Colonial politics of labelling communities have had disastrous consequences which continue to impact the lives of the colonized. Identities were created and circulated through this act which in turn had categorised, included and excluded the communities living in the colonial fringe. Karbis were labelled ‘heathen’, ‘worshippers of malignant demons’, ‘unwarlike’, ‘timid’, ‘coward’ ‘bloodthirsty’ and such other colonial vocabularies which continue to haunt them. Colonial authorities persisted with the misnomer, ‘Mikir’, over the ancient indigenous nomenclature Karbi and the label remained in force for centuries. Colonial categorisation of Karbis into Hills and Plains simply because of geographical locations continues to divide and distance the tribe psychologically, socially, culturally and politically. The colonizers however saw in the Karbis their ‘industriousness’ as it served the colonial enterprise.

Living with Labels 

Colonial labelling is ‘a political act since labels include and exclude.’ 1Retzlaff, Steffi, 2005 – What’s in a Name? The Politics of Labelling and Native Identity Construction, The Canadian Journal of Native Studies XXV, 2(2005); pp. 609-626 The colonial administrators and ethnographers preferred the misnomer Mikir over Karbi, the indigenous nomenclature, goaded by local assamese intellectuals like Gunabhiram Barua.2 Barua, Gunaviram, 1857 (reprint) – Aham Buranji, Publication Board of Assam. Karbis have been singled out for being ‘unambitious’, ‘cowardly’ and ‘wanting in martial spirits’ 3Stewart, R Leut., 1855 – Notes on Northern Cachar, J.A.S.B. Vol. XXIV and taken advantage of for being ‘unwarlike’ and ‘peaceful’. Sir Charles James Lyall and Edward Stackk, the first ethnographers to write on the Karbis, also called them ‘mild and unwarlike’ who asserted that the ‘Mikir have never been a warlike race…’ 4Sir Charles James Lyall and Edward Stack, The Mikirs 1908; 5, 22The American Baptist Missionaries described the Karbis as ‘demon worshippers’ 5Moore, PH Mrs, 1901 –Twenty Years in Assam; Baptist Mission Press and labelled them as ‘savage and bloodthirsty’ 6Montgomery, HB, 1919- Following the Sunrise – A Century of Baptist Missions 1813-1913, published in connection with the Centennial of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society by the American Baptist Publication Society, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis. The ‘distinction’ of ‘Hill Meekirs and the Plain Meekirs’7Stewart, R Leut., 1855 – Notes on Northern Cachar, A.S.B. Vol. XXIVthough historically belonging to the same ethnic group was insisted upon and dividing them under these invented categories in the colonial constitution making exercise through Government of India Act, 1935. 8Syiemlieh, Davi R, 2014 – On the Edge of Empire – Four British Plans for North East India 1941-1947, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

The psychological, cultural and political divide between the ‘Hill and Plain’ Karbis still continue who are paying the price of colonial politics of labelling. The myth has persisted and disadvantaged the Karbis in more ways as Independent India has retained the similar framework with active conspiracy of the State of Assam.

We will critically analyse the impact of colonial labelling of Karbis to question the modern myth of how ‘backwardness’ is measured in terms of ‘laziness’, ‘peacefulness’ with ‘timidity’, ‘unwarlike’ with ‘racial inferiority’ and how these invented categories have traumatized them.

Industrious Karbis 

No colonial sources have ever described Karbis as ‘lazy’. Rather, in various available documents, Karbis have always been hailed as ‘industrious’. American Baptist missionaries too likewise have praised the Karbi trait of being ‘particularly quiet and industrious.’

Rev. J Rae of Serampore Mission, the first European to have ever visited the Mikir areas in April 1836, ten years after the infamous Yandabu Treaty, had given a fair detail of the tribe existing then in his appeal to Capt. Jenkins in these words:

The Mikirs never cultivate the valleys between the hills. On my asking why they did not do so, their answer was, that they had no cattle, and where were they, being such poor people to get them? Yet their appearance did not indicate poverty, for, as I passed along, I saw their women and children covered with silver bangles and ear-rings etc. Some had brass, mixed with silver; and every village seemed to have an abundance of fowls, pigs, and sometimes goats. The dhan was quite abundant, and was stored in houses: the coolies that came with me from Kazi Runga to the first Mikir village, told me, that the Mikirs sometimes supplied the people of the plains with dhan when it was scarce there. This must be owing to the more industrious habits of the Mikirs, who are able to get a sufficiency for their own wants, and even to spare to others, from their scanty and hard soil. The Mikirs are very different from their lazy apathetic neighbours, the Assamese in the plains; when it is also considered what the former people use only a small hoe for cultivation, we must certainly speak well of their industry.9Calcutta Christian Observer, April 1836

The colonial authority was meticulous in its observation of the various tribal communities and their cultural and physical traits. William Robinson in his accounts of the Karbis of 1841 had described:

‘That division of the Nowgong district known as the Mikir hills, occupies a tract of hilly country covering an area of 1710 square miles. These hills are occupied by a fine athletic and industrious race of people, called Mikir.’ 10Robinson, William, 1841 – A Descriptive Account of Assam: With a Local Sketch of Geography; Ostell and Lepage, British Library, Bishop’s College Press, Calcutta

Robinson, further taking note from J Rae’s observation of 1836, also had reiterated the fact that Karbis were ‘industrious’:

‘The occupation of the Mikir consists chiefly of agriculture, in which cotton forms a principal article; rice is also very generally cultivated. These articles are usually grown on the slopes of the hills, the Mikirs seldom availing themselves of the valleys. They have notwithstanding an abundance of grain, and in times of scarcity, occasionally have the means of supplying the people of the plains. This must chiefly be attributed to the more industrious habits of the Mikirs, who from their hard and scanty soil, are able to procure a sufficiency to meet their own wants, and even to spare a portion of their hard earnings to others.’

Lieut. R Stewart in his report summed up in the ‘Notes on Northern Cachar’ (1855) labelled the Karbis as ‘unambitious’ and remarked that:

‘The single exception to the prevalence of warlike feelings and habits in these hills is afforded by the Meekirs, and industrious but unambitious people in North Cachar. Though they carry spear and dhao, they use them only for the purposes of cultivation and wood-cutting. Literally, they have beaten their swords to ploughshares. The result is that they are the constant prey of the Angamee Nagas, and other tribes, whose trade is war, and whose chief joys are those of the fight. The Meekirs must be classed with the Bayeiye and the Banuyeti of Africa; they are the Quakers of the Indian hills, as the latter are of the African plains.’ 11The North British Review, Volume 38, 1863; 402

Dismissing the traditional values and institutions of the Meekirs, Stewart also commented that

‘The Meekirs appear to have no government; nor can it be imagined for what purpose a people could require government who have abandoned the idea of defending themselves or their property.’

Stewart had also labelled all the tribes of the region as ‘savage tribes’ or ‘naked savages’ that invariably included the ‘Meekirs.’ In fact, the label ‘savage’ finds regular mentions in almost all the colonial and missionary accounts that described the hill tribes of the North East.

Horatio Bickerstaff Rowney repeated with the same dismissive colonial attitude and labelled the Karbis as ‘not warriors’ and ‘cowardly’ but found them ‘laborious’ by observing that

‘the Hill Meekirs are not warriors. But if cowardly, they have the credit of being very laborious, and raise rice and cotton in abundance, the latter of which they sell to advantage. The only weapon they carry is the dao, of which no use is made except for cultivation and wood cutting. Their dress consists of two pieces of cotton cloth dyed with red stripes and sewn together like a bag, with aperture left for the head and arms; and this is put on in a manner of a shirt.’ 12Rowney, Horatio Bickerstaff, 1882 – The Wild Tribes of India, Thos De La Rue & Co

WW Hunter in his account of 1881 maintained the Karbis as being ‘universally described as the most pacific and industrious of all the hills tribes of Assam…’ who cultivated cotton in large areas or 3846 acres (9602 Bighas) according to the Revenue Survey of 1872. He went on to assert that ‘They are a fine, athletic, but poor in spirit, and somewhat devoid of personal courage…’ In the same account, Hunter reiterated that ‘As a rule they are a laborious people…’ 13Hunter, WW, 1886 –Imperial Gazetteer of India (Vol.X), 2^nd edition, Trubner & Co., London

Hunter’s observations give some important insights into the changing socio-economic dynamics among the Karbis. He noted:

‘Each little hamlet manages its own affairs. In their own hills, the Mikirs cultivate cotton and summer rice, according to the nomadic system of agriculture known as jum, in forest clearings made mostly on the slopes of the hills. Their implement is the hoe; cattle are not kept, and milk is regarded as impure. In the plains, however, they are giving up this prejudice and learning to cultivate winter rice with plough.’

From simple hoe to plough, from hill slopes to wet cultivation in the plains, the transition is remarkable. This transition must have made a tremendous impact on the economic life of the Karbis. This change in the mode of production during the early colonial days was indeed a remarkable phase in Karbi history.

GD Walker, the author of the first Karbi dictionary, ‘A Dictionary of the Mikir Language’ (1952) had in his preface to the book offered a theory of why the tribe is ‘unwarlike’. According to him, the language had been ‘practically one and the same throughout’ which was then spread over a ‘wide area from Golaghat to Kamrup and the Khasi Hills beyond Gauhati, and from the Cachar plains near Silchar to the forests north of Bishnath in Darrang’ because of the ‘unwarlike character of the Mikir people.’

Maj John Butler who had toured the Karbi territory as a military officer described that ‘…the Meekirs seem devoid of anything approaching to a martial spirit…’ but praised them for their quality of being ‘…a quiet industrious race of cultivators…’ 14Bulter, Maj. John, 1855 –Travels and Adventures in the Province of Assam; Smith, Elder & Co., 65, Cornhill

From 1826 onwards, the British started imposing its administrative system in the newly acquired territories and had deputed special officers in each area to understand the various tribal people, their social, cultural, religious and even physical traits. The ‘first European who ever penetrated into that country’ Rev. J Rae of the Serampore Mission stationed at ‘Gowahatti’ wrote ‘an appeal’ in February 1836 to Capt. Jenkins urging him ‘to endeavour at the same time to show the feasibility of doing something for their moral and religious instruction…’ wherein a fair account of the economic life of those inhabiting in the Karbi areas of ‘Noagong’ was given. The American Baptist Missionaries also similarly described the Karbis as ‘particularly quiet and industrious’  in a ‘Report of the American Baptist Mission to Assam, 1845’. The Karbis were also described as ‘shy and timid with strangers and usually bolt into the jungle on seeing a European’ as Waddell had observed. He further noted that ‘In the vicinity of the Hinduised Assamese the Mikirs are rapidly however giving up their primitive habits…’ 15Waddell, LA, 1901 & 2000 –The Tribes of the Brahmaputra Valley – A Contribution to their Physical Types and Affinities’, Logos Press, New Delhi

A fairly elaborate account of the Karbis in the ‘Notes on Northern Cachar’ repeats the same observation:

‘The Meekirs though cowardly are laborious and persevering, and are considered the best subjects in N. Cachar, keeping clear of courts, paying revenue regularly, and working hard at their vocation as cultivators. They rear rice and cotton in abundance, disposing of the latter to Cossiahs and to merchants who come up the Dyung. When not employed in agriculture they fell large trees, construct canoes, and float them down to market in Assam, realizing considerable profit by this manufacture. The labour of their cultivation is greater than that of the other tribes, as bamboo jungle is scarce in their locality, and they are necessitated to clear forest land.’16Asiatic Society of Bengal, Edited by the Secretaries, Vol. XXIV, Nos. I to VII, 1855, Calcutta and Printed by J. Thomas, Baptist Mission Press, 1856 

Colonial Revenue System and the ‘laborious’ Karbis 

After 1826, the colonial authorities gradually took over the tribal territories and the Karbi inhabited areas scattered over a large areas of NC Hills, Jaintia and Khasi Hills and in Nowgong and Sibsagar districts too came under the British revenue system:

‘Soon after the British annexed the Ahom territory on February 24, 1826, the Karbi territories, which were under the domain of the Ahoms, automatically became a part of the British territory. The Karbis of the adjacent Janitia hills came under the British in March 1835 when the Jaintia kingdom was annexed by the British. The North Cachar Hills, part of the Karbi territory, was free from British India up to 1854. Finally, Lord Dalhousie accorded his approval to the annexation of North Cachar Hills on the ground that the ‘occupation of the territory was a less objectionable alternative than letting it alone.’ Accordingly, in early 1854, the British annexed North Cachar Hills. Thus, by 1954 the whole of Karbi land came under British domain.’ 17Subba, TB & Ghosh, GC [ed.], 2003 –The Anthropology of North-East India; Orient Longman

The colonial authority was swift in imposing its own revenue system in these territories, and by 1838, brought the Karbis under the first revenue settlement:

‘…it was determined to bring them under a revenue settlement of some kind, and to raise them, if possible, in the social scale by putting them on the same fiscal platform as the Assamese of the plains. The Assamese had always looked upon the Mikirs with contempt and dislike, and the tribe had kept itself aloof in the jungles, away from all civilizing intercourse. The hills were now visited by a British officer and a settlement affected with the consent of the Chiefs, by which the old tributes were converted into an assessment upon each house according to the number of the male cultivators living therein. The total net revenue so assessed was about Rs. 1700.’ 18Mackenzie, Alexander, 1884 & 2012 – ‘History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal’; Cambridge University Press; (1884 & Digitally printed version, 2012)

W W Hunter mentioned that:

‘When the country was first brought under British rule, a small tribute in kind was exacted from the Mikirs; but in 1837-38, this system of taxation was abolished, and the tribe was formed into three imaginary grades or classes, and a house tax was levied of varying amount on each of these classes. On the first class a house rate of Rs. 4 or 8s. per annum was assessed; on the second class a tax of Rs. 3 or 6s; and on the third class a tax of Rs. 1.8 or 3s. This settlement yielded a net revenue of Rs. 1711.8.0 or 3s in 1837-38.’ 

This system did not work well for the British and two years later, a uniform house-tax was levied on the Karbis at the rate of Rs. 2.4 abolishing the three imaginary classes irrespective of the number of families sharing the same house. The British found out that, in order to avoid the house-taxes, ‘many families herd together in the same house.’ (Hunter, 1879; 189) The problem of British revenue collection was made harder by the fact that the Karbis changed their habitations ‘every two or three years’ looking for ‘fresh lands for cultivation.’ Hunter described that the Karbi houses were ‘clean and healthy in appearance, and very picturesque.’ He also mentioned about the Karbis engaging in trades ‘carried on with the people of the plains’ through ‘bartering in cotton, aria thread, caoutchouc, and bees-wax for salt and piece-goods’

Rev. Rae in 1836 had already mentioned of such barter trades the Karbis engaged in with their new liking for ‘hukkah and cloth etc.’ Rev. Rae had described that the Karbis were ‘extensive cultivator of cotton, which is their principal commodity for export. How much is cultivated, I am unable to say, but it must be to a great extent; indeed, were it not for the Nagas, Mikirs, and Lalongs, the people of Asam would fare but poorly in cotton…Their common practice is to exchange their cotton for salt…’  Rae had mentioned about ‘hats’ (markets) being established in the vicinity to conduct barter trades with the tribal people. These ‘hats’ (Karbi = hithi) played multiple functions in the lives of the hill people besides serving the mercantile interests.

Lyall and Stack in ‘The Mikirs’ had described the ‘institution of cooperative agriculture by the village lads, the bachelors’ house or terang’  or the ‘association or club of the dekas’ being the ‘most important institution from the point of view of agriculture…useful form of cooperation’ which was then ‘falling into disuse.’  The Karbi economic life was a cycle of ‘raising in ordinary years sufficient food for their subsistence, and a considerable amount of cotton and lac for export to the plains’.

Trade with Plainsmen and the Opium Havoc 

However, the growing trade relations with the plainsmen were also beginning to have other adverse effects on the Karbis. A Missionary wife Mrs. PH Moore had remembered

‘One sad result of the Mikirs coming to the plains is that they are fast learning to take opium…’19 Moore, Mrs. PH (ed.), 1901 – Twenty Years in Assam, Omsons Publications, Rajouri Garden, New Delhi.

Wild tea plants were already discovered in Assam in 1823 and crossbreeding of Assam tea with smuggled Chinese tea plants was started by 1834. By 1839, Assam tea began to be transported to England with the intention ‘to compete on the open market with Chinese tea, with the hope of eventually eliminating Britain’s reliance on China.’ Opium poppy also ‘grew abundantly in Assam’20Saikia, Yasmin, 2005 – Assam and India – Fragmented Memories, Cultural Identity, and the Tai-Ahom Struggle; Permanent Black, Delhi and the colonial masters began to exploit this to their commercial advantage. The opium cultivation began by 1847-1848 and introduced opium as cash crops and started the sale of manufactured opium in the market. By 1860, opium trade became a government monopoly criminalising non-licensed cultivation of opium. Licenses were sold to ‘respectable persons’ who offered the highest bid. There appeared 5137 opium shops in 1873-74 period surpassing the number of villages in Assam. Opium revenue increased in leaps and bounds from 1875 to 1879. Colonial government defended its policy by claiming that opium was required by the people ‘in order to protect themselves from the diseases that are prevalent in a very damp and malarial climate like Assam…’ As a result, the consumption of opium far surpassed the Indian average and much in higher quantity that was set by the League of Nations and Assam was declared a ‘Black Spot’ where consumption was highest during 1920-1921. And ‘the largest consumers’ were ‘the Mikir tribe, of whom, 80 to 85 per cent’ in a population of 1, 18, 629 ate opium according to the Final Report of the ‘Royal Commission on Opium’.

