the immigration of Bengali land hungry peasant into colonial Assam. But who was Maulana Bhashani? A rustic pir? A vulgar peasant leader? Scourge of Colonial Indiaian and Post colonial Pakistani & Bangladeshi state? Communist? Islamist?  Today, socialism and Islam are often viewed as incompatible. Does the career of Maulana Bhashani, “the Red Maulana” of Bangladesh, offer a corrective to this view?

Introduction

By 1974, the dreams and hopes of liberation in Bangladesh had soured: unemployment, hunger and political repression were in full force. Anthony Mascarenhas, one of the first journalists to alert the world about the scale of massacre committed by the Pakistani army against the Bengali population in 1971, described the Rakkhi Bahini, an elite paramilitary force established after the independence of Bangladesh in the same year, as “a private army of bully boys not far removed from the Nazi Brown Shirts”. They were used by the new regime led by the Awami League to crush opponents and critics. In time, Mascarenhas wrote: “it completely terrorised the people”. By the end of 1973, politically motivated murders committed by the Rakkhi Bahini had crossed the 2000 mark. Many of those killed were said to be Maoist enemy agents, but often on fairly spurious grounds such as “found carrying Chinese wireless sets”. Why was the Awami League so worried? The answer to that goes back before 1971, to stories that hint at the different possibilities that the ruling party in East Pakistan at the time, the Awami League, had been well aware of, and needed to suppress.

One such story emerged in my conversation with a man who was 8-9 years old in 1970-1971. He remembered Maulana Bhashani’s posters and young people carrying the little red book in their pockets in his hometown in the outskirts of Dhaka. Then there are the stories of the strange and cryptic shab-e-namas (night messages) that appeared on the walls of Dhaka and elsewhere just before the war, demanding a North Bengal province. Finally, there are the stories of rallies in early 1971, where young men and women donned red caps and shouted out “jatir pita” (father of the nation) at Bhashani. These stories may seem unremarkable, but they suggest to me that there were multiple “fathers” involved in the unmaking of Pakistan and making of Bangladesh. They suggest that Bhashani inhabited political spaces and constituencies that were not encapsulated or accommodated within the politics practiced by the Awami League or Mujibur Rahman, widely considered the founding father of  Bangladesh. On the contrary, these stories suggest Bhashani’s constituencies encroached upon and threatened to overwhelm and overturn the Awami League’s future plans for the new nation-state. The paper will show how Mujib’s nationalism was just one of the currents in East Pakistan over this period, the other provided by Bhashani was the articulation of a radical, progressive and transnational vision of freedom, justice and equality.

Who was Maulana Bhashani?

Maulana Bhashani’s life, hitherto, has received little curiosity or attention from academics, despite having been such a heavy weight figure in South Asian Muslim politics and beyond. Who was Bhashani? Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani (1880-1976) was a venerated pir, peasant leader and politician of colonial Assam and Bengal and postcolonial East Pakistan and Bangladesh. He was a scourge of colonial and postcolonial regimes. President of the provincial Assam Muslim League during the colonial years, he went on to form two of the most powerful opposition parties in Pakistan, the Awami Muslim League and the National Awami Party (NAP) – the latter whose birth Ajoy Ghosh, a member of the Communist Party of India, described as an “event of historic import for the Pakistan people”. If there was an all-Pakistan figure after Jinnah, it was perhaps Bhashani. Stories about him come from both wings.

Notwithstanding, Bhashani presents a tricky and complex subject to write about for a number of reasons. How does one write about a leader who has not only left few written traces of his own ideas but appears as a figure of scorn and ridicule in official archives? Archives in the United Kingdom and the United States on East Pakistan are replete with instances of politicians, journalists and members of intelligentsia of both wings of Pakistan offering up information on Bhashani’s illiteracy, ignorance, rusticity, irrationality, on him being crude, vulgar, violent, not really a Maulana or not really a Communist, among many other things. Historians have ended up sharing the same disdain, content with their descriptions of him as a firebrand preacher or agitator.  However, if you listen closely, and I mean closely to other voices – voices that are often choked at the thought and memories of Bhashani – he becomes more than an agitator. He is the Majloom Jononeta or leader of the oppressed in Bangladesh. He is the politician who presided over one of the largest kissan (peasant) conferences in Punjab and who, quoting Iqbal, told the people to burn the land that does not feed them. He is the pir who appeared in the dreams of Bengali farmers after having flown on his boat driven by a pack of tigers to discuss the next struggle. And for the working-class diasporas in Brick Lane or Jackson height, he is their Che, Rosa, and Malcolm X.

I want to recover Bhashani from the condescension and silence of history. I explore his role in the 1969 uprising in Pakistan, a significant moment in the unmaking of the state, leading to the victory of the Awami League in 1970 elections. I upend the conventional narrative around the 1960s and show that Maulana Bhashani was far from the weakened figure that he was made out to be. Derided by his opponents as “Mao-Lana” for his Maoist inclinations, Bhashani was nonetheless seen as having little political support or teeth.

Bhashani’s political practice

So to begin: on 5 December 1968, the plane carrying Pakistani President Ayub Khan and his entourage landed on the tarmac of Tejgaon airport in Dhaka. Ayub was guest of honour in celebrations marking Pakistan’s “Decade of Development” or as his opponents wryly put it, the “Decade of Dictatorship”. With Mujib in jail, and schools and universities closed for an indefinite period, the president was assured that the main sources of agitation in East Pakistan had been tamed. It was a grave miscalculation. Ayub’s trip was completely overshadowed by the massive protests and hartals (strikes) that besieged Dhaka and the other areas of East Pakistan, and which signalled the first phase of the 1969 uprising in the East Pakistan province. The trouble for the administration had come from different, though not entirely unexpected, quarters.

Bhashani’s call for a hartal on 7th December 1968 was an unprecedented success. Over the next few days as strikes occurred consecutively, the newspapers’ front-page headlines screamed out to its readers, while its content provided blow-by-blow accounts of police firing, deaths and injuries, walkouts at the Legislative Assembly and Bhashani’s spectacular defiance of Section 144. The strikes were also repeated in other parts of the province such as Chittagong, Noakhali, Sylhet, Bogra and Khulna.  The scale and swiftness with which they took place and the wholeheartedness with which people responded to them even surprised NAP members. Thus, contrary to impressions of Bhashani as a politically passive and agreeable figure to the regime, who was famously reported to have said to his followers “Do not Disturb Ayub”, a different archive in the 1960s suggest that Bhashani was actually stealthily organising and mobilising peasant constituencies in North Bengal and labour constituencies as well  through boat tours and political assemblies, building up his network of murids (disciples) and Marxists for the very purpose of mobilising them to fight for their freedom, equality and dignity. All of which gave him, in December 1968, an advanced insight into the readiness of certain sections of Pakistan’s population for battle.

Over the 1960s, Bhashani’s engaged in several innovative practices that were intended to organise and mobilise his constituent groups to bring about a form of Islamic Socialism or at least prepare the way for it.  Though I do not want to draw a strong correlation, Bhashani’s encounters with left-leaning activists and leaders in Europe, the World Peace Council, China, and Havana were to leave a strong impression on his politics. Bhashani held Islamic Socialism as the antithesis to imperialist depredations. Unlike Mujib’s Six-Point programme, which sought greater freedom for the Bengali populace at large, Bhashani offered the peasants and workers a model that primarily spoke to their material and spiritual emancipation and made them central to its realisation.

Bhashani did this in several ways. First, through the introduction of new relationships and linkages, which brokered the most unlikely of alliances between Bhashani’s murids and the Marxist workers of NAP, Krishak Samiti, and Mazdoor Foundation and legitimated the existence of the “other” in one another’s worlds. This he did through the modification, if not complete innovation, in his relationship with his murids, particularly in the bay’ah (oath of allegiance) that they undertook over this period. The bay’ah demanded alongside the usual articles of belief in God, Prophet and the spiritual lineage, a belief in socialism. The bay’ah made a Marxist of the murid and a murid out of the Marxist.

Their common purpose not only made both groups acceptable to each other but also endowed both with an equal standing and the right to enter into the same spaces and use the language of the other.  With the Marxist workers of NAP and Krishak Samiti more frequently present at religious gatherings and mosque, the murid was to find his world equally transformed during this period. With belief in socialism now naturalised into an article of faith, the murid’s search for that deeper connection with Bhashani and God was to be found in his engagement with the external world of political activism as much as the internal world of dhikrs (chants) and muraqaba (meditation).

The second intervention Maulana Bhashani made over this period came through his introduction of new ideas, language and vocabularies in assemblies and gatherings, intended to impart to the peasant and workers a sense of their own power and dynamism.  Bhashani introduced his constituents to their new selves over this period: they were the sarbahārā (have-nots).  Though sarbahāra itself was not a new term, and regularly used in the Marxist lexicon to refer to the proletariat class, Bhashani opened it to incorporate wider and different histories, futures and icons, both sacred and profane. The sarbahāra for him constituted a class that was not defined by what they lacked, but by their ubiquitous presence across different times, geographies and civilisations, possessing the power to change the course of history.  The sarbahāra found their own champions and heroes contained within these narratives, as varied as Mao Tse Tung and Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, a companion of the Prophet and someone more significant in Shi’a than Sunni historiographies.  When a disgruntled Kazi Mohiduddin declared NAP as the “sarbahāra party, with a sarbahāra programme, holding little value for any other class”, he intended his words to shed light on why he had resigned from Bhashani’s NAP to help form the pro-Moscow NAP. What the resignation actually signalled was that Bhashani had succeeded, at least in his own rhetoric, to project the peasants and workers as constituting a well-defined and powerful class, who were capable of representing their interests and prepared to play an instrumental, if not leading, role to bring about fundamental changes to state and society.

The ghost of Bhashani

While Bhashani’s muted public pronouncements and attitude towards the Ayub regime contributed towards his diminishing importance in the political scene of Dhaka, Bhashani’s activities, particularly in North Bengal, suggest a different story altogether. His attempts to create more powerful, organised and conscious constituencies through the introduction of new alliances, histories and practices were less placatory and more defiant in their attitude to a regime that denied social, political and economic dignity and equality to its people.  The success of his tactics can be seen in the desperation of Ayub. On 9th March, just weeks before he resigned, Ayub Khan’s diary entry reads “gangs of communist and terrorists on the prompting of Bhashani are raiding police stations, the houses and properties of Muslim Leaguers, and asking the chairman and members of Basic Democrats to resign (….) in consequence, most of the civil officers have left their posts and so have the local rent collectors, and their records have been burnt.” Bhashani, according to Christopher Jaffrelot, had not only managed to mobilise his Bengali base but also farmers in the Chambar district of Sindh and Hashtnagar in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). His mobilisation in both wings for a different world during the 1969 uprising and immediately after gesture to the tensions, aporias and possibilities in the unmaking of Pakistan and making of Bangladesh. Now, Bhashani’s stories either remain untold, or are spoken of in conspiratorial whispers or as the tired and aching memories of a past long gone.  What we forget is that these spaces where the ghost of Bhashani lingers – the huts and homes of poor villages and chars in Bangladesh, Sindh, Baluchistan and NWFP, and the left circles and working-class diasporas in the North – are the spaces where dreams continue to breed.

This essay was first published in Jamhoor. Jamhoor is an independent media platform for artists, writers, activists, academics and others to share their work on South Asia. They want to promote critical insights on the South Asian experience, as embedded in various structures of power (capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, caste, racism etc.).

The centrality of tea garden workers of Assam in writing its history, finds its corollary in their total absence in the current discourse in political activism or the academia. Labour invisiblized is not mere metaphor. Over 8 lakh current and around 40 lakh ex-tea garden workers in the over 875 big plantations, and many more in the over 2,73,000 small tea gardens, work a daily grind in ever worsening conditions away from the spotlights animating social discourse in the region. Only when a Laxmi Orang is stripped and thrashed in the heart of Dispur, or a Bogidhola erupts in anger or 21 die in a month in a Doyang tea estate, does the question of the situation and lives of this most exploited sector of tea workers even come up as a social question (and even then it remains in the sidelines).

Recently the tea workers in Assam, as well as their nearby counterparts in Darjeeling Hills-Terai-Dooars, are engaged in a struggle for implementation of minimum wages. Along with it are demands for land rights, for SC status for the communities, and so on. The Minimum Wages Act 1948 has not been applied in the sector, and so every time a haggling through an undemocratic system of ‘collective bargaining’ between the owners and only one Trade Union as favoured by the owners settles matters, with government presence being a passive observer or intervening on behalf of the managements. This is a sector making super-profits as consecutive Annual Statistics from the Tea Board shows a steady and steep rise in production and demand. But the current daily wage rate of Rs.137 in the Brahmaputra valley, Rs.117 for Barak valley and Rs.126 for ATC gardens with some variations, almost reduces these working class communities to bare life. Many Trade Unions as part of a Joint Forum currently demand a daily wage rate of Rs.351 plus fringe benefits. In this situation, a government committee recommending a revised rate of Rs.351.33 has come which shockingly excludes the fringe benefits, setting the rate really low, even to which the Owners as expected, have raised objections. The following is the Govt’s methodology for calculating minimum wages.

What follows is a ‘Response to the government notification’ from some citizens involved and concerned with the situation of tea workers. Also, note that this is a calculation based on bare minimum for the sector, while the general demand of Trade Unions across the board currently is of an all-India minimum wage of Rs.22,000 per month with some calculating it as Rs26,000/month.

To,

Tapan Chandra Sharma,

IAS, Secretary to the Government of Assam,

Labour Welfare Department,

Assam Secretariat, Block-A, 3^rd Floor,

Dispur, Guwahati-6

Date: 15^th September 2018

SUBJECT: Response on “Fixation of Minimum Wages for the Plantation Workers of Assam”

Respected Sir,

We, the undersigned, are citizens involved and concerned with the situation and interests of the plantation workers of Assam, in varying capacities. We are sending our response to the Government of Assam Notice no. GLR (RC) 178/2014/Pt-I/4 on “Fixation of Minimum Wages of Plantation Workers of Assam”.

The tea plantation workers of Assam have historically, and continue to, contribute to the making of Assam, and yet continue to remain one the most super-exploited working class communities in the State. The current daily wage rate of tea workers in Assam is Rs.137, which is much lower than the min wage of other industrial workers in the State itself. Also, as the government calculation note itself notes, the wages of Tea workers of Kerala (290, in fact the revised wages in the Munnar plantations since 2016 is above Rs.300), Tamil Nadu (Rs.289.41), etc. are about 111% more than that of Assam. This needs to be seriously addressed by the government and people of Assam, as has been time and again demanded by the workers. The fixation of minimum wages and its timely revision is an ‘inalienable right’ of plantation workers, and we are happy that the Labour Welfare Dept. has worked out a ‘draft composite Minimum wages’ proposal, and hereby submit our response pointing to the anomalies that we noticed.

Our first submission is that the Minimum Wages Act 1948 be applied to the sector, and benefits under the Plantation Labour Act 1951 also continue as per its provisions. The fringe benefits component of wages should continue along with a revision in the cash component of wages. The system of adding Variable Dearness Allowance (VDA) with varying Consumer Price Index should be accepted along with Minimum Wage.

Second, we jot down our comments corresponding to the points in the given Notification, and also state our calculations, which is a legitimate demand of the workers.

Minimum wages or what is ‘the minimum necessity’ for a worker to daily regenerate her/his labour power, is not a static concept, and requires continual revision in a given context. Minimum Wages, as the International Labour Conference 1957 noted, was arrived at, in a horizon of it being applicable to the unorganized sector, with Fair Wage for the Organized Sector, and Living Wages as the goal towards which we have to move. The 15^th ILC or Indian Labour Conference 1957 laid down the criteria for calculation of Min Wages, with the Minimum Wages Act 1948, laying out its specifics of calculating it, as you have noted. 

