United Liberation Front of Assam, one of the most powerful militant organisations
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Uprooted in the Northeast:The imbalance of rights, ethnic claims and histories of dispossession
by Sanjib Baruah
In Meghalaya in 1997, the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council, which has constitutional jurisdiction over Khasi 'customary law', passed the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Bill. The Khasis have a matrilineal kinship system and the bill sought to codify the system of inheritance through the female line. But it became highly controversial. A number of organisations, including the influential Khasi Students Union and the Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai (literally, 'association of new hearths') opposed the measure arguing that instead of codifying an 'outdated system' of matrilineal succession, Khasis should 'modernise' their kinship system. They proposed a change that would allow only children of two Khasi parents to be regarded as Khasi.
Why did legally establishing who is and who is not a Khasi become so important? Because the Khasis are designated a scheduled tribe (ST) and the lion's share of public employment, business and trade licenses, and even the right to seek elected office is reserved for STs. Nearly 85 percent of public sector employment in Meghalaya, where a majority of them lives, and 55 of the 60 seats in the state legislative assembly are reserved for STs. While the historical disadvantages that the tribal peoples suffered account for this elaborate protective discrimination regime, the status of non-tribals in the northeast Indian state of Meghalaya, as well as in the neighbouring states of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland, where such a protective discrimination regime exists, is best described as that of 'denizens'. In all these states, the rights to land ownership and exchange, business and trade licenses, and access to elected office are restricted.
The term 'denizen' goes back to the power of 'denization' that British monarchs once had to grant aliens some of the privileges of natural born subjects. At a later stage, the parliament sought to control the royal power of denization by passing laws that disallowed denizens from being members of the Privy Council and the houses of parliament, from occupying civil or military offices of trust, or from obtaining grants of land from the crown. While the restrictions on the rights of the non-tribal population have a very different history and rationale, the particular limits, eg on rights of
property ownership, access to public employment and elected office are not dissimilar to those applicable to denizens.
The category 'tribal' and its definition would be considered problematic in many academic circles. In India, however, it remains part of the policy discourse because the protective regime necessitates the official recognition of certain groups as 'tribal'. Article 342 of the Indian constitution provides for the president of India by public notification, to specify the "tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within tribes or tribal communities which shall for the purposes of the Constitution be deemed to be Scheduled Tribes". The use of 'tribal' here simply means a group included in that list hence scheduled tribe or ST. According to one scholar who has examined how the Indian government has arrived at the list, tribes were "defined partly by habitat and geographic isolation, but even more on the basis of social, religious, linguistic and cultural distinctiveness their 'tribal characteristics'. Just where the line between 'tribals' and 'non-tribals' should be drawn has not always been free from doubt" (Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984).
This protective discrimination regime is the result of an incremental policy-making dating back to colonial times when policy instruments were devised to protect vulnerable aboriginal peoples living in isolated enclaves once described as 'backward tracks'. Under the Sixth Schedule of postcolonial India's constitution, many of these enclaves became autonomous districts, and autonomous regions within those districts, each identified with a particular tribe. Subsequently, many of these territories became full-fledged states, whereby the protected minorities turned into majority groups in these states, and the system lost some of its original logic.
In three of these states Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland the continuation of the colonial institution of the 'inner line', which requires any outsider entering these territories to first secure a permit, creates an even stronger layer of protection against potential settlers. In spite of this, thanks to the changes in demographic trends inherent in economic development policies, such as the forging of national markets for large numbers of unorganised migrant labour crisscrossing the country, where again Indian citizens have become 'subjects without rights', the majority status of these protected groups is under increasing stress.
One of the unintended effects of the tensions between this process of incremental policy-making on the one hand, and migration into the area on the other, is that the notion of exclusive homelands, where certain ethnically defined groups are privileged, developed into an inflexible principle. This dynamic has translated into (often violent) exclusionary politics. Thus, the Northeast today is a hotbed of ethnic clashes between competing groups for exclusive rights to the same assets and, consequently, the site of significant levels of internal displacement.
Condemned to move
In recent years, internal displacements caused by violent ethno-national conflicts between tribals and denizens in many parts of northeast India have attracted the attention of refugee advocates. While most agree that there is substantial internal displacement in the region, calculating the precise number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has not been easy. Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Mahendra Lama describes the nature of the problem in India as a whole. Political sensitivities prevent the government from releasing data on displacement, he says. But without "a central authority responsible for coordinating data from central and state governments, regular monitoring is not possible in such a huge country". The "nature, frequency and extent of the causes of internal displacement" in India are so varied that it would be a "Herculean task to monitor and record them".
The Norwegian Refugee Council's profile of internal displacement in India in 2000-01 is illustrative of the wide divergence that exists between various available estimates of IDPs in northeast India while also pointing to the absence of data in some cases. The available estimates of the number of IDPs in the state of Assam in 2000-01, for instance, varied between 87,000 persons to more than 200,000. The estimates for Riangs displaced from Mizoram and living in refugee camps in Tripura varied between 31,000 and 41,000. The profile cites one estimate that at least 80,000 Bengalis have been uprooted in Tripura since 1993. In Manipur, conflicts between tribal groups have led to the displacement (at least temporarily) of as many as 13,000 Kukis, Paites and Nagas since 1992, but there were no estimates of the number of IDPs in Manipur. In Arunachal Pradesh, as many as 3000 Chakmas had become internally displaced, but the number of those who have left the area was unknown. The US Committee for Refugees in its report for 2000 estimated that there were 157,000 displaced persons in northeast India.
These estimates, even if not precise, underscore the magnitude of the IDP crisis in northeast India. It is important to delve into the historical conditions and the institutional context in which the typical ethno-political conflicts of the region take place and examine why these conflicts have proven to be conducive to ethnic violence and displacement.
In the 20th century, tribal societies in the Northeast went through a process of transition, from shifting cultivation to settled agriculture, from clan control of land to its commodification, and urbanisation and cultural change associated with a continuing process of 'modernisation'. The new economic niches created in this process of social transformation attracted large-scale migration to this sparsely populated frontier area of the Subcontinent. Today, except for Assam and Tripura, all the other states show growth rates that are above the national average during the 1991-2001 decade. However, in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland as well as in Assam's two autonomous districts (Karbi Anglong and North Cachar hills), STs as a proportion of the total population are on the decline. At the moment though, except for Karbi Anglong district,
the majority status of STs is not immediately under threat. This trend of population growth is, of course, the rationale for freezing the present balance of ST representation in the state assemblies. The protective discrimination regime, outlined earlier, arose partly as a response to these demographic trends.
Too often, the demographic change in the region has been seen only from the perspective of what scholars of migration call 'push factors'. But it is important to bring in the 'pull factors' as well the economic transformation and process of class differentiation in these states that have provided significant economic opportunities to new immigrants some of which may be hidden from the gaze of law. In one area of Karbi Anglong, for example, while ownership rights are in the name of tribals, 'Bihari', Bengali and Nepali denizens, more adept at the state-encouraged settled cultivation than the STs who are traditionally shifting cultivators, are the real owners. Indian security forces, ostensibly there to deal with the security threat posed by insurgencies, are appropriated by the denizens because of shared ethnic ties, and often assist in this process the agency for this.
There are informal ways in which denizens acquire de facto property rights that are likely to become de jure rights in future. In Meghalaya, for instance, some powerful individuals having captured what is formally clan-controlled land now exercise substantial control over both urban and agricultural land, sometimes up to 1000 acres something that would never have been allowed by custom. Chiefs and headmen have been issuing land deeds to non-Khasis and Khasis alike for a fixed rent. The breakdown of customary modes of land control has meant the introduction of absentee landlordism, realisation of rent from land, sharecropping, land mortgage and even landlessness. Such land grab has also been made possible by official development policies that have encouraged plantation crops such as tea, coffee and rubber.
Since the protective discrimination regime in place restricts what denizens can legally do, numerous informal arrangements have emerged in the ownership and control of agricultural land and in business practices. And as exemplified above, those informal niches are sometimes positions of advantage vis-à-vis a person belonging to an ST and at other times the ST person may not be at a position of advantage. The normalisation of the idea of exclusive homelands for ethnically defined groups generates a kind of politics that is in dissonance with the existing political economy of the region. The emerging pattern of class differentiation taking place within the framework of the protective discrimination regime of these transitional economies is complex, with some settlers exploiting indigenous tribal people and others occupying the most marginal of economic niches. And, while the regime has enabled some tribal people to do well, it has not stopped the proletarianisation of others.
The other side of the privatisation of clan-held lands is the emergence of a poorer group of people eking out a living by working as agricultural workers or sharecroppers or by whatever other means possible. To be sure, most of them are local tribals, who despite the protection given to them as members of STs, lack the social and political resources to benefit from the privatisation of clan-lands or to be able to hold on to lands allocated to them. But occupying these economic niches, are also a large number of denizens Nepalis, Biharis and Bangladeshis among them who are easier to 'uproot' should a dispute arise.
This is the context in which the idea of exclusive homelands expressed in the institutional language of "autonomous district councils" or "separate statehood" has shaped the imagination of tribal as well as non-tribal activists of the region. This particular configuration of institutional legacy, demographic trends, and political discourse in northeast India has wrought an extremely divisive politics of insiders and outsiders that has led to the incidence of displacement. While this combination of circumstances is unique to this part of India, the introduction of similar ideas of exclusive homelands in demographically mixed situations has produced similar conflicts with the attendant risk of ethnic violence and internal displacement in other parts of India as well.
A notable example is the new state of Jharkhand where, in 2002, a government proposal to link public employment to "ancestral roots" through a domicile policy led to a bandh (strike) and violence in which many died. Whether a particular regime of differentiated citizenship can achieve its intended goals must be a matter for investigation for the costs of sacrificing the basic principle of equal citizenship are high, and regimes of differentiated citizenship have intended as well as, importantly, unintended consequences.
Excluded areas to exclusive homelands
Attempts to deal with 'aborigines' by creating protected enclaves where they can be allowed to pursue their 'customary practices' including kinship and clan-based rules of land allocation go back to the earliest period of British colonial rule in India. It is worth remembering, however, that the idea of protection came only after enormous violence was visited on some of the same people by the early colonisers in the course of pacification campaigns against 'savage tribes' and, after it became clear that the initial onslaught of colonial transformation had led to the massive dispossession and displacement of many of these peoples who were organised in pre-capitalist social formations. For many, whatever protection came along, was too little and too late.
As early as 1874, the Indian legislature had passed a scheduled districts act. The Government of India Act of 1919 empowered the governor general to declare any territory to be a backward track where laws passed by the Indian legislature would not apply. The Statutory Commission, which in 1930 had examined the political conditions in British India and proposed constitutional reforms, did not like the term 'backward tracks'. It proposed a change of name from 'backward tracks' to 'excluded areas'. The Government of India Act of 1935 therefore provided for "excluded" and "partially excluded areas" so called because they were excluded from the operation of laws applicable in the rest of British-controlled India.
Some of the potential problems, especially the dangers to non-aboriginal people living in those areas, were anticipated by the debates about these measures even in colonial times. One of the best-known critiques of colonial-era tribal policies is GS Ghurye's 1943 book, The Aborigines So Called and their Future (Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, India, Publication No 11). "The acknowledgement of the right of the so-called aborigines to follow their traditional pursuits, like the practice of shifting cultivation, without any reference to the needs of the general community", wrote Ghurye in reference to the recommendations of the Statutory Commission, "was the most dangerous doctrine endorsed by the Commissioners". The commissioners, he charged, had not considered the impact on non-aborigines living in those places and "much less did they give their thought to the proportions of such people in the various areas, unless we discover it in the distinction of the two categories of excluded areas made by them".
If the distinction between excluded and partially excluded areas was indeed based on the proportions of non-aborigines living in those areas, he wrote in a later work, it was too broad a distinction to be useful. About the Government of India Act of 1935, Ghurye wrote that in its "eagerness to do something for the tribals", the British parliament barely considered the condition of the non-tribal people in whose midst the protected aborigines live and on whom they depend to some extent for their livelihood. That these non-tribals too have rights, that their goodwill and cooperation, next only to the conscious and deliberate internal organisation of the tribals themselves, are the most essential factors for the welfare and future development of the so-called aborigines, failed to receive adequate consideration.
That some non-tribals may have indeed taken "unfair advantage of the simplicity and ignorance of the aborigines", Ghurye argued, was no reason to write off their contribution to "socio-economic development", and much less to treat all of them as a "right-less population".
