Here is a far more serious editorial. Whether one agrees or not with Bikash Sarmah, it may be a good exercise to assess where Assam is, after 60 years of Independence.
There have been vast changes - some good, some just rotten bad. Maybe netters can weigh in on how the state is doing in say Education, Quality of Life, Industrialization, Per capita incomes, Cultural/Language/Literature development, Agriculture, Population movements, Floods, Infrastructural developments etc, etc. and of course Overall (across the board), how has Assam fared vis-a-vis to other states and other states in the NE. --Ram _____________________ *Asom at 60, in Reality — I THE REALITY MIRROR Bikash Sarmah *C OME WEDNESDAY AND WE shall celebrate 60 years of Independence. At 60, how does Asom look like? Does its look also reflect on the systemic aberrations that the Indian version of democracy and secularism has overlooked — to the advantage of politicians for whom politics or party is more important than the motherland? Or is it that Asom has an exclusivity — an inbuilt mechanism to inflict wounds on its own soul — that cannot connect to mainland discourses? How does Asom fit into the Indian federal paradigm? I am tempted to recall here the Assam Agitation from 1979 to 1985. The movement, whose cause was as just as anything when it came to a people threatened by the influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, had the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) catapult to a hitherto unheard political height — an instance in democratic India that had students impress upon the country that the movement was the only alternative to rescue a doomed populace. The movement was successful in the sense that it could mobilize the Asomiyas against what would later on be best described as the Islamization of Asom due only to illegal immigration from Bangladesh and then to the absolutist design therein, which I have extensively dealt with in the three-part series entitled ''The Unfinished Agenda of Partition in Asom'' (The Sentinel, June 8, 15, 22, 2007). During the six-year-long Assam Agitation, there dawned upon the Asomiyas a bit of realization as to the seriousness of the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh to Asom, and also to the fact of that immigration being highly political and politicized. Illegal Bangladeshis were — and still are — crowding Asom because they and their sympathizers in the State ultimately wanted to storm into the corridors of power at Dispur. It was not an immigration driven by hunger alone. In one of my discourses in this column, I have called it ''political immigration'' ( ''Define it as Political Immigration'', The Sentinel, July 7, 2006). And the fact of illegal immigration from Bangladesh to Asom was highly — and perversely — politicized by the Congress at that point of time, which continues till date, because illegal Bangladeshis were a suitable breed to be called Indian 'minorities' in the pseudo-secular political parlance, which would then enable them to thrive in the State as a powerful vote bank. The Congress did not have the motherland as a factor in its scheme of things. T oday, what are the remains of the Assam Agitation? Just two, perhaps. One, a political party, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which was the political offshoot of that fiery agitation and which had vowed to rid the State of every single illegal immigrant; a party that had promised to bail out the Asomiyas from the political cruelties of the Congress. Two, the illegal Bangladeshis themselves. Today, these two remains flourish in their own ways. One by being blind to the cause of the Asomiyas, and mostly out of choice — the AGP. The other by virtue of being empowered to live in a State whose very government has pledged to safeguard the 'minorities' in the name of 'pluralist' ethos and 'secularism' — the illegal Bangladeshis. Add to this organizations like the All Assam Minorities Students' Union (AAMSU) and the All Assam Madrassa Students' Association (AAMSA), and of course a new political party called the Asom United Democratic Front (AUDF) — notorious for its genesis just in the wake of the abrogation of the IM(DT) Act by the Supreme Court in 2005 as though the 'minorities' would be persecuted by the Asomiyas in the absence of that discriminatory immigration regime. And add to all this the ULFA's violent ways and its reported camaraderie with hostile Bangladeshi fundamentalist forces as well as Pakistan's ISI. At 60, then, Asom not only bleeds — thanks to ULFA's obdurate ways and its evolution quite detached from the cause of insurgency — but also withers as the State slips into a state of anarchy. There are temptations though: of the State being in the reckoning for its suitability as the gateway to South Asia; of the State being a destination for foreign investors as Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi would have us believe and celebrate; of the State being in its infallible march to the league of developed States of the Indian Union; and so on and so forth. However, the naked truth stares at the Asomiya society, anywhere, everywhere. The crux of the matter is that it is Asom where a so-called minorities' organization, the AAMSU, has the guts to challenge the Asomiyas — of course in areas where none would challenge the illegal Bangladeshis, such as Dhubri, Goalpara and Barpeta. The challenge was thrown to the Asomiyas last month. I t is Asom where a madrassa organization, the AAMSA, has the guts to ban the entry of an Asomiya, Samujjal Bhattacharyya, both AASU advisor and North East Students' Union (NESO) president, in the Barak Valley — as though the valley is no longer Asom's or the Asomiyas'. The ban was imposed only a few days ago. It is Asom where the ruling party proves its worth not by coming to the aid of the indigenous populace, but by certifying all the suspected Bangladeshis, dumped in the State by a pro-people Arunachal Pradesh dispensation, as Indian citizens in a manner becoming only of traitors, in such tearing hurry. It is Asom where ministers do not know what they talk about when it comes to illegal Bangladeshis. At 60, Asom has a Chief Minister who certifies all the suspected Bangladeshis, who have left Arunachal Pradesh for Asom following a stern directive to them by the All Arunachal Pradesh Students' Union (AAPSU), as confirmed Indian citizens only to be 'supported' on the floor of the State Assembly — on Monday — by one of his colleagues in the ministry, Rockybul Hussain, who says that their 'identification' process is still going on. As if the Asomiyas are a bunch of fools to believe that! At 60, no wonder, then, that such 'identification' should make every single illegal Bangladeshi an Indian 'minority'. The rest of India may celebrate Independence Day — India at 60, or whatever be the slogan. In Asom, even if the ULFA allows one to celebrate the day, the thought of ''Asom at 60, in reality'' must unnerve the sensible Asomiya soul, for Asom at 60 is only a few years away from being part of a greater Bangladesh, which obviously means a greater Islamic state since Bangladesh is not a secular state but a declared Islamic state, and there is no reason why a greater Bangladesh would declare itself secular — it just will not, and such examples galore. Next week I shall conclude by harping on Asom's exclusivity imposed on its people by mainland India and how it is still assumed to be fitting well into the Indian federal paradigm. (The writer is the Consulting Editor of The Sentinel)
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