The Hon’ble Supreme Court in the year 1991, in its judgment (Mgt. of Reptakos Brett vs Workmen) expressed that, minimum wages should be determined as per recommendation of 15^th Indian Labour Conference held at 1957 at New Delhi. It also decreed that a further point needs to be added, namely:

“(vi) children’s education, medical requirement, minimum recreation including festivals/ ceremonies and provision for old age marriages etc. should further constitute 25% of the total minimum wage.”

The minimum wage formula as was last adjusted in 1991 by the Supreme Court (as above) after 34 years (1957-1991). A further 27 years have now passed. Necessities have grown manifold. The 7^th Pay Commission has also started off by accepting these norms more or less. Based on these, the general demand of Trade Unions across the board of an all-India Minimum Wage is currently Rs.22,000 per month with some calculating it as Rs26,000/month, with variation on sectors and areas. For the tea sector this amount, even if revised, is relatively already much low.

From the notification, we get the calculation of the wages proposed, We jot down our comments here in a column, correspondingly with the points of the given notification, and then our calculation too.

This is just the calculation of minimum wages based on Government approved formula for calculating minimum wages. The component of kind or ‘fringe benefits’ is separate, and not included here in our calculations. As per provisions under the Plantation Labour Act 1951, this should be separately given under the heads of Medical, Housing, Education, Welfare and Leave with wages and festival holidays. Statutory benefits like Bonus and DA, P.F. and Gratuity are also distinct from this, which should be separately calculated and given.

So,

Fuel, lighting and others should constitute 20% of the total minimum wage.

Children’s education,… marriage, etc. should constitute 25% of the total minimum wage.

the Housing Factor factored should constitute(at least) 5% of the total minimum wage.

Which means, these 3 factors, in sum total, should be 50% of the total min wage

And consequently, it follows that, the first two i.e. the Food and Clothing component should be the rest 50% of the total min wage

Now, in the draft, total expenditure on food + cloth has been proposed to be = Rs. 6648.30+600 = Rs. 7248.30

Therefore, the Minimum Wage should be at least = Rs. 7248.30 X 2 = Rs. 14496.60 per month

This should be divided by 26 days

and not by 30 (as done in your calculation),

as the tea workers are daily rated workers. So, it should be= Rs. 14496.60 / 26 = Rs. 557.56 per day

So, we are calculating the reasonable figure of Rs.557.56 per day

Along with this, we state again that:

1. Reducing the cash and kind components to a single minimum wages cannot be done in the case of plantation workers. The government proposal includes the fringe benefits within the revised rate in actuality makes it a really low rate. Our above calculation, of Rs.557.56 per day is only the cash component to be adjusted along with some overlaps with the kind component, as per the “irreducible minimum” stated by the Supreme Court. Benefits under the PLA 1951 should continue.
2. The Minimum Wages Act 1948 should be applied along with PLA 1951, and the system of adding Variable Dearness Allowance (VDA) with varying Consumer Price Index should be accepted along with Minimum Wage.
3. This is a sector making super-profits as consecutive Annual Statistics from the Tea Board shows a steady and steep rise in production and demand. So arguments of ‘crisis in the industry’ are patently wrong. The revision should happen with evolving a democratic system of ‘collective bargaining’ between the owners, the government and all Trade Unions and stakeholders from among the workers.

Sincere Regards,

1. Sanjay Barbora, Associate Professor and Dean, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, TISS, Guwahati
2. Debarshi Das, Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati
3. Kangkan Deka, Professor, Department of History, Darrang College, Tezpur
4. Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Convenor, Uki Research Collective, Guwahati
5. Bonojit Hussain, activist and researcher, Guwahati
6. Bedabrata Gogoi, researcher and activist, Satra Mukti Sangram Samiti Assam
7. Pranab Doley, Advisor, Jeepal Krishak Sramik Sangha
8. Angshuman Sharma, activist SFI and PhD research scholar, JNU Delhi
9. Devangana Kalita, activist and researcher JNU, New Delhi
10. Gaurav Rajkhowa, Convenor, Uki Research Collective, Guwahati
11. Mayur Chetia, activist and researcher, Delhi
12. Nayanjyoti, Trade Unionist and PhD research scholar, Delhi University

We strongly condemn the terrible incident of the mindless killing of 5 working class Bengali people Shymal Biswas, Subul Biswas, Anath Biswas, Dhananjay Namasudra, Avinash Biswas, who were mercilessly gunned down on 1 November in Dhola, Tinsukia, Assam.

Initially, the media attributed this heinous act to the ULFA (I). However in a statement issued by the outfit it has claimed that it has no links to the said act of cold blooded killings.  As we are writing this statement fingers are shifting towards the peace-talk faction of the ULFA and the police has detained Jiten Dutta and Mrinal Hazarika on suspicion of instigating/enacting the killings, given the incendiary statements recently given by the said members threatening to target Bengali community if the Citizenship Amendment Bill (2016) was to be rammed in by the government. From the ground, the lone survivor of the killings in Tinsukia last evening, Sahadev Namasudra stated that the gunmen were in military fatigues and spoke in Hindi. Meanwhile the KMSS leader Akhil Gogoi in a press conference has demanded a high power investigation team consisting of two acting High Court Judges to look into the incident and solve it within a week’s time. His proposal of the team comes in the context of regarding people’s suspicions about the government’s complicity in the incident. On the other hand the Chief Minister of Assam has assured that the government will take to task anyone who issues instigations, provocative and hate messages.

In the context of the ongoing attempts by the BJP government to pass the Citizenship Amendment Bill (2016), there has been continuous venom spewed by the ultra nationalist leaders and organisations of both the Assamese and the Bengali communities. The cold blooded killings of the above mentioned five Bengali youth has to be read in this immediate context, though Assam has had a prolonged history of ethnic and nationalist conflicts and mass killings. The desperation of the ruling government before the 2019 general elections and its longstanding vision to carve a Hindu nation out of India, and to smoothly pass the Citizenship Bill clearly informs the current step towards ‘return’ of Assam into a political chaos filled with conflict and killings. The pushing of this unconstitutional Bill by the RSS and BJP at the Centre, as an ideological and pragmatic necessity, despite wide spread protests against it, including Assam Bandh on 23rd October, lays concrete grounds for such conflicts to sharpen. The chauvinist nationalism of the local right wing of the dominant communities, which seeks to continue the polarization on ethnic lines also propagate and benefit from such a situation. The pan Indian nationalist right wing forces and the deep State seeks to mint the overlaps between the two. Here the Bajrang Dal and other wings of the RSS continue to be active collaborators.

While the state police have rightly detained Mrinal Hazarika and Jiten Dutta for their provocative and hate-informed statements recently, it has refused to regard with any seriousness the continuous hate-filled, threats and communal statements given by BJP MLA Siladitya Deb who remain unchecked. Further the BJP Union Minister of State for Railways, Rajen Gohain responded to the incident by advocating the unconstitutional Citizenship Amendment Bill (2016) as a safeguard against a possible future when “a day will come when we will be ruled by the Bangladeshi Muslims”.

The fallout of this venomous ethnic and religious polarization is always against the toiling sections of the population. While condemning the killings, we must hold the State responsible, which is giving protection and encouragement to ethnic chauvinist and religious communal forces. It is also an urgent need of the hour for political forces in and outside Assam not to make unsubstantiated and insensitive statements on the incident, which can further deteriorate the situation.

We appeal to all to maintain restraint in the words that they utter keeping in mind the volatile nature of the situation in Assam and help each other in maintaining calm and peace and resist the divisive murderous forces that put the lives of the people in danger.

We demand:

– an independent judicial enquiry be instituted on the incident.

– Siladitya Deb and such people who are continuing to spew communal and ethnic tension be arrested

– The Citizenship Amendment Bill (2016) must be immediately scrapped

Sd/-

1. Amrapali Basumatary, Academic and Activists, Delhi
2. Angshuman Sarma, Research Scholar, JNU
3. Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Youth Activist and Researcher, Assam
4. Bedabrat Gogoi, Research Scholar, JNU
5. Biswajit Bora, Academic, University of Delhi
6. Bonojit Hussain, Youth Activist and Researcher, Assam
7. Debarshi Das, Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati
8. Mayur Chetia, Activist, New Socialist Initiative (NSI)
9. Nayanjyoti, Activist, Krantikari Naujawan Sabha (KNS)
10. Samudra Sangkha Gogoi, Research Scholar, Delhi School of Economics
11. Tonmoyee Rani Neog, Research Scholar, JNU

Once upon a time, in a land of lush fields and bountiful harvests…

Perhaps in not as many words, but the Axom Nagarik Samaj’s (Citizen Community of Assam) recent pamphlet, “NRC and Why is it Important?,” seems to have gone with the tried and tested narrative template of Assamese nationalist discourse. A forum of prominent intellectuals including writer and former police officer Harekrishna Deka, journalists Ajit Bhuyan and Prasanta Rajguru, and academic Dr. Akhil Ranjan Dutta among others, Axom Nagarik Samaj claims to represent the legitimate demands of the “indigenous communities” of Assam for protection against the “heavy influx” of illegal migrants from Bangladesh that “threatens their political, economic and social space.” In the past, they have spoken out on against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.

Their recent booklet on the NRC has been prepared expressly with a national audience in mind. Aiming to dispel the misconceptions of those who accuse the Assamese of being anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant chauvinists, they offer a historical account of the “immigrant problem” in Assam that they hope would convince the reasonable observer to take a sympathetic view of the devastating effects of migration on indigenous society and culture.

The authors trace the roots of the problem to on, the one hand, colonial land policy that sought to convert wastelands into revenue producing agricultural land by settling Bengali-speaking Muslim peasants from Sylhet and Mymensingh districts (in present-day Bangladesh); and on the other, manipulative vote-bank politics and nefarious bureaucratic corruption in the postcolonial period. To establish their case for the exponential rise in immigration from present-day Bangladesh, especially between the 1940s and the 1980s, they enlist the credibility of statements by colonial officials and Indian bureaucrats and the veracity of official Census figures and intelligence reports.

They go on to assert the popular basis of the NRC initiative, arguing that it was the result of a difficult but enduring consensus amongst the communities of Assam that emerged at the end of the Assam Movement, and finds expression in the “compromise” that was the Assam Accord. The updating of the NRC, they feel, would help concretise the key Accord clause regarding “detection and deletion of foreigners.” That the NRC updating process is being overseen by the Supreme Court seems to afford them a measure of comfort that it will not be manipulated by vested political interests.

The document hardly stands out for its literary ingenuity, even less so for its political vision. They present a narrative that has been the staple of Assamese nationalist discourse, available for consumption at least since the late-1970s and extremely popular during the Assam Movement. Unfortunately, for the authors, they are not living in 1982. In reproducing this discourse today, they also reinforce the blind-spots that have afflicted this fantasy of a harmonious, multi-ethnic pastoral Assam, rudely intruded upon by colonialism and outsiders. Their single-minded obsession with the “Bangladeshi” gives the impression that the antagonism towards Bengali-speaking Muslims is because of their presumed place of origin. The desire to make them the problem obscures a situation where the hostility towards the community is one aspect of a far more complex terrain of ethnic conflict that has shaped the lives of communities in the region at least since the 1980s. One may even say that it is precisely the authors’ inability to consider Bengali-speaking Muslims as an ethnic community of Assam—and by extension, tied up in its ethnic political discourse—that compels them to think of migration only as a “Bangladeshi problem.”

Their desperate return to the purported scene of the original sin of colonial migration policy betrays a refusal to confront the complexities of migration today. As such, they present an incomplete picture of migration in Assam, especially the last three-four decades. Handicapped by a superficial understanding of the forces, opportunities, constraints, and problems of migration in postcolonial Assam, most notably they fail to take into account the dynamics of internal migration within Assam and migration from other Indian states. According to official estimates, development-induced displacement for projects including hydroelectric power projects, setting up of industries, army camps, etc. have displaced more than 343,000 persons, while unofficial estimates put the figure at 1.9 million. Another factor responsible for massive migration within the state is displacement due to ecological devastation. Reports with the Water Resources Department show that riverine erosion alone was responsible for the loss of 3,860 sq km of land was lost since 1954, wiping out more than 2,500 villages and 18 towns. Taken together, these factors produce an extremely complex picture of both the scale and dynamics of migration in Assam, which cannot be captured through analyses of census data that try to prove the rise in population through narrow comparisons and simplistic projections.

Finally, it is amusing that they put their weight behind the process as an intervention that would protect indigenous communities of Assam from land alienation and political disenfranchisement. But it causes these flag-bearers of the Accord no embarrassment that dissident voices (http://raiot.in/do-the-tribals-of-assam-have-an-opinion-on-nrc/) have begun pointing out the complicity of caste-Hindu Assamese elites in the colonial and postcolonial experience of land alienation and political disenfranchisement.

Beyond these specific points of criticism, we find most disconcerting the abiding faith the authors place in a legal resolution. Deceived by greedy politicians and outmanoeuvred in “vote-bank politics” for too long, they find succour in the safe arms of the law. Ever grateful to the courts for having ensured the updating of the NRC, these concerned citizens are now repaying their debt by becoming the moral guardians of public discourse in Assam. Being a Supreme Court-monitored process, they consider the matter to be beyond any political debate on the procedures, provisions, intentions, or effects of the NRC initiative. For hardnosed patriots like themselves, all such objections are what they would call “philosophical and humanitarian concerns” that can await our indulgence until after the “foreigners” have been enumerated.

We are neither philosophers nor humanitarians, and there are a few political lessons learned in the Assam of the 1990s we cannot but recall today. The post-Accord years marked a period when urgent concerns that had been pushed to the margins of the Assam Movement returned as articulate political critiques that fuelled a period of intense political debate. Assam’s place in regional, national, and global capitalist networks was re-evaluated. Demands were made for separate states, for inclusion in scheduled lists, for national independence. The shifting political terrain of the time taught us two things. First, we discovered the many ways in which the state occupies the ground that separates “democracy” from the “rule of law.” Second, we understood that far from abolishing the hierarchies of caste and ethnicity that marked Assam’s political culture and society, the figure of the citizen was only their shadow. If nothing, the 1990s convinced us of the impossibility of civil society, of nagarik samaj.

The Indian state has since traded its militarist mask for the developmentalist one as it tries to contend with these new political voices. And while the members of Nagarik Samaj renew their vows of loyalty to the Indian state, the rest of us can turn to the more urgent task at hand—namely, understanding what, since the 1990s, has changed and what has remained the same. Does the state not continue to operate in that ambiguous periphery of the law where it sustains structures of social power and hierarchy? At the same time, is not the very terrain of ethnic identities being rearticulated under a new regime of market and development?

True, it is difficult to answer such questions definitively at the present moment. But a clear beginning can be made by asserting against the prevailing consensus that the NRC initiative actually draws its lineage not from the demands of the Assam Movement but from the paradigm of depoliticization adopted by the state through the 1990s and 2000s. Further, the historically exclusionary character of Assamese nationalist political discourse puts into question any consensus amongst “all communities of Assam” on the NRC and represented through the Accord. In fact, this forced closure of the “immigrant issue” is what makes it impossible to arrive at a consensus on the effects of capitalist development, which transforms ethnic-cultural difference into conflict and competition. The most urgent task now is to resist the debilitating effects of this consensus—it does not just obscure the problem, it is precisely part of the problem.