Nevertheless, the Indian constitution of 1950, retained most of the provisions of the 1935 act, though the nomenclatures and some of the institutional forms were modified. Not surprisingly, Ghurye could reprint the same book with only a few changes and a new title in 1963. Most importantly, from our perspective, the constitution made a distinction between the tribal areas of Assam (five of the seven states of today's northeast) and those in the rest of the country. While the tribal peoples of the rest of India came under the Fifth Schedule, the Sixth Schedule provided for the administration of the tribal areas of northeast India.
The chairman of the subcommittee of the constituent assembly that drafted the Sixth Schedule, later Assam's chief minister, Gopinath Bordoloi, in presenting its proposals justified them by referring to the uncertain political conditions in the region at the time of independence. Bordoloi stressed the need for continued protection because of the doubts among the tribal people of what a postcolonial dispensation would bring; he spoke of the need to 'integrate' these peoples in a Gandhian way. The fear of being swamped by outsiders once the colonial era restrictions were suddenly removed was indeed a concern expressed by leaders of the tribal communities. That the Naga revolt broke out soon after independence and continues till this day indicates that the anxiety expressed by Bordoloi was far from theoretical.
Scheduled differences
The Sixth Schedule distinguished two sets of tribal areas of undivided Assam, which at the time was the entire Northeast barring Sikkim, using the administrative categories that were then in effect: a) the districts of the United Khasi and Jaintia Hills (excluding Shillong), Garo Hills, Lushai Hills, Naga Hills, North Cachar Hills and the Mikir Hills, and the North East Frontier Tracts and the Naga Tribal Area. The first set of areas today comprise the states of Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and parts of Assam, and the second category consists mostly of the state of Arunachal Pradesh and a part of the state of Nagaland. The Sixth Schedule institutions were meant for sets of areas, but the latter set of territories which were mostly un-administered during colonial times was considered to be not quite ready at that time for self-governing institutions. The administration of those areas was going to be carried out directly from Delhi with the governor of Assam acting as the agent of the Indian president.
The Sixth Schedule provided for autonomous districts and autonomous regions within those districts with elected councils which enjoyed powers to levy some taxes, to constitute courts for the administration of justice involving tribals and law-making powers on subjects including land allotment, occupation or use of land, regulation of shifting cultivation, formation and administration of village and town committees, appointment of chiefs, inheritance of property, marriage and social customs.
However, the schedule was not intended to protect all the STs of northeast India. Only those that were considered to be relatively concentrated in the old excluded and partially excluded areas, and for which the constitution used the term tribal areas, came under the purview of the Sixth Schedule. The Bordoloi subcommittee did not consider the situation of other STs. Among them were groups such as Bodos, Misings and Tiwas that are described today as plains tribes to distinguish them from the hill tribes that came under the Sixth Schedule. In the Constituent Assembly, the special needs of the plains tribes were the responsibility of a separate subcommittee, which was in charge of minority rights. A Bodo politician, Rupnath Brahma, was a member of the minority rights subcommittee.
The process of formation of Autonomous District Councils, however, did not quite proceed the way constitution-makers had anticipated. The outbreak of the independentist Naga rebellion, for instance, meant that political conditions for holding elections to the Naga Hills District Council did not exist. Instead, in 1963, the state of Nagaland was created. The North East Frontier Tracts where the Sixth Schedule was eventually supposed to be in place also went through a different process of institutional change than the one anticipated prior to the Indo-China war of 1962. The area is now the state of Arunachal Pradesh, where tribals enjoy protection at the state level. Meanwhile, the Sixth Schedule has been extended to Tripura in response to tribal militancy, where the Tripura Tribal Areas District Council was formed.
It is not accidental that Nagaland was created in 1963, a year after India's war with China. The Chinese invasion exposed India's vulnerabilities in the region. Already, the Naga independentist rebellion had begun to make officials of the postcolonial Indian state anxious. There were stirrings of unrest in other parts of the region as well. Beginning with the China war, the managers of the Indian state began to see the external and internal 'enemies' in this frontier region coming together and constituting a looming threat to national security. Extending the institutions of the state all the way into the international border nationalising this frontier space has been the thrust of Indian policy ever since. Over the next few years, the governmental structure of the region was fundamentally redesigned to create what I have called a cosmetically federal regional order. Thus, with the creation of Nagaland, statehood in northeast India became de-linked from questions of fiscal viability and of its implications for the constitutional architecture of the larger polity. Building on the elementary apparatus of state institutions created by the Sixth Schedule became a good way to ensure both the penetration of the state and the creation of local stakeholders in the pan-Indian dispensation.
Northeast Indian states: Reserved seats for Scheduled Tribes in state legislative assemblies
States ST as % of Population* Leg. Assembly Total Members Leg. Assembly Seats of STs Leg. Assembly Unreserved Seats
Arunanchal 63.7 60 59 1
Assam 12.8 126 16 102**
Manipur 34.4 60 20 40
Meghalaya 86.6 60 55 5
Mizoram 94.8 40 39 1
Nagaland 87.7 60 59 1
Tripura 31.0 60 20 33***
*BASED ON 1991 CENSUS DATA **RESERVED FOR SCHEDULED CASTES ***RESERVED FOR SCHEDULES CASTES
Apart from consolidating the idea of exclusive homelands, organising the region into a number of mini states, all of them with the formal institutions of other Indian state governments, also had the effect of imposing a particular developmental paradigm. There is, after all, a standard vision of development which is contained in the routine practices of the bureaucracy of a 'developmentalist state' that allocates funds to departments such as public works, rural development and industries; and that vision only gets bolstered by the patronage politics of an electoral democracy. In the sparsely populated parts of this frontier region, these economic trends have invariably meant more immigration.
The most significant aspect of this new regional order, from the perspective of the theory and practice of citizenship, however, is that the vast majority of seats in the state legislatures of the mini states indeed all but one seat in the case of three legislatures are reserved for candidates belonging to the STs. The table below gives the number of reserved seats in the state legislatures of northeastern states and also gives the percentage of the ST population.
In the legislative assemblies of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland all but one seat is reserved for STs. In Meghalaya, 55 of the 60 seats are reserved. Apart from the issue of the denizens not being able to contest elections, the principle of one-person, one-vote, one-value has had to be undermined in other ways as well in order to achieve such a weighted system of representation. Generally, the norm about ensuring the equality of the relative weight of each vote in a democracy requires that in electoral systems with single-member constituencies, the electorates in all districts be roughly of the same size. That could not be done if the legislative assemblies were to have such a weighted system of representation. As a result, Nagaland's largest urban centre, Dimapur, for instance which has a very high concentration of denizens is divided into two constituencies and one of them is the sole unreserved (non-tribal) seat in the Nagaland assembly. This unreserved constituency has many times the number of voters of each of the other constituencies in the state.
Through another constitutional amendment the balance between reserved and unreserved seats in the assemblies of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland has been frozen in order to ensure that delimitation of constituencies in light of demographic changes in future does not change the current balance.
Whatever the philosophical dilemmas these arrangements present to the theorist of citizenship, the emergence of elected state governments under the control of tribal politicians and of a visible well-to-do tribal elite in those states has captured the imagination of tribal as well as non-tribal ethnic activists in the region. There is a perception that the STs in the states with the most comprehensive protective discrimination regimes have done well economically and have been relatively successful in insulating themselves from being swamped by immigrants. While a homeland has become something to aspire for on the part of those ethnic groups (STs as well as others) who do not have one, ethnic activists of the existing homelands have become zealous defenders of what they see as their statutory entitlements. This was exemplified in the case of Khasi activists in Meghalaya.
Returning to the controversy in Meghalaya over Khasi succession rules, the authority of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council to decide on Khasi succession rules is derived from the Sixth Schedule of the constitution. According to its sponsors, the goal of the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Bill was to stop non-Khasis from adopting Khasi surnames to take advantage of opportunities reserved for STs. The activists opposed to the bill would hardly disagree with that goal. However, the attempt to codify 'customary practice' drew public attention to the liberal way in which the Khasis have traditionally incorporated outsiders into their fold. The practice by which children of a Khasi mother and a non-Khasi father can become a Khasi came up for special scrutiny.
The opponents of the bill argued that the system allows too many people to pass off as Khasi and take advantage of opportunities reserved for Khasis. Thus, the president of the Syngkhong, Keith Pariat, was quoted in the press as saying that the matrilineal system no longer serves contemporary needs and that, if it was allowed to continue, the 'pure Khasi tribe' will become extinct in another 10 to 15 years. The bill, however, did not become law because it did not receive the governor's assent a constitutional requirement aimed at moderating the powers of state legislatures.
By raising questions about the way 'outsiders' have historically been incorporated into the Khasi fold, the controversy had the effect of putting under the cloud the rights including rights to property ownership, public employment and to seek elected office of significant numbers of people living in Meghalaya, some for generations. And since the proposed reforms would have denied those rights to people who had some claim to being a Khasi, the climate generated by the controversy could only have been worse for most denizens such as residents of Meghalaya who have no claim to being Khasi or a member of one of the other STs.
Ethnic homelands: An anachronism
While the Northeast becomes increasingly polarised over the insider/outsider groups of high-stakes politics of the region, people from the Northeast may in fact be quietly be joining the Indian mainstream. Modern India, according to the jurist Professor Upendra Baxi, has achieved "national integration without achieving national integrity". But, perhaps the postcolonial social transformation of northeast India, taking place under the protective cover of the Sixth Schedule, is slowly making the region a part of this grid of 'unconstitutional national integration' in somewhat unexpected ways.
The Bangladeshi and Nepali presence in the region points to a significant transnational dimension of this as well. At least a part of the demographic change in northeast India has to be explained by this migrating proletariat meeting the labour demands of the building boom in the region made possibly partly by the state resources being pumped in and the substantial leakage of funds through corruption and the class relations in the emerging forms of post-shifting cultivation agriculture. Their presence in these economic roles is certainly very visible to any visitor to northeast India today.
Slowly but steadily, the dispossessed tribal of northeast India is also sure to join this mass of humanity on the move. Thus, if the Bihari denizen in Karbi Anglong takes advantage of the misery of the poor Karbi to take effective control of his land, a tribal landlord in the Naga foothills, often empowered and enriched by positions in or connections to the state government of Nagaland, may be in a position of power and dominance vis-a-vis the Bengali denizen sharecropper informally leasing his land. Questions of social justice in northeast India are significantly more complex today than what
the regime of protection was originally designed to accomplish.
How anachronistic the homeland idea has become in the context of the existing political economy of northeast India today is apparent in the demand for a homeland for the Bodos on the north bank of the Brahmaputra. Bodo speakers today number only 1.1 million or 11.5 percent in the area they want for their homeland. They have come in conflict with the Koch Rajbongshis, who if they 'win' ST status will become by far the predominant tribal group in the recently approved Bodo Territorial Council area. They have also come in conflict with the All Assam Students Union, which spearheaded the Assam movement of the 1970s-80s against 'aliens', and is now in discussion with the state and central government about ways to protect Assam's 'indigenous people'. Since the term 'indigenous people' in international human rights discourse is roughly synonymous with what in India are called scheduled tribes, the extension of the word 'indigenous' to include a non-tribal people especially one that is itself at loggerheads with some of Assam's STs has aroused deep suspicion.
More than any other case, the displacement of Santhals in Kokrajhar district in the late 1990s victims of violence by Bodo militants dramatised this incongruity. The Santhals in Assam are descendants of tea workers brought to Assam as indentured workers, many of them more than a century ago. Their displaced forefathers provided the muscle for the tea industry that marked the arrival of global capitalism in Assam in the 19th century. That such a group could be displaced for the second time in the course of an 'indigenous' group's search for an ethnic homeland no matter how tragic the story of injustice done to them brings home the absurdity of the way insiders and outsiders are framed in the homeland discourse of northeast India. The discourse today has become a serious challenge to the foundational principles of citizenship. It cannot be expected to provide a framework for the struggles for social justice of today and of the future.
Dual citizenship
Minimally, what is needed is a framework that does not involve the state forever categorising groups of people in ethnic terms and making descendants of immigrants into perpetual outsiders. While mechanisms to control immigration are no doubt necessary, so are rules about absorbing the descendants of immigrants no matter how restrictive. And at least a generation or two later, they have to become full citizens. This writer suggest that the notion of dual citizenship, not unknown in federal systems citizenship both of India and of a state might be able to provide such a framework. Such a regime of dual citizenship would be a variation in the theme of the differentiated citizenship regime that exists in northeast India. But its purpose would be to replace the ethnic principle with a civic principle and to give the right to define the rules of inclusion and exclusion to territorially defined political communities.