The colonial government actively promoted opium sale and Karbis were defenceless against this assault which ruined them permanently. JH Hutton, Deputy Commissioner of Naga Hills, wrote in his Naga tour diaries dated 31 August 1920, which gives a crucial insight into how opium was forced upon the ‘wretched Mikirs’ –

‘Disposed of the opium shop which I have settled with one Gupteswar who seems less likely than the other applicants to put the shop to illicit purposes. He will be rationed at present with 30 seers of opium monthly. There are some very high offers for this shop as compared with the bids made in Kohima when it was sold by auction. I suspect that the reason is partly that it was the only unrationed shop on the Railway in the neighbourhood and therefore of value for smuggling purposes as I understand a good deal of opium is smuggled into Burma via the Assam-Bengal Railway and Chittagong. Partly, however, the competition for the shop was in order to exploit the wretched Mikirs for cane and lac and agar, the last of which has now a tremendously enhanced value. Under the present system the opium shops are simply used as a handle to induce the Mikirs to bring in jungle produce, for which I fancy they are paid in opium instead of cash, and it is well known that the Marwari trader who wants to make a fortune in cane, cotton, agar or lac must control the opium shop either directly or Benami, and it is obviously to his interest to encourage opium eating, and that much more so than the man who merely sells it for the profit on the opium, since he stands to make a huge profit in so many ways of each opium eating Mikir.’ 

It was the time when opium contributed ‘more than one-fifth of the government revenue in the vast empire in British India’ and the ‘wretched Mikirs’ were easy victims. During the period, Hutton and other colonial sources described, the Karbis were as not yet used to wet cultivation. They were dependent on bartering petty forest items with traders in the plains and the best they did were engaging in large-scale cotton cultivation. It may be assumed that the majority of the people depended on shifting cultivation in the ‘slopes’ using only the ‘hoes’ and producing only what were needed for sustenance. No surplus was produced or it was not even possible to do so in such a mode of economic activity. Paddy cultivation in the plains came very gradually and in a haphazard manner. Opium habit introduced by the British soon consumed almost the entire Karbi population. The ‘industrious’ Karbis bartered away household items, domestic animals, ornaments etc. to pay for the deadly habit and within a short period of ten to twenty years after 1826, they were pushed to abject poverty. The subsistence economy was thus completely ruined, so was the ‘industriousness’. The new British revenue and land policies wrecked the old social, cultural, and economic traditions by creating a new class of middlemen who collected revenues as mouzadars and rapidly rose in prestige and power, even overshadowing the traditional chiefs.

The Politics of Labelling 

There is a general idea that Karbis are ‘lazy’ and this trait is attributed for their ‘backwardness’. Many have succumbed to this theory and blame their own tribesmen for the economic mess that they are in today. The celebrated Malay author Prof. Syed Hussein Alatas in his book ‘The Myth of the Lazy Native’ has attempted to debunk the myth essentially as a colonial creation and thus called it a ‘colonial ideology’. Alatas argued that

‘…ideology of colonial capitalism evaluated people according to their utility in their production system and the profit level’ under Western rule, with the result that the capabilities of the indigenous inhabitants were denigrated through various myths and stereotypes, notably, the myth of the lazy native.’ 

The colonial ideology of being ‘superior’ was used to justify how the colonized people were classed and categorised that played a crucial role in constructing new and potentially negative identities for them. Labelling Karbis as ‘unwarlike’, ‘timid’ or ‘devoid of anything approaching martial’ had remained in popular discourse beyond colonial time, shaping the way the Karbis imagined of themselves with all negative impacts. In Hunter’s own admission, the ‘Mikirs were found very useful as coolies in the Lushai Expedition of 1871-72’.  Karbi coolies who were forced to fight the British war of conquest against the Lushai that fitted the colonial design and were praised – ‘Hitherto they have borne a bad name for cowardice, but their character in this respect was cleared by their conduct at the time of the Lushai expedition.’

Colonial Coolie Corps, composed of various hill tribes including Goorkha, Kookies, Cosseyahs, Cacharies, Nagas and Mekirs, were employed to carry out the most dangerous missions such as reconnaissance, cutting jungles, building huts, who faced deadly cholera epidemic without much or no supply of medicine and often left unguarded by sepoys.21Woodthorpe, RG, 1873 –The Lushai Expedition 1871-72; Hurst and Blackett, London But colonial dependence on various tribal communities, including the Karbis, for manpower in its army was never acknowledged in public discourse. Mackenzie mentioned:

“Our own population of Mikirs being very scanty, we shall be unable to continue to employ them in conducting expeditions into the Angami Naga Hills, for rather than submit to this service, I am persuaded they will leave the district, or be utterly ruined from not being able to do their cultivation.” 

After the failure of ‘absolute conquest,’ the British attempted to recruit Nagas as soldiers. This was one of the strategies adopted for pacifying the Nagas, but it failed as the Nagas would abandon the service in a short time. So the British army was mostly made up of the Manipuris, Kukis, Kacharis, Mikiris and Assamese. Latter, Nepali immigrants were brought in to serve as well.’

Colonial era Karbis were praised for being ‘industrious’ but in spite of this, they were also categorised as ‘backward’. In one of his secret cables to the British parliament, Governor Reid had confessed that the Karbis ‘…pay proportionately more in taxes and receive less in amenities than any other area in the Province…’ and even ‘proposed’ that ‘neglect of this kind would be remedied’, which however was never done. The ‘laborious’ Karbis were subjected to maximum taxation in the new colonial revenue system and in the ‘Jaintia Hills territory, which is wholly British, a house-tax at the rate of Rs.1 per house is levied, the Mikir and Kuki settlements paying double this rate.’

The British administration, for good reasons, is also blamed for dividing the ‘backward’ hills from the prosperous plains and perpetuating the binary for political and economic control over both. Irrespective of the multiplicity of hill people and their cultures, the British labelled them equally as ‘backward’. Against this sweeping generalisation, JJP Wouters has argued that;

‘…hill dwellers came to be seen as the opposite of ‘British civilisation’, as well as inferior to the alternative civilisation presented by the high castes of the ‘mainland’. This eventually led to the ‘invention of tribes’, a process through which uplanders became socially construed as collectively backward and sharing characteristics that were fundamentally different from those inhabiting the plains.’

Backwardness is therefore constructed in terms of ‘British civilisation’ and this colonial construction has remained in circulation influencing even the policy makers in modern India. Being ‘industrious’ alone counts less or even nothing in the post-colonial ideology too in the same manner as the qualities of being ‘peaceful’ and ‘unwarlike’ are condemned as distinct racial ‘inferiority’. In the colonial greed for power and profit, opium trade was aggressively promoted, destroying the Karbi trait of being ‘industrious’ and condemning them to perpetual backwardness. The truth is:

‘Negative labels (and implications) can disempower groups through the creation of potent negative stereotypes and can thus be a powerful means of exercising social control and a tool to manipulate identities.’ 22Retzlaff, Steffi, 2005 – What’s in a Name? The Politics of Labelling and Native Identity Construction, The Canadian Journal of Native Studies XXV, 2(2005); pp. 609-626

Decolonizing Colonial Construct 

The impact of British colonialism is a rarely discussed issue among Karbis. The Historical Trauma (HT) inflicted on Karbis is therefore not realized. Traditional Karbi territories were dissected multiple times at the whims of the colonial state. As a result, the ‘Hills’ and ‘Plains’ categories of Karbis were constructed, categorised and forced to remain isolated from each other for centuries and the political, cultural and linguistic impacts are still being felt. The ‘industrious’ Karbis were forced to wholesale opium addiction which totally crushed their economic backbone forever. The middlemen, such as mauzadars and opium lessees, created in colonial economic and political interest introduced a new social class which asserted its illegitimate authority over entire Karbis. Missionaries who accompanied the colonial administrators introduced modern education among Karbis, but even they too were not free from colonial attitude. Missionaries cannot absolve themselves from negatively portraying the Karbi ideas of the ‘self’ by attacking their religious and cultural foundations as ‘unmeaning’.

The territorial, economic and cultural disruptions caused by colonialism continue to impact Karbi life in many negative ways. Many of the crucial issues facing present generation Karbis are rooted in colonialism and it is therefore important to understand them in the larger framework of ‘Historical Trauma’ and begin the process of decolonization. In other word, this process for Karbis may perhaps begin with such an effort of deconstructing colonial policies and practices in the light of critical scrutiny.

___________________________

Dharamsing Teron is an indigenous activist hailing from the Karbi people in Assam’s central hilly region of Karbi Anglong. He has been in the forefront of a long-drawn autonomy struggle since 1986 participating in the political, cultural and literary aspirations of the Karbi people. He has initiated documenting vanishing Karbi folklore and publishing books in English, which include the popular ‘Karbi Studies’ series in a collaborative effort with young Karbi researchers, writers and translators. He is currently the founder Director of ‘Centre for Karbi Studies’ which aims to foster indigenous research initiatives in the ‘most under-researched area’.

Linso Timungpi is an Assistant Professor of Geography. She is an executive member of Centre for Karbi Studies and has translated Karbi fiction into English.

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Translated from Axomiya by Biswajit Bora

Congratulations to Miya poetry. Probably for the first time a new movement in poetry has started to express the life and struggles of char-chapori dwelling Muslims in Assam in such a clear and emphatic language. A few poets have written those poems in their spoken dialects, profoundly expressing the hard struggles of Muslim people, their history, marginalisation from the mainstream Assamese society, their citizenship and religion-centric daily tribulations. Personally, we have been able to read only a few of those poems – that too with our limited knowledge and understanding of the language – but whatever we understood have left a strong impression on our mind. The word “miya” is usually used in a derogatory sense in the mainstream Assamese society. But this set of poems has established the word “miya” and the Miya identity as powerful means of self-assertion. This is the political significance of the poems, and therefore the poems should be embraced by every progressive Assamese. We belong to the mainstream Assamese society, and therefore socially safe and privileged. Nobody can point their fingers at us, nobody can question our citizenship, nobody can harass us without reason. Hence it is not surprising for mainstream Assamese people like us to be unable to effortlessly realise the hardships and tribulations faced by the Miya people. But this should not be the case with the progressive section of society with an understanding of politics. For ages Miya people have lived by struggling against difficult and unfortunate conditions of living, yet contributing to Assam’s economy and society. Yet the mainstream Assamese society has always neglected and looked down upon them. The ultranationalists have always harassed them whenever and wherever they can. All these have contributed to fill up the lives of Miya people with indescribable resentment, sadness and suffering. That resentment will one day burst out, that sadness and suffering will one day explode – we will have to accept that with respect. If we hope for a greater Assamese society based on harmony and syncretism, we will have to attentively listen to the grievances of and complaints by the Miya people, and in their days of distress, we will have to help and support them as our own. Expression of resentment might not always be smooth, shrieks of sadness and suffering might not always be sweet, but those expressions and shrieks must be acknowledged. Therefore we should welcome Miya poetry with open arms. If we are suspicious and confused about Miya poetry, then it is our responsibility to resolve those suspicions and confusions. For how long the Miya people will keep waiting in the wings of the Assamese nation? For how long they will keep living on the margins of society? It is our obligation to accept them as part of the mainstream Assamese society with equal rights and dignity. Therefore Miya poetry should direct us to do self-reflection and self-realisation. Therefore it should be a matter of delight that a few conscious people are emerging in Miya society who have been able to emphatically register their grievances and complaints of the community, and who are capable of providing a progressive leadership to the community. It can never be a threat to Assamese society, if that Assamese society is the plural democratic Assamese society that we want. Therefore we may critique Miya poetry, we may question Miya poetry – but the central questions of the Miya people raised by Miya poetry must not be ignored.

7 War Special Poems

A few questions regarding Miya poetry must certainly be raised. In a very short span of time, especially outside Assam, Miya poetry has become a topic of discussion in national and international newspapers and magazines. As such, there is nothing to complain. It should also be acknowledged that the mainstream newspapers and magazines in Assam would similarly ignore Miya poetry just like it is usually done to the questions of the Miya people. Therefore it is not unnatural for the practitioners of Miya poetry to get persuaded by newspapers and magazines outside Assam. But the problem is the simplified human rights centric discourse regarding issues like the NRC, D-voter, etc. that is prevalent outside Assam – and Miya poetry is discussed as a part of the same discourse there. It is worth mentioning that many people from Assam are also actively engaged in maintaining that discourse. In that discourse, a homogenous and simplified idea about Assam and the Assamese is broached. Its central argument is that Assamese people are xenophobic and racist – be it the NRC, D-voter, or harassment of Miya people, everything is a different expression of this xenophobia and racism. This simplified idea does not respect Assam’s complex socio-political conditions and multi-layered ethnic problems and Assamese people’s economic and social problems and struggles. Discussions on Miya poetry has found a space in national and international newspapers and magazines only as a part of this discourse. Maybe this fact has not been mentioned clearly in all the discussions on Miya poetry, but it is not difficult to understand that discussions on Miya poetry has found a space in the theoretical-political context of contemporary discussions on Assam in that aforementioned discourse. We have clearly opposed and criticised that discourse, and we believe that it is imperative that every person from Assam should oppose such simplified ideas. Instead of opposing, if any person from Assam contributes to such simplified ideas, it is undoubtedly a case of a lack of political responsibility or being driven by petty personal motives. The Miya poets should keep in mind that no simplified or wrong idea about the social life of Assam is associated with discussions on their poetry. We are not specifically talking about the Miya poets, but the emerging progressive leadership of Miya society will have to collectively take a substantial socio-political responsibility. The way they will have to take a stand against the mainstream Assamese society’s practice of ignoring and neglect, similarly they will have to put organisational efforts for internal democratisation and modernisation of Miya society. And this struggle for socio-political emancipation of Miya people is an internal and regional struggle of social life in Assam. Hence this struggle will have to be carried out by finding some space in the current equilibrium seen between various influential political forces and groups of Assam’s social life. It will always be surrounded by reactionary forces; and therefore the progressive sections of Assamese society must be incorporated in that struggle. In such a situation, the struggle for the emancipation of Miya people will naturally be a hard and complex one. Although it is wrong and ridiculous for every step to be taken according to a long-term political strategy, nobody wishing and working for the emancipation of Miya people should expose their irresponsibility by denying the current socio-political equilibrium in Assam. We do not think that it would be by any means profitable to acquire national or international support while completely ignoring social conditions in Assam. This is a local struggle and Miya people will have to assert their rights and dignity by being among local forces and by fighting locally – national or international support or praises are incapable of influencing it. At best, outside help or support of some NGO-kind may be stitches on a wound – but it cannot carry out socio-political struggles. Therefore the new progressive leadership of Miya society should direct their attention toward the local equations of power rather than showing interests for distant support or praise, and should try to form an alliance with the progressive sections of Assamese society. It is not advisable to deny all these. Moreover, possible political solutions for the grievances and complaints of Miya people should also be kept in mind while registering those. For example, Miya people have suffered indescribably because of the NRC, but it is political inanity to oppose or reject the NRC for that reason. Because, if not the NRC, then is there any possible political alternative which will ensure that there would be no suffering for Miya people. Hence, mere opposition or rejection/denial without any idea about a possible political solution is politically lame and harmful. The new progressive leadership of Miya society should also be attentive to it. We embrace Miya poetry as socio-political self-assertion coming out of Miya people, and so we are raising a few political questions associated with it. The practitioners of Miya poetry should consider and reflect on these questions.

Miya poetry is not a tool for division – it should be a bridge of unity between the mainstream Assamese society and the Miya people. But in order for that to happen, both the progressive sections of the mainstream Assamese society and the practitioners of Miya poetry should play their responsible roles.

The post In Praise of Miya Poetry of Assam appeared first on RAIOT.

Translated from Axomiya by Biswajit Bora and Mayur Chetia. The article was originally published in the leading Assamese daily, Asomiya Pratidin, on 20 August 2017.

The problem of flood in Assam is heading towards a change in character, making the problem much graver and insoluble. This is not sudden but we have been noticing flashes of this change for the last decade. The fact that many rivers in Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts have been shallowed by sand, that the paddy fields have been entombed in sand, that there is deposition of sand instead of alluvium during flood, that there is no fish and wood in the flood waters meaning that the graveness of the problem is heading towards a cataclysm. Flood in Assam is no longer a problem, it has become a catastrophe instead.

A lack of scientific attitude towards rivers, unplanned developmental work, dreadful attempts to control rivers and construction of big dams as well as groundwork for new big dam projects are the main reasons for this. Ecological questions such as climate change might also be associated with this change.

