On India’s North East State Assam -Re: A Crisis Of Policy and the Sovereignity Question

The author of the above piece I believe is an academic in Political Science and has established himself as an expert on the political field of the East South Asia, a region which he has referred as the ˜northeastern states”.

I trust that an academic of his stature must have used the word ˜so-called in the first paragraph of his piece to mean ˜designated rather than incorrectly or falsely termed or even meaning doubtful or suspect. Let us get our bearing here.

India by declaring unilateral ceasefire against the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) once, has established that a state of war existed between India and the ULFA which in turn gives ULFA the standing of a recognised armed organisation albeit it can be a para-military force. Hence my understating that like many other similar organisations across the world, ULFAs military organisation is not a make believe one but a real one and be recognised as such. Therefore due respect should be given to the organisational nomenclature of groups, ranks etc. It is unfortunate that a person involved in the Centre for Policy Studies, New Delhi, has failed to appreciate the implications as a result of that ceasefire.

In the seventh paragraph him writing Popular outrage at the kill ings of civilians, might a reader ought to understand that the killings in question are by the ULFA guerrillas? Would Baruah, give the breakdown of the numbers slain by the ULFA guerrillas as well at the hands of the Indian security personal since 1979? In the wording ˜sense of hopelessness” he may be reflecting upon ULFA being unable to show the light at the end of the tunnel or the people of Assam recognising that ULFA is not capable of taking on the mighty Indian Army meaningfully. I would tend to sympathise with such a negativity appreciating deeply that most Assamese even do not know the mechanisations of creation of their next door country Bangladesh and how can one expect them to know about East Timor gaining independence from Indonesia; to give them conviction and courage.

In the eighth paragraph he writes ˜ULFA as an idea has always been more powerful than reality. But the fact is that six months prior to his death Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in his interview in the ˜Dynasty” bio-documentary series saying, I thought Assam has gone out of my hands says it all about the relevance of UL FA. It must be noted here that at that point of time the ULFA was not blatantly visible to the people but an enigmatic secretive organisation. The sole idea of restoring the Sovereignty of Assam was so dear to the Assamese that they took the organisation to their hearts and this realisation shook Rajiv and the Indian establishment to the core.

The writer is so very right in his observation in paragraph nine! It can be added here that the ULFA flagging up ‘A sovereign Assam is a birth right of the Assamese concurs with the UN instruments. He has avoided this aspect of Assam’s political rights in his deliberations it seems.

In paragraph nine Mr. Baruah may be giving a reasoning that ULFA has managed to grind its axe on the prevailing unemployment and underdevelopment etc since 1947 to sustain20its political influence. But let us look at it from a different angle. If Assam was developed with its natural wealth fully since 1947 without prejudice Assam could have been one of the most highly developed region by 1962 and when Indian Prime Minister Nehru said ˜Good Bye” to the people of Assam in the 3rd week of November 1962, Assam could have declared unilateral independence and world perhaps would have welcomed Assam with open arms. One might speculate here, is that the reason why is India leaving this region underdeveloped? After all per capita income of the Dibrugarh District of Assam is higher than that of Bombay, but, Dibrugarh remains almost a sleepy town as left by the British in 1947!

In paragraphs ten to fifteen he is touching the problem of migration into Assam. The migration engineering process started after the British occupation of Assam to cause the failure of the administration of Purondor Xinho till 1834. It became a policy of the British administration to settle East Bengal peasants as an economic force from 1880s. Sir Sadulla becoming the Chief Minister of Assam after 1935 India Act Constitutiona l Asseembly upon collapse of the Bordoloi ministry, with his associates Bhasani, Mionul Huq Choudhury, Fakruddin Ali Ahmed etc. encouraged a large wave of econo-political migrants. After 1947 Indian administration settled hoards of refugees of Hindu denomination in Assam. That the red carpet was rolled out also to non-refugee economic migrants has been explained thus far as to create a Muslim vote bank for the Congress Party of India. However, it is not improbable that a policy was put in place to make the Assamese Nation irrelevant to deny the Assamese rights to claim a sovereign status for Assam by filling the place with aliens. To sort out the migration into Assam, the above complexities need to be taken into consideration.

In paragraph fifteen, East Bengal migrant Muslims adopted Assamese as their mother tongue is something very easy to understand. As can be surmised from the language of SorzaPodos(Cyarja Padas) written by Kamrupi Buddhist scholars , Bengal claiming these Padas as the earliest Bengali known literature, these Buddhist hymns likely to reflect the language spoken in Pragjyoishpur/Kamrup. These hymns contain majority of words use d by the Assamese speakers regularly even today. In contrast with spoken language of West Bengal, in the vocabulary of the rural natives of many parts of Bangladesh exact Assamese sounds and near Assamese sound and expressions are abundant. Therefore the migrants from East Bengal and Bangladesh of today speaking Assamese is like a fish taking to water!

