Bikash Sarmah has given a good synopsis of this problem. Quite often (and in this net too), a demand or a desire to solve the illegal Bangladeshis problem in Assam is promptly cast as communal. This is unfortunate, Assamese Muslims or bonafide Bengali residents of Assam are equally affected by this problem, and it is in the OVERALL interest of Assam & Assamese that this problem be solved, and soon.
While Delhi has the responsibility of controlling and manning the Indo-Bangladesh border, it is paramount to recognize that the state and her people also have an active role. There a so many groups in Assam that are willing to make a concession here and a concession there for short term political or pecuniary gains. And then, there are the people - who are more than willing to employ illegal Bangladeshi help at the drop of a hat as they are cheaper (and well, they are there). The problem has not just become huge, but has grown tentacles, and legs, and has basically become monstrous. If I were a betting man, I would say that this problem will never be solved - politics in Assam and Delhi will for ever reap the various benefits of keeping this issue alive. Its a darn shame! --Ram ps: Maybe netters will discuss this with some gravitas, instead of attacking each other, putting down each other's personalities, backgrounds, and trying to show off they have all kinds of solutions up their sleeves for all kinds of problems. :-) :-) ____________________ Is the Assam Youth Really Concerned? THE REALITY MIRROR By the Assam youth I do not mean the ‘never-aging’ student leader. I am also not obviously talking of the Bangladeshi youth in Assam awaiting a greater Bangladesh to happen, nor am I talking of the youth of the erstwhile East Bengal/ East Pakistan descent who may not find anything wrong with a greater living space for Bangladeshi nationals. I mean those who are sons of the soil, who are 25 and below, those who were born when the so-called historic Assam Accord was signed 25 years ago and those who were born thereafter who are now mature enough to understand what is going on around them, if of course they are interested in the affairs of the beleaguered State of Assam, the best living space for the swelling illegal Bangladeshi crowd out to reduce the indigenous people of the State into a persecuted minority in their very homeland. But is the Assam youth concerned? Is he informed by the reality of the problem? Does he realize the gravity of the situation? Can he foresee who might preside over his destiny in the near future? Does he know who are the kingmakers in his State? Does he even have an inkling of the actual design? Let us start with the design. The design is this: get Assam flooded by as many illegal Bangladeshis as possible so that their original living space, Bangladesh, which faces an acute paucity of land and other resources to sustain the burgeoning population resulting from polygamy, is extended to include the resourceful Assam in a greater Islamic state of Bangladesh. (There is stress on the word ‘‘Islamic’’ because Bangladesh is an Islamic state, will remain so, given its highly Islamized society and despite an attempt at secularism by the present government of Sheikh Hasina, and therefore, a greater Bangladesh will patently be a Islamic state.) Let us call it the unfinished agenda of Partition, the agenda of making Assam a Bangladeshi-majority area with geo-strategic ramifications typical of such a zone, given (1) the proximity with China with which Bangladesh presently shares a very good relationship, a relationship that is becoming multidimensional by the day, ranging from the usual business ties to military aid to Bangladesh, and that will evolve by the day because China is desperate to expand its sphere of influence and beat India thus, and (2) the Bangladesh chapter of the Pakistan Army’s rogue spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), whose chief intent to be in that country is to destabilize India’s Northeast and through the Northeast the rest of the country, and make its valuable jihadi contribution to the making of a greater Islamic state in this part of the world. Let the Assam youth be informed by these facts of life. This is no fiction. Does the youth know what Stratfor, a US news intelligence service and strategic think tank, said three years ago? In April 2007, it came up with a report on the infiltration of ISI operatives into the strategically located India’s Northeast. In its report titled “India: Islamization of the Northeast”, Stratfor harped on the attempts by the ISI in tandem with Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies to exploit the instabilities fuelled by the militant groups of the Northeast so that India could be prevented from emerging as a key global player. The report said that the ISI and Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies were working clandestinely in Bangladesh to bring all the Northeast-based