A quick review of the language in which the citizenship laws of countries are framed illustrates how the logic of the citizenship discourse necessarily differs from that of the discourse of homelands for ethnically defined groups. In principle, most countries recognise three ways of becoming a citizen: birth within the territory of a country (jus soli), descent from a citizen (jus sanguinis) and naturalisation. If jus sanguinis incorporates the principle of citizenship gained through blood ties to citizens, the other two principles can incorporate the ethnically or culturally different outsider. In contrast to that, the homeland discourse tends to define political communities in static and exclusively ethnic terms. Of course, in reality, countries vary enormously on how much of the jus soli principle is applied to the claims to citizenship of children of immigrants born in the country and on the degree of difficulties that are involved in obtaining citizenship through naturalisation. Indeed, in countries like Israel and Japan, jus sanguinis remains the predominant way of acquiring citizenship. Yet the openings for new members that exist in principle makes the discourse of citizenship different from the exclusionary logic of the discourse of exclusive homelands.
The framework of dual citizenship can define political communities in civic terms, incorporate new members and make a decisive break from the notion of ethnic homelands
Certain recent developments in the citizenship policies in Europe help illustrate this point. Despite the political rhetoric against foreigners in Europe today, the trend in most European countries has been to extend the right of citizenship to second-generation immigrants. The labour demands during the latter half of the 20th century induced a major part of Europe's recent immigration. Originally, the migration was thought of as temporary, as illustrated by the notion of guest worker. However, as many temporary migrants became permanent settlers, countries have had to respond creatively to the reality of a growing number of foreign non-citizen residents living in their midst. Whatever their degree of economic and social integration, lack of citizenship had tended to separate immigrant groups from the broader community in significant ways and implicitly justified xenophobic and exclusionary rhetoric. Thus, it was hard not to see a direct connection between Germany's inability to recognise Turks, Yugoslavs and other former guest workers as potential German citizens and the attacks on Turks as 'foreigners'. Germany, of course, has since 2000 changed the laws of citizenship recognising the right of second-generation immigrants to citizenship.
Indeed except for Austria, Greece and Luxemburg, the other 12 European Union countries now give second-generation immigrants the right to citizenship. Of course, there are conditions attached including, in some cases, double jus soli besides the applicant, a parent too has to be born in the country. The point is not however to debate the laws, but to draw attention through example to the fact that, unlike the homeland discourse, it is hard within the discourse of citizenship not to recognise the right to citizenship of second-generation immigrants. In that sense the citizenship discourse is qualitatively different from the homeland discourse of northeast India that makes denizens and perpetual foreigners out of ethnically defined outsiders and their descendants.
The obvious advantages of the framework of dual citizenship are that it can define political communities in civic terms, introduce a dynamic element of incorporating new members and thereby make a decisive break from the notion of ethnic homelands that is part of the legacy of colonial subject-hood. Dual citizenship would imply that elected state governments and legislatures could make rules by which an internal immigrant becomes a citizen of the state and a member of the political community embodied in that state.
Furthermore, under a strong dual citizenship regime, even national citizenship could become a concurrent subject requiring for instance, that international treaties affecting the flow of people from outside the country into India for instance the treaties affecting the rights of ethnic Nepalis or Bangladeshis in India would need the concurrence of state governments. Making such treaty a part of state level political debates could give such treaties the popular legitimacy that they appear to lack in northeast India. Giving state legislatures a formal say in controlling the flow of people into the region restrictions that exist today, but primarily through non-transparent colonial-era bureaucratic practices like the inner line or as an indirect effect of the protections given to STs will give legitimacy to the internal immigration into the region that is only likely to increase in coming years.
Indian public opinion, however, is unlikely to be friendly to the idea of dual citizenship, which is been announced recently as a sop for the West-based non-resident Indian. Indeed, in the 1999 debate that followed the autonomy resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir assembly, commentators specifically pointed at the dangers of the dual citizenship idea. Columnist Arvind Lavakare, for instance, recently argued that if a state had such power, it would "discriminate in favour of its citizens in matters such as the right to hold public office, to vote, to obtain employment or to secure licenses for practicing law or medicine". He gave the example of Jammu and Kashmir, where the right to acquire immovable property is restricted to the state's permanent residents to illustrate how "politically explosive" the idea of dual citizenship can be. "With that solitary exception [sic]", he noted with satisfaction, an exception that could be removed by abrogating Article 370 of the constitution, "the Indian federation has largely achieved, and seeks to maintain, uniformity in basic civil and criminal laws". Like many Indian commentators, Lavakare is oblivious of the Northeast and of Article 371 (which immediately follows the much-reviled article on Jammu and Kashmir), that gives some of the northeastern states their special forms of autonomy.
The choice in the Northeast today is not between a new set of restrictions that dual citizenship would introduce for the first time and a uniform national citizenship where all Indian citizens have unrestricted rights to movement, residency and property ownership. What exists on the ground is a set of rules that distinguishes between citizens and denizens, rules that have fuelled an increasingly exclusionary politics of homelands and have been prone to generating ethnic
violence and recurrent episodes of displacement. Dual citizenship in such a situation would be able to introduce for the first time a regime of civic citizenship that will be in line with the actually existing political economy of the region.
Such a citizenship regime will also be consistent with the traditional liberal incorporative ethos of the region. In the controversy over the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Bill, the matrilineal system of succession that Khasi activists would like to 'modernise' has a remarkably liberal and progressive conception of group membership. While descent is traced along the female line, that does not stop children of non-Khasi women married to Khasi men from being absorbed into Khasi society. Children of such marriages typically adopted the non-Khasi mother's given name or occupation as a clan name and over time such names became recognised as Khasi clan names. Indeed, there are many Khasi clans today that trace their ancestry to non-Khasi women who were wives or concubines of Khasi men, abducted from the plains in the course of trading expeditions and wars. This also does not discriminate against children married out of wedlock.
As Khasi sociologist Tiplut Nongbri points out in a recent paper on Khasi women and matriliny: while the Khasi rules of descent may render "the ethnic boundary of the Khasi highly porous, it makes the addition of new members into the society relatively easy and adds to the vibrancy of the system". Dual citizenship will only return the Northeast to the spirit of such progressive traditions of incorporating new members so dramatically different from the caste sensibilities of mainstream India and make a clean break from the colonial constructions of ethnic subject-hood that have generated today's lethal politics of homelands.
http://www.himalmag.com/2003/march/essay_2.html
by Sanjib Baruah
In Meghalaya in 1997, the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council, which has constitutional jurisdiction over Khasi 'customary law', passed the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Bill. The Khasis have a matrilineal kinship system and the bill sought to codify the system of inheritance through the female line. But it became highly controversial. A number of organisations, including the influential Khasi Students Union and the Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai (literally, 'association of new hearths') opposed the measure arguing that instead of codifying an 'outdated system' of matrilineal succession, Khasis should 'modernise' their kinship system. They proposed a change that would allow only children of two Khasi parents to be regarded as Khasi.
Why did legally establishing who is and who is not a Khasi become so important? Because the Khasis are designated a scheduled tribe (ST) and the lion's share of public employment, business and trade licenses, and even the right to seek elected office is reserved for STs. Nearly 85 percent of public sector employment in Meghalaya, where a majority of them lives, and 55 of the 60 seats in the state legislative assembly are reserved for STs. While the historical disadvantages that the tribal peoples suffered account for this elaborate protective discrimination regime, the status of non-tribals in the northeast Indian state of Meghalaya, as well as in the neighbouring states of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland, where such a protective discrimination regime exists, is best described as that of 'denizens'. In all these states, the rights to land ownership and exchange, business and trade licenses, and access to elected office are restricted.
The term 'denizen' goes back to the power of 'denization' that British monarchs once had to grant aliens some of the privileges of natural born subjects. At a later stage, the parliament sought to control the royal power of denization by passing laws that disallowed denizens from being members of the Privy Council and the houses of parliament, from occupying civil or military offices of trust, or from obtaining grants of land from the crown. While the restrictions on the rights of the non-tribal population have a very different history and rationale, the particular limits, eg on rights of
property ownership, access to public employment and elected office are not dissimilar to those applicable to denizens.
The category 'tribal' and its definition would be considered problematic in many academic circles. In India, however, it remains part of the policy discourse because the protective regime necessitates the official recognition of certain groups as 'tribal'. Article 342 of the Indian constitution provides for the president of India by public notification, to specify the "tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within tribes or tribal communities which shall for the purposes of the Constitution be deemed to be Scheduled Tribes". The use of 'tribal' here simply means a group included in that list hence scheduled tribe or ST. According to one scholar who has examined how the Indian government has arrived at the list, tribes were "defined partly by habitat and geographic isolation, but even more on the basis of social, religious, linguistic and cultural distinctiveness their 'tribal characteristics'. Just where the line between 'tribals' and 'non-tribals' should be drawn has not always been free from doubt" (Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984).
This protective discrimination regime is the result of an incremental policy-making dating back to colonial times when policy instruments were devised to protect vulnerable aboriginal peoples living in isolated enclaves once described as 'backward tracks'. Under the Sixth Schedule of postcolonial India's constitution, many of these enclaves became autonomous districts, and autonomous regions within those districts, each identified with a particular tribe. Subsequently, many of these territories became full-fledged states, whereby the protected minorities turned into majority groups in these states, and the system lost some of its original logic.
In three of these states Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland the continuation of the colonial institution of the 'inner line', which requires any outsider entering these territories to first secure a permit, creates an even stronger layer of protection against potential settlers. In spite of this, thanks to the changes in demographic trends inherent in economic development policies, such as the forging of national markets for large numbers of unorganised migrant labour crisscrossing the country, where again Indian citizens have become 'subjects without rights', the majority status of these protected groups is under increasing stress.
One of the unintended effects of the tensions between this process of incremental policy-making on the one hand, and migration into the area on the other, is that the notion of exclusive homelands, where certain ethnically defined groups are privileged, developed into an inflexible principle. This dynamic has translated into (often violent) exclusionary politics. Thus, the Northeast today is a hotbed of ethnic clashes between competing groups for exclusive rights to the same assets and, consequently, the site of significant levels of internal displacement.
Condemned to move
In recent years, internal displacements caused by violent ethno-national conflicts between tribals and denizens in many parts of northeast India have attracted the attention of refugee advocates. While most agree that there is substantial internal displacement in the region, calculating the precise number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has not been easy. Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Mahendra Lama describes the nature of the problem in India as a whole. Political sensitivities prevent the government from releasing data on displacement, he says. But without "a central authority responsible for coordinating data from central and state governments, regular monitoring is not possible in such a huge country". The "nature, frequency and extent of the causes of internal displacement" in India are so varied that it would be a "Herculean task to monitor and record them".
The Norwegian Refugee Council's profile of internal displacement in India in 2000-01 is illustrative of the wide divergence that exists between various available estimates of IDPs in northeast India while also pointing to the absence of data in some cases. The available estimates of the number of IDPs in the state of Assam in 2000-01, for instance, varied between 87,000 persons to more than 200,000. The estimates for Riangs displaced from Mizoram and living in refugee camps in Tripura varied between 31,000 and 41,000. The profile cites one estimate that at least 80,000 Bengalis have been uprooted in Tripura since 1993. In Manipur, conflicts between tribal groups have led to the displacement (at least temporarily) of as many as 13,000 Kukis, Paites and Nagas since 1992, but there were no estimates of the number of IDPs in Manipur. In Arunachal Pradesh, as many as 3000 Chakmas had become internally displaced, but the number of those who have left the area was unknown. The US Committee for Refugees in its report for 2000 estimated that there were 157,000 displaced persons in northeast India.
These estimates, even if not precise, underscore the magnitude of the IDP crisis in northeast India. It is important to delve into the historical conditions and the institutional context in which the typical ethno-political conflicts of the region take place and examine why these conflicts have proven to be conducive to ethnic violence and displacement.