When there was massive deposition of sand at Chamarajan in Dhemaji or when the rivers in north Assam had been calamitously shallowed by sand, the people in Assam, especially the government of Assam should have woken up at that time. That was the beginning of the disaster. Accumulation of heaps of boulders at the Assam-Arunachal border in the rivers flowing down from the hills in Arunachal Pradesh for the construction of the Bogibeel bridge on the Brahmaputra as well as the construction of multiple roads and other construction works has led to this catastrophe in north Assam. It is known that 7.5 lakh of truckloads of stones were lifted from the river beds for the construction of the Bogibeel bridge. Scientists say that the deposits of sand under a stone in a river bed are four times the weight of the stone. When the stones are lifted, the sand deposits fill up the river bed. First, the river becomes shallow and the river bed rises up to the level of paddy fields. When the stream flows on such a river bed, it becomes inundated and the sand deposits spread to the paddy fields on the banks of the river. This is how the dreams of peasants are shattered forever.

Assam is compelled to suffer the consequences of the developmental works undertaken in China, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. The disastrous consequences of any developmental work undertaken on the river banks in those places fall upon Assam. Especially even if a leaf falls in Arunachal Pradesh, the rivers in Assam have to bear the consequences. The infrastructural works in Arunachal Pradesh and Bhutan have perilously affected the rivers in Assam. One such example is the construction of trans-national highway in Arunachal. The construction works going on in Bhutan with financial aid from the Indian government and other countries have jeopardised lower Assam.

The big dams are primarily responsible for the characteristic change in Assam’s flood problem. How the Ranganadi dam has brought hardships to the people of Lakhimpur and Majuli districts and the Kurishu dam in Bhutan has done the same to the people of Nalbari, Baksa, Barpeta, Chirang, Bongaigaon, Kokrajhar districts are already well known. The Karbi Langpi Hydroelectric Project has also caused distress to the people of Nagaon, Morigaon and Karbi Anglong districts and has damaged acres of land. Those keeping a tab on the flood problem in Assam are well aware of the once prosperous peasants of Kamrup and Raha becoming paupers. All the big dams constructed till now are relatively small dams, but the construction of actual large dams is imminent. It has been planned to make Arunachal Pradesh the power house of India by constructing dams that would potentially produce seventy thousand megawatts of electricity. Massive hydropower plants like the Siang Hydroelectric Project with a capacity of producing ten thousand megawatts of electricity have been planned.

One example would clarify the interrelation between big dams and the problems of sand deposition and flood. As per the detailed project report (DPR), 193 lakh cubic metres of stones will be required for the construction of the Dibang Multipurpose Project. This is equivalent to 32 lakh truckloads of stones. If sand deposits in the Dibang which are four times the amount of the stones flow down to the Brahmaputra because of the lifting of the stones from the Dibang’s bed, 128 lakh truckloads of sand would fill up the river bed of the Brahmaputra. As a result, not only the Brahmaputra would be catastrophically shallowed but also the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park would be transformed into a desert forever. Even if the construction of the Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project gets completed, Assam’s heritage sites, Majuli and the Kaziranga National Park would cease to exist. Construction works are going on in Bhutan to produce 32 thousand megawatts of electricity by Indian companies with financial aid from the Indian government. Consequently, it would be futile to think about the future of the Manas National Park.

What is the relation between big dams and flood? Many people say that there is no relation between big dams and flood, while some others say that big dams instead check flood. Let us start from the second argument. All the big dams that have been planned in Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh are meant for the production of electricity only. The questions of flood control, irrigation or drinking water supply are not addressed by these. The only exception is the Dibang Multipurpose Project which theoretically talks about flood control. (Many people get furious if someone says that considering the demand for electricity in Assam or the Northeast, these projects for the production of electricity by the Indian government are not meant for the northeastern region). It has been theoretically proved that large dams built to produce electricity cannot solve the problem of flood. Moreover, there is not even the option of flood control in the hydropower projects in the Northeast. Experts and scientists have shown that big dams have always caused devastating deluge. When there is rain and the river water level significantly rises, the gates of a dam need to be opened. Otherwise, the entire dam would collapse which would be another disaster. When the gates of the Ranganadi dam had been opened this time, he people of Assam could witness what force the released water flows with from a dam. Only those who do not understand this interrelation between big dams and flood stand in support of big dams. Nonetheless, people in Assam have come to realise big dams are leading Assam to a catastrophe by severely worsening the flood problem. We have only witnessed the calamitous consequences of the Kurishu, the Ranganadi and the Karbi Langpi dams, but we could easily foresee the imminent comprehensive outcome of all the large dams under construction in China, Arunachal Pradesh and Bhutan. We went to Majuli, Lakhimpur, Nagaon and Morigaon to understand the disastrousness of the flood and the distress of the people affected. We have never seen such a deluge of epic proportions. Hundreds of thousands of bighas of land have been buried in sand. Those lands would remain barren for the next twenty years. The government has not rehabilitated the people living by the embankments who have been suffering from erosion for ages, nor does anyone have the slightest idea what the government plans to do with them. It is hard to imagine the plight of the people unless experienced or witnessed directly how their homes have been destroyed. Not only the furniture or utensils, but everything has been destroyed—the houses built on perseverance by multiple generations have been destroyed at the blink of an eye. The yards adjoining the houses which are usually a source of income for a household in Assam have been destroyed. The granaries have been destroyed, or in other words, the stored threshed grains for a year have been lost in flood. Cultivation of paddy or other crops has been destroyed, thus shattering the dreams for the coming year as well. The ponds and fisheries have been submerged in flood, thus destroying another means of economy. Livestock has been lost. The people have lost everything. The village infrastructures have been destroyed. Everything has been annihilated.

The government has failed to rescue and aid the people. It might be hard to gauge the extent of the graveness of the issue, but we are unable to express it in clear terms for the lack of a language. Let us give an example—when the people were drowning in flood, the government was busy playing ministerial games. Whatever has been distributed in the flood relief is an insult to the people affected. The less said about children’s food and fodder are better. Some two to four thousand rupees might be given in the name of compensation many months after the flood subsides, thereby kicking the broken hearts of the people once again. Whenever the president or a minister of the ruling party claims—we have given ₹4,00,000 to those who have lost their lives in flood and the Centre will also give ₹2,00,000—and compares it to others, no more humanity or civility could be expected from them, nor is there any possibility for any civilised and sensitive person talk to them.

Why have so many embankments been breached in flood? We have procured the list of contractors who were in charge of construction of the Hatimura embankment in Nagaon. The contract of the breached embankment was given to the brother and a friend of the Water Resources Minister of Assam. This seems to be the reason why the minister stated that someone had cut off the embankment. Embankments are not cut off nor destroyed by people but by devils disguised as contractors.

Let us come forward to rigorously study this change in the character of the flood in Assam. Let us come forward to realise the extent of loss due to flood in actual terms. Let us come forward to work for permanent solutions or measures to deal with the problem of flood. It is not only the time for distributing flood relief but also to earnestly think and work to change the scenario.

The post New Cataclysmic Nature Of Floods in Assam appeared first on RAIOT.

To,

The Honourable Chief Justice of India,
Supreme Court of India,
Tilak Marg, New Delhi – 110201

(Through the Registrar, Supreme Court of India, email id: supremecourt@nic.in)

Dated: 7th August, 2019

Subject: Regarding the panicky situation created by suspicious and mischievous notices served to NRC applicants for re-verification by NRC authority in Assam

Your Lordship,

We, the undersigned citizens of India, most respectfully would like to draw your kind attention regarding the on-going updating of national register of citizens (NRC) in Assam. The people of Assam have been supporting the NRC updating process and participating in the hearings and verifications, sometimes even by paying huge costs in terms of time, energy and financial resources. Nevertheless, the people of Assam are ready to go through any verification whenever required for the greater interest of an error-free and just NRC.

However, we would like to draw your kind attention regarding the panicky situation created by suspicious and mischievous notices served to NRC applicants for re-verification by NRC authority in Assam. Now notices are being served to people and they are asked to appear before the NRC authority in far-flung areas with a short notice of one or two days. The people of Assam in general and people living in riverine areas in particular have experienced one of the worst floods in recent years. They are struggling to cope with the losses and many of them are still living in temporary relief camps. Under such circumstances, if these people are asked to attend the NRC hearing giving them just one or two days and summoned to 500-600 kilometres away from their homes, there is little doubt that a large number of them wouldn’t be able to attend the hearings.

The NRC updating process is in its final stage and the Honourable Supreme Court of India has directed that there is no need to conduct sample re-verification. This direction was a great relief for the people of Assam and many of them moved back to their normal lives. Many people resumed their occupation in other states. Previously, all the notices issued by NRC were available online but this time, the notices are being served physically, sometimes those are delivered at the eleventh hour and thus making their lives more perilous. There are many instances where the notice is served in the evening in remote areas and people asked to appear the next day at 9:00 am at a distance of 600 kms. This is totally impossible for a person living in a char of lower Assam who needs half a day to cross the river to attend the hearing in Jorhat, Sivasagar, Golaghat and other upper Assam districts.

As per the Honourable Supreme Court monitored and approved modalities, the applicants should be provided at least 15 days of time to attend the hearing after receiving the notice. The Honourable Supreme Court has also observed that the persons required to attend hearing shouldn’t face inconveniences and are not required to travel long distances. However, it seems that the NRC authority in Assam is violating the Honourable Supreme Court’s direction or purposefully ignoring the Honourable Supreme Court’s observation.

This episode of re-verification has already created a severe humanitarian crisis in the state of Assam. People are using risky and desperate modes of travel to reach the hearing venues on time. On the evening of 4th August, 2019 a bus carrying people from Sontoli area of Kamrup (R) district to Golaghat collided with a truck carrying bitumen near Guwahati. Most of them are critically injured; children and women burned by hot bitumen are fighting for their lives in Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. On 5th August,2019, a woman named Rejia Khatun (68) from Jaokatadia village in Kamrup (R) district died of heatstroke in the Nagaon district.

In this crucial juncture of this historic national register of citizens (NRC) process, we pray before Your Lordship for the following:

i) Kindly direct the NRC authority to re-schedule the hearing either within the district or within the adjoining districts and provide at least one week’s time so that the applicant can attend the hearing and complete the process within the due date stipulated by the Honourable Supreme Court.

ii) Kindly direct the NRC authority to make the notice available on internet along with the physical serving so that people living in other states can also access the same and attend the hearing accordingly.

iii) Kindly direct the NRC authority to reschedule hearing at a convenient place for those who have already missed the re-verification hearing.

iv) Kindly direct district administration to provide the basic transportation facility like providing a boat and bus for the greater interest of an error-free and fair NRC.

Yours faithfully,

1. Abhilash Rajkhowa (President, Students’ Federation of India, Panjab University)
2. Advocate Bijan Das (Ex Advocate General, Tripura)
3. Advocate Hemen Borah, Jorhat
4. Amjad Hussain, Nalbari
5. Amrit Goswami (Social Activist, Jorhat)
6. Ananta Kalita (Economist)
7. Angshuman Sarma, JNU
8. Ankur Tamuliphukan (Researcher)
9. Anupan Chakrabarty (Independent Journalist, Guwahati)
10. Arabinda Roy (Nagarik Udyog, Silchar)
11. Arup Baishya (Writer and Political Activist)
12. Ashis Choudhury (Professor)
13. Asit Baran Chakrabarty (Retd. Bank Employee-and-Social Worker)
14. Baharul Islam (Professor, LTK College, Lakhimpur)
15. Bakuli Baishya (Writer)
16. Bhaben Handique (Convener, Swaraj Asom)
17. Bhabesh Nath (Teacher and Youth Activist)
18. Bhaskar Das, Majuli
19. Bidyut Sagar Boruah (Research Scholar, Delhi University)
20. Bipul Hazarika (President, Asom Mojuri Sramik Union)
21. Biswajit Kumar Bora (Assistant Professor, University of Delhi)
22. Bondita Acharya (Human Rights Activist, Jorhat)
23. Bonojit Hussain (Farmer and Researcher)
24. Chinmoy Madhurjya Deka (Student, University of Delhi)
25. Dayasagar Kalita (Researcher, Jatiya Itihash)
26. Debabrat Das (Writer)
27. Debajit Choudhury (Social Worker)
28. Debakanta Handique (Writer)
29. Debashri Bhatta (Social Worker)
30. Dibakar Sensua (Educationist, Moran)
31. Dibash Phookan (Freelance Journalist, Educational Entrepreneur and Social Activist)
32. Dilip Kumar Dey (Retd. Educationist)
33. Dipak Kumar Adhikary (UMYCA)
34. Ajit Patangiya
35. Arupa Patangiya Kalita (Retd. College Teacher and Creative Writer)
36. Barnali Baruah Das (Jukti Bikax Bikax Xomiti, Assam)
37. Devabrata Sharma (Chief Editor, Asamiya Jatya Abhidhan)
38. Dinesh Baishya (Educationist and Author)
39. Ghanashyam Nath (Educationist and Author)
40. Koushik Das (Chief Editor, Mukta Chinta)
41. Mrinmoy Dev (Doctor, Writer and Social Activist, Karimganj)
42. Ranjit Kumar Das (Social Activist)
43. Rituraj Kalita (Associate Professor, Cotton University)
44. Sushanta Kar (Educationist and Writer, Tinsukia)
45. Adil Ulyasmin (Ex-HoD, Department of Political Science, Dibrugarh University)
46. Dulal Kalita (Amguri, Sivasagar)
47. Dulal Sen (Activist, Forum For Social Harmony, Guwahati)
48. Faruk Laskar (Social Activist, Forum For Social Harmony)
49. Fojolur Rahman (Social Worker, Lakhimpur)
50. Godfrey Hereh (Adibasi Activist, Lakhimpur)
51. Gulam Sarowar Hussain (BE Graduate)
52. Guna Kalita (Social Activist)
53. Gyanen Chakraborty (Social Activist, Nalbari)
54. Harkumar Goswami (Creative Entrepreneur and Social Activist)
55. Jamir Uddin Talukdar (Journalist, Hojai)
56. Jilmil Hazarika (Actress)
57. Jiten Bezbaruah (Writer, Dibrugarh)
58. Jnanedra Barkakati (Painter and Sculptor)
59. Joseph Kawa (Professor, Bosco Institute, Jorhat)
60. Junu Bora (Writer and Social Activist, Guwahati)
61. Jyotirmoy Das (Power Engineer)
62. Jyotirmoy Talukdar (Ashoka University)
63. Kalparnabh Gupta (Trade Unionist)
64. Kalyani Barua (Announcer and Human Rights Activist)
65. Kamal Chakrabarty (Social Activist, Silchar)
66. Kamal Kumar Medhi (Social Activist)
67. Kamal Nayan Mishra(Teacher and Youth Activist)
68. Kamalesh Gupta (Secretary, Elora Bigyan Mancha)
69. Karishma Hazarika(PhD Researcher, GU)
70. Kiran Kumar Tanti (Adibasi Matribhasa Dabi Samiti)
71. Krishnanu Bhattacharjee (Social Activist, Silchar)
72. Krisnakanta Gogoi (Social Activist)
73. Kumkum Malakar (Social Activist)
74. Lohit Krishna Misra (Retired Central Govt Officer and Social Activist)
75. Loknath Goswami (Artist and Cultural Activist)
76. Madhurjya Baruah (Advocate, Gauhati High Court)
77. Mahesh Deka (Journalist)
78. Maitrayee Patar (Poet)
79. Manash Das (President, NTUI, Assam State Council)
80. Manoram Gogoi (Journalist and Entrepreneur)
81. Masuma Begam (Social Worker)
82. Mayur Chetia (Writer, New Delhi)
83. Moiful Yasmin (Darrang)
84. Mostak Ahmed Choudhury (Editor, Gyansambhar, Hojai)
85. Mousumi Chetia (PhD Researcher, International Institute of Social Studies, Part of EUR, Rotterdam, The Hague, Netherlands)
86. Mridula Kalita (Women Rights Activist)
87. Mrinal Kanti Som (General Secretary, Assam Mojury Sramik Union)
88. Naser Ahmed (Central Club, Jorhat)
89. Padma Lochan Nath (Educationist, Golaghat)
90. Parijat Nanda Ghosh (President, Prayash, Silchar)
91. Pijush Kanti Das ( Journalist, Silchar)
92. Pooja Nirala (Youth Activist)
93. Prabin Kumar Neog (Veterinary Professional, Jorhat, Tiyok)
94. Pranav Doley (Advisor, Jeepal Krishak Sramik Sangha)
95. Professor Dalil Uddin Ahmed (Moirabari College)
96. Puravee Kalita (Social Worker)
97. Pulin Phukan (Ex-Block Development Officer)
98. Rabia Khanom (Writer)
99. Rafe Yasin (Central Club, Jorhat)
100. Rajen Kalita (Retd. College Teacher, Poet, Critic, Editor and Social Worker)
101. Rashmirekha Bora (Writer and Activist)
102. Reema Borah (Filmmaker)
103. Robson Munda (President, Jharkhandi Adibasi Sangram Parishad)
104. Rofique Ahmed, Jorhat (Secretary, Sanmilita Nagarik Mancha, Jorhat)
105. Rofiul Hussain Baruah (Writer, Nalbari)
106. Rupalim Dutta (Writer)
107. Sadikur Rahman Baruah (Engineer and Social Worker)
108. Safiul Islam (Asst. General Secretary, APCR)
109. Sakil Ahmed (Journalist)
110. Samhita Barooah (Shillong)
111. Samir Jyoti Baishya (Filmmaker)
112. Sandipan Talukdar (Science Consultant, Newsclick)
113. Sanjoy Kumar Tanti (Tezpur)
114. Santana Sarma (Principal, Jorhat Jatiya Vidyalaya)
115. Santi Ranjan Mitra (Retd. Teacher and Social Worker)
116. Satyesh Bhattacharjjee (Social Activist)
117. Satyjit Hazarika (Social Activist, Dergaon)
118. Shailen Gohain (Jukti Bikax Bikax Xomiti,Assam, Dibrugarh)
119. Siba Charan Kalita (Sr. Journalist, Chaygaon)
120. Sisir Dey (Lawyer, Social Activist)
121. Soneswar Narah (Advisor, Jeepal Krishak SramikSangha)
122. Subrat Talukdar (Political Activist)
123. Sudakshina Gogoi (Research Scholar, Dibrugarh University)
124. Sujata Hati Barua (Asst. Professor, Puthimari College)
125. Syed Tafsiul Mannan (Retd Engineer)
126. Taha Amin (Reporter, Silchar)
127. Taha Amin Mazumdar (Reporter)
128. Tamojit Saha (Professor, Journalist, Editor & Poet)
129. Tanujjyoti Gogoi (Writer, Guwahati)
130. Tosha Probha Kalita (Litterateur)
131. Toufiqul Hussain (President, SMDC, Jorhat High Madrassa)

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Run Assam Run! Run People of Assam Run! Run Away from the Run of the River! Learn to Run! Keep Running!