militant outfits and jihadi elements under one umbrella. “The ISI has facilitated cooperation between ULFA and other northeastern militant outfits with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, Islamist militant groups in Jammu & Kashmir, Islamist groups in Bangladesh and a growing number of Al Qaeda-linked jihadi groups operating in the region... ULFA’s growing links with Bangladeshi Islamists and jihadi elements in the area are increasingly coming to light,” Stratfor revealed. The Sentinel (April 24, 2007) had carried the report as a front-page story. There have been reports of jihadi terror groups like the United Muslim Front of Assam, Muslim Liberation Army of Assam, United Liberation Militia of Assam, Muslim Security Council of Assam and the Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam taking shelter in areas bordering Bangladesh and sar (riverine) areas. Who will these organizations, which are sprouting along with the unchecked flow of illegal Bangladeshis to the State, recruit as their most reliable and ruthless cadres? Why, is there any dearth of hostile illegal Bangladeshis in Assam who are willing to be employed as members of jihadi terror outfits and who have been told by their patrons that a grand greater Bangladesh will soon be unveiled where they will be masters and where the Assamese people who employ them as labourers will be slaves and eventually stateless citizens or eliminated from their land of birth? Reality Number Two. The Congress, infamous for its shoddy politics of ‘minoritism’ to remain in power even at the cost of national security, is the chief culprit. It is the Congress that in 1983 effected the blatantly pro-Bangladeshi IM(DT) Act as an immigration law meant solely for Assam. Thanks to the country’s oldest political outfit, India then became the only country in the world with two immigration laws — the IM(DT) Act, 1983 meant only for Assam and the Foreigners Act, 1946 for the rest of the country. The Congress’ immigration innovation for Assam was abrogated by the Supreme Court in 2005 for it being unconstitutional. Mind it, the Congress, in its bid to consolidate the illegal Bangladeshi constituency in Assam, had no qualms at all about subjecting the State to an unconstitutional immigration law! That immigration law was one of the gravest of threats to our national security, and yet the Congress was absolutely unconcerned. Under the IM(DT) Act, the onus of proof of nationality lay with the complainant, and not with the accused as in the Foreigners Act and as in all other immigration laws of the world. The Assam youth must be informed by the fact that the now-scrapped IM(DT) Act was a calculated move by the Congress to make it virtually impossible for illegal Bangladeshis settled in Assam to be deported to their native land, so that they would remain in Assam and vote for the ‘secular’ Congress eternally as ‘Indian minorities’ as a mark of gratitude to their messiah. That immigration monstrosity was perpetrated on Assam’s demography for 22 years. Result? Today there are at least six districts in the State — Nagaon, Barpeta, Dhubri, Hailakandi, Karimganj and Goalpara — that are Muslim-majority. The Assam youth must also be introduced to the fact that the indigenous Muslims of Assam, or Assamese Muslims as they are called, are not in any way part of this Islamization project and sheer violence on Assam’s demography. A highly enlightened and liberal community, the Assamese Muslims consider themselves Assamese first. They are as endangered by the Bangladesh-ization of Assam as any other son of the soil is. And the mother of all realities. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) leaders who had signed the Assam Accord that put an end to the six-year-long anti-Bangladeshi Assam Agitation (1979-85) had accepted the IM(DT) Act at the time of signing the Accord despite being fully aware of the fact that the Act was scripted only to undo what the Accord would attempt: detection and deportation of illegal Bangladeshis merrily settled and safeguarded in Assam to Bangladesh! Or were the young AGP leaders immature at that point of time and so were unable to see through the agenda? If that was so, why did they float a political party? Solely to be able to call the shots from Dispur and flourish thus? It is high time the Assam youth took interest in the affairs of the State in relation to the irreversible process of its Bangladesh-ization after being informed by the facts of life outside the perverse domain of pseudo-secularism. They face a grave threat to their very existence in a land where illegal Bangladeshis are ‘‘already kingmakers’’ as the Gauhati High Court rightly observed in 2008. Arise, awake! And yes, our esteemed pseudo-secularists will ask the Assam youth to rubbish whatever has been said as ‘paranoia’ and a ‘communal’ mindset at work. Be careful. Bikash Sarmah _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