In the 20th century, tribal societies in the Northeast went through a process of transition, from shifting cultivation to settled agriculture, from clan control of land to its commodification, and urbanisation and cultural change associated with a continuing process of 'modernisation'. The new economic niches created in this process of social transformation attracted large-scale migration to this sparsely populated frontier area of the Subcontinent. Today, except for Assam and Tripura, all the other states show growth rates that are above the national average during the 1991-2001 decade. However, in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland as well as in Assam's two autonomous districts (Karbi Anglong and North Cachar hills), STs as a proportion of the total population are on the decline. At the moment though, except for Karbi Anglong district,
the majority status of STs is not immediately under threat. This trend of population growth is, of course, the rationale for freezing the present balance of ST representation in the state assemblies. The protective discrimination regime, outlined earlier, arose partly as a response to these demographic trends.
Too often, the demographic change in the region has been seen only from the perspective of what scholars of migration call 'push factors'. But it is important to bring in the 'pull factors' as well the economic transformation and process of class differentiation in these states that have provided significant economic opportunities to new immigrants some of which may be hidden from the gaze of law. In one area of Karbi Anglong, for example, while ownership rights are in the name of tribals, 'Bihari', Bengali and Nepali denizens, more adept at the state-encouraged settled cultivation than the STs who are traditionally shifting cultivators, are the real owners. Indian security forces, ostensibly there to deal with the security threat posed by insurgencies, are appropriated by the denizens because of shared ethnic ties, and often assist in this process the agency for this.
There are informal ways in which denizens acquire de facto property rights that are likely to become de jure rights in future. In Meghalaya, for instance, some powerful individuals having captured what is formally clan-controlled land now exercise substantial control over both urban and agricultural land, sometimes up to 1000 acres something that would never have been allowed by custom. Chiefs and headmen have been issuing land deeds to non-Khasis and Khasis alike for a fixed rent. The breakdown of customary modes of land control has meant the introduction of absentee landlordism, realisation of rent from land, sharecropping, land mortgage and even landlessness. Such land grab has also been made possible by official development policies that have encouraged plantation crops such as tea, coffee and rubber.
Since the protective discrimination regime in place restricts what denizens can legally do, numerous informal arrangements have emerged in the ownership and control of agricultural land and in business practices. And as exemplified above, those informal niches are sometimes positions of advantage vis-à-vis a person belonging to an ST and at other times the ST person may not be at a position of advantage. The normalisation of the idea of exclusive homelands for ethnically defined groups generates a kind of politics that is in dissonance with the existing political economy of the region. The emerging pattern of class differentiation taking place within the framework of the protective discrimination regime of these transitional economies is complex, with some settlers exploiting indigenous tribal people and others occupying the most marginal of economic niches. And, while the regime has enabled some tribal people to do well, it has not stopped the proletarianisation of others.
The other side of the privatisation of clan-held lands is the emergence of a poorer group of people eking out a living by working as agricultural workers or sharecroppers or by whatever other means possible. To be sure, most of them are local tribals, who despite the protection given to them as members of STs, lack the social and political resources to benefit from the privatisation of clan-lands or to be able to hold on to lands allocated to them. But occupying these economic niches, are also a large number of denizens Nepalis, Biharis and Bangladeshis among them who are easier to 'uproot' should a dispute arise.
This is the context in which the idea of exclusive homelands expressed in the institutional language of "autonomous district councils" or "separate statehood" has shaped the imagination of tribal as well as non-tribal activists of the region. This particular configuration of institutional legacy, demographic trends, and political discourse in northeast India has wrought an extremely divisive politics of insiders and outsiders that has led to the incidence of displacement. While this combination of circumstances is unique to this part of India, the introduction of similar ideas of exclusive homelands in demographically mixed situations has produced similar conflicts with the attendant risk of ethnic violence and internal displacement in other parts of India as well.
A notable example is the new state of Jharkhand where, in 2002, a government proposal to link public employment to "ancestral roots" through a domicile policy led to a bandh (strike) and violence in which many died. Whether a particular regime of differentiated citizenship can achieve its intended goals must be a matter for investigation for the costs of sacrificing the basic principle of equal citizenship are high, and regimes of differentiated citizenship have intended as well as, importantly, unintended consequences.
Excluded areas to exclusive homelands
Attempts to deal with 'aborigines' by creating protected enclaves where they can be allowed to pursue their 'customary practices' including kinship and clan-based rules of land allocation go back to the earliest period of British colonial rule in India. It is worth remembering, however, that the idea of protection came only after enormous violence was visited on some of the same people by the early colonisers in the course of pacification campaigns against 'savage tribes' and, after it became clear that the initial onslaught of colonial transformation had led to the massive dispossession and displacement of many of these peoples who were organised in pre-capitalist social formations. For many, whatever protection came along, was too little and too late.
As early as 1874, the Indian legislature had passed a scheduled districts act. The Government of India Act of 1919 empowered the governor general to declare any territory to be a backward track where laws passed by the Indian legislature would not apply. The Statutory Commission, which in 1930 had examined the political conditions in British India and proposed constitutional reforms, did not like the term 'backward tracks'. It proposed a change of name from 'backward tracks' to 'excluded areas'. The Government of India Act of 1935 therefore provided for "excluded" and "partially excluded areas" so called because they were excluded from the operation of laws applicable in the rest of British-controlled India.
Some of the potential problems, especially the dangers to non-aboriginal people living in those areas, were anticipated by the debates about these measures even in colonial times. One of the best-known critiques of colonial-era tribal policies is GS Ghurye's 1943 book, The Aborigines So Called and their Future (Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, India, Publication No 11). "The acknowledgement of the right of the so-called aborigines to follow their traditional pursuits, like the practice of shifting cultivation, without any reference to the needs of the general community", wrote Ghurye in reference to the recommendations of the Statutory Commission, "was the most dangerous doctrine endorsed by the Commissioners". The commissioners, he charged, had not considered the impact on non-aborigines living in those places and "much less did they give their thought to the proportions of such people in the various areas, unless we discover it in the distinction of the two categories of excluded areas made by them".
If the distinction between excluded and partially excluded areas was indeed based on the proportions of non-aborigines living in those areas, he wrote in a later work, it was too broad a distinction to be useful. About the Government of India Act of 1935, Ghurye wrote that in its "eagerness to do something for the tribals", the British parliament barely considered the condition of the non-tribal people in whose midst the protected aborigines live and on whom they depend to some extent for their livelihood. That these non-tribals too have rights, that their goodwill and cooperation, next only to the conscious and deliberate internal organisation of the tribals themselves, are the most essential factors for the welfare and future development of the so-called aborigines, failed to receive adequate consideration.
That some non-tribals may have indeed taken "unfair advantage of the simplicity and ignorance of the aborigines", Ghurye argued, was no reason to write off their contribution to "socio-economic development", and much less to treat all of them as a "right-less population".
Nevertheless, the Indian constitution of 1950, retained most of the provisions of the 1935 act, though the nomenclatures and some of the institutional forms were modified. Not surprisingly, Ghurye could reprint the same book with only a few changes and a new title in 1963. Most importantly, from our perspective, the constitution made a distinction between the tribal areas of Assam (five of the seven states of today's northeast) and those in the rest of the country. While the tribal peoples of the rest of India came under the Fifth Schedule, the Sixth Schedule provided for the administration of the tribal areas of northeast India.
The chairman of the subcommittee of the constituent assembly that drafted the Sixth Schedule, later Assam's chief minister, Gopinath Bordoloi, in presenting its proposals justified them by referring to the uncertain political conditions in the region at the time of independence. Bordoloi stressed the need for continued protection because of the doubts among the tribal people of what a postcolonial dispensation would bring; he spoke of the need to 'integrate' these peoples in a Gandhian way. The fear of being swamped by outsiders once the colonial era restrictions were suddenly removed was indeed a concern expressed by leaders of the tribal communities. That the Naga revolt broke out soon after independence and continues till this day indicates that the anxiety expressed by Bordoloi was far from theoretical.
Scheduled differences
The Sixth Schedule distinguished two sets of tribal areas of undivided Assam, which at the time was the entire Northeast barring Sikkim, using the administrative categories that were then in effect: a) the districts of the United Khasi and Jaintia Hills (excluding Shillong), Garo Hills, Lushai Hills, Naga Hills, North Cachar Hills and the Mikir Hills, and the North East Frontier Tracts and the Naga Tribal Area. The first set of areas today comprise the states of Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and parts of Assam, and the second category consists mostly of the state of Arunachal Pradesh and a part of the state of Nagaland. The Sixth Schedule institutions were meant for sets of areas, but the latter set of territories which were mostly un-administered during colonial times was considered to be not quite ready at that time for self-governing institutions. The administration of those areas was going to be carried out directly from Delhi with the governor of Assam acting as the agent of the Indian president.
The Sixth Schedule provided for autonomous districts and autonomous regions within those districts with elected councils which enjoyed powers to levy some taxes, to constitute courts for the administration of justice involving tribals and law-making powers on subjects including land allotment, occupation or use of land, regulation of shifting cultivation, formation and administration of village and town committees, appointment of chiefs, inheritance of property, marriage and social customs.
However, the schedule was not intended to protect all the STs of northeast India. Only those that were considered to be relatively concentrated in the old excluded and partially excluded areas, and for which the constitution used the term tribal areas, came under the purview of the Sixth Schedule. The Bordoloi subcommittee did not consider the situation of other STs. Among them were groups such as Bodos, Misings and Tiwas that are described today as plains tribes to distinguish them from the hill tribes that came under the Sixth Schedule. In the Constituent Assembly, the special needs of the plains tribes were the responsibility of a separate subcommittee, which was in charge of minority rights. A Bodo politician, Rupnath Brahma, was a member of the minority rights subcommittee.
The process of formation of Autonomous District Councils, however, did not quite proceed the way constitution-makers had anticipated. The outbreak of the independentist Naga rebellion, for instance, meant that political conditions for holding elections to the Naga Hills District Council did not exist. Instead, in 1963, the state of Nagaland was created. The North East Frontier Tracts where the Sixth Schedule was eventually supposed to be in place also went through a different process of institutional change than the one anticipated prior to the Indo-China war of 1962. The area is now the state of Arunachal Pradesh, where tribals enjoy protection at the state level. Meanwhile, the Sixth Schedule has been extended to Tripura in response to tribal militancy, where the Tripura Tribal Areas District Council was formed.
It is not accidental that Nagaland was created in 1963, a year after India's war with China. The Chinese invasion exposed India's vulnerabilities in the region. Already, the Naga independentist rebellion had begun to make officials of the postcolonial Indian state anxious. There were stirrings of unrest in other parts of the region as well. Beginning with the China war, the managers of the Indian state began to see the external and internal 'enemies' in this frontier region coming together and constituting a looming threat to national security. Extending the institutions of the state all the way into the international border nationalising this frontier space has been the thrust of Indian policy ever since. Over the next few years, the governmental structure of the region was fundamentally redesigned to create what I have called a cosmetically federal regional order. Thus, with the creation of Nagaland, statehood in northeast India became de-linked from questions of fiscal viability and of its implications for the constitutional architecture of the larger polity. Building on the elementary apparatus of state institutions created by the Sixth Schedule became a good way to ensure both the penetration of the state and the creation of local stakeholders in the pan-Indian dispensation.
Northeast Indian states: Reserved seats for Scheduled Tribes in state legislative assemblies
States ST as % of Population* Leg. Assembly Total Members Leg. Assembly Seats of STs Leg. Assembly Unreserved Seats
Arunanchal 63.7 60 59 1
Assam 12.8 126 16 102**
Manipur 34.4 60 20 40
Meghalaya 86.6 60 55 5
Mizoram 94.8 40 39 1
Nagaland 87.7 60 59 1
Tripura 31.0 60 20 33***
*BASED ON 1991 CENSUS DATA **RESERVED FOR SCHEDULED CASTES ***RESERVED FOR SCHEDULES CASTES
Apart from consolidating the idea of exclusive homelands, organising the region into a number of mini states, all of them with the formal institutions of other Indian state governments, also had the effect of imposing a particular developmental paradigm. There is, after all, a standard vision of development which is contained in the routine practices of the bureaucracy of a 'developmentalist state' that allocates funds to departments such as public works, rural development and industries; and that vision only gets bolstered by the patronage politics of an electoral democracy. In the sparsely populated parts of this frontier region, these economic trends have invariably meant more immigration.
The most significant aspect of this new regional order, from the perspective of the theory and practice of citizenship, however, is that the vast majority of seats in the state legislatures of the mini states indeed all but one seat in the case of three legislatures are reserved for candidates belonging to the STs. The table below gives the number of reserved seats in the state legislatures of northeastern states and also gives the percentage of the ST population.