Why do we have to Run?

Run for your lives from the River! Run because the ‘Run of the River (RoR)’ dams of Bhutan are demonstrating their transboundary trance!

No, it is not the ‘Divine Madman’ Drukpa Kunley of Punakha Valley you have to run away from! It is the wrath of a different breed of ‘Hydro Madmen’ who are in a rampant dam building spree of the ‘Run of the River’ type dams in Bhutan, with India’s investments and technical help, under the banner of Indo-Bhutan Friendship! Run, because this friendship is not the sustainable spiritual type which was spread by the teachings and travels by Guru Rinpoche through Assam once!

Run for your lives, you cannot save your precious belongings, your houses from the raging floods! The ‘run of the river’ is faster and far more destructive than your own governments in New Delhi and Dispur, and the ‘hydro madmen’ keep offering false assurances about, all the time! Run, because public hearings are of no value and environmental impact assessments are mere token gestures!

Run, because you can rest no more under the technical assurances of ‘run of the river’ jargons, because this simply means they stop water and release the same amount back to the river! When and how much, gradual or all at once? They will never let you know, maybe give you a few hours notice, Flood Early Warning much, but flood will still be there, and you still will need to learn to run! So Run!

Run, because there is a massive greed of hydropower ‘head’ behind the dams! And the ‘hydro madmen’ have never learnt any reasoning or rationale of downstream impact assessment in their engineering colleges! So Run!

Run, because none of the big dam projects in Bhutan fit into their Gross National Happiness Index, and the ‘hydro madmen’ are busy retrofitting their Gross National Hydropower greed to their Gross National Happiness principles. Run, because the Gross National Happiness is not transboundary in nature in any way!

Run, because the natural barriers of riverbed stones and boulders of the rivers of Bhutan have been unsustainably mined, over-mined, and trucked massively through Assam and Meghalaya to Bangladesh! You must seen those lines of Bhutanese trucks pass by your areas in Assam, crossing the Brahmaputra at Jogighopa and onwards via the Garo Hills to enter Bangladesh at Dalu border crossing!

Bangladesh is building their bridges and other water infrastructure with those mined Bhutanese stones and boulders! Now even the waterways are being used to ferry massive amounts of such mined and trucked riverbed stones and boulders from Bhutan via India to Bangladesh, heralding the new run of sub-regional cooperation!

Some bridges will be washed away by the intensity of floods in Bhutan and India, some protective water infrastructure will try reduce the damage in Bangladesh downstream! The intensity of floods in Assam will keep rising because these very riverbed stones and boulders are increasingly missing in action. Who will save the natural barriers of the upstream rivers? We are missing the point! So Run!

Run because New Delhi has to help Bhutan build more hydropower dams, because they have to strategically signal their strong presence in Bhutan to China, especially after Doklam! The ‘national security’ framing story of mega-hydropower dams is the same in Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and the entire band of the Himalayas! So Run!

Learn to Run, because this is going to repeat every monsoon, while the embankment, dredging, riverbed mining and big dam ‘speculative economies’ will only continue to thrive and speculate on your collective miseries, of your own ‘economies on stilts’ and the contractors and politicians and the ‘Hydro Madmen’ will keep calling the shots! So Run!

Learn to Run, because soon most of the ‘hydro madmen’ will either ‘run away with your rivers’, like NEEPCO has already done with the downstream Ranganadi in Arunachal Pradesh, or make you run multiple times in the monsoon flood cycle. Keep Running!

Run because we have started naming our floods after the ‘run of the river’ dam building companies! Run because you already know well the natural fury of the rivers, and also know that the ‘hydro madmen’ have made our rivers even more furious, by inflicting multiple cuts on their bodies! So Run!

Run, because you live under the shadow of the ‘run of the river’ dams! Run because you are a risk society, and to organize against risk, run back and forth multiple time in a single flood season to reconstruct your own perpetual ‘economy on stilts’, only to organize to run again in the next monsoon. So, Learn to Run!

Run because the ‘hydro madmen’ are busy constructing more risk for you! Run because you have seen or heard the wrath of the natural dam break induced flash floods of 2000 on the Siang, the dam collapses in Laos and Brazil. Run because most of you have never seen a big dam in your lives, and still have to live under its shadow of risk! You have to learn to Run!

Learn to run like the golden girl of Assam, Hima Das, because this ‘run of the river’ rampage, and you running away from the river is the new normal! Run, People of Assam, Run! Run Away from the Run of the River!

All images by the author

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Indian Liberals must understand that the CAB and the NRC are truly pernicious and evil, not simply because they are against Indian Muslims. By and large (outside Assam) they are not. So let’s stop pretending that this is the case. If you happen to be a non-Muslim Indian liberal, then you need to understand that stating that you will now ‘register’ yourself as a ‘Muslim’ because of the CAB and the NRC, is not something that will affect your citizenship status by even one jot. This is not and cannot be ‘civil disobedience’ because an Indian citizen registering as a Muslim ‘disobeys’ nothing and nobody insofar as citizenship is concerned. That is a matter under the ambit of the law pertaining to conversion, not citizenship. We need more than token gestures of this kind.

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As the National Media has decided on silence – this death list (just from Guwahati) is from the reports on local TV networks. Chalk up these murders on the head of RSS/BJP/Hindutva Fascist Indian state

12/12/2019

Dipanjan Das
23 years old
used to work as canteen worker at Sainik Bhavan
Shot at Lachitngar, Guwahati 5.00pm
Bullet gone through the stomach
Died at Guwahati Medical College

around 7.00pm

near Hathigaon High School
Four people shot
One spot dead
3 critically injured

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This essay is the work of Gaurav Rajkhowa, Ankur Tamuliphukan, Bidyut Sagar Boruah and Anshuman Gogoi of Uki Research Collective

The last few days have seen a wave of protest and resistance all across the north-east against the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment ) Bill in Parliament. The inchoate protests of the masses have nevertheless expressed in the clearest terms their indignation against a House of representatives who have paid no heed to every appeal, petition and protest against CAB over the last couple of years. The government, likewise, has made its intentions abundantly clear, airlifting in additional paramilitary forces and escalating the situation by deploying Army columns in some areas of Assam.

The tenor of the anti-CAB mobilization in Assam has been somewhat different from elsewhere in the country—here, the CAB debate is inseparable from the debate on the National Register of Citizens (NRC). With an eye on how the terrain of the CAB-NRC debate has shifted in the last few months, it would be the right time to turn our attention to the second half of this notorious CAB-NRC combine. In fact, the way in which CAB has been pushed through reveals much about how the NRC process may be expected to play out, and how Hindutva fascism actually intends to deal with the demands and aspirations of the many nationalities that fall within the borders of its imagined Hindu empire.

There were many in Assam who were cautiously optimistic about the NRC process—they had hoped this would end, once and for all, the discrimination against Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims as Bangladeshis. But not anymore. Over the last few months, as the deadline for the publication of the final list came ever closer, many instances of the misuse and manipulation of the process came to light. Key procedures for document verification were changed after the process had begun. And even as the State has completed the updating process with much vigour, it has not yet clarified its position on the fate of those who have been excluded from the process. Lawyers, constitutional experts and civil society groups around the country have presently expressed their doubts about the composition and mode of functioning of the Foreigners’ Tribunals set up for the purpose of detecting illegally-resident foreigners; they have voiced their opposition to the idea of setting up detention camps and the slew of human rights violations occurring within them. All in all, it is clear that the NRC has turned into a process of targeted disenfranchisement.

In a sense, the NRC is attempting the impossible—to capture social identities within legal identities. And as with any such effort, it is accompanied by its unforeseen fallout. In the present case, the procedural ambiguities and widely reported instances of harassment/wrongful detention as well as forging of documents have created an atmosphere of suspicion on all sides, which no amount of documentary evidence can dispel. Such is the dense web of relationships within which these social-political identities interact that the legal apparatus finds its scope, authority and effectiveness to be quite restricted. Consequently, across the broader field of social power, a Miya Muslim or Hindu Bengali continues to be branded a foreigner, never mind the inclusion of their names in the NRC; all ‘indigenous’ communities are branded xenophobic, never mind the exclusion of many of them from the list; and the voices of so many others are drowned out in public discourse, their inclusion or exclusion notwithstanding. In such a situation, the process has done more harm than good to all those involved—whether they have been ‘included’ in the final NRC or not.

The questions of migration and indigeneity have a long and contentious history in Assam’s colonial and post-colonial past. Over the years there has emerged a political discourse of ethnicity and cultural nationalism around these questions that produces and perpetuates social domination. At the same time, this long history also shows may instances when these structures have been resisted, challenges and forced through radical reconstitution. Against the Brahminical articulations of Assamese nationalism there have also been others that have sought to refigure relations between the communities that constitute the Assamese nationality. And the latter strain, we suggest, harbours the possibility of engaging productively with the questions of migration and indigeneity. Against this approach, the NRC effort tries to force the contested popular vocabulary of political discourse into the immutability of legal-bureaucratic categories. In the process, it has precipitated a polarization of the political space—there is an escalation (rather than easing) of inter-community antagonisms. Far from resolving the ‘immigrant question’ once and for all, the NRC process has only contributed to intensifying simmering ethnic tensions and conflict amongst the various communities in the state. To be sure, this “side effect” is all too familiar to anyone acquainted with politics in Assam over the last three decades. As we have always maintained, the NRC traces its lineage not to the Assam Movement but the peculiar state strategy of channeling political demands towards ethnic violence. To this extent, the liberals as well as the Assamese nationalists are wrong in tracing the NRC back to the Assam Movement.

A hallmark of fascist politics is the transfiguring of political questions into cultural ones. In the present context, this has taken different forms. On the one hand, it is impossible to ignore the concerted effort to dismantle and depoliticize the unresolved questions of ethnicity and the right of nationalities to self-determination, which had until recently shaped political articulation in Assam. The fascist appropriation of the idea of ‘citizen’ is well underway, and is now being executed in the name of protecting the rights of the indigenous people of Assam. On the other hand, at the level of everyday politics and struggles, ethnic conflict is increasingly tending towards fascist forms of social domination. One fears that even more than its cultural-ideological premises it is the Hindutva style of politics that will have a transformative effect on struggles in the future. From setting up shakhas to the Sanskritisation of non-Brahminical religious sects—the faces of Hindutva are many. And CAB-NRC reveals one of its more cynical and calculated dimensions. No doubt this is only a sign of things to come, as fascist politics, social domination and neoliberal political-economy begin to lock step with each other.

These new developments cannot be wished away as the unintended consequences of a massive project of social engineering such as the NRC, coupled with its unfortunate coincidence with BJP rule. They cannot be attributed merely to the opportunism of the present political leadership, for these are actually symptoms of an endemic problem in the relation between the Indian state and society, expressed in sharp relief by the present conjuncture. Consequently, the questions at hand cannot be resolved in a piecemeal manner, through discussions and compromises behind closed doors. In fact, it requires a simultaneous rethinking of the questions of citizenship and the rights of nationalities. This can happen only if the government and the court-mandated bodies cease all CAB- and NRC-related activities until the questions of citizenship, migration, and regional disparity are discussed substantively, with adequate representation of all affected communities. All detention camps must be closed immediately and there must be an end to harassment of citizens in the name of ‘D-voters.’ The composition and procedures of the Foreigners’ Tribunals must be reviewed. Structural measures must be taken against the political disenfranchisement and economic exploitation of indigenous and migrant communities alike. Alongside these measures, there must also be a discussion to remedy the disproportionate burden of accepting immigrants that is being borne by only some states of India. Finally, a Parliamentary Committee must be formed to look into a broad restructuring of Centre-state federal relations and acknowledging the rights of nationalities within the Indian state.

However, it is doubtful whether the ruling dispensation and even most civil society commentators are capable of undertaking this task at the present moment. The creative forces to accomplish this will become available only in the midst of struggle against Hindutva fascism; and must develop out of a united front across communities, brought together in a spirit of equality, dignity, and justice for all. The blackboots are trudging through the burning streets again. And as the khaki uniforms begin turning olive green, one cannot feel that the old times have returned. But this time we will be stronger and wiser—this time we shall be victorious. Let no one mistake the moment we are living through, for we shall look back on this as the beginning of the end of the Hindu empire.

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Translated from Axomiya by Biswajit K. Bora

Assam is witnessing all-encompassing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) at this moment. People from every class, caste or creed have voluntarily come out on the streets. At a moment when the Bill has been passed in the Lok Sabha and tabled in the Rajya Sabha to be passed and made into an act, protesting voices in Assam are arrogantly shouting on the streets—“We won’t accept CAB.” These protests are our support, this arrogance is our strength—it keeps us alive and will continue to do so in the future. This are protests of epic proportion. In these protests is hidden revolutionary potential which we will have to develop. We salute these protests.

There have been many protests in Assam after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power. There were massive protests against the CAB the last time it was tabled in the parliament too. And we are forced to contemplate, looking at each and every protest demonstration and protest rally, if the nineties of the last decade is returning. Will it revive the consciousness of the nineties? Historically, we do not wish to return to the troublesome and violent days of the nineties. We desiderate only that consciousness of Assamese nationalism which can confront the Indian state—that consciousness which is critical of Indian nationalism, which can compel the Indian state-system to stand trial; that consciousness which can raise fundamental demands in front of the Indian state not only for itself but also for each and every little nationality; that aggressive consciousness which despite its aggression understands and respects the diversity of Assam’s social life. It goes without saying that like other nationalisms, Assamese nationalism was also never socially liberating, not even during the nineties. Like other nationalisms, it is also burdened with its intrinsic problems and limitations. But the role played by Assamese nationalism as consciousness of a region geopolitically and culturally distant from and neglected by the Indian mainland protesting against Indian nationalism and its representative state-system attributed Assamese nationalism a progressive character—it is the core base of Assamese nationalism. That is why the last series of protests made us think if that consciousness of Assamese nationalism was returning. But the situation at that time did not hint at a positive answer. Despite massive protests against the CAB, the BJP formed government in Assam in 2016 with a vast majority. Our apprehension that Hindu nationalism has devoured Assamese nationalism has been proved true over and over again. We may have raised certain demands at the level of parliamentary politics which are against Hindu nationalism, but culturally we are gradually stepping inside the deep and dark tunnel of Hindu nationalism. Hegemony of neoliberal and Hindutva ideology has been gradually established in our society.

We have witnessed many people becoming euphoric at the news of the four rape-accused being shot dead in an encounter by the Hyderabad Police, including people who are nationalists, who are known as progressive-democratic. How could Assamese people support encounters? The blood-soaked history of Assamese nationalism makes it impossible. But now it has also become easy in Assam. This change is easily recognisable if one looks at the reactions to the various incidents happening in Jammu and Kashmir, including the abrogation of Article 370. This is just one example. Does it mean that although we vocally oppose Indian national aggression, we are gradually embracing the ideology of Hindu nationalism? We will have to find out a rational answer to it from the protest movements happening at this moment. As of now, these protests are characteristically different from the earlier protests—firstly, these are much more aggressive than the earlier protests and inclusive of people from all sections of society; and secondly, the people of Assam have firsthand had a good taste of the BJP’s rule and their ideology during the period since the earlier protests. That is why we hope that these protests shall not be like the earlier protests—unlike earlier protests, these protests should not go back to the point of their origin where the protests need to be restarted from again. These protests must take us a step forward, engender a qualitative transformation in us. These protests must bring back the consciousness of the nineties and establish with aggression its course against Hindu nationalism. Let the thunderous rage and perfervid slogans of little nationalities against the homogenising Indian nation-state emerge from the heart of history like a phoenix.