The contours of a new political discourse will, no doubt, be shaped by conflicts and disagreements between the many voices that stand against this prevailing consensus. There may even be moments of coming together in solidarity. How this could happen is a question with which we all continue to grapple, but of one thing we can be sure—the “coming together of disparate voices” will be nothing like the Nagarik Samaj, which affords us the tragic irony of bringing together a former DGP of Assam Police and a firebrand journalist who famously called the Indian state a “paper tiger.” For all their mistakes, the many political voices of the whirlwind 1990s were able to establish a critique of the state that could sustain the imagining of new political futures. The opportunism of the Nagarik Samaj’s “constitutionalism,” we are convinced, holds no such promise.

Gaurav Rajkhowa

Ankur Tamuli Phukan

Convenors

Uki Research Collective, Guwahati

Dear great liberals of the Indian mainstream,

We are writing to you standing at a crucial historic moment. On 9 January 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had to give up their efforts to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 in the Rajya Sabha even though the Bill had already been passed in the Lok Sabha. The only reason for that was the fierce protests against the Bill in the northeastern states, particularly in Assam and Tripura. The Bill which is a stringent attack on and a mockery of the Constitution of India could not be passed only because of the protests by the people of Assam and the Northeast. However, the passage of the Bill has been halted only, the Bill is not dead yet! But this is certain that in future, the people of Assam and the Northeast will not rest until the final nail in the Bill’s coffin is put. Dear great liberals, what were you smoking?

You are the vocal proponents of Indian secularism. We often listen to your grandiloquent lectures on television screens – on secularism, on democracy, on the Constitution of the country. But, what the fuck did you do against this fatal Bill? Unlike you, we are jungli people living on the margins of the Indian state and society. That these jungli people had to save your secularism from death and save the face of the country in front of the world, what the fuck would you say now? That is why we say your secularism is damned – fuck your secularism.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 not only represents the communal agenda of the BJP but has also stripped you stark naked. Look at the history of the Bill – you would see your shameless ignorance, hateful selfishness, and limitless hypocrisy. You do not even bother to look at the fire unless it catches you; you do not see any problem anywhere unless there is a problem in the mainland India – even if the people of Assam or the Northeast die. In your mainland India, there will not be any disturbance if the Bill is passed. Therefore, there are no worries, you can keep discussing your secularism. Such is your selfishness, such is your hypocrisy! That is why we say – fuck your secularism.

What do you know about us? You know that we are jungli people – somehow, way beneath you, we are just hanging on the ladder of modernity. There is terrorism in our land – and your army save the nation and the people by fighting against and suppressing that terrorism. But you do not know the modernity-bred complexities of our society; you do not know that our region is crippled by various conflicts born of modernity’s path of development. You do not want to know that the policy and the logic of the modern nation-state have given birth to this terrorism and the complex situation of ethnic conflicts and violence. That Indian state – the state which still thinks of us as wild aberrations who just need to be subjugated and oppressed – which is your own and which you are beneficiaries of, is yet be our own. You talk about the greatness of India, about the diversity of India. But you do not know that your world is flat and the same – therefore you think about the outside world in the same light. But our world has a great diversity, our life is multi-coloured and multi-dimensional, which your flat thinking cannot even understand a bit. Yet in your pomposity, you try to be omniscient, give lofty, patronising speeches, and occupy higher moral ground. You do not know your pretence, and that is why we call you morons, we call you hypocrites.

You live in mainland India, at the centre of the Indian state. We live at the periphery. Our cries do not fall on your ears (which are deaf anyway), our stretched hands cannot reach you, because you are far away from us. Hence your eternal ignorance – of our location, of our qualification, of our standard. Yet we believe you have good ears, our chests puff out when we get your trifling attention, our desire to conquer the world gets satisfied when you give us a derisory place. The higher you sit on the peak of vainglory, the deeper we sink in the abyss of timidity. This is our psychological enslavement resulting from our peripheral geo-political location.

But today we have thrown off the shackles of that psychological enslavement. Today we are standing at such a historic moment where the equation between you and us has been completely reversed. We, the jungli people, have saved the soul of the Constitution of India and you have kept on watching like a nincompoop that you are. Thus you have become the object of our pity.

The equation will reverse again – you will continue to sit atop the peak of vainglory. It is because you have realistic means. The state which is so unknown to and far away from us is so near (and dear) to you. But we will remember your hollow character. We will remember how you have become the object of our pity.

That is why we say your secularism is damned – fuck your secularism. Down with such secularism.

[Translated from Assamese by Biswajit Bora]

Assam is boiling. Boiling over an overtly communal bill brought in by a communal regime aiming to polarise society. The bill got the nod of Lok Sabha on 8th of December, a day after a hastily prepared report was submitted by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC). The report was prepared by a Committee, (the majority members belong to the ruling BJP) by brushing aside all alternative opinions and was based on surmises and conjectures.

The organisations opposing this Bill have raised a number of issues, three of which are fundamental to the whole debate. The organisations opposed this bill on the ground of unconstitutionality as it goes against the secular spirit of the Constitution, which according to the Apex Court, is part of the basic structure of the Constitution. It was/is argued that the Indian Constitution does not envisage citizenship on the basis of religion and any attempt to do so will militate against the constitutional values. The second argument against the Bill was/ is that the state of Assam is not in a position to take the burden of more migrants, after accepting a large population of migrants as an integral part of its society. In this regard, reference was made to a statement given by the then Union Minister of State of Home before the Parliament, while answering the debate on Citizenship Act (amendment) 1986. In his statement before the Parliament, he had categorically declared that the migration of people from neighbouring countries is becoming an economic burden for our country and the country is not in a position to take the burden of more people. Thirdly, it was pointed out to the Committee that the Bill in question violates the Assam Accord which fixed the cut off date for detection of foreigners in Assam as 25-3-1971. The central government, through the proposed amendment, had unilaterally changed the cut off date without the consent of the people of Assam, on whose behalf All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) signed the accord on 15th August 1985.

The JPC however refuses to take note of first two arguments at all as revealed by the report and so far as the third issue is concerned, the Committee dealt with in a perfunctory manner.

The JPC is dominated by members belonging to ruling dispensation, which had taken a predetermined approach from the very beginning and the report itself bears proof of it. The report eloquently states in the beginning about the power of ‘the state’ to regulate grant of citizenship and nobody has any dispute with that. But, the issue is the basis of granting of such citizenship. The report quoted a number of statements made by various leaders, including Late Shyama Prasad Mukherjee at different points of time, to buttress the argument in favour of granting of citizenship to people belonging to certain religion (mostly Hindus and minus Muslims). It is interesting to note that the Committee conveniently refrained from referring to the fact that Constituent Assembly unanimously rejected the proposal to grant citizenship of the country on the basis of religion (Hindu). In the Constituent Assembly debate, while participating in the debate on citizenship one P Deshmukh, a member from Bombay proposed an amendment in following words: ‘Every person who is a Hindu or Sikh by religion and not a citizen of any other states wherever he resides shall be a citizen of India’. Arguing in favour of such an amendment he said, ‘in the second sub-clause I have proposed that I want to make a provision that every person who is a Hindu or a Sikh and not a citizen of any other states be entitled to be a citizen of India. We have seen the formation and establishment of Pakistan. Why was it established? It was established because the Muslims claimed that they must have a home of their own. Here we are an entire nation with a history of thousands years and we are going to discard it inspite of the fact that neither the Hindus nor the Sikhs has any other place in the whole world to go. By mere fact that he is a Hindu or Sikh he should get Indian citizenship because it is one circumstance that makes him disliked by others.’ (Constituent Assembly Debate, Second Volume, Lok Sabha publications).

The aforesaid amendment was discussed by the Assembly and after thorough discussions, the Constituent Assembly rejected such an amendment. The Assembly overwhelmingly rejected the amendment on the ground that a secular Constitution cannot make provision for religion based citizenship. This argument although, specifically made before the Committee did not attract the JPC’s attention. Rather, they shifted the narrative to a direction which suits the government, by quoting statements of different leaders selectively and out of context. Had it been the intention of the Constitution makers to go for religion based citizenship, they would have accepted the amendment of Deshmukh itself. But that had not been done and JPC conveniently overlooked it.

The JPC did not even discuss the second issue raised against the Bill. Apparently they did not have any answer to the said argument, advanced with facts and figure.

So far as the third issue of the Bill being violative of Assam Accord is concerned, the report of the JPC was evasive. The Assam Accord was a contract between the people of Assam and the Union Government. Over the years, a consensus has been evolving in Assam, cutting across political and social divide and the progressive sections of Assam’s society is trying to create a new social contract based on the Accord. This is precisely the reason why the overwhelming majority in Assam is supporting the ongoing process of preparation of NRC. But the instant Bill, by proposing to give citizenship to a class of people entering Assam after 25-3-1971, has unilaterally amended the Assam Accord. Secondly, through the Bill, the Union Government is pushing the state to the brink of social unrest by disrupting the delicate social balance sought to be maintained by the people. Interestingly, the officials of Department of Legal Affairs while deposing before the Committee ,unambiguously admitted that the proposed Bill contradicts the Assam Accord (page 61 of the report of the JPC). But neither the official witnesses nor the JPC could offer any justification for bringing a Bill which is going to disrupt fragile peace in Assam. Rather the Committee, to justify the Bill, hide behind Section 6A of Citizenship Act, 1955, which has nothing to do with detection and deportation of foreigners. On the other hand, there was no material available before the Committee suggesting religious persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, except a vague statement by government officials. The official witness belonging to Ministry of Home Affairs in their deposition had stated that ‘the Government of Bangladesh was committed to protecting and preserving the rights of minority groups in their country and ensuring their security. However, there have been violent incidents impacting the minority community in Bangladesh in the past.’(page 48 of the Report of JPC). Can such vague statements be the basis of a Bill which sought to nullify the very foundation of the Constitution?!

This Bill is neither humanitarian, nor as innocuous as claimed by its proponents. This Bill is an attempt to give legal sanctity to the idea of ‘Hindu Homeland’ of ideological mentors of the ruling BJP and the report of the JPC was prepared to serve the said objective. This report needs to be rejected and fought against tooth and nail.

While Assam is in turmoil over Citizenship Amendment Bill, BJP led government has conferred India’s highest honour, Jewel of India (Bharat Ratna) on late Bhupen Hazarika. A cultural and political shapeshifter, Bhupen Hazarika was always tough to pin down. The following essay by two progressive activists, Mayur Chetia and Nayanjyoti from Assam historicises the many faces of the Jewel of India. The essay was first published in 2011 in Kafila as a political obit. 

Mourning people from across Assam assemble in miles and miles of roads leading up to Bhupen Hazarika’s funeral. He’s a restless jajabor/wanderer no more. Paeans after paeans are being sung now after the ‘great cultural hero’, the ‘greatest Assamese’, the believer in ‘the power of the nation’ (the ‘nation’ being Akhand Bharat or Brihottor Axom, depending on whichever variety of nationalists sing). Bhupenda is dead.  Assam is in despair.

Despair and tears are nothing new to be offered by the people of the region, daily humiliated by their exploited, displaced existence. These intricacies of social existence lie shining sharply or muffled in Hazarika’s songs and journey over the years. The music is everywhere, even at the funeral, where of the reported 100,000 people, more were singing than crying. There is arguably no one in Assam who has not known, loved, hated, listened and sung Hazarika, and whom he has not sung of. And this is much before mass media as we know today existed.

In this fractured land where ‘identity’ is supposed to be the reigning logic of existence, of unity or separation, Hazarika touched, sung and wove a rich and ambiguous cultural fabric. And because of it, we find ourselves confronting a troubled legacy, a serpentine history.

Absolute ‘consistency’ is perhaps not a desirable quality and much more so with questions and figures of culture. But Bhupen Hazarika’s jajabor/nomadic inconsistency, and so perhaps the ups and downs of the journey of those whom he sang for and about, is historic. Riding on the energy of the communist-led peasant uprisings which lasted up to the mid 1950s in Assam, Hazarika’s radicalism borrowed directly from the ‘people’s singer’, the communist legacy of Comrade Bishnu Rabha and Jyoti Prasad Agarwala. Thus Hazarika would declare ‘kasi khonot aji bor suk’ (‘my sickle is too sharp today’). When the Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association (IPTA) had its dynamic heyday, Bhupen Hazarika was its president. He was a socialist when South Asia was gripped by its promise. He sang of hearing its echoes, of the energy of the masses, of the red sun on his black hair, from the depths of the night – mur gaon’ore xeema’re, paharor xipare, nixar siyortir protidhoni xunu (‘from the end of the horizon of my village, from across the hills, echoes come to me of the cry of the night’). He was then prothom nohoi, dritiyo nohoi, tritiyo srenir jatri (‘not of the first, not of the second- we are travelers of the third class’). Celebrating the vitality of the working masses, he identified himself as a co-traveler chugging ‘towards the destination together’.

But as the peasant uprisings were contained, this radicalism which was in identification with the stirrings of the tiller-of-the-land turned into the jingoist one of the son-of-the-soil, and come the Indo-China war of 1962, Hazarika turned into a ‘patriotic’ nationalist. He would discover terror and bloodshed committed on the hapless (sic) Indian Army soldiers by the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army, and demand a strong defense against the ‘violent marauders’ along the Himalayas (‘aji kameng ximanta dekhilu, dekhi xotrur poxuttva sinilu (‘today I saw Kameng border, and recognized the enemy’s bestiality’). However, this hatred for the Chinese proved to be short-lived.  For Hazarika, the jajabor/internationalist, who loved to talk of Gorky and his tales sitting at the tomb of Mark Twain’, it could have been hardly otherwise. Nonetheless, this contradictory pull between a rabid form of nationalism and the spirit of internationalism continued to haunt him his entire life.

Contradictions and ambiguities also followed his engagement with the six year long anti-immigrant Assam movement which started in 1979. On the one hand Hazarika would, supporting the mass character of the movement, also attest to its principal aim of the expulsion of peasant migrants from Bangladesh led by the All Assam Students Union (AASU). And on the other, it was precisely during its heydays, when sentiments were sharpening against ‘migrants’ conflated with Muslims as a whole, that he composed and sang ‘Mohabahu Brahmaputra’ where he painted the long history of migration and assimilation of diverse people which built a composite culture in the region, singing ‘podda nodir dhumuhat pori, koto xotojon aahiley; luit’or duyu parote kotona atithik adoriley … kisu lobo lagey, kisu dibo lagey, jin jaboloi holey…Robindranatheo koley’ (‘caught on the storm of river Podda (Padma), hundreds came, and the banks of the Brahmaputra welcomed them as guests … take some, give some, to melt into each other…also said Rabindranath’). Though often interpreted as a liberal plea, this can be read as a warning of the danger of a sectarian politics of essentialising, of the aggressive upper-caste Assamese Hindu colour of the movement, which sought to violently erase this myriad history into extinction. His assertion that ‘we all have a history of migration and thus we (including the migrants from the erstwhile East-Bengal, now Bangladesh) must strive to live together’, baffled both the supporters as well as the opponents of the movement. Many within AASU began to suspect his support for the movement, as despite his apparent avowal that the Assamese people are in the danger of becoming homeless in their own land (the official AASU line), all he had to offer as a solution was a narrative of migration- hardly a satisfactory answer to the requirements of a sharp anti-immigrant tenor.