In the legislative assemblies of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland all but one seat is reserved for STs. In Meghalaya, 55 of the 60 seats are reserved. Apart from the issue of the denizens not being able to contest elections, the principle of one-person, one-vote, one-value has had to be undermined in other ways as well in order to achieve such a weighted system of representation. Generally, the norm about ensuring the equality of the relative weight of each vote in a democracy requires that in electoral systems with single-member constituencies, the electorates in all districts be roughly of the same size. That could not be done if the legislative assemblies were to have such a weighted system of representation. As a result, Nagaland's largest urban centre, Dimapur, for instance which has a very high concentration of denizens is divided into two constituencies and one of them is the sole unreserved (non-tribal) seat in the Nagaland assembly. This unreserved constituency has many times the number of voters of each of the other constituencies in the state.
Through another constitutional amendment the balance between reserved and unreserved seats in the assemblies of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland has been frozen in order to ensure that delimitation of constituencies in light of demographic changes in future does not change the current balance.
Whatever the philosophical dilemmas these arrangements present to the theorist of citizenship, the emergence of elected state governments under the control of tribal politicians and of a visible well-to-do tribal elite in those states has captured the imagination of tribal as well as non-tribal ethnic activists in the region. There is a perception that the STs in the states with the most comprehensive protective discrimination regimes have done well economically and have been relatively successful in insulating themselves from being swamped by immigrants. While a homeland has become something to aspire for on the part of those ethnic groups (STs as well as others) who do not have one, ethnic activists of the existing homelands have become zealous defenders of what they see as their statutory entitlements. This was exemplified in the case of Khasi activists in Meghalaya.
Returning to the controversy in Meghalaya over Khasi succession rules, the authority of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council to decide on Khasi succession rules is derived from the Sixth Schedule of the constitution. According to its sponsors, the goal of the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Bill was to stop non-Khasis from adopting Khasi surnames to take advantage of opportunities reserved for STs. The activists opposed to the bill would hardly disagree with that goal. However, the attempt to codify 'customary practice' drew public attention to the liberal way in which the Khasis have traditionally incorporated outsiders into their fold. The practice by which children of a Khasi mother and a non-Khasi father can become a Khasi came up for special scrutiny.
The opponents of the bill argued that the system allows too many people to pass off as Khasi and take advantage of opportunities reserved for Khasis. Thus, the president of the Syngkhong, Keith Pariat, was quoted in the press as saying that the matrilineal system no longer serves contemporary needs and that, if it was allowed to continue, the 'pure Khasi tribe' will become extinct in another 10 to 15 years. The bill, however, did not become law because it did not receive the governor's assent a constitutional requirement aimed at moderating the powers of state legislatures.
By raising questions about the way 'outsiders' have historically been incorporated into the Khasi fold, the controversy had the effect of putting under the cloud the rights including rights to property ownership, public employment and to seek elected office of significant numbers of people living in Meghalaya, some for generations. And since the proposed reforms would have denied those rights to people who had some claim to being a Khasi, the climate generated by the controversy could only have been worse for most denizens such as residents of Meghalaya who have no claim to being Khasi or a member of one of the other STs.
Ethnic homelands: An anachronism
While the Northeast becomes increasingly polarised over the insider/outsider groups of high-stakes politics of the region, people from the Northeast may in fact be quietly be joining the Indian mainstream. Modern India, according to the jurist Professor Upendra Baxi, has achieved "national integration without achieving national integrity". But, perhaps the postcolonial social transformation of northeast India, taking place under the protective cover of the Sixth Schedule, is slowly making the region a part of this grid of 'unconstitutional national integration' in somewhat unexpected ways.
The Bangladeshi and Nepali presence in the region points to a significant transnational dimension of this as well. At least a part of the demographic change in northeast India has to be explained by this migrating proletariat meeting the labour demands of the building boom in the region made possibly partly by the state resources being pumped in and the substantial leakage of funds through corruption and the class relations in the emerging forms of post-shifting cultivation agriculture. Their presence in these economic roles is certainly very visible to any visitor to northeast India today.
Slowly but steadily, the dispossessed tribal of northeast India is also sure to join this mass of humanity on the move. Thus, if the Bihari denizen in Karbi Anglong takes advantage of the misery of the poor Karbi to take effective control of his land, a tribal landlord in the Naga foothills, often empowered and enriched by positions in or connections to the state government of Nagaland, may be in a position of power and dominance vis-a-vis the Bengali denizen sharecropper informally leasing his land. Questions of social justice in northeast India are significantly more complex today than what
the regime of protection was originally designed to accomplish.
How anachronistic the homeland idea has become in the context of the existing political economy of northeast India today is apparent in the demand for a homeland for the Bodos on the north bank of the Brahmaputra. Bodo speakers today number only 1.1 million or 11.5 percent in the area they want for their homeland. They have come in conflict with the Koch Rajbongshis, who if they 'win' ST status will become by far the predominant tribal group in the recently approved Bodo Territorial Council area. They have also come in conflict with the All Assam Students Union, which spearheaded the Assam movement of the 1970s-80s against 'aliens', and is now in discussion with the state and central government about ways to protect Assam's 'indigenous people'. Since the term 'indigenous people' in international human rights discourse is roughly synonymous with what in India are called scheduled tribes, the extension of the word 'indigenous' to include a non-tribal people especially one that is itself at loggerheads with some of Assam's STs has aroused deep suspicion.
More than any other case, the displacement of Santhals in Kokrajhar district in the late 1990s victims of violence by Bodo militants dramatised this incongruity. The Santhals in Assam are descendants of tea workers brought to Assam as indentured workers, many of them more than a century ago. Their displaced forefathers provided the muscle for the tea industry that marked the arrival of global capitalism in Assam in the 19th century. That such a group could be displaced for the second time in the course of an 'indigenous' group's search for an ethnic homeland no matter how tragic the story of injustice done to them brings home the absurdity of the way insiders and outsiders are framed in the homeland discourse of northeast India. The discourse today has become a serious challenge to the foundational principles of citizenship. It cannot be expected to provide a framework for the struggles for social justice of today and of the future.
Dual citizenship
Minimally, what is needed is a framework that does not involve the state forever categorising groups of people in ethnic terms and making descendants of immigrants into perpetual outsiders. While mechanisms to control immigration are no doubt necessary, so are rules about absorbing the descendants of immigrants no matter how restrictive. And at least a generation or two later, they have to become full citizens. This writer suggest that the notion of dual citizenship, not unknown in federal systems citizenship both of India and of a state might be able to provide such a framework. Such a regime of dual citizenship would be a variation in the theme of the differentiated citizenship regime that exists in northeast India. But its purpose would be to replace the ethnic principle with a civic principle and to give the right to define the rules of inclusion and exclusion to territorially defined political communities.
A quick review of the language in which the citizenship laws of countries are framed illustrates how the logic of the citizenship discourse necessarily differs from that of the discourse of homelands for ethnically defined groups. In principle, most countries recognise three ways of becoming a citizen: birth within the territory of a country (jus soli), descent from a citizen (jus sanguinis) and naturalisation. If jus sanguinis incorporates the principle of citizenship gained through blood ties to citizens, the other two principles can incorporate the ethnically or culturally different outsider. In contrast to that, the homeland discourse tends to define political communities in static and exclusively ethnic terms. Of course, in reality, countries vary enormously on how much of the jus soli principle is applied to the claims to citizenship of children of immigrants born in the country and on the degree of difficulties that are involved in obtaining citizenship through naturalisation. Indeed, in countries like Israel and Japan, jus sanguinis remains the predominant way of acquiring citizenship. Yet the openings for new members that exist in principle makes the discourse of citizenship different from the exclusionary logic of the discourse of exclusive homelands.
The framework of dual citizenship can define political communities in civic terms, incorporate new members and make a decisive break from the notion of ethnic homelands
Certain recent developments in the citizenship policies in Europe help illustrate this point. Despite the political rhetoric against foreigners in Europe today, the trend in most European countries has been to extend the right of citizenship to second-generation immigrants. The labour demands during the latter half of the 20th century induced a major part of Europe's recent immigration. Originally, the migration was thought of as temporary, as illustrated by the notion of guest worker. However, as many temporary migrants became permanent settlers, countries have had to respond creatively to the reality of a growing number of foreign non-citizen residents living in their midst. Whatever their degree of economic and social integration, lack of citizenship had tended to separate immigrant groups from the broader community in significant ways and implicitly justified xenophobic and exclusionary rhetoric. Thus, it was hard not to see a direct connection between Germany's inability to recognise Turks, Yugoslavs and other former guest workers as potential German citizens and the attacks on Turks as 'foreigners'. Germany, of course, has since 2000 changed the laws of citizenship recognising the right of second-generation immigrants to citizenship.
Indeed except for Austria, Greece and Luxemburg, the other 12 European Union countries now give second-generation immigrants the right to citizenship. Of course, there are conditions attached including, in some cases, double jus soli besides the applicant, a parent too has to be born in the country. The point is not however to debate the laws, but to draw attention through example to the fact that, unlike the homeland discourse, it is hard within the discourse of citizenship not to recognise the right to citizenship of second-generation immigrants. In that sense the citizenship discourse is qualitatively different from the homeland discourse of northeast India that makes denizens and perpetual foreigners out of ethnically defined outsiders and their descendants.
The obvious advantages of the framework of dual citizenship are that it can define political communities in civic terms, introduce a dynamic element of incorporating new members and thereby make a decisive break from the notion of ethnic homelands that is part of the legacy of colonial subject-hood. Dual citizenship would imply that elected state governments and legislatures could make rules by which an internal immigrant becomes a citizen of the state and a member of the political community embodied in that state.
Furthermore, under a strong dual citizenship regime, even national citizenship could become a concurrent subject requiring for instance, that international treaties affecting the flow of people from outside the country into India for instance the treaties affecting the rights of ethnic Nepalis or Bangladeshis in India would need the concurrence of state governments. Making such treaty a part of state level political debates could give such treaties the popular legitimacy that they appear to lack in northeast India. Giving state legislatures a formal say in controlling the flow of people into the region restrictions that exist today, but primarily through non-transparent colonial-era bureaucratic practices like the inner line or as an indirect effect of the protections given to STs will give legitimacy to the internal immigration into the region that is only likely to increase in coming years.
Indian public opinion, however, is unlikely to be friendly to the idea of dual citizenship, which is been announced recently as a sop for the West-based non-resident Indian. Indeed, in the 1999 debate that followed the autonomy resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir assembly, commentators specifically pointed at the dangers of the dual citizenship idea. Columnist Arvind Lavakare, for instance, recently argued that if a state had such power, it would "discriminate in favour of its citizens in matters such as the right to hold public office, to vote, to obtain employment or to secure licenses for practicing law or medicine". He gave the example of Jammu and Kashmir, where the right to acquire immovable property is restricted to the state's permanent residents to illustrate how "politically explosive" the idea of dual citizenship can be. "With that solitary exception [sic]", he noted with satisfaction, an exception that could be removed by abrogating Article 370 of the constitution, "the Indian federation has largely achieved, and seeks to maintain, uniformity in basic civil and criminal laws". Like many Indian commentators, Lavakare is oblivious of the Northeast and of Article 371 (which immediately follows the much-reviled article on Jammu and Kashmir), that gives some of the northeastern states their special forms of autonomy.
The choice in the Northeast today is not between a new set of restrictions that dual citizenship would introduce for the first time and a uniform national citizenship where all Indian citizens have unrestricted rights to movement, residency and property ownership. What exists on the ground is a set of rules that distinguishes between citizens and denizens, rules that have fuelled an increasingly exclusionary politics of homelands and have been prone to generating ethnic
violence and recurrent episodes of displacement. Dual citizenship in such a situation would be able to introduce for the first time a regime of civic citizenship that will be in line with the actually existing political economy of the region.
Such a citizenship regime will also be consistent with the traditional liberal incorporative ethos of the region. In the controversy over the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Bill, the matrilineal system of succession that Khasi activists would like to 'modernise' has a remarkably liberal and progressive conception of group membership. While descent is traced along the female line, that does not stop children of non-Khasi women married to Khasi men from being absorbed into Khasi society. Children of such marriages typically adopted the non-Khasi mother's given name or occupation as a clan name and over time such names became recognised as Khasi clan names. Indeed, there are many Khasi clans today that trace their ancestry to non-Khasi women who were wives or concubines of Khasi men, abducted from the plains in the course of trading expeditions and wars. This also does not discriminate against children married out of wedlock.