It needs to be kept in mind that the BJP is not bad because they have introduced the CAB or that the BJP is not good because they could withdraw the CAB. Rather, the BJP and the Sangh Parivar are introducing the CAB because they are dangerous. The ultimate aim of the Sangh Parivar is to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra. Therefore, bringing about a qualitative transformation of the state-system is as equally important as homogenisation of the society towards Hindutva. Similar to the way the minorities have become primary victims in this process, little nationalities like the Assamese are also facing a crisis of existence. Hindu nationalism is the worst enemy of idiosyncratic existence of little nationalities like the Assamese, their diverse culture and their effortless, uncomplicated and harmonious coexistence with other native ethnic groups. If we do not resist it in time, all of us will be crushed under the chariot of Hindu nationalism. But this regime driven by the ideology of Hindutva and the Sangh Parivar have left no stone unturned to establish Hindu Rashtra when it comes to cultural and institutional measures. Some of these measures might have affected us directly and as a result, we are shocked; some measures are yet to affect us and as a result, we are still indifferent. We need to understand that all these are realisation of the Sangh Parivar’s grand scheme of formation of Hindu Rashtra. The Citizenship Amendment Bill is also a part of that grand scheme. Thus, protesting against the CAB do not only mean rejecting the CAB—it means rejecting the grand scheme of formation of Hindu Rashtra. Resisting and dismissing the Sangh Parivar’s scheme of formation of Hindu Rashtra in absolute terms should be the imperative and primary aim and action of the protests against the CAB. Only then these protests would be comprehensive. But caution and self-reflexivity would be required for that. The protests must be aware of the casteist-communal elements of Assamese nationalism and the encouragement these elements are currently receiving from Hindu nationalism. That ultranationalist forces cannot derail the movement and turn it against any community or ethnic group must be firmly kept in check. Simultaneously, there must be keen efforts to mould the movement into an acceptable and socially liberating one for all participating nations and ethnic groups. The progressive-democratic sections within the movement must be at the forefront in such ideological efforts. On the other hand, everybody should keep in mind that no horrific event is going to happen as soon as the CAB is passed. In fact, the Bill itself is the most dangerous and fatal—for both the Constitution of India and the society in Assam. Its social and political consequences are not momentary and tumultuous—rather, it is like cancer which spreads slowly but surely. Yet it is certain that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar will viciously strike back at the protesting people of Assam, taking into cognizance the fact that nothing will suddenly happen immediately after the Bill is passed. Strategies must be readied for that retaliation. If it is not considered now, the protesting people would become directionless and crestfallen. That is why it is of utmost importance to expose the alliance of Hindutva and neoliberalism so that the protests are arrowed toward that alliance. It must be thought and strategised well in advance how to ensure that the rising ebbs of these protest movements do not disappear with the passing of time as a result of the retaliation by the current fascist regime.

The protest movement at present has unwaveringly opposed the Citizenship Amendment Bill. We hope that this movement moves further forward, and outgrowing the question of the Bill, it expands to fervently and decisively oppose Hindu nationalism and its alliance with neoliberalism. This protest movement must not be just fire and smoke—long may it glow like embers till the fall of the fascist forces! May the deadly ideological weapons to smash Hindu nationalism emerge from the spark of this protest movement!

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The ruling dispensation has successfully cleared the passage to the Citizenship Amendment Bill days ago on its second attempt and that now has become a legal constitutional Act. When it was initially pushed in January 2019, it was vehemently opposed and the Indian parliament could not clear the passage to the bill then. The most vociferous opposition comes from the people of India’s frontier region ‘North-East’, rather than its ‘heartland’. Today Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya have been paralysed by protest since the Indian Parliament cleared its passage. Three people have been killed in Assam, curfews imposed in parts of Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya and extra troopers have been called in.

Since the initial introduction of the bill, it has been a subject of concern, both at the regional level and at the ‘heartland’ of India. But the concerns over the new Citizen Act by the two have been entirely different and the discourse at the ‘heartland’ has been continuously belittling the issue of the region which in-fact is the core of politics in the region. The belittling of the region and its people is not new, in-fact during the first Indian parliamentary election the princely states of Manipur and Tripura were not allowed to exercise adult franchise, they were made a Part C State governed by a Chief Commissioner appointed by the President of India, and the reasons cited then by BR Ambedkar, the premier of India’s Constitution was that the inhabitants are “tribal”, “uneducated” and “backward” and the states having no “authority” or “local bodies”. All these while he had no clue of the 1948 elections in Manipur under the Manipur Constitution Act 1947 before its ‘merger’ with the Union of India. This is where I feel that I should speak. I will speak the language of the indigenous people in the region who are on the streets now and not mumble some convenient politically correct appeasing statements which will fit the ‘mainstream discourse’, I have no one to appease from the ‘heartland’ of India. In short, I will be honest to myself and to the people I speak for.

The suspicious orient(s)

The region often projected as ‘complex’ social-political terrain is home to more than two hundred unique trans-border ethnicities with sizes varying from a few million to some few hundreds. Catering these range of ethnicities within the logics of a modern ‘nation-state’ has been an ‘issue’ since the British colonial times till today under the Union of India. Witnessing identity based struggles in this region is not uncommon with struggles ranging from secession from India to autonomy within the Indian Union. With the Indian nationhood’s inability to travel beyond the Chicken Neck, historically the relation of the region with the Union has been bitter and contested, and it remains the same till today. With mistrust and suspicion by the then rulers of India the large portion of the region was “taken over” as a territory of the Union. The (in)famous response “Isn’t there a brigadier in Shillong?” by the then Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel from his death bed when the report of the native state Manipur’s reluctance to join the Union reached his ears resonates the mind of the people in Manipur till today. Further, Patel also saw the North-East frontier as “troublesome” and a “weak spot” to India’s security with reference to China, inhibited by people with “pro-Mongoloid prejudices” having no “established loyalty or devotion to India”, and hence the approach to the region till today has been from the radicalised lens of India’s strategic security, a frontier “taken over” to protect its ‘heartland’. The region today is a radicalised frontier territory and its large part ruled by extra constitutional legislations which put the entire populations as “suspects” and potential troublemakers. “Shoot at suspicion” is the ‘rule of law’ in the region and a “state of exception” prevails.

The demographic politricks

With the ‘strategic security’ approach to the region inhibited by people with “pro-Mongoloid prejudices”, the biopolitics towards the region includes the intention of demographic changes by its rulers from Delhi. This is apparent from the statement made by a then parliamentarian after India’s humiliating defeat in the Indo-China war that “half a million of farmers from Punjab” be settled in the present day Arunachal Pradesh; and the reluctance of Delhi to address the Bangladeshi immigration issue in the region points towards the intent of Delhi’s demographic designs in the region. The unabated influx from Bangladesh in the region since partition has been a crucial issue, particularly Assam and Tripura. As a matter of fact the Assamese nationalism is premised from the Bengali domination in the colonial and post-colonial period and has been the core of the politics in Assam. These two states have been taking the maximum ‘burden of partition’ in the region which was the result of the politics beyond the Chicken Neck. With no concrete policies for refugees in India, legal scholars have even questioned the legality of ‘sharing the burden’ in the region when states like Manipur was not even a part of India when the partition happened.

Tripura today is a settler colonial state ruled by the immigrants pushing the Indigenous Tipras to fringes. When one says partition and the subsequent exodus of the people, it is not a one time event, but rather a trail of human migration which continues for a long period and probably continuing till today. The situation in Tripura has reached to the level where the policing of the indigenous population during an indigenous uprising is done by the civilian Bengali settlers themselves. Even today, aftermath the amendment of the Citizen Act, reports are coming in that some Tipra settlements are hiding in the jungles for their safety from the violence of the Bengali settlers.

It will be naive to assume that the burden of partition is borne by Assam and Tripura only in the region. The settlements in Dimapur in Nagaland, Jiri in Manipur is testimony to it and the rest of the states have its own share. Beyond the Bangladesh immigration issue, many ethnicities in the region do not welcome the migrants from India’s ‘heartland’ coming and settling in their respective ‘homelands’, as they also pose the same threat to the ethnic minorities. The threat perception towards the people from India’s ‘heartland’ is no less than that of a Bangladeshi, as a matter of fact Bangladesh was also India once. The past people’s movements in Meghalaya and recent one in Manipur for legislative protection for the indigenous people is testimony to it. With no objective constitutional conceptualisation of indigenous people and ethnic minorities in India and lack of concrete protective policies in place for the indigenous people in the region, and no policies for ‘sharing the burden’ of partition, the region is open to settle by ‘outsiders’ paving the way to its decay. The fear and anxiety by the ethnic minorities in the region is never an ‘imagined’ one. The region records of having low birth rates but the decadal population growth rate is much larger exceeding most of the decadal counts from the national average, which obviously is due to the migration in the region. Any minority ethnicity in this situation will obviously feel threatened.

The new Citizenship Amendment Act and the dissenting ‘North-East’

Partition was an event which happened beyond the reach of the politics in the region. But its political repercussions is far-reaching, the region is not left out from its effects. Both the Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) have played their share of politricks out of it. The BJP, partnered with many small regional parties in each state having its own agendas, came and formed the government in the region taking up the issue of immigration and protection and development of the Indigenous people and their rights and importantly using the anti incumbency sentiments towards the INC. In Assam, they promised to implement the Assam Accord 1985 “in letter and spirit” which the party itself violated days back. The BJP back stabbed the people of Assam and the North-East at large.

The reading of the dissent in the region against the new Citizen Act is in the context of Assam Accord of 1985 and the National Register of Citizen (NRC) exercise in Assam which is an outcome of the Accord signed to identify non Indian citizens. Assam is the only state in Indian Union which is conducting an NRC exercise. The exercise started in 2013 only under the scanner of Supreme Court of India. In a 1979 parliamentary by-poll in Magaldoi, Assam, people witnessed an unusual rise of voters and it was suspected that the rise was due to the influx of Bangladeshi immigrants. It sparked the most violent protest in Assam popularly called the Assam Agitation spanning over six years killing a total of 885 persons. It is also in this context of uprising, the armed group United Liberation Front of Assam was founded which continues its armed struggle for a “Swadhin Asom”. The half decade long uprising was finally concluded in 1985 with the signing of a Memorandum of Settlement: the Assam Accord, with the Government of India (GoI) under the prime ministership of Rajiv Gandhi and the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AGP) as peoples’ representative of Assam. On a similar line in 1980, in Manipur, the All Manipur Students Union (AMSU) and the All Manipur Students Co-ordination Committee (AMSCOC) launched a violent agitation against the foreigners and migrants from India’s ‘heartland’ where two students were killed. An agreement was reached with the Government of Manipur (GoM) and the student bodies with an agreement signed in July 1980.

The principle clause of the Assam Accord was the “detection and deportation” of foreigners and the cut off date set for citizenship was the midnight of 25th March 1971. Any foreigners regardless of religion entering into Assam after the cut-off date was to be detected through NRC exercise and deported. And for the agreement in Manipur the base year was 1951 and “detection and deportation” of foreigners was also part of the agreement which was never materialised. The newly amended Citizen Act by setting the new base year for citizenship in India to December 2014 even though exclusively for Hindus completely contravenes the primary clauses of the Assam Accord and the agreement between AMSU, AMSCOC and GoM thereby giving passage for citizenship to the majority of the foreigners recently identified by NRC in Assam. This is the bone of contention and the source of current unrest in the region.

Our blood is not your brownie points!

Much has been talked of the region not being represented the in the mainstream discourses be it cultural or political, even PhD theses have been written on this subject. I agree to it at some point, but there is also representation(s) to an extent, the problem with it is that whatsoever is represented has been a misrepresentation of the people in the region. Dilution, defilement, belittlement have been the nature of the so called representation(s) be it on our culture, identity or politics. The narratives on culture, identity, and politics from the region do not fit their conscience, it has to be tweaked to fit their conscience. This act of mis-representation is a conscious act of violence towards the people of the region by the dominant mainstream. A violence operational at the level of discourse. This violence on discourse justifies their dominance. We are, through their discourse(s) fixated into the categories of “Anti-state”, “violent”, “unruly” “barbaric”, “not liberal”, “xenophobe” etc etc and so on.

When the news of the preliminary list of NRC list started coming with a slight indication of majority muslim Bangladeshis being on the verge of declaring foreigners and ‘stateless’, the debates and opinion pieces in media and comments by civil and political bodies in the ‘heartland’ of India was quick to conclude the exercise as “islamophobic”, “anti-secular” and “undemocratic”. Some even went to the extent of demonising the people of ‘North-East’ by condemning them as “xenophobic”, without having a slightest clue of the historicity of the exercise and the concerns of the indigenous people in the region. Later when the final list was published nearly two million people were announced as foreigners or non Indian citizens. Many were not satisfied with the final list. For the Assamese people the digits were less and for the BJP the huge chunk of the declared foreigners turned out to be Hindus. This is where the newly amended Citizen Act saves the agenda of BJP. The Act sets the cut off date exclusive for Hindus for citizenship who have entered India on or before December 2014. The BJP’s intention is to naturalise the citizenship of the excluded Hindus from the final NRC list in Assam while the people wanted to deport the foreigners, be it Hindu or Muslim. This is why the Assamese are agitating, and not because the new Citizen Act is anti Muslim or non-secular. The Act opens the passages for settler colonialism in the region.

With the BJP’s newly enacted Citizenship Amendment Act and plans for a pan Indian NRC, the targets towards the Muslims of India’s ‘heartland’ have been sending anxieties to Indian ‘liberals’ and ‘secularist’ who are vocal against the current ruling party. By relegating the cries of the North-East region to fringes, a strong and powerful ‘liberal’ discourse on ‘secularism’ has emerged in India’s ‘heartland’. One can clearly observe the immorality of this discourse; news reports, opinion pieces announce the new Citizen Act as “islamophobic” and “anti-secular” while using images from the protesting ‘North-East’. One will also find news reports where images are used from the current Assam protest and the news item never mentions the protest in Assam and its reason but talks of passing an “Anti Secular Bill”. Deaths of protesters in Assam is cited in making their ‘liberal’ ‘secularist’ arguments in news rooms and opinion pieces. Slogans like “no to NRC” is coming out from Ganga Dhaba/Jantar Mantar protesters while the entire region of North-East wants an NRC or similar exercise. While the BJP has completely annihilated the Assam Accord and the aspirations of indigenous people of ‘North-East’, the ‘liberals’ and ‘secularist’ have done no less than the BJP by muddying the entire issue at hand. BJP has killed the indigenous people of ‘North-East’ and Indian ‘liberals’ and ‘secularist’ are scoring brownie points in their liberal spaces through the blood shed in the region! This is the immorality of India’s ‘heartland’ be it left, right or centre!

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Over the last few days, I’ve found myself repeatedly on the defensive—from accusations flying around about the xenophobic Northeast, that people there “just want to kick everybody out”.

The post Listen to Our Stories to Understand AntiCAB Protests in North East India appeared first on RAIOT.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The post Essential Guide to the Crisis of Citizenship in Assam appeared first on RAIOT.

The article, translated from Axomiya by Biswajit K Bora, is a formal write-up of what Akhil Gogoi had verbally communicated to his comrades of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, when he was in Jorhat Central Jail.

The extraordinary mass awakening erupted in Assam after the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 had been introduced in the Lok Sabha on 9 December 2019 is hitherto unseen in the history of the state. We are at a loss whether to term it a mass movement or a mass protest! It is certain that it is a phenomenon that would shake Assam’s social life. Everyone would agree that it is a historic eruption in the life of the Assamese nationality. But no matter how massive this mass protest is, this mass movement by the people would not be able to achieve its goal unless it is given a rational direction. Therefore we are trying to propose a blueprint to carry forward this movement, so that the biggest political phenomenon that we have ever seen in our lifetime does not become a nine day wonder.

As soon as the Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on 10 December 2019, people all over Assam spontaneously took to the streets. The people brought Assam’s administrative system to an abrupt halt. No sooner had the Bill been passed in the Rajya Sabha and made into an act on 11 December, the mass protest became much more aggressive and uncontrollable. The national highways were blocked, rail lines were blocked, and works in the Central Government or the State Government offices were brought to a complete halt. Even commercial institutions were automatically and unsurprisingly closed, and the state economy was brought to a halt too. All these did not take place under any party or organisation’s leadership or direction – it was the people of Assam who were at the forefront.