Then with the rise of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) in the late 1980s-early 1990s, he sings of the countless blood-drenched sacrifices and the new meaning of the coming sunrise in the east (ULFA’s symbol is a rising sun). Ever enthusiastic of the potential of collective action and need for self-determination by the people, many would say, the sharpness of an anti-Indian state position and a critique of ‘Operation Bajrang’ brand of military domination, expected of a bard of a subjugated population was never there in him. A systemic critique would then be a muffled echo in his songs, as he would even turn the battle cries of the working class into abstract liberal appeals for humanity. Thus though the pathos of loss and ceaseless motion are captured Hazarika’s memorable voice in ‘bistirno parore’, his translation of the melancholy and anger of the worker with capitalist and racist exploitation in Paul Robeson’s Ol’ Man River becomes a mere petty bourgeois radical angst with the erosion of vague societal values in modern times.

With the ever more naked rightist turn in the political life of Assam’s middle classes in the late 1990s, Hazarika followed suit. With the formation of the NDA government (Asom Gana Parishad or AGP was part of the coalition) in 1998, his political journey came to its culmination with viewing the rabidly communal RSS as the authentic agent of social transformation. He even contested a Lok Sabha seat from Guwahati (which he fortunately lost) on a BJP ticket in 2004, with its cadres blaring his humanist plea ‘mahuhe manuhor babey, jodihe okonu nabhabey…bhabibo kunenu kuwa, xomonia’ (‘if man doesn’t think of man … who will?’) on their election vans.

Under the pressure of RSS, he even tried to replace the word Axom with Bharat(as Axom is only to be subsumed within the larger Indian national discourse) in some of his old compositions, but these modifications never became popular. Hazarika’s use of rhetorical forms, like of the ‘virgin earth’ and ‘nation as the mother’ and thus someone to be protected, have been used by patriarchal chauvinists, and this tinge in his content had itself perhaps led to his ‘straying’ into the right wing fold who today find it easy to appropriate him as their own.

Similar turns can also be read in celebrated cultural figures like Bob Dylan who went from being the anthem singer of the radical 1960s generation in the United States to a controversial tryst with a particularly devout form of Christianity. His twists and turns apart, Hazarika did give creative expression to a whole range of feelings of the people of the region, hardly ever discovered by those who had officially avowed ‘art for the sake of society’. Establishing such a chord with people is hardly possible for the crass careerist, and Hazarika, to be sure, was not among them. His compositions blurred the lines between the classical and the folk, between ‘high culture’ and the popular. If he was skilled in composing highly sanskritised Assamese poetry, he was equally at ease in giving voice to the joyous melody of the elephant hunter from Xibaxagor who seduces the gabhoru of Gauripur with his rustic Bihu songs.  He was perhaps also the first one to bring the qawwali genre into Assamese (‘samma thakile jarur jarur’).

And his songs of love and longing are almost always permeated with a high bout of subversive eroticism, a taboo in the caste Hindu households of the Assamese Shreejuts (‘sikmik bijuli, kije tumar xongo priya’). Thus he declares, ‘xomajor niti niyom bhongatu notun niyom’(‘breaking old rules is the rule of today’). Since the late 1990s (along with the rightist turn in his politics), Hazarika’s creativity was in rapid decline. He wrote very little in these years and though he composed a few songs for some Bollywood films, they were far inferior, in content and form, to his earlier compositions.

With Hazarika, the only ‘consistency’ then is of the love for wandering, a constant restless flux. A joyous yet troubled sense of celebration with the changing current and flows of the Brahmaputra being the womb and funeral of the numberless cultures melting into each other, led him also to the Podda, the Mississippi and the Volga. In ‘moi eti jajabor’, after the first two stanzas of such wanderings, he reflects on his peripatetic musings, saying ‘bohu jajabor lokhyo bihin, mur pise ase pon’ (‘many wanderers are directionless, but not me’) and in the next stanza goes on to specify why this is so. He pauses a while, saddened and wondering, at the immense inequality between ‘the rows of skyscrapers and the homeless in their shadows’. In his own jajaboria way he identifies the atrocities, loud or silent, stemming from the interstices of the world, and joining voice with the joyous songs of the people struggling against them, moves on again.

For some time now and at his death, when various varieties of nationalists are vying to uphold him as their hero, it would perhaps be more appropriate to read him at best as a signifier of changing times, wound up with the fortunes of various strata of the people of the region. He was never, as the nationalists would have us believe, a poster boy for ‘Akhand Bharat’ or ‘Brihottor Axom’, consistent with belief in the power of the nation. His belief in people and their creative collectivity at times borrowed from the liberal language and metaphors, and the chauvinist turn of his politics can probably be read in this, but a stress on isolated parochial history and/or pre-critical sense of superiority was never his agenda. Even while acquiescing at times with the linguistic Assamese nationalism of AASU which was based on closure, Hazarika nonetheless also continued singing in Bengali and Hindi as also in many other languages, ever in search for the continuities (a friend from Bangladesh just called yesterday to say that many in Bangladesh will probably only now know that he was an Assamese, and not a Bengali!). This also cannot be read (as the triumphant Indian nationalist would have it) as agreeing uncritically to the idea of a homogeneous ‘great Indian nation’. This search is a continuous one which goes beyond the nation. His repeated stress on the metaphor of the ‘river’ and of migration histories brings this out. The song of the young female worker in the tea plantation, who distinguishes herself from the mainstream caste Hindu culture, singing ‘Laxmi nohoi, mure naam saameli’(‘No, my name is not Laxmi; I am Saameli’), also brings this is a case in point where the pathos of the displaced journey of indentured labour and the conditions of bondage under which she worked is brought to life.

We look at this legacy of Hazarika today, when the ashes of countless revolts of the people of the region lie scattered over its plains and hills. As we enter a new phase of capitalist exploitation and uncertainty, the brutalized people search for new forms of organization and collectivity, its new voice. It mourns its singer at this hour, critically appraising him, seeking to wrench him free from the violence of the right wing nationalists, and sing anew the songs of the people. Just days before his death, Hazarika expressed a desire to be cremated near the tomb of his communist mentor, his dear Bistudaor Comrade Bishnu Rabha. Perhaps he wanted to return where he really belonged: to the theatre of creation rumbling in the hearth of the working people. We must fulfill this last wish of his while evaluating his life, taking his songs and journey forward. This year itself, two radical peoples’ theatre personalities, Badal Sircar and Gursharan Singh, who sung with and of the vitality and creativity of the working classes passed away. With Hazarika, even with his troubled legacy, we need to reclaim the voice which once spoke of and inspired the working masses, with whom he sought to melt, singing…

Xitore xemeka rati…
Bostro bihin kunu khetiyokor,
Bhagi pora pojatir tunh jui ekurat,
Umi umi joli thoka,
Raktim jen eti uttap hou

Kontho rudho kunu xu gayokor
Probhat anibo pora,
Othoso nuguwa, kunu somor gitor babey,
Moi jen eti sudha kontho hou

(Mayur Chetia and Nayanjyoti are political activists from Assam based in Delhi.)

First published by Centre of Koch Rajbanshi Studies and Development

Every winter Sumi Pegu, a fifty year old Mising woman runs the single ply yarn into exquisite horizontal patterns. A narrow paddy field in Gohpur’s Mising-gaon (about 230 kms from Guwahati in Sonitpur District, Assam) leads me to her loom. If you walk some kilometres further, you can get a serene view of the hills of Arunachal. The sound of working looms takes over the chirrup of tiny local sparrows looking for some grains to chew. The grain providers, mostly neighbours of Sumi, have to tend to the poultry and pigs regularly. Their children go to the nearby primary schools and have picked up the dominant Assamese tongue fluently—yet, all through the year, there is someone or the other tending the fibres of the loom.

Formerly, Sumi’s children would weave using a back-strap loom (xoru-xaal) which is a dying practise— alive perhaps only among the state’s ethnic groups. They are taught the basics in their Mising language, which mellifluously they use to recall, remember and revive an entire ancestry. “I gave it to my daughter as a plaything, so she could wrap it around her waist. Once the fingers are stronger and the grab steadier, it makes her job easy at the future xaal”, Sumi says. Womenfolk in this village believe that the one who cannot weave among them may bring bad luck. A grandmother herself, Sumi has seen the Ege (lower garment worn from waist to ankle level with a minimum of two-three pleats) go through decades of changes in terms of designs, superstitions and thread quality.

The traditional Mising loom is a wonder made out of bamboo and tree wood—both these raw materials are sacred in a poignant way. When they show signs of wearing out after years of usage, they are not broken down to ignite the kitchen fire. Even the poorest of Mising houses will tell you that. Special care (like placing the loom constituents on top of the dhuasang-clay stove) is taken to drive termites away. “When we spin the yarn, it is considered inauspicious for small boys to cross it. It not only puts the thread at risk but tears off the wheel and we have to redo all over again”, she says before pointing at me. “You see this hunchback? It is testimony to my dedication towards the most meticulous of designs. I regret I cannot go to the wild now to collect plants that were used to naturally dye our threads. The artificially dyed reels in the market are not to be trusted entirely”, she sulks.

Machines over all else

Over the last six-seven years or so, there has been a massive mechanisation of handloom in this village. The mass entry of mill-made Ege has gradually influenced the aesthetic appeal of fabrics. The signature Mising diamond pattern for instance, is getting indistinct and smaller. The butties, on the other hand are chaotically mixed with tree motifs and they no longer carry artistic finesse. Clothes that are transported to the urban areas with their ubiquitous synthetic assemble reveal these modifications very well. Sumi shares, “I am not competitive by nature, but the generation of my daughters-in-law are, they want to make a few more bucks. I really cannot blame them, as they sincerely manage the fields, household and the loom single-handedly. They hardly get any praise from their spouses”.

As Sumi plays around with the maku (weaver’s shuttle), her granddaughters try to help around the sang ghor. “In the summers, young girls are seen rowing rice saplings and due to the humidity, weaving takes a backseat somehow. The ideal time begins end autumn, though we weave in every season. These fingers are so accustomed to the loom that they begin to hurt if unused”. Sumi’s grandchildren had inherited textile memories passed through orally retold stories. They tell me that the colours represent nature in the clothes their granny weaves. The geometrical designs come paired with a range of motifs—fish heads, animals, flowers, butterflies, trees, stars and others. “It does not matter whether you are working on zero ply or single ply—if your hands are efficiently experienced, you can ace the motifs. My own grandmother used to weave one Gasor (upper garment) a day, probably the pace is reduced when one has to multitask and has fewer hands to help”, shares Sumi.

The expiry of older designs and motifs is not simply because of the tribeswomen being overburdened with other work, but also due to the soft cultural appropriation by the dominant Assamese elites. It has created a cold war kind of situation over who owns the “authenticity” in this craft. “My Ege do not yet have the “silk mark”, so they probably won’t do very well in the market. But the silk has been reared from scratch by me and the motifs are distinctly Mising”, Sumi complains. Literary thinkers like Nilamani Phukan in his collection of essays (?) had mentioned that tribal motifs like diamond, triangle and square and the configuration of star/fern motifs into dominant Assamese weavers came through years of borrowing. Isn’t it ironic that once any dominant identity labels a particular textile as their own, the ‘other’ stories of the weavers, their ethnic evolution etc, recedes to the background?

Bodices, boundaries and tradition

There are differences in the way married and unmarried women among the Mising community dress up. According to Sumi, “The old ladies at home use Segreg to wrap around their busts. The girls who attained puberty wear finely textured Ku: Pobis to wrap around the body beneath the armpits covering the upper part of the body. Married women on the other hand pull the Ege till their breasts and tie a firm methoni.” Talking to Sumi informed me that when we mention the traditional wear of Assam as a “three piece” mekhala sador, the above mentioned nuances are forever lost. These inadequate translations, in their attempt to ease out meanings for the one outside the region end up causing semiotic damage. The supposed “three piece” of women’s wear has a long folk history.

Among the Koches/ Koch Rajbanshis in Assam, the traditional weave Patani used to be worn in Tin-Tekia format (3 parts/layers–Agran, headgear, Patani). The Riha which is now worn as a sador was initially a breast cloth, it had different types: boroi-loga, gariyali, gunakata etc. It is interesting how diverse forms of breast clothes were replaced by blouses and brassieres and marked as “traditional” “civil” components of attire by the upper caste women. I myself recall one such incident in Jalukbari, when a local fish-seller in her late 30s was donated blouses as she would not cover her breasts. The women were convinced they were doing something very noble and “bhadra” for the seller whom they perceived to be poor. When I asked her few years later, she went on to say how nobody in her native village ever wore blouses. She would tell, “It wasn’t a taboo at all in Belxor, Nalbari district. Even men wouldn’t bother us—be it public or private spaces. When I was nursing my children, it was rather helpful. I still am uncomfortable with blouses.”

Policing and standardising the “three-piece” as the traditional wear had its micro and macro context. Nandana Dutta in Questions of Identity in Assam (2012) makes careful note of one such example in Assam Engineering College in 2007. Speaker Ismail Hussain had made dangerous associations with one’s cultural affiliations and one’s attire. It was reminiscent of Assam Andolan days (1979-1985) when there was tremendous insistence for the females to adopt mekhala sador as daily wear. “It was declared and implemented by self-appointed leaders of protesting groups, especially those carrying out dharnas and strikes or taking part in processions”, Dutta writes. What happened as a result of this is its continued (secret) abuse in spaces like college hostels, primary schools and so on. My aunts who were born in the late 60s recall vividly how ragging sessions in their educational institutes would comprise of whether or not they know how to wrap the mekhala sador with propriety. The tribal students were worst hit as humiliating remarks were made on their preconceived “barbaric” ways of dressing up.

It was during the same time that mekhala sador draping rules (full sleeve red blouses) for female dancers of Bihu (a folk form) were laid out. Gradually, as these folk forms were standardised, they began to represent the dominant Assamese attire in all its rigidity. Around May 2017, this debate fuelled up yet again, when the State Govt employees were urged to wear traditional dress (mekhala sador for women and dhoti kurta for men) on third and first Saturdays every month. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal in the current BJP-led Govt had hoped that such a move might enhance the spirit of regionalism and unity. It was rightly opposed on the grounds of exclusion—as it limited traditional wear of so many ethnicities in the state to the mekhala sador. In the midst of these contentions, what was missing was the life of a handloom weaver. Her weaves become agents of the identity battle, but she is effectively erased from that discourse.

Evil Twins

Gayatri Das, seller of mekhala sadors at Beltola thinks that the future of handlooms is very bleak. “The common people, who used to weave eons ago, have forsaken the looms for the dream of white collar jobs. The women now have to think economical viability first and foremost. When I was a kid, I remember my mother from Sirajuli would set the loom for two attires simultaneously. Among the final products, one would be hers and the other would be sold at Rs.1000 for example. This sustainable practise is no longer present, not even in rural areas”. Ms Das herself has to convince customers with half-truths about the weaves that they buy as traditional wear. “In my ten years of having met so many female buyers in Guwahati, only three have enquired about the raw materials of their clothing. Rest were in a rush and enamoured by the glittery threads that make up their mekhala-sador sets, which they finally chose”.

The politics of threads and lack of knowledge of the same has created a huge gap  among the weavers, sellers and the buyers. While hand-woven cloth may speak of the tedious hours spinning the wheel, the duplicates replace them only because a class of the society choose to make accessories out of them. The craft then recedes to the background for the minute designs of creepers, flowers etc when imprinted with bulkier machine technology fails to create that magical effect. It is important to interrogate why hand-weaving isn’t empowered via local methods and readily replaced by a faster, capitalist mechanism. Rita Barua, an intermediary between the weavers and urban sellers from Gohpur says, “The problem lies in the inequity of distributing income here. As opposed to the popular notion that “middle men” eat up all money, I earn very negligible. To transport crafted goods is a hectic affair, and when floods hit, I alone have a lot to manage. During festivities, the pressure increases, and consequently, the weavers have to readily produce twice the number of sets. It leaves them little time to weave something of their own. Time is money”.