As Khasi sociologist Tiplut Nongbri points out in a recent paper on Khasi women and matriliny: while the Khasi rules of descent may render "the ethnic boundary of the Khasi highly porous, it makes the addition of new members into the society relatively easy and adds to the vibrancy of the system". Dual citizenship will only return the Northeast to the spirit of such progressive traditions of incorporating new members so dramatically different from the caste sensibilities of mainstream India and make a clean break from the colonial constructions of ethnic subject-hood that have generated today's lethal politics of homelands.
http://www.himalmag.com/2003/march/essay_2.html
Marathaman
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Yeah. The whole thing is mismanaged from top to bottom by our politicians. If they really had the will, they could have crushed these guys a long time back. I mean comeon, these guys have been around for 50 years.
Instead of blaming BD, the indian govt should be cooperating with them to solve the problem.
alamgir
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Five killed in Assam ahead of independence daySun Aug 12, 2007 12:11PM IST
GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - Five people were shot dead by rebels in Assam ahead of the country's 60th independence day, police said on Sunday.
United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) rebels took five members of two families from their houses and shot them dead in an isolated area in the state's Karbi Anglong district.
"They were all non-Assamese small-time traders. The ULFA is behind these killings," a senior police officer said.
Since Wednesday the ULFA, which has been fighting for independence for ethnic Assamese since 1979, has killed 23 people and injured more than 25 in a series of attacks targeting Hindi-speaking non-Assamese, officials said.
The ULFA accuses non-Assamese people of plundering the state's resources and spoiling its culture. The rebels often step up their activities ahead of independence day on Aug. 15, which marks the end of British colonial rule in India in 1947.
This year the ULFA has called a six-hour general strike in the state on the day, asking people to boycott the celebrations.
More than 20,000 people have been killed in the ULFA insurgency.
in.reuters.com
GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - Five people were shot dead by rebels in Assam ahead of the country's 60th independence day, police said on Sunday.
United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) rebels took five members of two families from their houses and shot them dead in an isolated area in the state's Karbi Anglong district.
"They were all non-Assamese small-time traders. The ULFA is behind these killings," a senior police officer said.
Since Wednesday the ULFA, which has been fighting for independence for ethnic Assamese since 1979, has killed 23 people and injured more than 25 in a series of attacks targeting Hindi-speaking non-Assamese, officials said.
The ULFA accuses non-Assamese people of plundering the state's resources and spoiling its culture. The rebels often step up their activities ahead of independence day on Aug. 15, which marks the end of British colonial rule in India in 1947.
This year the ULFA has called a six-hour general strike in the state on the day, asking people to boycott the celebrations.
More than 20,000 people have been killed in the ULFA insurgency.
in.reuters.com
Assam: Identity and grievances
The ferment in Assam is the superficial manifestation of a discontent that is much deeper than what is seen outside as sentiments aroused by the question, "who is an Assamese?"
WHO is an Assamese? This is one of those silly and argument-stopping questions posed by those who ought to know better in any discussion or debate on the present situation, marked by intermittent outbursts of ferment and violence, in Assam.
This ferment is the superficial manifestation of a deeper discontent that has found expression at three different, but inter-related, levels. First, there is the general discontent about the lack of economic development and the unequal apportionment of national resources by the government in Delhi. This is a near-universal grievance cherished by all the States, many far more developed and much better off than Assam according to every indicator of economic and social progress. Elected governments and political parties operating nationally or within a State or region within the framework of the Constitution routinely articulate such discontent - and not merely in Assam.
Second, the same grievances are articulated in a broader historical and political context unique to Assam, relating this lack of development to a whole sequence of events and colonial initiatives beginning with the annexation of Assam by the British to Partition and Independence, and further relating these to the problems arising out of the movement of migrants from East Bengal (legal), East Pakistan and, since 1971, Bangladesh (illegal), into Assam in this historical, political and social context. These aspects of the past (and the present and the future) are also shared by other States in the region affected by migration and Partition and (illegal) migration. However the exceptionality of the ferment in Assam is related to the impediments these developments - beginning with war, defeat and annexation - have affected the evolution and consolidation of the Assamese as a people, particularly in the context of the similarities and distance between Assam and its far bigger and more resourceful neighbour, Bengal.
The principal, though not the only, influential voice articulating the grievances in these terms is that of the All Assam Students' Union (AASU). AASU came into its own when it launched the "anti-foreigner nationals" movement in 1979 and signed the Assam Accord (Memorandum of Settlement on the Problem of Foreigners in Assam) with the Union and State governments in August 1985. The Accord, which had a developmental content and promise, was also the midwife that assisted in the birth of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the first regional party in Assam, whose leadership was virtually identical to the leadership of the AASU, to capture political power and form the State's first regional party government. The implementation of this Accord, 20 years after it was signed, continues to be on the agenda of its three signatories.
Finally, these grievances have acquired an explicitly separatist expression articulated by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), also a child of the Assam movement that has outgrown its begetters. Taking the desire for greater autonomy implicit in the earlier nationalist assertions to its logical end, ULFA believes that all these problems are rooted in history and can only be resolved by the establishment of a Swadhin Asom (Sovereign Assam).
The argument-stopping question posed above is asked, and in the very way it is asked is also answered, in the context of the Assam Accord and, what was evident even when the Accord was signed, the built-in impediments in the way of its implementation. For Clause Six of the Accord has this to say:
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.
Except for auxiliary and conjunctional words that too are not entirely neutral in their context, every word in this clause is fraught with ambiguities, thus meaning different things to different people. The phrase, "... as may be appropriate... " for instance, is not simple bureaucratese; it provides several strategies and tactics of retreat into inaction.
There are two aspects to this supposed disjunction, and the problems it has created in the matter of the implementation of the Assam Accord. One is obvious, and the other has grave implications for the very integrity and identity of the State and its people.
At the most obvious level evident to the simplest of minds, the question highlights, with little originality, the disjunction between the "Assamese", a nationality corresponding to any other Indian nationality whose identity has no ambiguities in the perspective of those who are themselves Assamese, and the people while not being Assamese in those terms have come to inhabit the land of Assam and may choose to remain what they are or over a period of time lay claim to be asombasi, those who live in Assam, as a first step in their eventual evolution to Assamese. Even though there is a general feeling in Assam that this phenomenon of an incremental evolution of a people who are not Assamese into Assamese is a unique sign of the openness of Assamese society and its ability to absorb other streams and make these its own, corresponding instances of such openness and mobility across language and other identities are to be found in every language and culture group. For it is only through such plasticity that a culture and a people absorb change remain alive.
That such obvious points need to be laboured is just another indication of the frivolousness of approach that marks debate over issues that are matters of life and death in Assam. Such disjunction is a feature of the demographic composition of every State of the Union, barring perhaps Kerala where 96.6 per cent of the population speak Malayalam and, presumably, also return themselves as Malayalis. Every State of the Union has a substantial population of minorities who inhabit the land, who indeed, unlike in Assam, have inhabited the land for much longer periods, but are not identifiable with the nationality-nomenclature derived from the name of the land they inhabit and the language spoken by the majority of the inhabitants.
Table 1, downloaded from the Union Home Ministry's website, Census online, which provides the 1991 Census data, illustrates the point.
If at all there is a disjunction, it is between the name of a language and the "mother tongue(s)", most of them cognates of the language cited and so grouped under the language, as has been brought out in two interesting Tables from the 1991 Census: Languages and Mother Tongues (Scheduled Languages) and their strength, and Languages and Mother Tongues (Non-Scheduled Languages) and their strength. As the Tables make clear, this disjunction, if it is that, is present not merely in respect of the 18 "Scheduled Languages" but also in respect of 63 of the 96 other languages not specified in the Eighth Schedule having a strength of 10,000 speakers and above. Interestingly, 25 of the 33 languages not specified in the Eighth Schedule where there is "one to one unity" between the name of the language and the mother tongues of the speaker listed under that language are spoken in the northeastern region.
Cited below in Table 2 are some telling figures from Table 1. While the Table identifies 13,079,696 persons as Assamese, those identified as speakers of Assamese as mother tongue are 12,962,721. Table 1 cites 12,958,088 Assamese speakers; the discrepancy in respect of 4,633 persons between the two figures is perhaps yet another indication of the ambiguities even in the matter of self-identification.
Perhaps the corresponding figures in respect of the four major languages of South India (with the number of speakers who returned the language under both categories), and a brief account of how Hindi fares in such categorisation may clarify the issue of the disjunction; and also point out that such questions can be asked about any of the languages and nationalities in the country.
The figures for Hindi are even more interesting. Of the 337,272,114 persons listed under Hindi, as many as 103,839,285 (nearly a third) declare 48 cognate languages as mother tongue. The same is the picture in respect of almost all the languages, including most of the languages not included in the Eighth Schedule.
In other words, ambiguity marks the language and larger social (or "ethnic") identity of the overwhelming majority of Indians who are multilingual, barring those living in very small and isolated pockets. As noted by the poet and scholar A.K. Ramanujan, one constantly switches one's language identity in the public and the private sphere, the home and the world.
One can say the same thing in respect of one's "ethnic identity" too, to the extent that language is linked to "ethnicity". Who is an Assamese? Equally, who is a Tamil, who is a Bengali? Or, indeed, who is an Indian?
AND yet, the question is posed, not always in malice or out of ignorance or the wish to be clever. For the Assam Accord makes this identity central to the providing of "constitutional safeguards" to the people so identified and by definition not available to people not so identified.
If one were charitable, one would say that the Assam agitation leaders did not apply their minds seriously when they agreed, in fact insisted, upon this clause. However, even 20 years ago when the Accord was signed, indeed even earlier, the certain certainties about the Assamese identity had received some hard knocks. The days of a Mavis Dunn, a Khasi woman from Shillong who was then the provincial Minister, proudly proclaiming that she belonged to the "sisterhood of the same Assamese community of which Mrs [Narayani] Handiqui was an ornament and example" (speech delivered on the occasion of the unveiling of the portrait of the late Narayani Handiqui at the Narayani Handiqui Historical Institute, Guwahati, on February 7, 1940, Bulletin No. 4 of the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Government of Assam) are gone, never to return. The mass mobilisation during the Assam agitation superficially papered over these cracks and in the euphoria of a triumphalist and militant Assamese autonomist/nationalist assertion, further strengthened by the swift capture of political office and state power, these cracks were lost sight of.
However, the very moment of the triumph of such assertion as articulated by AASU and the formation of the first regional party government in the State headed by the AGP also marked the corresponding assertion, in some respects the re-assertion of such autonomist/nationalist tendencies long cherished, by communities that had always been viewed (at least in the Assamese nationalist imagination) as an integral part of the "greater Assamese society". The first was the agitation in the name of the Bodo people, constituting less than 5 per cent of the State's total population, for a separate Bodoland, mobilised by the All Bodo Students' Union (ABSU). Its calculatedly provocative slogan, "Divide Assam Fifty-Fifty", outmatched anything that earlier movements seeking separation from Assam had been able to articulate.
During its decade and a half of struggle which involved much violence, as well as the emergence of a separatist stream articulating the demand for an "independent and sovereign Bodoland" (paralleling the articulation of Swadhin Asom by ULFA), there was an accord on the creation of a Bodoland Autonomous Council (February 1993), substantially restructured later following more violent struggle, and the signing of another accord for the creation of a Bodoland Territorial Council (February 2003). Both the accords were clinched when the Congress party was in office in the State. Since then, even smaller groups, tribal and non-tribal, in opposition to real or perceived Assamese dominance have been relentlessly pressing for corresponding concessions.
Leaving aside the Hill Tribes inhabiting the two Hill districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar, which under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule already enjoy substantial autonomy (and are engaged in an agitation for greater autonomy, in the form of an "autonomous State within Assam" provided for under Article 244-A of the Constitution), there are nine (plains) tribal communities in Assam, the most numerous of whom are the Bodo (12,67,015). The remaining eight are listed below in the descending order of their numerical strength (according to 1991 Census figures):
Mising (4,67,790); Sonwal Kachari (2.51,725); Rabha (2,38,931); Lalung, now known as Tiwa (1,43,746); Deori (35,839); Barman of Cachar (13,348); Mech (6,738) and Hojai (4,582).
None of the representative organisations of these communities accepts these figures as accurate; all of them dismiss them as deliberate and politically calculated gross under-enumerations.