In order to achieve the rational goal of this movement against the CAB (now the CAA), we must learn from the mass movement led by the people of Assam all over the state, from 9 December onward. The revolutionary potential of this mass movement or the mass protest lies in its core. Our key observations are listed below:

1. This is an expression of the people of Assam’s collective indignation. There is no party politics, no organisational interest – the movement is driven by an earnest eagerness to resolve the problems. It is very pertinent to keep these in mind for a successful conclusion of this movement against the CAA.
2. The strategy and tactics of this spontaneous movement were right. What it means is that for their true love for their nation, whatever collective action everyone spontaneously participating in the movement has taken is the righteous action for a righteous movement. There are no traditional protest demonstrations or hunger strikes – this movement is carried forward by tactics to bring the administration to a halt in order to compel the Indian state to take notice. Therefore, these tactics should be used to lead this movement to a successful conclusion.
3. It has gushed out the obstacles to a unified movement that had long been a discourse in Assam. It had obliterated organisational arrogance. The people of Assam have taken leadership of this movement and all organisations and their leadership have rightly been compelled to take part in this historic mass movement.
4. When the movement has continued to grow, the government has become active again. Every possible measure has been taken to make the movement dwindle to nothing. Against such a backdrop, we want to propose the following future plans of action to the people of Assam:a) In order to arrive at an effective outcome, the movement would have to be continued for a long time, without resorting to violence at any moment.

   b)This movement would have to able to cut off the ruling party and their stakeholders from the masses for their actions against the interest of the people of Assam.

The success or failure of the movement would be determined by an ability to create a strategy to carry out the above-mentioned tasks with mass participation. In order to be able to sustain for a long time, the movement must have three characteristics –
a) massive participation of the people,
b) democratic direction of the movement,
c) peaceful yet non-negotiable movement.

What the movement must achieve:

This movement is not only against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, it has also given expression to the long standing indignation of the people of Assam and their sense of betrayal by the Indian state. It is a display of strength against the fascist Indian state. Therefore, what the movement seeks must not be a resolution against the fascist imposition of the CAA. Along with the scrapping of the CAA, we must realise our long standing demands, resolve the long standing problems of Assam. Hence, what the movement must achieve are:

1. The question of Indian citizenship in Assam must be resolved once and for all. A “non obstante clause” must be added to Article 11 of the Constitution of India so that the Parliament of India cannot take a decision regarding Indian citizenship in Assam without prior approval by the Assam Assembly.
2. A “non obstante clause” must be added to Article 347 of the Constitution of India regarding the state language of Assam so that whatever decision the Parliament of India takes concerning the state language of other states within the Union of India, Assamese will always be the state language in Assam while each and every indigenous language will be given due recognition.
3. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 must be scrapped in toto. In addition, there must be a provision of Inner Line Permit for the state of Assam.
4. The state of Assam must be given special status as per the Constitution of India. This is what we may also term as “constitutional safeguard”. The provisions under Article 370 1(A) to Article 371 (J) must be extended to Assam. As it is the case in Nagaland, the indigenous people of Assam must be given rights to land and resources under Article 370 1(A). As it is the case in Sikkim, seats must be reserved for the indigenous people of Assam in Panchayats, municipality corporations, Assembly and the Lok Sabha. Seats must be reserved for the indigenous people of Assam in educational institutions. Central government and state government as well as private jobs must be reserved for the indigenous people of Assam.
5. A legislative council where all the ethnic groups are equally represented must be formed to ensure equal status and equal rights of all the indigenous ethnic groups in Assam.
6. There must be special provisions to safeguard the heritage, language, literature, culture and tradition of all the ethnic groups in Assam.
7. Land reform must be carried out in Assam to ensure that each and every local farmer in Assam is given agricultural land along with complete irrigation facilities in every plot so that substantial transformation could be brought about in the agricultural sector in Assam.
8. Traditional industries as well as other handicraft industries must be built and developed in all the villages of Assam to ensure complete employment of all the youths in Assam as well as to bring back those youths home who are currently working in other states.

This movement would effectively be a failure if the mass awakening against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 is not directed toward such a successful conclusion. In such a scenario, possibilities of such mass movements in the future would also remain.

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According to the understanding of Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization (UNPO), the right to self-determination is the right of a people to determine its own destiny. In particular, the principle allows a people to choose its own political status and to determine its own form of economic, cultural and social development. Most importantly, the right to self-determination is recognized in international law as a right of process (not of outcome) belonging to people and not to states or governments. Accordingly, the principle of self-determination is prominently embodied in Article 1 of the charter of the United Nations. In a similar note, in its attempt for the elucidation of the concepts of Rights of people brought together by UNESCO from 1985 to 1991, it concluded in the sense of the Genocide Convention that right to self-determination is an integral part of human rights law which has a universal application. It further recognized the fact that the right to self-determination is a fundamental condition for the enjoyment of other human rights and fundamental freedom, be they civil, political, economic, social or cultural.

Given this understanding, it is crystal clear that when demands of self-determination are asserted by oppressed nationalities/identities, these demands are not simply demands for political independence from an oppressive state, but these demands are the fundamental grounds on which the very idea of human rights gets established. And any state does not possess the moral and legal right to persecute, annihilate, suppress such demands – as it is beyond the reach of governments and belong to the category of the Universal.

But the reality is otherwise. Even if for a moment we keep aside the fresh universal humiliation of Kashmiri peoples demand of self-determination, we still have other, less heard about, mostly ignored state sponsored persecution of people and their right to self-determination by the Brahmanical Indian state.

One such marginalized story is from Assam and its demand for self-determination which again has been gaining fresh momentum in and through the ‘Brahmanical’ Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019.

The Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA)

CAA is not simply a brainchild of BJP PM Narendra Modi and HM Amit Shah, which the duo prepared and projected as a savior of human rights bill to save religiously persecuted Hindus in neighboring Islamic nations. The idea that Hindus possess exclusive rights over citizenship in India has been the foundational and fundamental principle of the RSS, since its inception in 1925. And RSS was (is) smart enough to perceive a primordial sense of civilizational polarization in the name of religion which has been happening in the so called civilized world, forever. To the worldview of RSS, the world is fundamentally occupied by Christians and Muslims, which means that both Christians and Muslims have enough of the world where they possess their exclusive right over citizenship. Hindus, if perceived from the world civilizational location, are minority and they only have India where they can exercise their precious exclusive right over Indian citizenship.

Taking this illusory understanding of RSS a step further, the BJP Shah/Modi duo gave this civilizational polarization a new turn. Ever since 9/11 happened in USA and ever since the war on terror was declared on Muslims by Christian nations, the medieval barbaric war of religions has gained modern momentum. Now, the distinction was very clear. On one side, there stands a civilized, secular, democratic, Christian nations and on the other side stands the barbaric, authoritarian, orthodox Islamic nations. So, the problem faced by the Modi/Shah duo and BJP was that how to enter into this glorious civilizational war with Hindu Brahmanical virility? It was not that difficult. The last 70 years of existence of the Indian nation has done enough and everything to make sure that Muslims in India remain otherized. Further, RSS has been successful enough to convince the Hindu conscience that Muslims have been the root cause of degradation & degeneration of the great Hindu nation named India. BJP therefore did not have to put much effort to bring the Citizenship Amendment Bill. It is based on a simple idea that Hindus must be provided with state sponsored due process across the world so that each and every Hindus can attain citizenship of India, finally making sure that Brahmanical Hindus and upper caste Hindu males possess the eternal right to rule India forever. Thus CAB was brought in 2016 and was also passed in the Loksabha.

But in their simple formula to formally establish Hindu Rashtra in India by being part of a world civilizational polarization through religions, the Modi/Shah duo led BJP missed or willingly ignored the insignificant demand for self-determination by the people of Assam. And the role of merely 3 crores population of Assam in this enormous battle of religions can’t be ignored or stepped aside due to its insignificance. In fact, what RSS/BJP and the Hindu conscience perceives as insignificant has turned out to be the fundamental hurdle in clearing the road for a Hindu Rashtra. As a result, CAB could not be materialized in 2016 and it was made into an act in 2019, which aims to deal with the question of Assam’s aspiration to self-determination by including a fresh section in the revised 2019 bill, which states that –

6B. (4). Nothing in this section shall apply to tribal area of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram or Tripura as included in the sixth schedule to the Constitution and covered under ‘The Inner Line’ notified under the Bengal Eastern Frontier regulation, 1873.

And this is the solution by means of which RSS/BJP crushes the fundamental human rights of people of Assam, who has been fighting a lesser known battle ever since it became a part of the Brahmanical Indian state. This battle has been against the practical threat of becoming immigrants, strangers, homeless, oppressed in one’s own land. For instance, in Tripura in the short span of 100 years, Tripuri identity has been systematically erased, otherized, marginalized by overloading Tripura with caste Hindu Bengali identity first by the British colonial state and then by the Brahmanical Indian state.

It is in this context, to preserve a marginalized identity, to preserve a marginalized language, to preserve socio-economic, political and cultural rights, CAA is needed to be scrapped totally.

Otherwise, the collective humiliation of people’s emotions by BJP government is going to boost the demand of self-determination, not only in Assam but also across the North eastern states, where the question of stateless and nationality has remained an unfinished project.

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My mother has been complaining a lot these days about termites, she says they have been all over the house and are eating it up from within, “a jerk of earthquake and the house will collapse”. They had infested one of our wooden tables slowly over years. It looked fine from the outside but with a nudge the entire table dismembered into dust. Such is the termite’s prowess of unmaking.

Since the past couple of months I have been thinking a lot about home and ways in which it archives the passage of time. In one such afternoon of sluggish enquiry, I learnt about my great-aunt for the first time some forty years after her death when I discovered an old trunk in my house. The trunk was brought by her when she migrated from Sylhet to India (Assam) because of the partition of 1947. Coincidentally, the day I discovered this relic of the inglorious history turned out to be the anniversary of the country’s independence. It was on the 15^th August 2018.

While growing up it was routine affair for me, to sit and listen to stories of people and places of the familial past. It was often finding things around the house such as the trunk that would unspool into hours of stories, often refurnished, forever new and forever incomplete. My primary raconteurs were Appa, my grandmother, who died three years ago at the age of 80, and Chotodadu, my granduncle, who predicts that he will only die at the age of 88.

One morning some years ago I followed Appa around the house while she limped and bickered, and her sari slowly undraped behind her like a white river. She hurriedly settled down to clean up an Almirah, and insisted that I should leave her alone. However, in a couple of minutes her irked screech was abandoned midway for a tender tone, the one she always assumed while explaining something utter relish, for I had priced out from a corner of the Almirah a bundle of red passports. The moth eaten copies of Indo-Pakistan passports belonged to my Great Grandfather, Great Grand Mother, Borodadu (my grandfather) and Chotodadu. These passports , she explained to me were issued in the aftermath of the partition of India (from East-Pakistan), for its victims to travel back and forth through the freshly carved borders at ease, to smoothen the abruptness of migration of families who had left their homes, lands and localities. Immediately after the partition, one however didn’t need any passport; one had to only go through a check post with required documents. Except if you were carrying any newspaper from the other side of the border that would certainly be confiscated. When Chotodadu and Borodadu had gone back to their ancestral village Norton (Sylhet) in 1948 for the celebration of Durga Puja they didn’t need the passports. This was the first Durga Puja after they belonged to a new country where their ancestral home didn’t belong anymore. I asked Chotodadu about what the mood was like there during the festivities, if people were disheartened after the hope that the Sylhet referendum would ensure Sylhet’s merger with India was betrayed. “Not at all”, he replied, “nobody believed the certainty of partition, they thought Pakistan was temporary, that it wouldn’t last very long, and the lands would eventually re-unite”. It was only since 1954 that these passports started to be issued, marking a point in history where a chasm between belonging to a Desh that meant attachment to one’s home, and a Desh that meant affiliation to a State or nation- a cartographed territory was being sharpened.

Most of the memories of their ancestral home in Sylhet or the Desher bari as it is still referred to comes from during the time of the second world war. The wrath of the War or the fearful anticipation of it unfolded into different histories in different parts of the world. Assam too was seething in anticipation of a Japanese raid. Trenches were built near houses, and evenings were spent in blackouts. My Great grandfather, Great grandmother and their children lived in Guwahati back then. My Great Grand Father was a Lawyer there, and they lived in the old neighborhood of Panbazar, while the other members of the joint family lived in the Desher bari of Sylhet which was then a part of Assam. The city of Guwahati at that time was being depopulated, fearing aerial bombing. Families of ‘working men’ were sent off to the villages, Borodadu, Chotodadu and their other siblings spent the longest duration time in the Desher Bari then. The time following this was tumultuous, the decolonization was gaining momentum, and as independence drew closer the fate of Assam remained uncertain.

During the partition the house of Panbazar became a shelter for most of the extended family and acquaintances, the ones who left their homes and stayed here until they could settle to the newly allotted lands and make new homes there. The people didn’t start coming in immediately after the partition but during the 1950s following the communal riots. Almost every other day the house would be simmering with the tide and ebb of new guests, this went on for of about a year.

While my grandfather’s father and mother were the resident hosts for waves of people coming in, my grandmother, Appa, and her family had a different experience of the times, they had to depart in more immediate sense of the word. Appa often told me the story of the day her father permanently left their home in Raigor, Sylhet. The migration of a family was finalized when the family deity was removed from the house. It was a winter morning when my grandmothers’ father left the house with the deity placed in a basket under his arms. When he reached Dewaan Bagaa (a Tea garden in Barka Valley, where their kins lived) he heard the news that Gandhi had been assassinated. Her father decided to celebrate Gandhi’s death by cooking duck, for he believed Gandhi was responsible for the breaking away of the country, for him having to leave his home. This burden of responsibility on Gandhi wasn’t borne out of a conviction of him having actively caused it, rather from an intimate expectation that he, being the Mahatma, was the one who could have stopped it. My grandmother used to story to correlate the date of their final departure from Sylhet.

On the other hand, for my grandfather’s father the dominant emotion was a yearning to eventually return to the village. It was decades later when it was finally accepted and ingested that there would be no return to the desher bari that vines of nostalgia grew across home and crept down the subsequent generations, somewhat romanticized with the luxury of being able to do so. Remembrances take many methods; one was Mejodadu’s, who from his childhood memory made a sketch of the Desher Bari. With no photographs as such, that became our only visual template to accommodate inherited memories and imaginations. The other was Chotodadu’s, who, used to make me and my cousins create model of that sketch of the house using Lego and everything else that we could gather from around us, sand, pebbles etc. The best one would win the biggest chocolate. Mejodadu once jokingly remarked, ‘why is Benu (Chotodadu) spilling over with so much nostalgia, given he has spent the least amount of days in that house’! Mejodadu was a repository of stories, however he, like most of the other people, Borodadu for instance, died before I could ask them many of these things. In fact in the last few years I met Mejodadu so seldom that there wasn’t much opportunity to ask him either, his toothless ramblings was absolutely incomprehensible on the phone. I went to Calcutta two years back, when he was dying. The day he died I only hoped that it would be as sunny and bright as he once described to me what the day of his death should be like.

Mejodadu’s sketches, the Indo Pak passport and the trunk are amongst the few things that embody the memories of the movements across spaces. Another such thing is a family deity at home. It was in the shape of a plate and called ‘Bhabani shankarer Tati’. A copper plate layered with white and red sandalwood past applied on its surface over years. The plate along with being an object of worship that was brought during the migration of the family also brought with it an interesting story about itself. An ancestor of, named Jagannath Shiromoni was enquired one day by his caste- discipline what day it was in the lunar calendar, to which he replied in hubris, that it was the full moon. Little later he discovered it was rather the opposite, it was the night of no moon, however because he had already declared that it was full moon and his words couldn’t be wrong, he summoned the moon in this plate to show his caste discipline. This story, one of reassuring the caste superiority-despite of being wrong he couldn’t be wrong, moreover he couldn’t be wrong to his disciple, a hierarchy lower in the caste ladder-speaks emphatically of the fact that objects are anything but benign, and that remembering is remembering to remind, remembering to domesticate and remembering to reaffirm in quotidian ways, ones assumed social positions. When the last remaining members finally left their Desher Bari they came to Guwahati with this copper plate where the moon was shown.

The Desher Bari had been emptied of most of the inhabitants by the 1960s. Gyanadadebi, whose name is written on the trunk in red along with her address ‘Norton gram’, had come to the Guwahati with her husband ( my great uncle ) when she must have been around 75. Everybody else had gradually moved to India by then and. It was during then, mostly out of a fear that when they die there wouldn’t be any one (implying anyone of the caste/clan) to do their last rites that they decided to leave their home and come to Assam and spend the rest of her life here. They came carrying this trunk, from which I found her wooden mirror and portrait of a young woman, who, I discovered was her only daughter, Nirmala. She had died very young during childbirth.

Home archives the passage of time in many ways. While earlier I used to think of it as the stories of people and places, now it is the gradual erasure of the story-tellers, their inconsolable absence emphasized by their mute photographs pasted across the walls, and the incomplete afterlife of all these things which in their reinvented use or disuse have become memorabilias of futile yearnings.

Then there are these termites, expanding their nest across the walls in a mockery of cartography. There is also the banyan tree that has emerged from corner of worn out wall, the dense moss that covers the terrace, and the rodents gnawing off old papers and clothes. This is another archive of time, one that is thriving, one that makes you realize that decay and death can be as alive and breathing, and that erosion is also an act of being. For the walls wounded with photographs of the dead which reiterate that remembering is rooted in the realization of not having it any more, the termites and their sprawling nests are its pulsating arteries.