Rita also informs that plenty of things have changed post the notorious GST was imposed on handloom items recently. It might have been uplifted now, but the fears still gnaw weavers from the within. “Though I don’t know of any impactful protest against it in Assam, sellers of traditional items have developed innovative ways to resist. Many have taken down hoardings across the highway, it’s their bread and butter, let’s not forget”. Today, the Govt. showrooms also sell duplicates under the banner “traditional handloom”—it is a sign of major insecurity and shall put an end a very rich culture of weaving one’s identities.

Sumi as Hambreelmai: Will the erased weaver be heard?

From Gohpur’s Mising gaon to state funded art and crafts showrooms in Guwahati, handlooms clearly are a vulnerable industry today. As older motifs and stories about them keep falling from the weaves, one wonders if women like Sumi will be remembered in another decade. The folk memory of the Mishmi tribes of Arunachal Pradesh retells one such story—about their first weaver, Hambreelmai. “Hambreel” is, in Mishmi, a species of little fish, and it is said that the nature around her—butterflies, birds and fishes were so attracted to her weaving that when her loom broke, the broken parts metamorphosed into varied forms of life. Every single day, looms of weavers like Sumi and Hambreelmai are being replaced and wiped away in Gohpur. Some remain glorified in folk tales and legends while most are made to look pretty in glossy magazine covers so that businesses are lured into the region. In the words of Mrs. Pegu, “These photographers, they come and they go. My daughters are now accustomed to posing for them, though we never make the headlines of any local daily. The spinning wheel goes round and round, just the usual”.

1
Kashmir is India’s deputy-wife
Pakistan India’s shady lover

2
The grief that was there in Burhan Wani’s funeral
That grief in the killing of Dhemaji children

The circular migration of the same grief
Is in the coffin of the soldiers in Pulwama

Arjun wakes up from the Mahabharat to ask
What will I gain from so much death?

Krishna remains

Without an answer
Speechless

3

Today the Muslims are bad
Tomorrow the Hindus

We will kill the Sikhs today
We will chase away the Buddhists tomorrow

Khaki half-pant
Good

Scull-cap – RDX
Good

The American meaning of Jehad
Good. Good.

Today understand nicely the politics
Yet till that day

We were just amphibians
Soaked in hooch and lust

Good. Very good

4.

At this moment
Listen to no intellectual
Or, to a mad poet like me

The market is flooded with the poison-sea of religion

Don’t gulp it down to become poison guzzling Shiva

5.

After the funeral comes
A strangely cold
And good feeling

Still it is sinful
To do comedy
In a grief-stricken country

Today if Narendra Modi dressed as a soldier
Goes to war
The monkey army follows
And from the other side
ISI Lashkar-e-toiba Hijbul Mujahideen…

I swear by my mother that I will
Bet my last penny
And clap my hands away

6.
Everything will be okay tomorrow
Tomorrow everything will be okay

Tomorrow the great media will
Deliver the propaganda pizza

Tomorrow everything will be okay

7
War is needed
Weapons are needed too

Let the country become Vietnam once

Half mast flag
Near bloodied dead bodies

Is needed

___________ Translated by Banamallika Choudhury

১.
কাশ্মীৰ ভাৰতৰ উপপত্নী
পাকিস্তান তাইৰ ভণ্ড প্ৰেমিক
২.
বুৰহান ৱানিৰ শৱযাত্ৰাত যি দুখ আছিল
একেখিনি দুখ আছিল ধেমাজিৰ শিশুহত্যাত

সেই একেই শোকৰ চক্ৰাকাৰ গতি
পুলবামাত নিহত সৈনিকৰ কফিনত

মহাভাৰতৰ পৰা উঠি আহি
অৰ্জুনে প্ৰশ্ন কৰি যায়-
ইমানবোৰ মৃত্যুৰে মই কি লাভ কৰিম

শ্ৰীকৃষ্ণ নিৰুত্তৰ

নিৰ্বাক
৩.
আজি মুছলিম বেয়া
কালি হিন্দু বেয়া

আজি শিখক কাটিম
কালি বৌদ্ধক খেদিম

খাকী হাফপেন্ট

ভাল

টুপী-আৰ ডি এক্স

ভাল

জিহাদৰ আমেৰিকান অৰ্থ

ভাল ভাল

আমি ৰাজনীতি বেছ বুজিছো

অথচ
সৌ কালিলৈকে আমি আছিলো
মদে-সঙ্গমে উভচৰ

ভাল
বহুত ভাল
৪.
এই মুহূৰ্তত
না কোনো বুদ্ধিজীৱিৰ কথা শুনিব
না শুনিব মোৰ দৰে পাগল কবিক

ধৰ্মৰ বিষ সাগৰ হৈ আছে বজাৰত

পটককৈ পী নীলকণ্ঠী হৈ নাযাব
৫.
সৎকাৰৰ পিছত
এক অদ্ভুত শীতল
আৰু ভাল ভাৱ এটা আহে

তথাপিও
দুখত কাতৰ হৈ থকা দেশত
কমেডি কৰা মহাপাপ

আজি যদি নৰেন্দ্ৰ মোদীয়ে
সৈনিকৰ বেশত যুদ্ধক্ষেত্ৰলৈ যায়
পিছে পিছে বান্দৰ বাহিনী আৰু
সিফালৰ পৰা
আই এছ আই লস্কৰ-ই-তইবা হিজবুল-মুজাহিদীন

বিদ্যা শপথ
শেষ খুচুৰা কেইটা জুৱাত লগাই
হাততালি বজাই থাকিম মই

( ভক্তগণলৈ এটা এটা মাক ফোদী উপহাৰ )

৬.
কালিলৈ চব ভাল হৈ যাব

কালিলৈ চব ভাল হৈ যাব

কালিলৈ মহান মিডিয়াই
প্ৰপাগাণ্ডিষ্ট পিজ্জা লৈ আনিব

কালিলৈ চব ভাল হৈ যাব

৭.
যুদ্ধৰ প্ৰয়োজন আছে
প্ৰয়োজন আছে অস্ত্ৰৰো

দেশখন এবাৰ
ভিয়েতনাম হৈ যাওক

ৰক্তাক্ত মৃতদেহৰ কাষত
অৰ্ধনমিত ৰঙা পতাকাৰ

প্ৰয়োজন আছে

I have to drink
Let me Drink
I want to live
Let me live

You’re rich
So have your Assam Tea
I’m poor
Tea Tribal
Let me drink away my pain

I have to drink
Let me Drink
I want to live
Let me live

If you’ve a heart in you
Then listen to me
If you believe my words
Then share it around

Everyone in Assam
Has had a sip
Labour your life away
And then have a drink

You couldn’t even give us minimum wage
Only 167 rupees per day

Starvation Wage vs Living Wage in the Tea Gardens of Assam

You’re rich
So have your Tata Tea
I’m poor
Tea Tribal
Let me drink away my pain

Why Should we have education
Why should we have healthcare
You only need labourers
To make economy stronger

This toxic hooch was good
How would we have lived our life without it

You’re rich
So export your Tea
I’m poor
Tea Tribal
Let me drink away my pain

If you drink
It is Absolut
If we drink
It is Chullai
Our blood
Is Laupani
And your blood
Is kingfisher

Your election promises were fraud
We didn’t get our minimum wage didn’t go up
Labourers have been dying for some time
And you didn’t even tax the hooch

You’re rich
Tell your tea seller
We immediately supply your Assam tea
But atlas let us sometime have Assam tea

I have to drink
Let me Drink
I want die
Let me die

My first personal introduction to the flurry of activities that would be associated with the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam was in June 2015. My partner and I were in Australia for a conference, when my father left several text messages for us to call him. He wanted the exact spelling of my deceased father-in-law’s name, as well as the name of his village in Nagaland. “Where have you both kept your school and college certificates?” he asked when I called. Thus it began, a scramble for documents that would prove that I was indeed a citizen of India, who was from Assam and had a formidable array of evidence as proof. My father explained that my partner’s details would be sent to Nagaland and once the administration there verified the details sent to them, she too would be included in the NRC.

That evening, I caught up with an old schoolmate in a Sydney suburb. He, his wife and two primary-school going daughters, were Australian citizens. Over dinner, he told me that his father-in-law in Assam was very excited about the NRC and had been calling him to ensure that his documents were in place. My friend was born and raised in Shillong (Meghalaya) and had spent much of his adult life working outside India, so he was understandably curious about how this excitable rush for documents would play out.

On that chilly winter night in Sydney, he asked me if—like his father-in-law—I thought that the NRC would bring some closure to several decades of tumultuous politics in Assam. My response was non-committal and oblique. Fortified by our class that had slowly become better travelled than our parents and our Assamese surnames, we could afford to not find an answer to the question on that evening.

However, many others—especially women, indigenous groups, Muslims and those with no easy access to documents and papers—would find it difficult to be evasive about their futures and avoid critically engaging with the collective future of political mobilisation in Assam.

A Place at Home

Since the announcement of the NRC draft on 30 July 2018, one has had to confront the fact that more than four million people had their names excluded from the list, leading many to commit suicide. This has divided civil society and public opinion vertically. Many student unions and political parties, as well as the administration, attempted to show that there would be no violence in dealing with the aftermath. Other members of civil society and political opinion have pointed out that the exercise itself was faulty and the rhetoric that pushed it was divisive in nature. Political commentators, advocacy groups, and public intellectuals have spent considerable time and energy in persuading those who disagree with their view of the soundness of their positions.

To muddle matters for observers and activists outside the region, the Citizenship Amendment Bill of 2016 that grants citizenship to all minorities from India’s neighbouring Muslim majority countries was passed by Parliament on 8 January 2019. Organisations that welcomed the NRC came out in opposition to the bill, while many who were opposed to the NRC, especially in the Barak Valley, supported the enactment of the bill. Civil society remains polarised along language and regional lines even after the bill was allowed to lapse in the upper house of Parliament on 13 February 2019. Bengali-speaking Hindus, especially in the Barak valley, felt betrayed by the government’s cynical mobilisation of communitarian politics, while most indigenous communities celebrated collective victory in the aftermath.

In Assam, the NRC was seen to be the legal and political way to address the two issues that have influenced political mobilisation in Assam since the mid-20^th century: autonomy and social justice. The Citizenship Bill, on the other hand was seen as a reiteration of a peculiar colonial relationship between Assam and the rest of India, periodically emphasised by the disregard for political opinions of Assamese and indigenous people. While the demands for autonomy reflect the desire for territorial control over land, demands around issues of social justice reflect an insistence on citizenship and equality under constitutional law. Both issues have a very tense relationship with one another. They have led to decades of violent conflicts, where the state has used a combination of military subjugation and co-optation of voices of dissent to deal with the situation.

Hence, political commentators and representatives of civic and political organisations have had a difficult time explaining to the rest of the country and the world as to why they have either supported or opposed a Supreme Court monitored process to survey the legal status of every inhabitant of the state, even as they have differing positions on the Citizenship Amendment Bill. When did they, or their ancestors make Assam their home? Could they prove their presence in the state going back to the partition of British India? Or did they come to Assam after the formation of Bangladesh in 1971?

Answers to these questions are entangled in colonial history, ethnic identity, and control over resources in Assam. These three factors have been instrumental in defining the political discourse, anxieties, and activism associated with the NRC process. As a British colony, Assam saw an unprecedented inflow of labour and capital that transformed the economic and political landscape of the region in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. This transformation hinged upon extraction of resources and resulted in the politicisation of ethnic identities. Radical political voices in Assam had frequently drawn from this mix to demand two seemingly contradictory guarantees—territorial autonomy (even secession) and differential citizenship rights—from the Government of India.

I structure this essay into four interconnected sections: (a) underlining the importance of colonial history, ethnic autonomy, resources and the NRC debates; (b) a brief look at what exactly went into the NRC process (c) mapping the spectrum of reactions and the history of activism related to the NRC; and (d) looking at the future of political discussions about citizenship within India.

Ethnicity, Resources and Autonomy

The colonial period is key to understanding many of the enduring conflicts in Assam today. Adversarial positions on the NRC fall into a process that has been researched and documented well over the past few decades. The presence of the colonial state in Assam was limited to parts of the populated valleys, where the government allowed people from East Bengal to settle on agricultural land for annual and decennial leases. The landscape, economy and society changed dramatically, as cash crops like jute and tea, as well as minerals like oil and coal were grown or extracted in abundance from the area in the 19^th and early-20^th centuries. This transformation also entailed a radical change in the demography of the region, as peasants and indentured workers from different parts of the British-controlled Indian subcontinent were brought to Assam. Tea plantations, in the central and eastern part of the Brahmaputra valley and in parts of the Barak valley were given longer-term leases.

In the upland areas however, the government followed a “light-touch” policy and allowed indigenous communities to retain their traditional chiefs and heads, while making way for indirect rule by the colonial state. This policy continued after Independence and was reaffirmed by the Bordoloi Commission in 1949, when they proposed that the hills be governed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

Under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule, use and transfer of land between individuals was left to the discretion of the autonomous councils that allowed indigenous communities (defined as Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution) to govern certain areas where they were a numerical majority. The councils functioned as territorial enclaves within the larger state and in matters related to transfer of land and property reflected the light-touch administration during the colonial period.

While some territories and communities accepted this autonomy arrangement, others like the Naga and Mizo were less convinced. In both areas—Naga Hills (comprising the current state of Nagaland and parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur) and Lushai Hills—demands for independent, self-governing territories brought together small, kin-based communities who were able to organise successful armed resistance to the post-colonial state and to settler communities.

There is little doubt that Assam’s long, complicated history of settlement and demographic change continues to play a dominant part in political mobilisation in the region.

The first territorial councils were elected in the autonomous districts around the undivided province of Assam in the 1950s and continue into contemporary times. Since then, the state of Assam has been reorganised and currently there are three territorial autonomous district councils (Bodoland, Dima Hasao and Karbi Anglong) and six non-territorial councils (Deori, Mishing, Rabha Hasong, Sonowal Kachari, Thengal Kachari and Tiwa) in the state.

There is little doubt that Assam’s long, complicated history of settlement and demographic change continues to play a dominant part in political mobilisation in the region. This process was informed by tropes of identity, embodied in differences between groups, bureaucratic distancing of the state from people and the eventual centralisation of power.

The postcolonial state has also held itself up as a neutral entity, claiming to uphold the rights of all citizens while simultaneously encouraging an incremental approach to demands for autonomy amongst indigenous communities and other communities who settled in the valleys during the colonial period. It continued after the partition of British India in 1947, as well as the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. It has predictably led to a polarisation of opinion on the rights of the people of the region and those who have a right to call Assam their homeland.

Assamese and tribal activists often allude to demographic changes as the continuing legacy of colonialism, where the colonial state (and its postcolonial inheritor) wilfully used settlers in order to politically subjugate and economically exploit the region This fact is reiterated through political mobilisation along communitarian and ethnic lines, involving the formation of armed groups for almost all communities in Assam. Commentators argue that this is the precursor of attempts at creating majorities through acts of violence, causing large-scale displacement along India’s Northeast borders (Banerjee and Basu Ray Choudhury 2012; ; Vandekerkchove 2009).

The discourse on identity politics does not allow for certain communities to assert territorial rights in Assam.

