The brutal massacre of Muslims in Assam’s tribal Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD) on suspicion that they have voted for a non-Bodo candidate in the recently concluded general election is a blot on Indian democracy. Since voting in Indian election takes place by secret ballot, how did the assailants confirm who the Muslims voted for?
Surely, the deaths were a result of a well-hatched conspiracy that was consolidated by open calls to deport Muslim immigrants. Was Narendra Modi merely expressing concern about infiltration from Bangladesh during his poll campaign in Assam and West Bengal or was he whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment?
Had he underestimated the repercussion of hyping up the “Bangladesh card” with the help of inflammatory slogans in these sensitive states?
While Assam witnessed frequent ethnic clashes between natives and settlers of East Bengali origin since late 1970s, West Bengal — with a history of subliminal friction due to legacies of partition — sits on a powder keg. Is Modi therefore trying to revive communal ideology in places where it has been rejected resoundingly? Most importantly, is he on the same page with his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) colleague Subramanian Swamy on the issue of Dhaka ceding its territories for settling illegal immigrants?
Swamy had earlier demanded that Sheikh Hasina’s government must be ready to compensate India by giving up some lands if they do not take back illegal migrants from India.
Wittingly or unwittingly, BJP has revived an idea that the secessionist “Bangabhumi” movement proponents use to nurture. It envisaged the creation of a Hindu homeland comprising of 20,000 square miles in southwestern Bangladesh encompassing the districts of Jessore, Khulna, Faridpur, Kushtia, Barisal and Patuakhali. And the tendency of carrying political dramatics to an absurd limit has naturally set the alarm bells ringing in Dhaka.
For long, Bangladesh has suspected that the Indian intelligence in conjunction with ultra-Hindu outfits have secretly supported this otherwise dormant idea to keep Dhaka under India’s strategic ambit. This author understands that like the Chakma rebels of eastern Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill tracts, some senior Bangabhumi ideologues received indoctrination from Indian intelligence in the past. Perhaps, very few are aware that an influential section of the Indian intelligentsia too was sympathetic to this cause.
Modi’s vitriolic articulation of the illegal migrant issue has disturbed the equilibrium in eastern and far-eastern parts of India especially because the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has not proved efficacious in protecting innocent lives.
Notwithstanding the institutional cacophonous symphony of support for AFSPA, the fact remains that the law is no panacea for resolving ethnic tension. Assam is under AFSPA and the Indian intelligence failed to pick up any advance sign of flare-up despite the presence of strategic assets within the regions’ innumerable underground militant organizations.
That the carnage could not be prevented in spite of putting the entire northeastern region under a security blanket and a strong intelligence network during election will lead us to some uncomfortable questions.
Was this a ploy to polarize the society along communal lines and enable politicians to milk the humanitarian tragedy for electoral mileage, even if it is at the cost of precious lives? As rightly pointed out by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Modi’s remark has helped poison the hearts of local people against Muslims. Despite the canonization of the myth of moderation around Modi, it must be accepted that he still remains the brightest of BJP’s loose cannons and his words generally convey the portent of things to come. Let us not forget that unrestrained rhetorical jingoism will only exacerbate the ethnic fault lines in sensitive areas.
Hence, New Delhi must strive to genuinely find out the real reasons for sub-national identity crisis gripping some of its territories. It is time to understand that the northeast and portions of neighboring West Bengal have some unique attributes, which needs to be preserved.
The population here consists of the original indigenous inhabitants together with people of other ethnicities, including Muslims, who migrated at various points of history and have been integrated into the local sociocultural system. Those who put the blame on so-called illegal immigration for the Assam mayhem are barking up the wrong tree.
The British brought unskilled migrant workers from East Bengal to work in Assam tea plantations more than a century ago and Modi ended up targeting bona fide Indian Muslim citizens.
Unfortunately, neither does Modi realize the pernicious implications of his remarks nor is he ready to admit that it has not been determined officially that illegal Muslim immigrants are encroaching on local tribal resources in northeastern India. For the rest of the country, Assam is the only land link to the entire northeastern territories.
It is also considered as a lynchpin of India’s look-east policy as is evident from recent bilateral agreements signed between India and Japan concerning economic and infrastructural development of northeastern states during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit.
Banking upon communal innuendos to get a toehold in a region with high ethnocultural sensitivity is nothing but catastrophic. Besides, any move that deepens communal fission and endanger relation between South Asian member states should be denounced.
Since, climate change and environmental degradation will potentially displace large chunk of people in a climate vulnerable South Asia in future, the regional leadership must have the vision to stitch together a dynamic plan for preventing an imminent disaster resulting out of large scale migration due to sea level rise, floods, variation in rainfall and droughts.
- Seema Sengupta is a Kolkata-based journalist and columnist.
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