Three of these - the Mising, the Rabha, and the Tiwa - have autonomous councils which they want to be upgraded into territorial councils. Recently, the State government, with the forthcoming elections in mind, passed legislation providing for the creation of autonomous councils for the Sonwal Kachari and Deori communities as well. There is little doubt that these too will eventually join the demand for territorial councils though the creation of such a territorial council even in respect of the Bodos whose population is more than that of all other Plains Tribes taken together, has created more problems than ever, since the issue of demarcation of the BTC territory still remains unresolved.
Consider, for instance, the case of the Deori, a Plains tribe, who now have an autonomous council whose jurisdiction is supposed to be "Deori-dominated areas of the North Bank in Lakhimpur district". The 35,839 persons enumerated as Deori in the 1991 Census live in four districts of Upper Assam on both banks of the Brahmaputra, though it is convenient for the government to acknowledge a supposedly "predominant area" inhabited by the Deori. A territorial council for the Deoris, whose total population is less than that of any municipal ward of a small town, would be an unnecessary exercise.
There are other communities on the periphery of existing tribal communities or entirely outside that world who too have corresponding, sometimes contrary, demands, all hinging ultimately on that magic word, identity. For the demands are not always for greater autonomy; they are marked by far greater variety and complexity. For instance, communities such as the Koch Rajbongshi or the Sarania Kachari, both of whom have moved away from their historical tribal roots and are now recognised as Other Backward Classes (OBC), want their tribal status to be restored. Similar is the demand of the Adivasis. These descendants of tea-garden labourers, who migrated from central India where communities going by their ancestral identities continue to be recognised as Scheduled Tribes, have lost their S.T. status in Assam because of the location-specificity of such identities. Those now recognised as Plains Tribes want for themselves the concessions made in respect of the Bodos.
Virtually every identifiable community barring the caste Hindu Assamese and, to an extent, the Assamese Muslims, have similar identity-autonomy based demands for recognition as a S.T.; for "upgradation" of such recognition by seeking inclusion in the Sixth Schedule, for territorial autonomy. Identity is the name of the game; the trajectory is the one charted by the ABSU, which in turn closely modelled its agitational methods after those of the AASU.
Where will all this end, one may well ask, instead of asking who is an Assamese.
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2216/storie...2001504400.htm
The ferment in Assam is the superficial manifestation of a discontent that is much deeper than what is seen outside as sentiments aroused by the question, "who is an Assamese?"
WHO is an Assamese? This is one of those silly and argument-stopping questions posed by those who ought to know better in any discussion or debate on the present situation, marked by intermittent outbursts of ferment and violence, in Assam.
This ferment is the superficial manifestation of a deeper discontent that has found expression at three different, but inter-related, levels. First, there is the general discontent about the lack of economic development and the unequal apportionment of national resources by the government in Delhi. This is a near-universal grievance cherished by all the States, many far more developed and much better off than Assam according to every indicator of economic and social progress. Elected governments and political parties operating nationally or within a State or region within the framework of the Constitution routinely articulate such discontent - and not merely in Assam.
Second, the same grievances are articulated in a broader historical and political context unique to Assam, relating this lack of development to a whole sequence of events and colonial initiatives beginning with the annexation of Assam by the British to Partition and Independence, and further relating these to the problems arising out of the movement of migrants from East Bengal (legal), East Pakistan and, since 1971, Bangladesh (illegal), into Assam in this historical, political and social context. These aspects of the past (and the present and the future) are also shared by other States in the region affected by migration and Partition and (illegal) migration. However the exceptionality of the ferment in Assam is related to the impediments these developments - beginning with war, defeat and annexation - have affected the evolution and consolidation of the Assamese as a people, particularly in the context of the similarities and distance between Assam and its far bigger and more resourceful neighbour, Bengal.
The principal, though not the only, influential voice articulating the grievances in these terms is that of the All Assam Students' Union (AASU). AASU came into its own when it launched the "anti-foreigner nationals" movement in 1979 and signed the Assam Accord (Memorandum of Settlement on the Problem of Foreigners in Assam) with the Union and State governments in August 1985. The Accord, which had a developmental content and promise, was also the midwife that assisted in the birth of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the first regional party in Assam, whose leadership was virtually identical to the leadership of the AASU, to capture political power and form the State's first regional party government. The implementation of this Accord, 20 years after it was signed, continues to be on the agenda of its three signatories.
Finally, these grievances have acquired an explicitly separatist expression articulated by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), also a child of the Assam movement that has outgrown its begetters. Taking the desire for greater autonomy implicit in the earlier nationalist assertions to its logical end, ULFA believes that all these problems are rooted in history and can only be resolved by the establishment of a Swadhin Asom (Sovereign Assam).
The argument-stopping question posed above is asked, and in the very way it is asked is also answered, in the context of the Assam Accord and, what was evident even when the Accord was signed, the built-in impediments in the way of its implementation. For Clause Six of the Accord has this to say:
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.
Except for auxiliary and conjunctional words that too are not entirely neutral in their context, every word in this clause is fraught with ambiguities, thus meaning different things to different people. The phrase, "... as may be appropriate... " for instance, is not simple bureaucratese; it provides several strategies and tactics of retreat into inaction.
There are two aspects to this supposed disjunction, and the problems it has created in the matter of the implementation of the Assam Accord. One is obvious, and the other has grave implications for the very integrity and identity of the State and its people.
At the most obvious level evident to the simplest of minds, the question highlights, with little originality, the disjunction between the "Assamese", a nationality corresponding to any other Indian nationality whose identity has no ambiguities in the perspective of those who are themselves Assamese, and the people while not being Assamese in those terms have come to inhabit the land of Assam and may choose to remain what they are or over a period of time lay claim to be asombasi, those who live in Assam, as a first step in their eventual evolution to Assamese. Even though there is a general feeling in Assam that this phenomenon of an incremental evolution of a people who are not Assamese into Assamese is a unique sign of the openness of Assamese society and its ability to absorb other streams and make these its own, corresponding instances of such openness and mobility across language and other identities are to be found in every language and culture group. For it is only through such plasticity that a culture and a people absorb change remain alive.
That such obvious points need to be laboured is just another indication of the frivolousness of approach that marks debate over issues that are matters of life and death in Assam. Such disjunction is a feature of the demographic composition of every State of the Union, barring perhaps Kerala where 96.6 per cent of the population speak Malayalam and, presumably, also return themselves as Malayalis. Every State of the Union has a substantial population of minorities who inhabit the land, who indeed, unlike in Assam, have inhabited the land for much longer periods, but are not identifiable with the nationality-nomenclature derived from the name of the land they inhabit and the language spoken by the majority of the inhabitants.
Table 1, downloaded from the Union Home Ministry's website, Census online, which provides the 1991 Census data, illustrates the point.
If at all there is a disjunction, it is between the name of a language and the "mother tongue(s)", most of them cognates of the language cited and so grouped under the language, as has been brought out in two interesting Tables from the 1991 Census: Languages and Mother Tongues (Scheduled Languages) and their strength, and Languages and Mother Tongues (Non-Scheduled Languages) and their strength. As the Tables make clear, this disjunction, if it is that, is present not merely in respect of the 18 "Scheduled Languages" but also in respect of 63 of the 96 other languages not specified in the Eighth Schedule having a strength of 10,000 speakers and above. Interestingly, 25 of the 33 languages not specified in the Eighth Schedule where there is "one to one unity" between the name of the language and the mother tongues of the speaker listed under that language are spoken in the northeastern region.
Cited below in Table 2 are some telling figures from Table 1. While the Table identifies 13,079,696 persons as Assamese, those identified as speakers of Assamese as mother tongue are 12,962,721. Table 1 cites 12,958,088 Assamese speakers; the discrepancy in respect of 4,633 persons between the two figures is perhaps yet another indication of the ambiguities even in the matter of self-identification.
Perhaps the corresponding figures in respect of the four major languages of South India (with the number of speakers who returned the language under both categories), and a brief account of how Hindi fares in such categorisation may clarify the issue of the disjunction; and also point out that such questions can be asked about any of the languages and nationalities in the country.
The figures for Hindi are even more interesting. Of the 337,272,114 persons listed under Hindi, as many as 103,839,285 (nearly a third) declare 48 cognate languages as mother tongue. The same is the picture in respect of almost all the languages, including most of the languages not included in the Eighth Schedule.
In other words, ambiguity marks the language and larger social (or "ethnic") identity of the overwhelming majority of Indians who are multilingual, barring those living in very small and isolated pockets. As noted by the poet and scholar A.K. Ramanujan, one constantly switches one's language identity in the public and the private sphere, the home and the world.
One can say the same thing in respect of one's "ethnic identity" too, to the extent that language is linked to "ethnicity". Who is an Assamese? Equally, who is a Tamil, who is a Bengali? Or, indeed, who is an Indian?
AND yet, the question is posed, not always in malice or out of ignorance or the wish to be clever. For the Assam Accord makes this identity central to the providing of "constitutional safeguards" to the people so identified and by definition not available to people not so identified.
If one were charitable, one would say that the Assam agitation leaders did not apply their minds seriously when they agreed, in fact insisted, upon this clause. However, even 20 years ago when the Accord was signed, indeed even earlier, the certain certainties about the Assamese identity had received some hard knocks. The days of a Mavis Dunn, a Khasi woman from Shillong who was then the provincial Minister, proudly proclaiming that she belonged to the "sisterhood of the same Assamese community of which Mrs [Narayani] Handiqui was an ornament and example" (speech delivered on the occasion of the unveiling of the portrait of the late Narayani Handiqui at the Narayani Handiqui Historical Institute, Guwahati, on February 7, 1940, Bulletin No. 4 of the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Government of Assam) are gone, never to return. The mass mobilisation during the Assam agitation superficially papered over these cracks and in the euphoria of a triumphalist and militant Assamese autonomist/nationalist assertion, further strengthened by the swift capture of political office and state power, these cracks were lost sight of.
However, the very moment of the triumph of such assertion as articulated by AASU and the formation of the first regional party government in the State headed by the AGP also marked the corresponding assertion, in some respects the re-assertion of such autonomist/nationalist tendencies long cherished, by communities that had always been viewed (at least in the Assamese nationalist imagination) as an integral part of the "greater Assamese society". The first was the agitation in the name of the Bodo people, constituting less than 5 per cent of the State's total population, for a separate Bodoland, mobilised by the All Bodo Students' Union (ABSU). Its calculatedly provocative slogan, "Divide Assam Fifty-Fifty", outmatched anything that earlier movements seeking separation from Assam had been able to articulate.
During its decade and a half of struggle which involved much violence, as well as the emergence of a separatist stream articulating the demand for an "independent and sovereign Bodoland" (paralleling the articulation of Swadhin Asom by ULFA), there was an accord on the creation of a Bodoland Autonomous Council (February 1993), substantially restructured later following more violent struggle, and the signing of another accord for the creation of a Bodoland Territorial Council (February 2003). Both the accords were clinched when the Congress party was in office in the State. Since then, even smaller groups, tribal and non-tribal, in opposition to real or perceived Assamese dominance have been relentlessly pressing for corresponding concessions.
Leaving aside the Hill Tribes inhabiting the two Hill districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar, which under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule already enjoy substantial autonomy (and are engaged in an agitation for greater autonomy, in the form of an "autonomous State within Assam" provided for under Article 244-A of the Constitution), there are nine (plains) tribal communities in Assam, the most numerous of whom are the Bodo (12,67,015). The remaining eight are listed below in the descending order of their numerical strength (according to 1991 Census figures):
Mising (4,67,790); Sonwal Kachari (2.51,725); Rabha (2,38,931); Lalung, now known as Tiwa (1,43,746); Deori (35,839); Barman of Cachar (13,348); Mech (6,738) and Hojai (4,582).
None of the representative organisations of these communities accepts these figures as accurate; all of them dismiss them as deliberate and politically calculated gross under-enumerations.
Three of these - the Mising, the Rabha, and the Tiwa - have autonomous councils which they want to be upgraded into territorial councils. Recently, the State government, with the forthcoming elections in mind, passed legislation providing for the creation of autonomous councils for the Sonwal Kachari and Deori communities as well. There is little doubt that these too will eventually join the demand for territorial councils though the creation of such a territorial council even in respect of the Bodos whose population is more than that of all other Plains Tribes taken together, has created more problems than ever, since the issue of demarcation of the BTC territory still remains unresolved.