This is particularly true for numerically large populations such as descendants of indentured workers in the plantations and subsistence peasants of the floodplains in the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys. Their presence in the region is tied to commodities, crops and a labouring history that places them in the point of contact between Europeans and pre-colonial society. This leads to a peculiar situation where radical political discourse on indigenous politics and rights over resources follows one that is similar to the cultural and political assertions of first nation communities in Canada, United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, sections of the left-leaning advocates of autonomy made efforts to assert alliances that overcame ethnic identities. However, over time, as successive central and state governments began to negotiate with radical voices of dissent, ethnic territorial autonomy was foregrounded as a possible resolution. This allowed a section of people to remain outside the scope of political mobilisations and as outsiders in particular districts and regions.

The relationship between Assam’s realities as a colonial province and the possibility of its existence as a nation separate from India was often raised in the Assam Association formed in the early part of the 20^th century. The lack of an unequivocal answer has been one of the major sources of political mobilisation, forming an ideological underpinning for movements for autonomy and secession throughout the second half of the 20^th century, until contemporary times (Choudhury 2016; Saikia 1985).

Rights of Marginalised People

There is a second order of issues linked to social justice that is linked in turn to such politics in Assam. They have to do with securing equal rights for marginalised people, regardless of their ethnic identity and based more on their social position within the political economy of the region. As mentioned earlier, the working class for Assam’s tea plantations were forced to migrate from other parts of India, while many peasants in the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys were Muslims from East Bengal. Their conditions were markedly different from the white-collared workers, merchants and traders who were Bengali- and Hindustani-speaking Hindus from the Gangetic plains.

In the colonial province of Assam, religion was not the only factor that determined the decision people made to stay (or move). Language played an equally important role, especially for those who were going to become religious minorities within India.

Historians and political scientists who have written about colonial Assam’s referendum in 1947 that resulted in the Muslim majority district of Sylhet joining (East) Pakistan and the rest of the province becoming part of India allude to the anxieties of local politicians in Assam when it came to colonial policies on immigration.

Assamese nationalists of the early 20^th century often differed with their counterparts in the Congress and also with the Muslim League on the issue. The League’s best-known politician in Assam, Syed Saadullah, who has been portrayed in history texts as the person responsible for encouraging immigration from East Bengal in the 1930s in his time as the prime minister, was actually castigated by peasant leaders like Maulana Bhashani for creating impediments in the acquisition of land by settlers. Similarly, Congress leaders like Ambikagiri Raichoudhury and political commentators like Jnananath Bora frequently reminded the party leadership (and Nehru in particular) of the similarities between Assam and Palestine on the immigration and settler question.

Hence, when the Indian subcontinent was eventually partitioned, peasants and workers who were tied to the land and work in Assam were faced with difficult choices even though there did not seem to be much evidence of widespread violence (as in Punjab and Bengal). In the colonial province of Assam, religion was not the only factor that determined the decision people made to stay (or move). Language played an equally important role, especially for those who were going to become religious minorities within India. For a section of Assamese nationalists of the time, it was even more important than religion.

Coincidentally, two recent books—both anchored in colonial Burma—have appeared to allow one to make sense of what is going on in contemporary Assam (and its transnational neighbourhood).

Amit Baishya’s translation of Debendra Acharya’s novel Jangam: A Forgotten Exodus in Which Thousands Died (2018), detailing the harrowing escape of Burmese-Indian peasants from Burma into Assam during World War II, show how 20^th century decolonisation was a violent process that disrupted the lives of many and led to a transfer of population from one part of the British Empire to another.

Anthropologist Anand Pandian and his grandfather M P Mariappan’s evocative book, Ayya’s Accounts: A Ledger of Hope in Modern India (2014), of the latter’s life journey, part of it as an evacuee from Burma, also detail the trials of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times and circumstances.

Both books are remarkable for their ability to depict the grainy details of uprooted lives that began with the unmooring of the British Empire. These events predated the formation of postcolonial nation-states and yet, almost 70 years hence, we find ourselves at similar crossroads again. Both books about Burma are memorable in the lack of rancour that the protagonists display for their Burmese neighbours, realising that they were all caught up in circumstances beyond their control. It was almost as though anti-colonial movements in the region would bring closure to these divisive political events.

Unfortunately they did not and as the current NRC process in Assam shows, the government added yet another layer of oppression to a large section of people who had placed their faith in the law.

Novelist Parismita Singh’s thoughtful and reflective pieces on the fallout of the NRC allude to the difficulties that such people have had to endure, as well as the potential for violence that it has brought in its wake (Singh 2018a and 2018b). These conditions force one to assess the future of debates around citizenship, not just in Assam but also in parts of the wider region that includes other states of the Indian union and countries such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and Nepal. After all, discussions about citizenship and belonging have been central to the wider region and the fallout of conflicts has been significant as well.

The data collection process for the NRC tended to disaggregate citizens on the basis of property and lineage. It also collated on the basis of ethnic identity, gender, and religion, leading to almost four million individuals scrambling for more documents and filing objections on how the process was carried out. In the following section, I address the evolution of the NRC and the kind of governmental resources that went into it. What was it? Was it like a census but with disciplinary consequences? Or was it a toothless exercise meant to pacify agitated opinions?

What was the NRC and How Was it Rolled Out?

The NRC has an interesting timeline in the history of modern Assam, especially after 1947. It followed the 1951 census and appeared in government circulars issued to reassure agitating groups in Assam that the immigration issue would be addressed by the administration. This meant taking recourse to laws like the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Foreigners (Tribunal) Order, 1939.

Such a process was in marked contrast to the upheavals of the tragic transfer of people between India and Pakistan in the west, where these laws were put aside to accommodate people escaping violence in West Pakistan. This difference between the two partitioned sectors of British India is important, as it alludes to the different ways regional governments responded to the humanitarian crisis.

Drawing attention to the government’s unwillingness to address the movement of people in the east, as well as the persistence of civic efforts to raise the issue of immigration, Sanjib Baruah underlined the different ways in which the Partition narrative appeared in Assam and showed how it continues to have an impact on contemporary debates (Baruah 2009, 2008). In his recent writings on the NRC, he has addressed the government’s lack of preparedness in conducting such a process, drawing attention to the manner in which key neighbours were not adequately informed of the outcomes of this process, especially when political rhetoric was directed towards a historically specific population from Bangladesh (Baruah 2018).

In 1951, people in Assam—especially Muslim cultivators and urban poor who lived along the East Pakistan border—were asked to fill out an enumeration form by the government as the initiation process of the NRC. As mentioned earlier, it was not for the first time since the country had attained independence from Britain that an enumeration process was being held. Ordinary citizens would have felt a sense of confusion, since the Census had just taken place. Moreover, those living along the Naga Hills were being asked a related set of questions regarding autonomy.

Hence, the idea of a government process involving various organs of the state but without much public debate, would have been seen as yet another administrative issue whose impacts were not immediately tangible, especially since it involved the declaration of documents and evidence by individuals to the administration.

This was in marked contrast to reaffirmation of independence after a plebiscite on the question of Naga territory and people being part of India that was undertaken by Naga leaders in the province of Assam. The referendum began on 16 May 1951 in the Kohima playground and involved only one ballot paper upon which every adult Naga was asked to stamp his or her view on the political future of the people. The plebiscite is central to the moral and political apparatus upon which Naga people continue to assert their independence and autonomy in India.

The 1951 NRC, on the other hand, was not central to the debates around citizenship for a greater part of the political history of Assam. No elected government took it upon itself to revise the NRC until 2010, a story that I deal with in the following section.

The capacity of the state to conduct such head-counts on the basis of documents that attest to property, occupation and proof of residence has increased manifold since 1951. However, as anthropologist Matthew Hull (2012) has pointed out, there is no clear correlation between an administration’s ability to document and how people respond to such demands (Hull 2012).

Most people who need to negotiate with the state know that there are theoretical (and practical) ways to create the kind of documentation in order to finish a job. In the recently concluded NRC in Assam, the government sought to minimise these shortcomings in two ways: (a) by throwing in the entire state machinery, including all departments of the Government of Assam, the Registrar General of India and the Supreme Court, into the process; and (b) using technology to iron out wink-wink deals that are attributed to the everyday workings of the state in developing countries.

2015 Edition of NRC

The 2015 edition of the NRC was more robust. It required individuals to show their legacy data that included having a family member’s name in the 1951 NRC and/or having the individual (or a direct family member’s name) included in the electoral rolls as of 24 March 1971, a day after the Bangladesh liberation war was formally announced.

In case a person was unable to find her/his name in the legacy data, the administration allowed for 12 other documents that could be shown as evidence, provided they were granted before 24 March 1971. These were: (i) land tenancy records, (ii) Citizenship Certificate, (iii) Permanent Residential Certificate, (iv) Refugee Registration Certificate, (v) Passport, (vi) LIC Policy, (vii) Government issued License/Certificate, (viii) Government Service/Employment Certificate, (ix) Bank/Post Office Accounts, (x) Birth Certificate, (xi) Board/University Educational Certificate, and (xii) Court Records/ Processes.

These documents have an aura of middle-class respectability to them. They attest to a person having ownership of property, access to education, jobs and documents that allow her/him to travel at will. However, a vast majority of itinerant working people—most of whom constitute Assam’s unorganised labour sector—were unable to produce these documents.

Reactions: A Place on the Spectrum

In this section, I map the range of positions that were articulated before, during and after the NRC process. In order to do so, I lay out the history of activism that informed the various parties that were intimately involved, including the tumultuous years of political violence that occurred during the 1990s and 2000s, centred on issues of territorial autonomy and sovereignty. Before one can make sense of the varying positions on the spectrum, one has to place the NRC within the context of radical activism that involved a wider range of actors than the ones frequently alluded to in Assam, namely the students unions and organisations that assert the rights of indigenous communities. In addition, as I show, there was also a certain degree of advocacy and urgency to address the issue that was shown by the Supreme Court of India, the Election Commission, and the Government in Assam.

In 1951, the NRC exercise was not extended to all districts of the state, which at the time included the current states of Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland. A little more than a decade later, the Prevention of Infiltration from Pakistan (PIP) scheme was launched in 1962 and its enforcement to identify and deport was entrusted to the Assam Police. The Foreigners Tribunal (FT) Order was passed in 1964, to further enable local state officials to deal with undocumented migration from across the border, especially from erstwhile East Pakistan.

These legal measures affected the lives of Muslim communities living along the border areas, who were often pushed back into East Pakistan. They also extended an incommensurable level of power to determine matters related to citizenship, to local functionaries of the state at the block and village level.

Perhaps the legal measures were not able to identify undocumented immigrants, since in 1969 the government—headed by Bimala Prasad Chaliha—put an end to the PIP scheme. In all this while, the NRC of 1951 was not revised, nor was there a concerted effort by civil society organisations to call for its revision.

A key moment in the reappearance of the NRC in its current form goes back to 1979 and the by-election following the death of Hiralal Patowary, a Member of Parliament from Mangaldai constituency in the North Bank of the river Brahmaputra. Prior to the by-election, the Election Commission of India announced that there were more than 40,000 names of “fake” voters on the list.

Assam Agitation

Following this, Assam experienced over four years of civic unrest, a period popularly called the Assam Agitation (or anti-foreigner agitation, by some). It was during the agitation that the Government of India enacted the Illegal Migrants (Determination) Tribunal (IMDT) Act, specifically for the state of Assam in 1983. Until then, suspected foreigners were identified and made to leave the country under the Foreigners Act that was enforced by the Foreigners Tribunals.

The IMDT was specifically aimed at migration from East Pakistan/Bangladesh and inserted 1971 as the cut-off year for undocumented immigrants to be considered for deportation from Assam. The implications of analysing this law in contemporary times are two-fold: (i) it laid the conditions for amending the laws for citizenship in India in 1985, from one that was based on naturalisation to one based on birth; and (ii) acknowledged the need for diplomacy, in addressing politics and history between India and Bangladesh. The second implication is important to bear in mind. It lays out the fundamental difference of opinion between those involved in the study and practice of Indian foreign policy and a populist political opinion on immigration within Assam.

The IMDT, until its repeal, was a cause for concern for representatives of both immigrant and indigenous communities, who viewed it as a problematic piece of legislation. For people of East Bengal heritage, it signified the persistence of doubt and accusations about their status. For indigenous communities, the law signified double standards in determining and bestowing citizenship rights on individuals in the country, placing the burden of proof on private individuals instead of the state.

The Assam Accord was signed in 1985 between Rajiv Gandhi (then Prime Minister of India) and representatives of the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) and All Assam Students Union (AASU) to end the conflict and civil strife. It had several clauses built around the detection and deportation of undocumented immigrants, especially in the riverine areas, invoking the pre-Independence Foreigners Act, 1946 and Foreigners (Tribunal) Order, 1939.

It is interesting to note that there were no legislative efforts within Assam to find an alternative to the old colonial laws upon which much of the administrative exercise of detection and deportation was taking place. However, there was no mention of the NRC even though its current exercise is seen as a promise made as a part of the Assam Accord.

When the IMDT was finally repealed for being at odds with constitutional provisions for granting citizenship in the rest of the country in 2005, the current chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal and leader of the All India United Democratic Front, Badruddin Ajmal, appeared as primary protagonists in the oppositional politics around the law. The repeal also elicited the involvement of Supreme Court of India in the issue and come up with an alternative that could assuage demands for harder borders and controls over immigration in Assam. It was only after the repeal of IMDT that updating the NRC appeared as a concrete proposal from the state to repair a relationship that had been marked by bloodshed, mistrust and antagonism between itself and civil society organisations in Assam (Gohain 2018).

I shall explain the origins of this conflict in the subsequent section, but it would help to foreground violence in underlining the spectrum of positions and advocacy around the NRC.

An important organisation in the activism around the process was the Assam Public Works (APW). It had come into existence in the year 2000 mainly to draw attention to the tensions arising from the armed conflict in Assam. In terms of political positions, it was squarely on the side of the government, making public pronouncements about the futility of the demands for self-determination and autonomy.

In 2009, the organisation filed a petition [WP (c) 279/2009] demanding that the NRC of 1951 be updated and undocumented migrants be deported from Assam. The government of Assam, then under the control of the Indian National Congress, attempted a pilot project in 2010 using the old 1951 forms that had references to Pakistan as a place of origin, leading to protests by the All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU) in many parts of western Assam during which four persons died on 21 July 2010 in Barpeta town.

Media reports of the incident talked about the protestors burning effigies of Tarun Gogoi, who was then the chief minister of Assam and Samujjal Bhattacharya, who was the advisor to AASU. Both figures have seldom been on the same side of the spectrum on identity politics in Assam. The former chief minister’s party was seen to be sympathetic to immigrants, partly due to the role that it played in opposing the Assam agitation in the early 1980s. The AASU advisor, on the other hand, was associated with a more robust nativist position on the matter.

The deaths in Barpeta forced the government of Assam to set up a cabinet sub-committee to decide on matters pertaining to the updating of the NRC in the state in 2012. Until that time, the issue had not become as divisive, or even publicly debated, as it would become only a few years later.

Supreme Court Intervention

In 2013, the Supreme Court of India intervened in the project. Justice Ranjan Gogoi, then a judge in the Supreme Court, instructed the state government to update the Court on the NRC, beginning a series of interventions that border on judicial advocacy. This nudge included demands for a timeline for completion of the process, a budget for undertaking the process, the immediate release of Rs 400 crore to the state government by the centre and the appointment of Prateek Hajela as the person to oversee the NRC update.

Operations however began in 2015, after the change in government in New Delhi. Two thousand five hundred seva kendras were set up across the state to help people understand the process for filing their applications.