What Baruah writes in paragraph seventeen, ˜This reading of history has its elements of myth and fantasy is really difficult to comprehend. By saying this he has lot of explaining to do. Is he trying to deny the existence of Pargjyotishpur extending from the banks of Korotuoya, whole of Brahamputra and Barak valleys as well as Bhutan, Parts of Nepal, Bihar and Orissa at its height and KumarBhaskarVarman being an ally of HarshaBardhana in defeating Sasanka? May be he buys some Indian historians suggestion that Kumar giving his magic umbrella a gift to Harsha his friend and ally means Pragjyotish loosing its Sovereignty to Harsha’s India! Coming to the Ahom period since 1228, is he trying to say that, Ahom kings sending a yearly gift to Potala Palace was to mean accepting Chinese suzerainty over the Kingdom of Assam and therefore a Sovereign Assam is a myth and fantasy? Or Baruah possesses a document which irrefutably proves that the Ahoms surrendered the Sovereignty of the Kingdom of Assam to the Moghul Emperor?

I trust with this feedback I should be able to whet the appetite of some readers to understand Assam and her problems. .

I am pasting the original article below.

Dr. M. Hazariaka AssamWatch(UK)
AssamWath(UK) is a voluntary non profit making human rights organisation.
E Mail : assamwatch@aol.com

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The Telegraph (Calcutta) July 8, 2008
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080708/jsp/opinion/story_9504721.jsp#

A CRISIS OF POLICY AND THE SOVEREIGNTY QUESTION Sanjib Baruah

A unilateral ceasefire and a new governor may not be enough to end the cycle of violence and counter-violence in Assam, unless there is a radical renegotiation in the social contract between India and this state, writes Sanjib Baruah.

Some in Assam like to see the unilateral ceasefire by the so-called Alpha and Charlie companies of United Liberation Front of Asom?s 28th battalion as good news. However, there is nothing in the history of the past two decades of the state?s politics to suggest that the state?s multi-faceted political crisis, of which Ulfa is a symptom, might end with new defections from Ulfa or, even a mutiny.

A far more promising development may be the appointment of former chief minister of Rajasthan, Shiv Charan Mathur, as governor. For the first time in nearly two decades, Assam will have a politician as governor.

Two other gubernatorial appointments in the region are significant. Sikkim’s new governor, the retired IAS officer, Balmiki Prasad Singh, is an old Northeast hand. Unlike these two men, the new governor of Meghalaya, Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary, has had a career in a uniformed all-India security service. But his Bodo roots makes it an interesting appointment.

Governors of the northeastern states have more inputs in policymaking than in the less-troubled states. It is no coincidence that the primary thrust of our policy towards Ulfa during the tenure of the last two governors ? both military men ? has been military. The half-hearted steps toward negotiations were not the result of conviction on either side. They were gestures to satisfy Assamese public opinion that strongly favours a negotiated and honorable set tlement with Ulfa.

The outgoing governor, Ajay Singh, leaves behind a remarkably unsuccessful record of locking horns with Ulfa for nearly two decades. In the early Nineties, long before he became the governor, he commandeered two counter-insurgency operations against Ulfa as head of the Indian Army?s 4 Corps. As governor, he came to be associated with a hardline position of opposing talks with Ulfa.

Singh claims in his resumé that as the commander of those counter-insurgency operations, he ?was given the responsibility of wiping out [the] Ulfa insurgency? and that he smashed the Ulfa insurgency in less than three months?. But that was more than fifteen years ago.

While Ulfa is at a crossroads today, it is not because of its military< o:p> reversals alone. Popular outrage at the killings of civilians, and a sense of hopelessness that there is no end in sight to the cycle of violence and counter-violence, are more important factors.

There is no evidence that anyone knows how to use the shift in the public mood as a political opening. One hopes that the new gubernatorial appointments would mark a shift in the balance between military and political thinking. Even though Ulfa as an idea has always been more powerful than the reality, this has not made engaging with it any less challenging.

The oft-repeated clichs about unemployment and underdevelopment creating conditions for recruitment by insurgent groups, and platitudes about solving the crisis of immigration through border-fencing=2 0do not give confidence that our decision-makers understand the sources of Ulfa?s political influence.