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This is a translation of Akhil Gogoi’s open letter he handed over to his comrades when he was presented before a special National Investigation Agency court in Guwahati on 24 January 2020. Akhil Gogoi, mass peasant leader and RTI activist from Assam, was arrested on 12 December 2019 by Assam Police and later handed over to the NIA. He has been booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and a case was registered against him under section 120(B), 124(A), 153(A), 153(B) of the IPC and section 18, 39 of the UAPA. Translated from Axomiya by Biswajit K. Bora

Respected Leadership of Anti-CAA National Organisations,

Revolutionary greetings to all of you from prison. Because I have been incarcerated in judicial custody for a long time, I am in profound mental disturbance, and I humbly convey the following to you in this Byzantine conjuncture for Assam.

We are extremely worried, concerned and apprehensive about the current strand of the people’s movement against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in Assam. Therefore, despite being held captive inside the red walls of prison, we want to critically yet constructively reflect on it.

We believe that the ongoing anti-CAA movement has strangely become protracted, dawdling, and directionless. The movement has been disgracefully devoured by symbolism. The time is no longer suitable to carry out symbolic protests. At this moment, we need a resolute, unified mass movement that can bring the government to their knees.

Despite our absolute respect toward mass rallies, cultural protests, mass roars, black flag displays, etc., we want to say that these kinds of action programmes at this time will not force the government to change their decision in principle. These action programmes were certainly fruitful against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB), but the nature and character of the movement against the CAA ought to evolve.

We believe that a movement carried out to repeal an act of the parliament ought to be unprecedentedly and overwhelmingly forceful and intense.

What should be the nature and character of this mass movement against the CAA? The people of Assam spontaneously took to the streets and defined the nature and character of this movement on 10^th, 11^th and 12^th of December, 2019. The nature and character of an infallible mass movement could be fathomed out by deducting the incidents of violence from the extraordinary mass awakening we saw erupt all over the state in those three days.

After the historic mass revolt of 10, 11, and 12 December 2019, the most positive attribute of the movement carried forward under the leadership of various national organisations is its peaceful nature. The negative aspect is the dwindling intensity of the earlier mass revolt.

The most significant aspect of that mass revolt was the spontaneous, courageous participation of the revolutionary people of Assam and an independent leadership. In different regions in the state, that mass revolt was led by the local leadership of a community or a group of that region. Afterwards, when the leadership of the established organisations took over the reins, it indeed attained a direction; but the earlier intensity severely dwindled and the government also stopped taking the movement seriously. Instead, the government expressed its complete trust in the movement. It was as if the inherent force of the mass movement to make the communal and monstrous government tremble in fear had diminished suddenly.

Therefore, in order to shake the government in a specious manner, the leadership of the movement had to reiterate the slogan to form an alternate political party and give exaggerated importance to the Supreme Court so that they could convince the people of their intention.

We would have to politically resolve an unconstitutional issue raised politically by violating the country’s constitutional principles and values. Only an inexorable mass movement carried forward on the just path can change such a fascist decision. We acutely feel the absence of such a resolute mass movement in Assam.

The massive tide of the mass revolt of 10, 11, and 12 December 2019 spontaneously gushed out the long-discussed problems that created obstacles to a unified movement by the national organisations of Assam. The mass revolt of those three days was the example of a genuine unified movement of the Assamese nationality. It is however a national irony that the movement post-December 12^th could not overcome those limitations. We believe that in order to keep the movement ideologically just and arrive at a just outcome by treading a just path while at the same time ensuring that the people are not betrayed, this national struggle must truly become a relentless, unified mass struggle. The way the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) and artists in Assam have united, Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), Nagarikatva Xangxodhan Aain Birodhi Mancha [Forum against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act], civil society in Assam, college and university students, people’s organisations, tribal organisations, and other national organisations and crusading writers-intellectuals, as well as the citizens of Assam, must be united too. We believe that it is impossible to achieve our goal without such a unified national struggle.

The Supreme Court has decided to set up a five-judge constitutional bench to hear the petitions filed against the CAA. A constitutional bench is set up so that the matter will be in the court for a prolonged period of time. What it means is that the matter will be kept within the icy Establishment of the court. It is indeed worrying that the Supreme Court refused to put a stay on the CAA. But at the same time, to be overtly jubilant because the issues from Assam and Tripura, two states who have separate state accords will be heard separately is also a sign of political naïveté.

We believe that the decision to form an alternate political party has been announced ahead of time. Such announcements make the sincere sections participating in the mass struggle suspicious, lead to rumour-mongering among the populace, and give chances to the ruling regime to spread misinformation against the trustworthiness of the leadership of the movement. As a result, the movement gets hurt in its core. Our position in this context is that we need an honest and all-inclusive regionalist political party for Assam. To form such a political party in order to banish the fascist, fundamentalist, and communal BJP forever from the social life in Assam and to permanently resolve the national problems of the Assamese nation is the need of the hour. But it must not be done at the cost of jeopardising the ongoing mass struggle. We need this alternate political party as a supplement or extension to this massive, resolute movement. Therefore, the announcement to form such a political party must not come from the leadership; instead, the demand for such a political party must spontaneously come from the people. For the national interest of the Assamese nation, we will have to comprehensively defeat the BJP in the Assam Legislative Assembly election, 2021.

In this crucial moment for Assam, I have been a victim of the government’s well-orchestrated conspiracy and remanded in judicial custody on a false charge. I am deeply distressed and perfervid. By continuously incarcerating me and my comrades, the government plans to shape the current movement according to their wish. We, the people of Assam must unitedly and unrelentingly move ahead toward victory by overthrowing this conspiracy. It is my sincere request to all the comrades and the leadership of all the national organisations in Assam that let all of us collectively transform this moment of crisis of the Assamese nationality into our resource. Against this backdrop of national awakening in Assam, let us take this opportunity to oblige the central government to not only repeal the CAA in toto but also permanently resolve the long-standing national problems of Assam.

Jai Aai Axom

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Of late, the communal forces, both of Hindus and Muslims, have been raising their ugly heads all over the country in an alarming way. These elements, with their divisive words, thoughts and deeds, have striving to vitiate the socio-cultural-political atmosphere of the country for serving their vested interests. One familiar agenda they very often resort to, is to focus on and propagate systematically the incidents of conflict among different communities with their distorted versions. But there are numerous instances in our society that carry the message of genuine understanding, co-operation and harmony among various communities. Highlighting such positive episodes may be an effective way for countering the ill-motivated designs of the communal forces. The Manikut Utsav, celebrated at Hajo, the Temple City of Assam is bright example of Hindu-Muslim unity which the entire country should take note of.

The Manikut Utsav is a religio-cultural procession organized at Hajo on the first day of the Assamese month Magh. The procession starts from the Poa Mecca gate on the Garurachal Hill and ends at the Hayagriva Madhav Temple on the Manikut Hill. The Khadim of Poa Mecca Dargah and the Dolai of Panchatirtha (Haigriv Madhav, Kedar, Ganesh, Kameswar and Kamaleswar) jointly inaugurate and lead the procession. Thousands of people take part in the procession with great zeal and enthusiasm. Distinguished personalities in the fields of literature, art and culture of Assam consider it a privilege to be present on the occasion. Performance of Jikirs, Nam-Prasangas, Bihu-geets and other folkloristic items sounds out the gospel of communal harmony loud and clear and turns the gathering into a vibrant and colourful one.

The Manikut Utsav came into being in the year 1993. On 6 December 1992, the almost five-century old Babri Masjid was demolished by a section of Hindu communal outfits. This triggered a spate of communal violence in various parts of the country. Sporadic incidents of communal conflicts took place in certain areas of Assam also. The age-old tradition of communal harmony and peaceful co-existence of the state seemed to be in jeopardy. In such a situation, the right-minded people and organizations thought in necessary to uphold the message of communal harmony and brotherhood in the form of Manikut Utsav. The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) took a bold initiative towards this noble cause.

Taufiq Hussain, the present Khadim of Dargah 

Aniruddha Sarma, a priest of Haigriv Madhav mandir says

Ashini Kumar Sarma, secretary of Haigriv Madhav temple 

Viewed in the backdrop of Hajo’s religious, cultural and historical heritage, the birth of a festival of communal harmony like Manikut Utsav seems to be quite natural. Hajo has been famous as the “Tribeni Sangam” ( confluence of three streams) of Assam since ancient times. These three streams are–Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Hajo figures prominently in some ancient scriptures like the Kalikapurana of the 11th century AD and is home to five famous Hindu temples known as the Panchatirtha. Of these temples, the Hayagriva Madhav on Manikut Hill is the most famous one. The Poa Mecca on Garurachal Hill is an important Islamic shrine that contains the tomb of Ghiyasuddin Awliya, a Sufi saint of the 13th century AD. The Buddhists of Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal and Arunachal Pradesh believe that Mahamuni Gautam Buddha attained his Mahaparinibbana under a sal tree at Hajo. They consider the idol of Hayagriva Madhav to be that of Gautam Buddha and visit it in the month of Magh. They would take with them some amount of sacred soil from Hajo in their return journey. The stone-carved elephant symbols on the Hayagriva Madhav temple carry the significance of Buddhist belief.

On the occasion of Ashokastami festival, a religious procession is taken out with the idol of Hayagriva from the Hayagriva Madhav temple upto the bank of the Brahmaputra at Sualkuchi. This procession is mandatory to be escorted by a section of local Muslims known as the “Saukadhara” ( Stick bearers). These local Muslims have the voting rights in the election of the Dolai of the Panchatirtha. Again, on the occasion of the Shivaratri festival in the Kedar temple which is just below the Poa Mecca, a representation from the Poa Mecca Dargah would offer “Sidha” ( materials) to support the festival. Another representation from the Kedar temple would do the same on the day of “final Urus” ( a Muslim religious ceremony) at the Poa Mecca. In the medieval history of Assam, Hajo occupied an important position as the centre of tripartite politics between the Ahoms, the Muslims and the Koch dynasties. At times, they fought against each other and, at times, they enter into treaties with each other. Hajo has been attracting peoples of diverse races, castes, creeds and cultures to its breast since time immemorial. The very name of the city “Hajo” itself derives from a Bodo word “Hajw” meaning uplands or hills and it indicates its ancient association with the Indo-Mongoloid people. It is in this context that the significance of the Manikut Festival could be best understood.

The author is grateful to Dr Nur Islam Saikia, Professor of Cotton University, Angshuman Sarma, Ph.D Scholar of JNU and Siddhartha Dutta for their valuable information and suggestions in preparing this article                 

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The unrelenting movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019  (CAA) reveals that the wounds of the past remain unhealed. While the CAA is an attempt at settling, to quote Sanjib Baruah, the “unfinished business” of partition, it has flared up what the indigenous people of the Northeast dread the most- the fear of being reduced to a minority. That fear is often labelled as a mere myth by some and the persistence of that myth is often ascribed to the Assamese middle class’s political agenda. However, in the case of the CAA protests, the spontaneity and intensity and consistency of the current movement signal a contrary view. It is in this light that Assam’s politics can be explained in terms of a ‘politics of resentment’, a term given by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama, in his own analyses of identity politics.This resentment is against the Centre which continues to belittle the identity concerns of the indigenous people. The former and now scrapped IMDT Act and the current CAA, in their own ways, can be seen as the materialization of such an apathetic attitude of the centre towards Assam.

Assam’s politics centres on immigration and its threat to the identity of its people. This threat in today’s context could be argued either for or against, real or perceived, but it is crucial to acknowledge that it’s evident as every time such a perception comes around, there is a spontaneity and potency of resistance. Can we label it as mass hysteria, as a lot of mainland liberals have come to make sense of it? Or is it a Sorelian myth, designed and concocted to drive the masses into action towards a deliberate political end? The secular discourse of the mainland gives us a few revelations. But before that, it is important to note how the differential politics of Assam and the other Northeastern states á la rest of India, has always baffled mainland political analysts.

A big chasm of in-difference?

Assamese nationalism has, apart from its more militarist ways, continuously expressed its resentment in legal and constitutional language- what should be the status of ‘illegal immigrants’ in a sovereign country? But the centre’s answer to such a question has often ignored the genuine concerns of the state. The conflict between the Centre and Northeast is rightly highlighted by Sanjib Baruah- when it comes to India’s policy (on immigration) there is an implicit acceptance of the rights of Hindu political refugees from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) to settle anywhere in India, on the other hand when it comes to the Northeast, there is a reluctance to make any distinction between Muslim economic migrants and Hindu political refugees. It is this conflicting pan Indian and sub-national opinion over the immigration issue that is one of the primary reasons for the current protests in the region and its difference from the protests in the mainland.

The CAA further heightens, what the anthropologist, Arjun Appadurai found in analyzing multi-ethnic societies, the “Uncertainties”. He argued that the forms of such uncertainty are various. One kind of uncertainty is a direct reflection of census concerns- How many persons of this and that sort really exist in a given territory? Another kind of uncertainty is about what some of these mega identities really mean? Further uncertainty is about whether a particular person is really what they claim to be or have historically been? Finally these various forms of uncertainties create intolerable anxiety in the relationship of many individuals to state-provided goods- since these entitlements are directly tied to who “you” are ,and thus to who “they” are. Appadurai argues that when one or more forms of such identities come into play, violence is the obvious outcome.

Coming back to present-day Assam, the state government led by the BJP came to power by co-opting indigenous or regional political parties, promising to preserve, protect and promote jati mati aru bheti , where jati is loosely translatable to the Assamese (sub) nation, mati is homeland and bheti is the hearth. Doing a complete turn-around, at least that is how it appears to most people of Assam, bypassing the fact that it had always been a core electoral promise in the BJP manifesto, it now claims that the Act will not be detrimental to Assam. However, it is not difficult to see that the CAA is nothing but a continuation of Delhi’s authoritarian attitude towards Assam. The Act aims to fulfil BJP’s idea of a Hindu Rashtra at the cost of one of its constituent regions. In this process, there is a denial of identity concerns of the people of Northeast/Assam and it is not a new phenomenon. In an attempt to assuage the current volatile political atmosphere, the BJP led state government has used various tactics- military, political and economic. The well-known journalist, Subir Bhaumik, has argued that the four principles of realpolitik statecraft propounded by Kautilya- Sham, Dam, Danda, Bhed have all been used in varying proportions, to control and contain the violent movements in the Northeast. Thus, the means adopted by the present government to suppress the movement is not unknown in the past. In fact, Assam has been reduced to a pawn in the political game of pan Indian parties. From the two major national parties’ own brand of politics (critiqued whether as minority or majoritarian) politics, the germane concerns of the Northeast have been sidelined, time and again. Unfortunately in this political game, it has often found a regional ally.

It is this continuation of Delhi’s authoritarian and apathetic attitude towards Assam, under different regimes, that is the main reason behind the persistence of the old wounds, the old fears and the old grievances. These will never die down unless a political solution is reached. Such a solution should be based on a change in the relationship between the Centre and its peripheries, by vesting certain exceptional power to the state, which is not uncommon under India’s asymmetric federal structure.

What lies beyond the Secular protests?

The CAA protests in the Northeast and the ‘mainland’ have once again brought out the sharp lines underlying the Indian Union’s and its people’s relationship with the people of Northeast India. It cannot be denied that the picture is one of people’s unities at the outset: Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Kerala etc., as far as the protests are concerned. But the uncomfortable truth, especially for the mainland liberal, is in the fact that if Muslims are tomorrow included within the ambit of the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, the protests in Assam or Tripura would go on unabated. In the very unlikely scenario of such an occurrence, the protests would in fact even magnify, and it will be the Northeastern states alone in the protesting field. Such a dissonance brought on by the peculiar historical context of Northeast India harking back to the colonial era, with Assam coming under the Raj as late as 1826, hangs like an albatross around the neck of every well-meaning, but confounded/ignorant, mainland liberal Indian. This in fact is the casualty of locating the CAA protests (and the NRC-NPR combination) in the Northeast, something that should not be lost sight of.

In the case of Assam, the Act has virtually meant the undoing of the Assam Accord of 1985, which is sort of a public contract between the people of Assam and the Centre, promising to solve the nationality question of Assam permanently. The deviatory and mixed statements of the ministers at the Assam state government, currently ruled by BJP led coalition, have complicated matters. It also needs to be noted that sections of intelligentsia of the Assamese people, and other indigenous and non-indigenous but permanent residents of Assam, have called the Act, to quote the editor of an Assamese daily, ‘an eternal license for the Hindus of Bangladesh to claim entry into Assam, irrespective of them facing persecution, or date of arrival (post-2014).’ This is because as the Act now stands, only an affidavit is required to be produced before the authorities for the foreign national to become a prospective citizen. A person fleeing religious persecution from Bangladesh, for all practical reasons, cannot be held accountable to produce documents to prove that s/he had arrived in Assam not later than 2014.

The historical colonial and post-colonial experience of the northeast and its impact on the demography, identity politics and conflicts in the region, is an important factor in understanding the anxiety, brought to the fore once again, by the protests against the Act. The threat posed by the CAA, whether real or imagined, can be seen as the threat perception of a cultural genocide, facing the indigenous or national minorities of the region. In this context, the words of Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, writing in the wake of the outbreak of the Second World War, seem pertinent as far as the threat perception is concerned. He argued that genocide could also be cultural in its form, not necessarily physically eliminating a national group. He talks about the imposition of the language, culture and laws by one national group over another (usually conquered). Although, the fears of the inhabitants of Assam (especially the ethnic Assamese and the indigenous peoples) could be better explained as a fear of getting assimilated into a more potent cultural nationalism (Bengali, in this case), the fear of ‘imposition’ of Bengali language is also present.