In the process, many non-governmental, community- and student-based organisations were co-opted into aiding the government to ensure a smooth end to the NRC. Several commentators had brought up this issue in their defence of the NRC process (Ahmed 2018, Bora 2015, Bhuyan 2018). However, others pointed out the disturbing realities associated with the behaviour of local state representatives on the ground, especially in their ability to make it difficult for Muslims of East Bengali heritage to engage in the process (Kalita 2018). Bengali-speaking people and organisations from the Barak valley also protested against the NRC process, saying that it was designed to exclude them.

The United Nation’s (US) special rapporteur on minority issues Fernand de Varennes, also wrote a cautionary to the Government of Assam stating that any government-aided process that wilfully sought to deny citizenship rights to a section of the population based on religion, language or other social markers was tantamount to rendering them stateless. This view was endorsed by several nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) working on minority rights within India and outside, but was subjected to severe criticism by student bodies and commentators in the Brahmaputra Valley.

People, ideas and political positions swerve towards selective readings of the past, especially when it comes to the disruptions caused by colonialism. In this process, some histories are privileged, while others are relegated to the margins.

Amidst the various student and political organisations weighing in on the issue, NGOs such as the Prabhajan Virodhi Manch (Forum Against Infiltration) led by a senior advocate Upamanyu Hazarika have called for direct participation of citizens concerned about the rise of immigration from Bangladesh. The organisation’s website prominently displays the percentage of Muslim-populated districts in Assam as evidence of undocumented immigration and has been critical of the NRC’s inability to be more forthright in its mission to identify foreigners in Assam.

Ugandan anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani draws one’s attention to the weight of history, politics and the colonial encounter in the kind of views one asserts about brutal, polarising events. In his book When Victims Become Killers (2001), he showed how routine matters of governance have the ability to be twisted to malicious extents. Those who advocate such intent are able to bestow some kind of warped political logic on atrocities that are committed by one section of people upon another.

Perhaps there is something similar happening in India, where the example of Assam is pertinent. People, ideas and political positions swerve towards selective readings of the past, especially when it comes to the disruptions caused by colonialism. In this process, some histories are privileged, while others are relegated to the margins.

In the following section, I look at the manner in which colonial history has created different political spaces for communities in Assam. I do so in order to underline the importance of ethnicity in the control over resources and territory, since all three are very important to understanding the NRC process. I discuss some of the possible outcomes of the citizenship debate, specifically within Assam, but also in relation to its impact on a wider region. This is particularly important in light of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the Brahmaputra Valley by organisations and individuals who were supportive of the NRC.

At the centre of the contestations is the process of migration, or more precisely, of mobility of human beings forced to move by the sheer force of geographic and political considerations not entirely of their making.

Interestingly, those who opposed the NRC in the Barak Valley, especially organisations representing Bengali-speaking Hindus, came out to support the bill. Therefore, when angry Assamese students shout slogans like “Bangladeshis go back,” they confuse many outside the region who wonder why then are they opposed to the Citizenship Bill. It is harder then to explain that “Bangladeshi” is not a religious category, but sociological shorthand for a historical process that has muted regional specificities in nationalist debates.

Citizenship Debates

Against this bleak backdrop is what Irish poet Seamus Heaney in his Nobel acceptance speech called “the abattoir of history,” with a past full of violent expressions of identity. The triggers of the episodes of violence are many. Regardless of the spectrum of causes of conflict in the region, the recurring binaries that operate (in the conflict) are those of the migrant and native; or settler and indigenous; or citizen and foreigner, or the generic insider and outsider.

At the centre of the contestations is the process of migration, or more precisely, of mobility of human beings forced to move by the sheer force of geographic and political considerations not entirely of their making.

Such political predicaments are not unique to North East India. The evocation of fear of the outsider, hence the evolution of a narrative to “drive out” those who are seen as the mirror opposite is similar to what transpires in other parts of the world. As different actors use the mediated public sphere to articulate their grievances against migrants/outsiders/foreigners, they simultaneously point to perceptions of anarchy among the actors themselves.

Mobility (across national borders) in this case, is seen as a weakness of the state to police its boundaries (Alexseev 2006). If the features pages and editorials of vernacular dailies are anything to go by, migrants are seen to have an undue advantage in the mobility narrative (Kimura 2008).  This implies that the host populations are most likely to react to strategies they feel aid migrants and the conditions that aid migration, in a manner that is confrontational (rather than reconciliatory).

Whether it is the dominant narrative of the AASU (in the 1980s), or the campaign for recognition of rights of the people of Terai in the new Nepali constitution, movements in the region have always tested existing notions of citizenship.

Sometimes, movements have used the dominant narrative of constitutions, while there have been times when constitutional language has been rejected in favour of innovative alliances that defy prescribed political possibilities. These processes are best captured in the manner in which the national constitutions and laws reflects the concerns of the inhabitants of the region.

In India, the government has used the political events and discourse in Assam to amend the Constitution and push through a version of citizenship that is marked by blood ties and cultural ascriptions, where it has become harder for a person to be granted citizenship in India even if she has lived and worked in the country all her life, unless she can prove that she has parents or ancestors who were born here (Roy 2016).

However, it is puzzling to come to terms with the fact that some of India’s most abused citizens, living in one of South Asia’s most militarised regions, can in turn seek the disenfranchisement of those they see as their other.

This is why I often find myself making subtle alterations to my views on the NRC depending on the person I am speaking to. Even as I understand the anxieties of the indigenous political discourse, I find it odd that its proponents were unable to be critical of the statist discourse on citizenship, as they once did in their opposition to militarisation throughout the 1990s and first decade of the 21^stcentury. This is especially true given the manner in which they had come out in protest of the government’s blatantly anti-Muslim Citizen Amendment Bill. It has forced me to engage with ideas that I dislike and disagree with.

Ranabir Samaddar (2018) expresses a melancholic view of this predicament in his recent article. In positing citizenship and statelessness as inseparable twins, he concludes that the voices of support for the NRC are emblematic of a collective revulsion towards an imagination of mixed lives.

Myriad Ways to Co-exist

Yet, the political discourse framed as it is around notions of identity and history, does not do justice to the myriad ways in which people have managed to live with each other in Assam. These pathways of coexistence are evident in mundane spaces like weddings, funerals, village festivities during the harvest season and other events that allow for more layered lives to evolve.

For those trying to make sense of the contentious politics surrounding the NRC, there seems to little hope for reconciliation between communities that see each other in adversarial positions over a government-sponsored, advocacy-driven process. It is true that a focus on the NRC process alone can lead one to the conclusion that its supporters displayed a monochromatic view of society, history, and culture in Assam.

I recall asking a lawyer friend in Guwahati about the dogged defence of the NRC among left nationalist Assamese commentators in August 2018. He and I agreed that the manner in which our friends and colleagues were defending the NRC was somewhat anachronistic and belonged to 20^thcentury nationalist politics. It had alienated the “Miya” (Muslims of East Bengali heritage, most of whom speak a variety of regional dialect) people, many of whom had embraced the Assamese language and culture over the decades. My friend had spent much of his life fighting cases against the state’s human rights violations during the brutal years of counter-insurgency in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was presciently convinced that trusting the state to resolve the immigration issue was a mistake. We both agreed that the NRC was a distraction from other pressing matters that confronted the people of Assam.

As the streets of Guwahati were filled with angry young women and men protesting against the Citisenship Amendment Bill, we felt vindicated by our analysis but disturbed by the manner in which this anger was being used in social media and on the streets.

The Government of India cynical used the Citizen Amendment Bill to iron over any pretence of non-partisanship on the matter of resolving the conflicts arising from demands for autonomy and social justice. If anything the sense of collective ennui, even after it was allowed to lapse, is a reminder that the militarisation of politics and civil society in Assam has led to an untenable reality. Today, it is easier for middle-class Assamese men to reminisce about home and culture in distant places than it is for working-class Miya women who have been born and raised in the chars (seasonal river islands along the Brahmaputra in Assam and Bangladesh) to find their names in the NRC. Yet, asserting secular ethics and quotidian examples of tolerance will be left to those who have been systematically excluded by the government.

The NRC involved colossal expense for the state and civil society in Assam. It has disrupted relationships and forced people and organisations to revisit old colonial debates about autonomy and social justice. As the protests against its sinister cousin—the Citizenship Amendment Bill—gain ground, one needs to imagine an alternative discourse that is built on dialogue and diplomacy. Such a discourse could start with conversations between governments and exchanges between writers, students, and artists in the wider region that incorporates our transnational neighbourhood.

First published as The Crisis of Citizenship in Assam in The India Forum

The post Not So Short Guide to the Crisis of Citizenship in Assam appeared first on RAIOT.

Featured image “Still Life, Three Skulls” – Paul Cézanne

The past by the virtue of being the testimony of experiences, decisions, and actions, is deeply etched in one’s memory. Time cannot replace the past but its memories can be negotiated in terms of what one wants to remember, recall or forget and erase deliberately. The process becomes hard if the past tends to be traumatic. During such attempts in making peace with one’s past, any intervention from an outsider may leave fresh scars, especially when such interventions are not positive but a cruel reminder of what people in Assam have once witnessed and have learnt to live with, without a closure. Gupto hoitya, popularly referred to as the secret killings in Assam is one such past, we reluctantly remember.

Politics in Assam had a turning point when a dismembered leg of an adult human was found on a dead stream in the village of Hudumpur at the outskirts of Guwahati by two journalists in June 1999. This discovery brought in the discourse of mystery and secrecy surrounding many killings and disappearances in Assam.

1990s was a turbulent phase that witnessed violence manifested in killings, extortions, and abductions, unleashed by the insurgent organization, United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) during their armed struggle towards Assam’s sovereignty. To counter this insurgency, Assam witnessed various security tactics. While the early 1990s saw Operation Bajrang and Operation Rhino, the onus to maintain internal security was transferred to the combined forces of police, army, and paramilitary under the Unified Command Structure (UCS) in 1997. While the insurgents and the counterinsurgents constructed the binary of what is good and what is not for a better future of the common people in Assam, either side failed to protect the civilians from the tussle of their power game. Every killing was justified either in the name of nation or disguised as an encounter, none was claimed to be a mistake from either side. During this time, slowly and steadily secret killings, which otherwise was perceived as individual cases of murder, turned into patterned and deliberate attempts targeting a particular group of people. The targets included family members and relatives of ULFA members, suspected ULFA, closed aides and sympathizers of ULFA.

In his book, Betrayal of North East: The Arrested Voice, former IPS officer Hiranya Kumar Bhattacharyya writes about a two-fold strategy behind the secret killings in Assam. Firstly, pressurize the relatives of ULFA leaders and cadres to desist from their unlawful activities and secondly, create an atmosphere of fear psychosis preventing the public from sheltering ULFA cadres. However, it was evident that human rights activists as well as anyone critical of the then incumbent state government fell prey to the secret killers who usually were masked gunmen coming mostly after midnight. They either killed the targets spontaneously or picked them up to be killed and thrown somewhere else.

Ananta Kalita of Hajo

One such classic case which opened the lid off the apparatus of secret killing was when a member of a students’ organization Asom Jatiyotabadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) Ananta Kalita was picked from his home at Hajo, around 36 km from Guwahati in September 1999, kept captive at Assam Police Battalion, Kahilipara for two days and was shot at point blank range and pushed down a cliff at Jorabat. But he survived to expose the pattern of such killings and the involvement of the state government, the police, and surrendered members of ULFA where the armed forces at different check-gates in Assam were kept in loop.

Justice K.N.Saikia Commission

In 2001, the episodes of secret killings turned into a vital political catalyst to overthrow the then incumbent regional political party Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). Tarun Gogoi led-Congress came to power in Assam taking the secret killings as their prime issue of electoral campaign. As promised, Justice K.N.Saikia Commission was formed in 2005 to investigate into the killings. The reports submitted by the commission in 2007 described the killings as ‘remote-orchestrated’ and renamed it to be ‘Ulfocide.’ The commission brought in compensation but not a closure for the affected families. The commission cited the absence of ‘circumstantial evidence’ in implicating anyone for the heinous crimes. However, it left enough scope for the people in Assam to map the pattern of secret killings.

As a reader, if you expect to know the secret killers by the end of this article, you shall be deeply disappointed. So, you still have time to skip through this article, just like the way we have skipped this part of the past so conveniently all these years. A section in academic books, a footnote in articles, a commentary in electronic media or allegations and counter-allegations during election campaign, that’s where we have dumped down the secret killings in Assam, again very conveniently. Everyone I went to with an honest intention to study these brutal series of killings suspected me, refused to meet me (initially), switched off their phones after they had very wisely saved my number, gave me names I should approach and the names I should not approach, has only de-motivated me to pursue interest in this area any further. Why? An answer to this ‘why’ shall unveil the ‘secret’ during these killings. That’s why my intention is not to unveil this ‘why’ but to condemn recent events in Assam that have brought back only insignificant scars to the survivors and families of victims.

The recent events that compel me to initiate this conversation today are four.

One, on 3^rd of September 2018, the constitution of Justice K.N.Saikia Commission was declared invalid by the Gauhati High Court on the ground that the commission was constituted without discontinuing the previous J.N.Sharma Commission through a required resolution in the Assembly and a gazette notification. This verdict came based on a writ petition filed by former Chief Minister of Assam Prafulla Kumar Mahanta in 2008. At a time when 35 cases have been officially registered and families of around fifty people covered in Justice K.N.Saikia Commission received compensation, quashing the commission reveals an attempt to erase the documentation of the event.

Two, at a time when the incumbent political party in the state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attempted to silence the dissenting voices from across the state against the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016, AGP not only opposed the move but also three of its ministers resigned from the ministry. At such a juncture, BJP brought in the conversation on secret killings at public rallies and local news channels to represent the ‘disloyalty’ of AGP towards the people of Assam often forgetting to mention the nature of governance under the then powerful National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at Centre during that period. Secret killings have maligned the political journey of the regional party in Assam.

Three, as stated earlier, secret killings are always remembered during elections in Assam. This makes the current time relevant to recall and rephrase narratives. For example, former Chief Minister of Assam Tarun Gogoi from Congress spilt the bean recently when he accused the then NDA government at the Centre to have pressurized him to continue the secret killings. The irony of this statement is his silence when he was in power in Assam for three terms (2001-2016) during which investigations into the killings just dragged on.

Apart from these three stances of three political parties at different phases of power politics, there is a fourth event that may compel one to remember the secret killings today and that is to empower the Assam Rifles to arrest anyone without a warrant and to search any place in suspicion in the border towns of five states in the Northeast India- Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland. Northeast India has already seen the ghost of Armed Forces (Special) Powers Act (AFSPA) and the scars haven’t been healed yet. At such a time, such news from the Central Government is definitely contradictory when the government claims to have achieved peace in the Northeast. Interestingly, the decision was withdrawn within 48 hours. Such notifications continue to exhibit the North East Region (NER) as periphery and as a field for pilot study where laws and rules are imposed arbitrarily despite the growing significance of the region not just nationally but also internationally and intellectually.

I also write this article in the birth month of journalist and human rights activist Parag Kumar Das who would have turned 58 years on 24^th of February 2019, if alive, if not being brutally killed by unidentified gunmen. His death matters to be remembered here for many reasons. I shall cite three.

One, he was the founder of Manab Adhikaar Sangram Samiti (MASS), a human rights organization formed aftermath Operation Bajrang in Assam in 1991 that challenged the state against the extra-judicial powers exercised under AFSPA and the organization recorded hundreds of cases of fake encounters, killings, and disappearances in the Assam of 1990s. Being a fearless journalist, he wrote on self-determination and was critical of those surrendered combatants of ULFA who were engrossed in the politics of terror in the state. If he and his opinions did not matter, why was he killed?

