Sentinel, 29th Oct'06
God Save Asom and the Asomiyas!
JP Rajkhowa(Retd Chief secy)
The question as to who the Asomiyas are or were, was never raised
during the British Raj or swaadhin Bharat, even when the Assam Accord
on the foreigners issue was signed in 1985 in the presence of the then
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Every one, including the signatories to
the Accord representing the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) -
since disbanded - was apparently aware of the meaning or definition of
"Asomiya". Even if some signatories representing the government had
some doubts on the issue, no one considered it appropriate to raise
it, as a matter of prudence, since the uppermost concern of the
sangrami leaders as well as the government representatives seemed to
be to resolve the vexed foreigners issue which eluded a solution for
long six years. The issue remained dormant during the first spell of
the AGP regime which had constituted a Cabinet committee headed by the
then Law Minister Surendra Nath Medhi to go into the matter of
drafting a detailed proposal to submit it to the Central Government
for administrative, legislative and constitutional safeguards for the
Asomiya people in pursuance of the Accord. The Committee's
recommendations were then considered, discussed and debated in the
State Cabinet, after which a consolidated proposal was sent to the
Centre. If I remember correctly, the then Advocate General of Assam
Pachu Gopal Barua and AGP MP Dinesh Goswami made valuable
contributions in drafting the proposal.
Clause 6 of the Assam Accord states: "Constitutional, legislative and
administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to
protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic
identity and heritage of the Assamese people." After submission of the
proposal as mentioned above, the AGP regime appeared to have totally
forgotten about it, as no discussion whatsoever was held with any
Central Ministry for implementation of Clause 6 of the Accord, not to
speak of discussing the proposal. What had prompted the then Chief
Minister Prafulla Mahanta not to follow up this extremely important
clause with the Union Home Minister or the Prime Minister by insisting
on a formal discussion on the State's proposal, only he will be able
to explain. At the bureaucratic level, I remember, the matter was
raised during discussions a number of times, but the mandarins at the
North Block shrewdly avoided the issue, leaving it to the political
masters to handle. But the political masters, both at the Centre and
the State, scrupulously refused to find time for a discussion. After
the AAGSP was disbanded, its constituents, Purbanchalia Loka Parisad
(PLP), Asom Jatiatabadi Yuva Chatra Parisad (AJYCP) and Sadow Asom
Karmachari Parisad (SAKP), also forgot the matter at their
organization levels.
Though the only sangrami signatory, the All Assam Students' Union
(AASU), remained in the focus - which continues till date - its
approach also appears to be a bit lackadaisical one. Thus years passed
by, and during the previous term of the Tarun Gogoi Ministry as AASU
started pursuing the matter with the Centre, the latter desired that
the State Government should intimate the students' body on a
universally accepted definition of "Asomiya" so as to enable the
Centre to process the issues related to the implementation of Clause 6
of the Assam Accord. Nearly four years have since elapsed, but the
Asomiyas and their government (is it of Bangladeshis?) are still
unable to define or elaborate or elucidate as to who is an Asomiya.
For the survival of the Asomiya people by which I mean all the
indigenous people of Asom belonging to different ethnic, religious and
linguistic groups who have been living in the State since time
immemorial and some for centuries, and who speak one or more of the
languages of the ethnic communities, including Asomiya, and follow
region-specific manners, customers, dress code, folk dances and music
etc, Clause 6 of the Assam Accord is most important. It is more
important than even Clause 5, which deals with detection, deletion,
regularization and deportation(?) of illegal migrants from
Bangladesh. Under Clause 5, only the post-March 24, 1971 Bangladeshi
migrants are to be detected, deleted and deported, thereby allowing
lakhs of pre-March 24, 1971 Bangladeshis to be regularized as Indian
citizens, allowing them to enjoy all their rights in Asom. Obviously,
the intention of the sangrami leaders had never been to include these
millions of regularized Bangladeshis in the description "Asomiya" so
as to provide them "constitutional, legislative and administrative
safeguards" in order to "protect, preserve and promote the social,
cultural and linguistic identity and heritage". Now after long 21
years of the Accord, one who calls himself or thinks of himself as an
Asomiya would like to know as to what safeguards have been provided to
protect, preserve and promote the social, cultural and linguistic
identity and heritage of the Asomiyas.