The protests in the northeast have been made invisible, and worse, appropriated in the pan-Indian discourse. This discourse is progressive and anti-communal in standing up to the un-constitutional elements of the majoritarian saffron onslaught. However, when juxtaposed alongside the militarised and exceptional state that Northeast India has been accorded in its post-colonial experience, it falls along expected lines. Two instances could perhaps throw some light on this, from both sides of the right-left spectrum.

In the op-ed page of The Telegraph on 9^th January, 2020, a well-known columnist and BJP MP wrote that the CAA protests had started on the 13^th of December 2019 from Kolkata, before spreading to the rest of the country. The resistance against the Citizenship Amendment Bill, when it was in the former version of CAB 2016 started in the Northeast and Assam in particular, first in the realm of civil society groups and intelligentsia. The columnist could have at least taken note of the details about where the protests against the CAB 2019 began, well before it was turned into CAA 2019.

The second instance is from a reputed left-leaning political fortnightly of India. The issue, of course, is dedicated to the CAA protests. Its front page is titled “Secular Upsurge and Brutal Response”. This is fairly a pan-Indian view of the CAA protests which intentionally or un-intentionally renders the concerns of the Northeastern states invisible. However, the same issue also carries an article on the protests in the Northeast mentioning the indigenous concerns of the region, but it is again in the margins, arguably because, the lines in the magazine’s front page has mentioned ‘newfound unity of the secular Indians.’ The message-driven home from such generalisations should not be seen in terms of the Northeast’s lack of secularism, but rather the discourse of footnoting or end-noting ( or ignoring altogether) concerns of this region– be it the Citizenship Amendment Bill, smart cities, big dams and a host of other phenomena as the experience of this part of India shows.

Appropriating the NRC is another syndrome of the Centre’s (not the people) purely utilitarian commitments to the fears of the Northeast. The NRC process in Assam was nothing short of a nightmare, especially for the intersectional poor and Bengali, Hindu or Muslim alike. Institutional biases along ethnic lines and traditional insider/outsider binaries were rampant in the procedures, along with the arbitrariness with which objections were filed and the Foreigner’s Tribunals functioned. Arundhati Roy had emphatically noted the exercise as a kind of ‘occupation by documentation.’ The horrors of the NRC now loom large on the horizon of north, west, east and peninsular India, and the irony is there for all to see. Because what is equally true and sobering is the fact that this very exercise in Assam is a product of the historically grounded fears of losing land, language, political power and culture to the outsider (and not just the foreigner). Some indigenous communities might also see it not just as a product, but also a compromise.

The moral arguments on the desirability of the NRC in Assam– especially at this juncture when both voluntary assimilation/integration of the non-‘tribal’, non-ethnic Assamese, and the time passed since 1971 (or 1985, as the vantage point might be) are substantial—notwithstanding, an attempt has been made by the BJP government to drive cheap, electoral mileage out of their appropriation of the NRC. In the process, un-wittingly, it has also de-legitimised, once more, the unique historical context of politics in Assam. The de-legitimation of the Assam NRC (for which substantial and real grounds exist in its sheer in-humanity) is only a façade, because the black and white secularists (for whom indigenous rights in the margins do not really figure) of the ‘mainland’ and the Hindutva fanatics have in their own ways played a role in invisiblising and appropriating the particular concerns of the Northeastern states. The BJP has in fact gone one notch further to weaponise the NRC, and by extension, the history of the Northeast where concerns went beyond the Hindu/Muslim binaries.

Today when one reads the writings of Parag Kumar Das, the late Assamese firebrand human rights activist and journalist, the 1990s seem like a not too un-familiar shadow of the present times. Among the many writings of Parag Kumar Das which were branded by the government of the day as seditious and anti-India, one hard-hitting piece compares the relationship between the Indian State and the ‘small sub-national polities’ in terms of an unholy marriage. The essence is of a sadistic husband who has trapped his wife in wedlock, by blocking all exits (legal recourse) out of the wedlock. Moving out of the Indian State as the righteous political fate of Assam is a long-settled question now, finding rare support only among a very small militaristic fringe today. But the historical grievances, the fear of continuous immigration being one, still have a lot of currency in the region, and these have come to the fore once again with the CAB and CAA protests. For instance, in January 2019, an influential public intellectual had warned the Indian Union invoking secession from the nation-state if such legislation is forced upon Assam.

This is especially true in the case of the Indian State and the response it has had to Assam’s resistances, whether these resistances were constitutional or extra-constitutional. Political impasses in the Northeast were met with short-sighted policy responses by the Indian State, and these were often militarist and coercive. The impression given was that of a set of solutions for a bag of symptoms, which the numerous self-determination movements or political assertions in this region represented. Apart from treating these political troubles under the optics of law and order, doling out of ethnic homelands became a favoured strategy to arrest or prevent the activities of the ‘hostiles’, as the insurgencies were called by the ‘national media’. Although this has meant the placating of some insurgencies or sub-national political assertions, it also complicated the fate and insecurities of the multi-ethnic pluralities of the region. That is why it is important to understand the chasms between the discourse of citizenship in the Indian mainland and its Northeastern appendage in a historical context. Saffron politics is just one more new perversion, in the motley of grievances that the Northeastern states have garnered throughout its post-colonial experience within the Indian nation.

What needs to be acknowledged?

It is worth recounting what the scholar of comparative literature, Dorothy M. Figueira, said regarding the importance of history- “the present is fractured, it consists of competing pasts”. The different reactions against the CAA in the mainland and northeast India spring from their divergent historical experiences – thus explaining the chasm in the movement. The Central government’s argument that the act is passed by Parliament and hence applicable to all the states, barring the few in where the provisions of Inner Line Permit and Sixth Schedule are present, repudiates the historical experiences of Northeast/Assam. Unfortunately, it also highlights the psychological distance that still exists between northeast and mainland India despite geographical integration and a well-entrenched administrative network. The larger question is- will the voice of Assam, Tripura and other northeastern states be heard?

The movement against the CAA is a movement for recognition- of historical uniqueness, culture, tradition, language of this region. In order to do that, the centre must understand the historical complexity of states like Assam and Tripura and other northeastern states. Most importantly the centre must realize and recognize that Assam’s problem of illegal immigration- that does not spring out of any communal politics or xenophobia and is as secular as it can be – is also a national problem since the status of illegal immigrants in a sovereign country must be well defined. The movement against the act provides an opportunity for the civil society organizations, intellectuals both east and west of the Chicken’s neck to initiate a healthy talk around the issue of immigration- and its demographic, cultural, economic and political aspects. A healthy discussion on this issue by taking into consideration the concerns of northeastern states is likely to generate conversations and the onus for that lies squarely with Delhi today.

In her recent book, Assam: The Accord, The Discord, Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, claims that the urgency of pushing the citizenship cutoff date from 1971 to 2014 (in the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019) apart from violating the Assam Accord, also underlines the fact that undocumented immigration in Assam has continued. According to another scholar of the region, Nani Gopal Mahanta, South Asia is the only region in the world where we do not have a well documented or legalized citizenship policy towards each other. Such a scenario clearly makes the immigration issue in South Asia more complex. The reality of globalization further makes it difficult to control immigration since it makes the borders porous. In the light of these stark realities, the demand for constitutional protection of indigenous people and the rhetoric of detection, deletion (of names from voter’s list) and deportation of illegal immigrants finds legitimacy. However there is little doubt that deportation of post-1971 migrants in Assam is nearly impossible as there is no bilateral or multilateral agreement with our neighbouring countries, and Bangladesh has often denied the existence of Bangladeshi illegal immigrants in India. Under these circumstances, the problem is of reaching a permanent solution to this impasse in the Northeast. Any solution to the Assam issue must take into consideration three important aspects.

Firstly, there is the need to explore in an accommodative manner, the constitutional protections possible of all the indigenous peoples of Assam, keeping in mind its multi-ethnic, multi-cultural realities on the grounds.
Secondly, and this lies at the heart of the protests in Assam, the question of post-1971 illegal immigrants. The question of post-1971 immigrants finds no easy answer. For hardcore nationalist organizations like AASU, there is no giving in to ideas of the integration and assimilation of this batch of immigrants. Their stand is clear- either the state deports them or their burden be shared by other states too. The former option does not look viable as there is no formal treaty of deportation that India has with Bangladesh. Regarding the latter option, it is pertinent to cite again Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, because she questions the practicality of the option. She asks- in a vote driven parliamentary democracy, how would the demand for caring and sharing be viewed by political players and existing voters in those receiving states?

And thirdly, recognizing the need to initiate a healthy debate on the lack of India’s immigration (or refugee) policy, with northeastern states as the prime stakeholders. But can immigration be ever stopped in toto? The answer is in the negative – and this applies both to legal and illegal immigration.

The movement against CAA in the northeast and mainland India provides the opportunity to initiate the talk on the need for an immigration policy. Immigration can be both legal and illegal, and can be due to many factors- political (persecution of minorities, flight from war), economic (employment opportunities), environmental and climatic (flood drought) etc. Thus, a homogenization of the issue is nothing but problematic. An immigration policy must be dynamic that takes into account all these factors. Most importantly, any policy on immigration must take into account the concern of states that share international border with other countries. In this case the northeastern states must be made prime stakeholders while making of an immigration policy.

Works Cited:

Pisharoty, Sangeeta Barooah. 2019. Assam: The Accord, The Discord. Penguin Random House India.

Baruah, Sanjib. 1999. India Against Itself. Oxford University Press.

Column by Proxanta Rajguru titled Saranxo, in the Amar Axom on 11^th December 2019

Lemkin, Raphael. 2002. Genocide. In A. L. Hinton (Ed.), Genocide: An Anthropological Reader (pp. 27-42). Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

Das, Parag Kumar. 1995. Nixiddho Kolom Aru Onanyo. Guwahati: Alibaat.

Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers : An essay on the geography of anger. Duke University Press

Fukuyama, Francis. 2018. Identity- Contemporary identity politics and the struggle for recognition. Profile Book Limited.

Figueira, Dorothy M. 2015. Aryan Jews Brahmins: Theorising Authority through myths of identity. Navayana.

Mahanta, Nani Gopal. 2013. Confronting the State: ULFA’s quest for sovereignty. SAGE Publication India Ltd.

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In the earliest penitentiaries, in Northern America, black slaves were imprisoned for the first time, in solitude and silence. They were carried in carts to the prisons, and before they saw the building their eyes were covered. Then, they would be taken to the centre of the prison, to a cell and their blindfold would be taken of. What would follow is an imprisonment through silence.

The prisoners would have a small light source in their cell (which would be covered if they were known to behave improperly), through which they could keep a track of day and night, winter and summer but by cutting them off from any kind of sound, the system would ensure that they lose sense of space if not of time.

Prisoners would not know which part of the prison they were in, they would not hear anyone across the walls and they were barred from speaking aloud to themselves.

People are known to have sat in the centre and not be able to walk, in the presence of this silence for we know now that sound is required to arrange ourselves in space.

What we also know, through multiple experiments around the world, is that in an anechoic chamber, where sound is completely cut off (including one’s own echo) one’s body becomes the sound. People begin to hear two sounds most distinctly. Their heart beat at a low pitch and the sound of their own blood rushing through the body at a high pitch.

As this happens, paradoxically, the most silent place becomes the loudest because when there is no sound to receive, the subject becomes the sound. What drives people to insanity often , in fact is not the silence but the noise.

It is also worth noticing here, that the earliest penitentiaries were all ideas of civilizing punishments. In 1773, when the Walnut Street Prison was opened in Pennsylvania, it was meant to be moving criminal justice from punishment to reformation. Prisoners were not thrown to the gallows but subjected to silence , as theologically speaking, their souls were to speak to them in silence.

What, for obvious reasons, the Walnut Street Prison completely did not foresee of course is that in time there would be enough reason to show that ‘silence’ was historically going to be termed as the next harshest punishment to capital punishment and solitary silence for long terms would prove to be even harsher than death. The religious logic of the soul, completely overlooked the notion that a black slave imprisoned for stealing bread from a landowner, had in fact less soul searching to do than to the system that compelled someone called a ‘slave’ in the first place to have to steal bread from someone who had exceptionally higher privileges and concurrently the moral validation of a god to exploit others. This not surprisingly, is also the period when the first ideas of Nation State were being formed and within a decade of the Walnut Street Prison, as Eric Hobsbawm argues,

In India, we are witnessing the psychopathological connection between the prison and the nation state in its entirety at the moment, in the context of both the Kashmir Valley and the creation of our latest architectural wonder, the detention center in Assam.

As a nation, we are being bound on principles of these two, I would argue, architecturally similar ideas , of silencing a space and of containing a people (within a space).

These are both detention centers except in the case of Assam the detention is within and in Kashmir the detention is ’without’. The subject in Kashmir is detained in the condition of necessarily being ‘an integral part’ of a nation by necessarily not having the rights of a subject of the nation state . If the rights were provided, paradoxically the subject would no longer consider being part of the nation as a favourable rational choice to make, in their basket of choices provided by the nation.

This paradox is another symmetry between the nation state and the silent penitentiary. The more silent the person is , the louder their experience of that silence.

In the last 6 months , the current government in India, has delivered its promise of the penitentiary with utmost care. It is in fact a government that cannot be questioned for not delivering its real promises. The Indian People, who arguably are yet to be found in the Indian nation state are in vast majority one would argue deeply satisfied with the Kashmir crisis and the NRC in Assam, primarily because the pathological needs of a condition called the nation are being fulfilled, finally beyond doubt. We should at this point of time, remind ourselves that although in the rest of the country, we are talking about the silence in Kashmir, it is actually the silence ‘ from Kashmir’ that we are referring to and not the silence ‘in Kashmir’.

A few months ago, three boys were picked up in a village and beaten up all night in a police station and their voices were played out to the entire village through loudspeakers attached to the top of the police station. This has been reported and verified through multiple sources including some leading publications.

The above incident, is one of many instances where Kashmiri youth are in fact being made to scream. Their resilient silence is being corporally beaten out of them and is being played through the several forms of silence that permeate a valley which by and large is several decibel levels lower than any Indian State of similar size.

It is often stated that this measure of the blackout was made so that people outside would not get to know what is happening in Kashmir as anti national elements would use means of communication to spread rumours to discredit an otherwise peaceful measure which as the home minister has said, was an essential step for ‘Akhand Bharat‘ (The all encompassing united India would be the rough translation of this term which etymologically would have a far more complex meaning than what the RSS has given it). We should note here that the desire for this all encompassing Akhand Bharat (whose map as propagated by the RSS includes parts of Afghanistan) is an electoral card for a group that was against the Quit India movement. The constitution that they have changed, is one that its chief architect Baba Saheb Ambedkar had to distance himself from due to its eventual refusal to drop its Hindu upper caste overtones.

We should remember, while scrutinizing the silence from Kashmir, that when this nation was formed, the RSS was opposed to that freedom and on the other side, during the making of the Republic, in 1951, the first president Dr Rajendra Prasad washed the feet of 201 Brahmins in Varanasi and drank the water. However, since the nation is not an anechoic chamber, and in fact since every idea does have its echo, it is not surprising that looking at Kashmir and Assam today, it seems like Mohammad Ali Jinnah was in fact the only true oracle of that moment, while Mohandas Gandhi as a true romantic and someone deeply embroiled in his own version of upper caste apologist position on ‘Varna’ as being integral to ‘Dharma’ and other such freudian slips in an otherwise glorious achievement of the last century, was silent in a strife torn Bengal on the eve of independence and did not make a speech.

It is not surprising that the current silence from Kashmir is an echo of what can be done with a largely upper caste Hindu male Constitution.

It is not surprising that the nation is in fact at the moment in the chamber of silence;

in the penitentiary where it no longer knows where is it oriented except in its true neo liberalist nightmare, it is also akin to celebrating its own sentence. This is the paradox of modern silence. The paradox of the modern nation state. This time around the person in the penitentiary not only does not know its space in the scheme of things, this time , even the light source is shut and the prisoner is celebrating the darkness.

We cannot tell space and we cannot even tell time. Like people bereaved of history we are celebrating a medieval execution. We are witnessing our own nationhood being deprived of framing any concept of personhood. We are witnessing those who opposed decolonization, turn us into even harder colonists , continuing the tradition from those, who delivered speeches of equality without compromising on their viscerally exploitative caste positions of privilege in the book itself.

Kashmir if anything is teeming with noise. With protests, cries, wails, gunshots, and beatings on loudspeakers. The experience of silence is purely ours, in the rest of India. In the rest of the world.

In time to come , we will hear again and again that India has taken a strong step to solving the Kashmir problem .

The question that will become the fixture of our times is ‘How will Kashmir solve the India problem’. For from here on, Kashmir will even more clearly hear its own heartbeat and its blood running up through its nerves. One in a low pitch and one in a high.

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