The two most recent governors have both been highly vocal on the dangers of illegal immigration from Bangladesh. But to expect political dividends out of such speech-making on this extraordinarily difficult issue without addressing it in any substantial sense is to grossly misunderstand the nature of the immigration crisis and its relationship with the rise of Ulfa.

Ulfa was a radical fringe of the Assam Movement of 1979-85. From the very beginning, it tried to distance itself from some of the Assam Movement?s extreme rhetoric on ?foreigners? and ?Bangladeshis.? At the same time it tried to get propaganda value out of the evident indifference of our governmental institutions to this key Assamese concern.

But the immigration crisis, for Ulfa, has never been more than a piece of evidence of what it sees as a raw deal that the Assamese got in the postcolonial pan-Indian dispensation.

India?s political and bureaucratic elites inherit a memory of Partition vastly different from that of their counterparts in Assam. Few people seem to know that the migration from eastern Bengal was a politically explosive issue in Assam even as far back as the 1930s. Indeed, it shaped Assamese attitudes towards Partition.

The flow of people from one of the subcontinent?s most densely populated areas to a sparsely populated region ? legally open to new settlements in colonial times ? did not stop with Partition. The erection of an international border did not change that reality. Indeed, from the Assamese point of view, the effect of Partition was to intensify the migration pressure from eastern Bengal, with waves of Hindu refugees joining in.

In retrospect, Assam appears to have adapted to this demographic transformation rather well. Official predictions of the 1930s that immigration would permanently alter the future of Assam and destroy =0 A ?the whole structure of Assamese culture and civilization? did not materialize. But it is not because the predicted demographic changes did not take place: they did, with profound consequences. But contrary to the fears of the colonial era, most East Bengali migrant Muslims adopted Assamese as their mother tongue. No one familiar with the relationship between demographic dynamics and civil disorder in other parts of the world would read this as a sign that everyone would live< /o:p> happily ever after.

Japanese scholar Hiroshi Sato talks about the faultline between the normative definition of citizenship in Indian law, and the actual exercise of franchise by people ?based on the legitimacy of rudimentary documents rather than on the registration of citizenship.? The ?foreigners? question in Assam is the product of this faultline. Understood in this way, it is not surprising that the issue became the epicentre of a veritable political explosion in Assam in 1979. There is no evidence that the ripples of this explosion have subsided.

The power of Ulfa as an idea reflects a policy impasse of subcontinental proportions, showing up the failures of Partition borders and of the foundational ideologies of the post-Partition states. Assam?s num erous tribal rebellions, and evidence of candidates of mainstream political parties turning to Ulfa?s tacit support during elections, and of even the government relying on such support in certain situations ? relations facilitated by the massive corruption that the state has become known for ? outline the multi-faceted nature of the crisis. If political movements relate to reality, either to the bare facts, or to strivings that grow out of a reality, Ulfa provides an example of the latter.

In Ulfa?s narrative of history, Assam lost its sovereignty in 1826. It sees itself as being engaged in a battle to recover that sovereignty. This reading of history has its elements of myth and fantasy. But as the veteran journalist, M.S. Prabhakara, points out, ?a certain wistfulness and nostalgia over a past when Assam was a sovereign and independent political entity,? have been part of Assamese ?folk memories, literature and cultural and political polemics,? for a long time.

To the military mindset, Ulfa?s insistence on discussing sovereignty might seem audacious, especially given the organization?s weak position. At the same time, it is hard to imagine how the strivings that animate Ulfa can be accommodated within the model of an ethnic peace accord ? so popular among our politicians and bureaucrats.

The chief minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, has held out the Bodo Liberation Tigers as an example. The BLT, he says, is similar to Ulfa, but ?we sat down with BLT and they surrendered…. Now we have BLT members as part of our government.?

But historically, the ?Assamese? has not been purely an ethnic and exclusive category. If the category includes minorities of all stripes ? as it does in Ulfa?s vision ? how can the aspirations of a territorially defined political community be accommodated within the model of an ethnic peace accord?

The reason for Ulfa?s apparent intransigence on the sovereignty question may be because the concept provides a way of getting around this difficulty. It brings to the policy agenda the notion of renegotiating the social contract between India and Assam.

Sovereignty talk does not have to take the form of the familiar talk about independence. However, compromises within this paradigm are possible only if constitutional reforms are part of the agenda. It might also require a willingness to relate foreign policy issues, vis-Ã -vis relations with Bangladesh, to domestic po licy concerns, but in ways other than those that our security establishment has long preferred.

A bold new political initiative to resolve Assam?s complex crisis must consider such options.

The author is at the Centre for Policy Studies, New Delhi. http://newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidRecord=210154,