Two, Parag Kumar Das’s death did not stop the activities of MASS rather gave the organization a hope to fight injustices. My encounter with the families affected by secret killings bear witness to this when the survivors and family members of victims acknowledge the support of MASS in an environment of suspicion and fear twenty years ago. As a result, the MASS activists became the new targets of the secret killers.

Three, the kindergarten kid in me witnessed the funeral of Parag Kumar Das on 17^th of May 1996 at Nabagraha crematorium in Guwahati with my family. My blurred memories from the time continue to remind me of a woman shouting and sloganeering when the mortuary van reached the crematorium. That was traumatic for a then 5 years old. During one such candid conversation with acclaimed journalist and novelist Ratna Bharali Talukdar in Guwahati, I made some sense of what I was trying to remember and why it was important for me. She said the generation born in early 1990s inherited negativity and memories of hate from Assam’s violent past and the only way to make sense of such brutality is to talk about it.

Justice K.N.Saikia Commission submitted four reports covering 35 cases that included 50 victims of secret killings in Assam during the period of 1998-2001. This is an official data. No one has an accurate figure. While some claim it to be around 110 killings, some say it to have exceeded 400. However, one thing was quite certain that many cases remain unregistered due to people’s fear in losing someone else from the family. I shall elaborate only one such case covering six members of a family who were shot dead and their house was bombarded at Sivasagar. Unfortunately, no one from the family survived to narrate me the horrific experience, neither did their surviving daughters could navigate down the memory line as they were very young and married off by then. The official documentation of the case in commission reports failed to capture the intensity of the brutality committed. I visualize the case from the eyes of a former woman cadre of ULFA, who has been the first person to witness the massacre, the following day. Two days later, she went on to join ULFA.

In 2016 I met Barsha (name changed) for the first time at Lakwa in Sivasagar while I was researching on the lives of women in ULFA. Today (in 2019), she must be around 45. In 2019, I went back to her for a story she narrated then, but did not complete and I never asked. I decided to revisit that story for that moved me in the last three years to question the very morality of insurgents and the counterinsurgents in the region. At a time when politicians in Assam have made a mockery of the secret killings, I want to argue which law allows such a death? A death so brutal, the ashes of which were witnessed by the neighbours of Umakanta Gogoi and his entire family at No.2, Borbil Gaon under Kakotibari Police Station at Sivasagar district in Assam. Reading the novella Arunimar Swades (Arunima’s Homeland) by award winning novelist Arupa Patangia Kalita may give one goose bumps that seems to be inspired by the cruelty carried out during secret killings in Assam.

UMAKANTA GOGOI

Umakanta Gogoi, who was around 57 years, led a simple village life as a farmer in the interiors of Sivasagar. Before he was killed in the village alongwith his wife who was a homemaker and their four children, they had just planted new saplings around their thatched house, where they had shifted few months back. Two of their daughters were married off. Amongst the four at home, the eldest daughter and the son were pursuing their undergraduate studies, the other daughter was in twelfth standard and their youngest daughter was in sixth standard. However, things were not as simple as it seems to be in rural Assam as the region has remained ULFA’s stronghold ever since its inception. Till Operation Bajrang was declared in 1990 and ULFA was banned, ULFA cadres would frequent almost every house for food, shelter, and for recruiting new cadres. ULFA’s socially motivated everyday welfare activities in the 1980s popularized the armed organization throughout Assam and people inculcated a welcoming attitude towards its members. However, the ban on ULFA had severe repercussions on the people who failed to make sense of this enforced alienation towards the organization. Neither did the ULFA cadres reflect upon their association with the villagers which was pushing many households into grave risks. It is claimed officially as well as in oral narratives that the victims of the secret killings had sheltered the cadres. Ironically, former ULFA cadres confess that there was hardly any house in the interiors of rural Assam who didn’t give them food when they asked for. The sense of hospitality and the sense of an armed struggle were poorly perceived by either side. The killing of families under such circumstances has left deep regrets even in the minds of the former combatants. Umakanta Gogoi’s family was no exception.

Barsha was the age of Gogoi’s eldest daughter who lived in the same neighbourhood. During the late 90s, she got involved in women’s collective that would pursue the issues of human rights in the locality. Apart from that, Barsha had a difficult childhood under poverty and she was in-charge of her young siblings after the demise of her mother. This compelled her to give up on her schooling at the face of familial responsibility. She found solace with Gogoi’s family at times of despair. Referring to Umakanta Gogoi and his wife as borta and borma (Assamese terms for addressing anyone elder to one’s father) respectively, Barsha recall how the memories of 11^th of September 1999 continue to haunt her every day. She contemplates how death is destined as she was to stay with Gogoi’s family that night but could not make through as she was engaged with work at the collective. Similarly, Gogoi’s son did not live at home during nights due to regular army search operations that left the young boys vulnerable to be arrested on suspicion. However, that night the entire family stayed back home together.

On the evening of 10^th of September, the two elder daughters of Gogoi went to pick Barsha up for a sleepover. One of the sisters asked Barsha to comment on the newly painted red nail colour on her legs. Barsha says she was healthy and had pretty legs. While the daughters were waiting for Barsha hoping she would complete her work, their mother went to a neighbour’s home that witnessed an encounter, the previous day. While the ULFA cadre was killed at that house and a conventional bomb was recovered, the family members were harassed by police, army, and masked men. One of the male members was shot on his foot during altercation. The atmosphere at No.2, Borbil village was engrossed in fear and suspicion during those days. Everyone would stay indoors after dusk as news of secret killings spread across the state. The strong army vigil also restricted the movement of insurgents during this period. When Barsha could not complete her work, she asked the sisters to return as it was dusk.

Late night around 3 am, neighbours claim to have heard an explosion. However, no one had the nerve to go out and see what had actually happened. Early morning, the next day news reached Barsha that Umakanta Gogoi’s house was burnt down. She instantly got ready to visit the house and asked her neighbours to accompany her. Nobody went. While she was walking down the road towards the house, people had started gathering on their doorways, but as she reiterates nobody agreed to enter the burnt house. Barsha narrates,

“It was around 7 am. When I reached their home, I could just see the broken and burnt thatched walls of the house. There was a strange silence. As I entered their doorway, I shouted thrice, Bai, Bai, Bai (addressing elder sister in Assamese). There was no one but hearing my voice, their ducks started quacking and the cows mooed. I leaned on a broken wall and tried to figure out where the people could be. Instinctively, I turned back and trembled at the sight of a dog eating human flesh. There was blood all around that left me in shock for the next five minutes. I went out of the house shouting in fear and told one of the neighbours who had gathered outside the house by then to go inform the gaon burah (village headman). I ran along three villages to inform the other village headmen. I met my father on way ploughing in the field and told him, Bai’hotor ghor khon aru nai (Elder sister and her family are no more). Hurriedly I told him to send my younger sisters to inform the people all around and I informed a local journalist. By the time I returned, the house was surrounded by hundreds of people. There was police too by then. I decided to enter the house again and along with other close neighbours, we were the ones who collected the pieces of human flesh in bed covers. This time I could make sense of what I saw inside the house. Bai dekhi bhoi lagisil. Soku duta ase, tolor nai, pasfale nai, muror khini beror usorot pori ase, eta bhoyonkor drishyo (I was frightened to see the eldest daughter’s eyes intact on her severed head on one corner of the room which was a dangerous sight). The second daughter who asked me to comment on her nails the previous day, her severed legs lay at the other corner of the room. I could recognize her by the red nail paint. How will it feel? Then I saw a clump of intestines hanging on the entrance of another room in the dilapidated house. It didn’t affect me and I wanted to see where others were. Some of us started breaking down the thatched walls. I saw their brother lying on the floor in blood with his legs bent. He was shot by a bullet. He was wearing lungi (wrapper for men). Next to him laid the body of the youngest child. I did not see any bruise upon her. She was a kid and didn’t even attain her puberty. A little away borma’s body was lying on the floor fully naked. That sight made me shout against the sinners who must have raped her before killing. When someone tried to pick up borta, the lower part of his body, mostly in intestine form fell down on the floor. It was a daunting display. The furniture burnt into pieces and there was a deep hole in the middle of the house. May be that’s where they placed the bomb and may be the daughters were closer to that spot which affected upon their bodies so brutally. After seeing all these, I got unconscious.”

(Barsha, Interview taken at Sivasagar in November 2016 and January 2019)

As the writer, I leave this story to be analyzed by the common people at a time when occasional and official narratives dominate the order of day. Episodes like that of secret killings are often narrated anticipating who could be the possible killer. However, I hope to find an alternative voice, the voices of those who had remained a death statistics in counterinsurgency accounts. Absence of justice or even apologies has left the survivors, families of the victims, and the witnesses not just lose their faith on governance but have harmfully affected their mental health in post-conflict societies. Umakanta Gogoi’s family is just one case. There may be a hundred more. At such times, petty politics over the secret killings not just make the politicians in the state look dirty but also brings an embarrassment to the democratic institutions of the country that failed to bring justice to the victims that included grandparents, aged parents, pregnant women and children. Episodes like these trigger justifications, not a closure.

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Photos by Saidur Rahman, Hojai

Kulsuma Begum’s son was evicted even before he was born. On 2^nd, 4^th and 8^th March Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council carried an eviction drive at Sarkebasti at the border of East Karbi Anglong and Hojai districts. Eviction was carried out at Sarkebasti’s Bahadur Bazaar, Islampur, Choudhury School Block, Ambari etc. Almost 580 families were evicted and 2700 people rendered homeless. And Kulsuma Begum was one of them.

Heavily pregnant, Kulsuma was dragged out of her home and physically assaulted. She was left out in the open bleeding. Kulsuma Begum went into labour after being hit by police and gave birth to her son in an open field. Not a single official present took any step to make arrangements to provide any kind of medical help. When questioned, officers of ADC rank and ACF did not bother to answer. It was the local people along with some web news portal journalists who raised some money and sent Kulsuma first to the Lanka PHC. From there she was shifted to Nagaon’s Bhogeshwari Phukononi Civil Hospital and then because of her extreme critical condition, she was shifted to Guwahati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH).

On 11^th March Kulsuma Begum died and her newborn son was in GMCH. Kulsuma and her son must be the latest victims of the eviction drive that the state of Assam witnessed. She must have also been someone overlooked completely by this government’s large number of women centric policies. Her death which was the result of denial of medical service is a gross violation of human rights. But till date no official has been held accountable for such callousness.

Eviction in Assam

This was however not the first instance in which people were evicted without any proper compensation. The eviction drive started in 2016 in Kaziranga and was carried out in many parts of Assam left a large number of people homeless. The discourse around eviction has fitted cosily in the narrative of BJP of saving the land and rights of the khilonjiyas or the indigenous people from ‘foreigners’.

It is a fact that a large part of reserved land of government has been encroached upon. But more often than not, these are people who have lost their land to erosion. Assam till now has lost 7.4% of its land to erosion. Those displaced in erosion are often forced to take up living in such government areas. A large section of these people are from the chars or sand bars – which are again more prone to yearly flooding and erosion. Belonging to the community of Muslims of East Bengal origin, they are often targeted and doubted of being illegal immigrants.

After Kaziranga, eviction was carried out in Sipajhar, Chanderdinga, Amchang to mention a few. Most of these areas were grazing reserves and were inhabitated by people who have lost their home and hearth to the Brahmaputra. In Chanderdinga, homes of people who had patta was also demolished. Locals even accused of Forest Reserve officials charging money in the name of giving respite from eviction. But nothing saved their homes. In January of 2017, these people were forced to live in makeshift tents on the banks of the river.

The Spectre of Illegal Bangladeshis

Every act of eviction is preceded by a problematic discourse – illegal immigrants have encroached on government land and needed to be evicted. Local news channels, certain groups in social media work in tandem to conjure the illegal immigrant encroachers. In many cases like Sipajhar, civilians were also seen taking part in demolishing the homes of these encroachers. However closer investigation proved such an understanding false. In case of Kaziranga, it was proven that a large number of Assamese families were also evicted. When they proved that they were settled by the then AGP government, they were promised compensation which is yet to be handed over. Journalists reporting from the ground also proved that these areas did not belong to the Kaziranga sanctuary but have been newly acquired. When protestors came out demanding compensation, police opened fire and killed Fakhrul Islam and Anjuma Khatun.

In Sipajhar, the case was of exploitation at multiple levels. People who have been displaced by erosion moved to Sipajhar and paid hefty sums to local people for land which belonged to the government. But later these very people demanded that the settlers be evicted due to some personal feud. Local miscreants also got involved and set their homes on fire. While local news channels were busy declaring these people as doubtful citizens, not a channel wondered why they were only evicted and not detained! Also no queries were made into the act of illegally selling government land.

This myth of evicting illegal immigrants was completely busted when Amchang eviction took place. It rendered a large number of people belonging to the indigenous tribes homeless. It was only after strong protests that this eviction was stayed. The class bias of the state apparatus also became obvious when a cement factory was left out while common people were evicted.

Coming to the latest incident of eviction, the boundary of the districts Karbi Anglong and Hojai are yet to be finalised. Those who were evicted are questioning the very legality of this eviction as they claim to be within Hojai district and the eviction was carried out by Karbi Anglong administration.

Why Eviction Now?

The eviction left a trail of demolished homes burnt to ashes. The only school of that area Choudhury Para Primary School was also demolished leaving the future of almost 200 students uncertain. Books, 6 quintals of rice could not salvaged, laments the Head Master.

The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti’s Hojai Committee staged a protest on 8^th March demanding that eviction be stayed till the boundary of the two districts is finalised. But even before the protest was complete police, army and paramilitary forces attacked the unarmed protestors. The lathicharge left more than 30 people injured. Videos of the lathicharge doing rounds on social media showed women with broken arms, bloodied men, unconscious students. Victims of the eviction and the brutal lathicharge claimed that civilians from Karbi Anglong district also took part in the violence and the looting that followed.

Even before the eviction was complete, an Assam web news portal InsideNe ran a news with headlines that read “Illegal Bangladeshi settlers evicted from Karbi Anglong”. It was only after much criticism that the word ‘alleged’ was included. Like every other case of eviction, here also the issue of illegal immigrants was used to render some kind of legitimacy to this inhuman practice. As of now, the eviction has been stayed till 20^th March by a court order.

Local residents and protestors pointed out the inaction by Hojai administration. They said that even when negotiation was going on between the two district administrations, eviction continued. One is left wondering why such placid response from the state. One cannot deny the fact that the issue of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 have alienated a large chunk of Assamese people from the ruling party. The government was seen as going back on its promise of safeguarding the jati, mati and bheti in Assam. The ruling party have also been accused of subverting the NRC which might have given some direction to the problem of illegal immigration. But now with the government hell bent on passing the CAB and legitimising immigrants till 2014, NRC already seems redundant. In such a scenario – is eviction being politically used to other Muslims of East Bengal origin and keep the dichotomy of ‘us’ and ‘them’ thriving? Is this eviction and the invocation of the spectre of illegal immigrants encroaching the land of the khilonjiyas a last minute attempt to win over Assamese voters just before the Lok Sabha election?

(With inputs from Saidur Rahman, President, Hojai KMSS and Ashraful Islam, Working President, SMSS)

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The contested citizenship question in Assam has real human costs. What follows is a list of NRC/D-Voter suicides compiled by Independent researchers based mostly on the deaths that got publicly reported. The list was sent to us by Abdul Kalam Azad.

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