While the politicians have been blissfully dithering away from the
issue for their own vote-bank interests, what has the only living
sangrami signatory to the Accord - the AASU - been doing to secure the
existence of the Asomiyas? Latest media reports state that the AASU
has demanded the update of the National Register of Citizens (NRC),
1951 so that illegal Bangladeshis could be detected, their names
deleted from the voters lists, and finally deported out of the
country. Is that the reason of putting the revived Foreigners Act in
Asom safely in the cold storage? We fail to understand why both the
processes cannot go together, simultaneously. Why have the Foreigners
Tribunals numbering 23 or so been set up, if they have no tasks to
perform? Are not these Tribunals legally authorized to take up nearly
four lakh complaints pending for disposal by the Tribunals set up
under the IMDT Act and those illegally rejected by the screening
committees or competent referral authorities?
As per the latest Action Taken Report (ATR) prepared by the Centre on
implementation of the Assam Accord, though there is hardly any
encouraging development on the foreigners issue under Clause 5 of the
Accord, certain actions under Clause 6 are mentioned. The Centre takes
credit for setting up the Srimanta Sankardeva Kalakshetra and
modernization of Jyoti Chiraban studio - both over a period of two
decades, with four different ministries in the State! What a way to
befool the Asomiyas and the AASU as well, as if our cultural,
linguistic identity and heritage are already protected just by
establishment of one cultural centre and renovating an existing
studio! Any person with average intelligence knows it pretty well that
setting up of even a thousand cultural centres and studios is not
going to safeguard the vital interests of any threatened multicultural
society or community. When the very existence of the Asomiya culture,
language and heritage is facing the imminent danger of extinction by
the joint pressure of Bangladeshis and their supporters, including
fundamentalist and terrorist groups and their cohorts in Asom, what
purpose the cultural centres and studios would serve is anybody's
guess. So if Asom is to be saved, the Asomiyas are to survive with
dignity, self-respect and some strength. Organizations like the AASU,
Asom Sena, various other students' organizations of the ethnic groups,
the Asom Unnati Sabha and certainly the political parties have to
decide and declare their strategies to save Asom and the Asomiyas.
While the ULFA has been fighting their 'liberation war' for the past
27 years, apparently against Indian 'colonialism', to form a part of
the Mogalistan confederation with the Asomiyas as minority (and
thereby serve their motherland!), thousands of Asomiyas continue to
suffer harassment, humiliation and torture in various forms at the
hands of the security forces. The top ULFA leadership, having secured
their present and the future on foreign lands, more particularly in an
unfriendly Bangladesh whose citizens have deprived the Asomiyas of
their ancestral land and properties, have continued their 'struggle'
with renewed vigour. It does not matter if their Bangladesh-based
'liberation war' leads to the killing of young students and other
youths. The two top ULFA leaders, Arabinda Rajkhowa and Paresh Baruah,
must understand that Asom has thousands of years of strong historical,
religious, spiritual and cultural links with India since the days of
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the tradition was carried
forward by Sankaradeva and other Vaisnavite saints and scholars of
Asom. Even if Asom has been neglected and deprived of her rightful
share in Indian developmental agendas, or if her natural resources are
unduly exploited by the Government of India, or if the Asomiyas are
exploited in different ways, the remedy does not lie in a so-called
sovereign Asom, which, even if achieved by any stretch of imagination,
would certainly be either a protectorate of Bangladesh or ultimately a
part and parcel of China just like Tibet, or a protectorate of a
western power broker.
The Asomiyas, in that remote eventuality, could become rich or
important for sometime, but then they would no longer remain or be
known as Asomiyas - they would lose their religion, culture, language,
heritage and whatever. No Asomiya worth the name would accept such a
'sovereign' fate if one has a normal mental make-up. This must be
clearly understood by the ULFA leadership. The Asomiyas would prefer
to resign themselves to their fate in a democratic, secular, free
country like India which is governed under a Constitution of which the
judiciary is the guardian, rather than thinking of aligning themselves
to a theocratic Bangladesh or an authoritarian China where human
values and basic freedom are simply nonexistent. The ULFA should
honour the wishes of the people they are supposed to have been
fighting for, and join the streams of the Brahmaputra and its numerous
tributaries, not continue with the streams of the Meghna and Padma, or
the Huangho and Yangtsikiang. This needs demonstrative courage on the
part of the ULFA top brass, which we are sure it has enough to
exhibit, in the interest of safeguarding the security of a
disappearing identity - the Asomiyas.
(The writer is a former Asom Chief Secretary)
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