Consider, for instance, the case of the Deori, a Plains tribe, who now have an autonomous council whose jurisdiction is supposed to be "Deori-dominated areas of the North Bank in Lakhimpur district". The 35,839 persons enumerated as Deori in the 1991 Census live in four districts of Upper Assam on both banks of the Brahmaputra, though it is convenient for the government to acknowledge a supposedly "predominant area" inhabited by the Deori. A territorial council for the Deoris, whose total population is less than that of any municipal ward of a small town, would be an unnecessary exercise.
There are other communities on the periphery of existing tribal communities or entirely outside that world who too have corresponding, sometimes contrary, demands, all hinging ultimately on that magic word, identity. For the demands are not always for greater autonomy; they are marked by far greater variety and complexity. For instance, communities such as the Koch Rajbongshi or the Sarania Kachari, both of whom have moved away from their historical tribal roots and are now recognised as Other Backward Classes (OBC), want their tribal status to be restored. Similar is the demand of the Adivasis. These descendants of tea-garden labourers, who migrated from central India where communities going by their ancestral identities continue to be recognised as Scheduled Tribes, have lost their S.T. status in Assam because of the location-specificity of such identities. Those now recognised as Plains Tribes want for themselves the concessions made in respect of the Bodos.
Virtually every identifiable community barring the caste Hindu Assamese and, to an extent, the Assamese Muslims, have similar identity-autonomy based demands for recognition as a S.T.; for "upgradation" of such recognition by seeking inclusion in the Sixth Schedule, for territorial autonomy. Identity is the name of the game; the trajectory is the one charted by the ABSU, which in turn closely modelled its agitational methods after those of the AASU.
Where will all this end, one may well ask, instead of asking who is an Assamese.
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2216/storie...2001504400.htm
Banner organisations, opposition parties call for 12-hour Assam bandh today
A high-level team of the Ministry of Home Affairs arrived here on a day's visit to take stock of the situation in the wake of the killing of Hindi-speaking people in central Assam's Karbi Anglong district on Monday.The visit also comes a day ahead of a 12-hour Assam bandh called by banner organisations, Hindi-speaking people and opposition parties.
The MHA team that included Director Generals of the Border Security Force (BSF) and the CRPF called on Chief Minster Tarun Gogoi and discussed the measures taken by the State Government to deal with the situation in Karbi Anglong. The death toll of those killed in militant attacks in the district since August 8 has gone up to 28 with the recovery of two bodies on Sunday. They were identified to be that of Hindi-speaking traders Nunu Satnami(40) and Suraj Sahani (26).
They were abducted on August 1 by suspected Karbi Llongri National Liberation Front (KLNLF) militants.Police shot dead two suspected KLNLF militants and recovered explosives and a pistol near Mauzadar Basti under the Bokajan police station of the district on Monday, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Central Range) L.R. Bisnoi said.
Although there was no report of any fresh attack on Hindi-speaking people either from the hill district or other parts of the State, the Purvottar Hindustani Samaj a banner organisation of Hindi-speaking people demanded that the administration of Karbi Anglong be handed over to the Army. It insisted that the Army be given a free hand in Karbi Anglong to tackle the situation.
Demand compensation
Appealing to people to make the bandh a success, the organisation appealed to all Hindi-speaking legislators to quit from the Assembly to protest the killing and the Government's "failure" to protect the Hindi-speaking people. They demanded a compensation of Rs. 5 lakh to the next of kin of each of the deceased and a government job to at least one member of each affected family.
The organisation has decided to stage a fast-unto-death in front of the Janata Bhavan from August 16 till the Government ensured security to the lives and property of the Hindi-speaking people, its working president Y.L . Karna said. If the Hindi-speaking legislators failed to respond to their appeal, the organisation would undertake programmes such as gheraoing them.
Apart from the Purvottar Hindustani Samaj and other Hindi-speaking organisations, 12 political parties that included the Prafulla Kumar Mahanta-led Asom Gana Parishad (Progressive), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF), the CPI(ML), the Purbanchaliya Loka Parishad (PLP) have issued a joint call to observe a 12-hour bandh on Tuesday. CPI(M) activists took out a protest march in the city demanding an end to the mindless violence against innocent Hindi-speaking people and other unarmed civilians. The party urged people to make the bandh a success.
The two major Opposition parties, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, have demanded the resignation of Mr. Tarun Gogoi for the Government's "failure" to protect the lives and property of citizens and deterioration of law and order.
http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/14/stories/2007081455451500.htm
A high-level team of the Ministry of Home Affairs arrived here on a day's visit to take stock of the situation in the wake of the killing of Hindi-speaking people in central Assam's Karbi Anglong district on Monday.The visit also comes a day ahead of a 12-hour Assam bandh called by banner organisations, Hindi-speaking people and opposition parties.
The MHA team that included Director Generals of the Border Security Force (BSF) and the CRPF called on Chief Minster Tarun Gogoi and discussed the measures taken by the State Government to deal with the situation in Karbi Anglong. The death toll of those killed in militant attacks in the district since August 8 has gone up to 28 with the recovery of two bodies on Sunday. They were identified to be that of Hindi-speaking traders Nunu Satnami(40) and Suraj Sahani (26).
They were abducted on August 1 by suspected Karbi Llongri National Liberation Front (KLNLF) militants.Police shot dead two suspected KLNLF militants and recovered explosives and a pistol near Mauzadar Basti under the Bokajan police station of the district on Monday, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Central Range) L.R. Bisnoi said.
Although there was no report of any fresh attack on Hindi-speaking people either from the hill district or other parts of the State, the Purvottar Hindustani Samaj a banner organisation of Hindi-speaking people demanded that the administration of Karbi Anglong be handed over to the Army. It insisted that the Army be given a free hand in Karbi Anglong to tackle the situation.
Demand compensation
Appealing to people to make the bandh a success, the organisation appealed to all Hindi-speaking legislators to quit from the Assembly to protest the killing and the Government's "failure" to protect the Hindi-speaking people. They demanded a compensation of Rs. 5 lakh to the next of kin of each of the deceased and a government job to at least one member of each affected family.
The organisation has decided to stage a fast-unto-death in front of the Janata Bhavan from August 16 till the Government ensured security to the lives and property of the Hindi-speaking people, its working president Y.L . Karna said. If the Hindi-speaking legislators failed to respond to their appeal, the organisation would undertake programmes such as gheraoing them.
Apart from the Purvottar Hindustani Samaj and other Hindi-speaking organisations, 12 political parties that included the Prafulla Kumar Mahanta-led Asom Gana Parishad (Progressive), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF), the CPI(ML), the Purbanchaliya Loka Parishad (PLP) have issued a joint call to observe a 12-hour bandh on Tuesday. CPI(M) activists took out a protest march in the city demanding an end to the mindless violence against innocent Hindi-speaking people and other unarmed civilians. The party urged people to make the bandh a success.
The two major Opposition parties, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, have demanded the resignation of Mr. Tarun Gogoi for the Government's "failure" to protect the lives and property of citizens and deterioration of law and order.
http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/14/stories/2007081455451500.htm
Assam: ULFAs Intensified Terror before Independence Day
ULFA has been itching to do something horrible before the Independence Day as it has been doing for many years in the past. The government of India and its security agencies were also aware of this. The increased pressure of security agencies gave ULFA little leeway to act. But this also forced the outfit to look for softer targets. In this search of ULFA, the minority Hindi-speaking migrant workers once again fitted the bill. The only difference is this time the outfit has targeted this population in a different area. In this nefarious act, ULFA is suspected to have been helped by some smaller local terror groups.
It has almost been a ritual for the insurgents of northeast to boycott Independence Day and Republic Day celebrations. The run-up to the events has always been violent, with rebels striking vital installations including crude oil pipelines, trains, road and rail bridges, and security personnel. Even this time ULFA has been able to raise the pitch of violence days before India celebrates its 60th independence anniversary.
On August 10, 2007 heavily-armed militants of ULFA raided two houses of businessmen in Assams remote Dolamora area, dragged their families out and shot 12 people on the spot. Those killed were non-Assamese, whom the ULFA accuses of plundering the state's resources and spoiling its culture. In other attacks, militants triggered two bomb explosions in crowded places in Karbi Anglong district, killing a two-year-old boy and wounding 15 others, including some non-Assamese. The Assam police held ULFA and the Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF) responsible for the incidents. These groups have been working in tandem in parts of Karbi Anglong district. The KLNLF has been fighting for a homeland for tribal Karbis living in the two hill districts of Assam - Karbi Anglong and North Cachar.
Earlier, on August 8, the rebels shot dead eight non-Assamese people, including two children and three women, in the same area and in a similar strike. The latest deaths bring to at least 27 the number of people killed in rebel attacks in Assam since August 5. Nineteen of the dead belonged to the Hindi-speaking community. Nearly 70 more people were injured in the attacks. The security forces also gunned down few ULFA militants.
ULFA has tried to justify this terror by saying that workers from Hindi speaking areas are taking the job of Assamese and threatening local culture. That is completely untrue. Reports have indicated that of late there has been a huge increase in Bangladeshi population in Assam. These people have come to Assam after being evicted from other states in India. ULFA is total silent on this influx of Bangladeshis for reasons known to all.
The Assam Public Works (APW), the non- governmental organization engaged in a campaign against ULFA has stated that the terror outfit was targeting the Hindi-speaking group in an effort to please its Bangladeshi masters. The organization has termed the recent attacks on the Hindi speaking community as a ploy of the ULFA to divert the attention of the people from the burning issue of illegal migrants and secure a footing for the infiltrators that are strongly entrenched in several districts. Appealing to the people of the State to come out openly against the ULFA, the APW has said that it was time to drive out the ULFA along with the Bangladeshis from the State.
ULFA has been indulging in this kind of violence for a number of years. In a most abominable act of terror in 2004, ULFA had carried out a blast in Dheemaji on the occasion of Independence Day. In this incident ten schoolchildren were among 13 people who were killed.
ULFA had planned similar explosions this year during Independence Day. With this objective it had smuggled large quantities of explosives in the state. The Assam police had recovered an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) on June 25 from the heart of the Dibrugarh town and arrested one ULFA militant who confessed that it was meant to be planted at the Parade Ground there.
Another hardcore ULFA militant Bitopan Moran was arrested in Dibrugarh with four kilogram of explosives on July 24. His arrest further proved that the ULFA was out to create disturbance in the Independence Day celebrations. During questioning by the police, the arrested militant admitted that his task was to plant a bomb in the field where the Independence Day celebrations was to take place and he was also asked to lob a grenade at a police station. Following the arrest of Moran, security of all the parade grounds in the state was increased.
On July 28 Assam police unearthed yet another ULFA plot to replicate the 2004 Dhemaji blasts across parade grounds in the state during official functions to celebrate Independence Day. The plot became known after two arrested ULFA militants were interrogated by Sivasagar police and Guwahati police grilled two others. The four insurgents were arrested in separate operations.
On July 30 police in Dibrugarh once again recovered huge quantities of RDX, weighing about 25 kg and suspected to be meant for use by the ULFA to disrupt Independence Day celebrations. This explosive was recovered from two different villages. In this connection police arrested four persons, including a 15-year-old girl, who allegedly has a relationship with a hardcore ULFA cadre of the 28th battalion. The explosives were brought by another hardcore ULFA cadre of the outfit's 28th battalion Amar Tanti.
On August 2, the Assam police revealed that the capital city Guwahati was sitting on as many as 10 explosives dumps that police know about but cannot locate. These explosives were smuggled into the city a few months ago.
These recoveries of explosives in different parts of the State and arrests of senior cadres exposed the attempts of ULFA to carry out subversive activities during the run-up to the Independence Day celebrations. According to reports available with the forces, apart from trying to plant explosives on parade grounds, the ULFA leadership also instructed the cadres to target oil installations including pipelines, security forces and even Hindi-speaking people in the run-up to the Independence Day celebrations.
Assam police also has the information that several members of C company of 28 battalion of the ULFA have managed to penetrate into the upper Assam districts to carry out subversive activities despite the fact that the battalion as a whole, which is considered to be the strongest of the battalions of the militant outfit, suffered severe setbacks in anti-insurgency operations in recent past. The operations of the battalion are mostly masterminded by hardcore militant Jiten Dutta and it is suspected that he is operating from the bases of the outfit in Arunachal Pradesh.
On the other hand, most of the operations in lower Assam including in Guwahati city are being masterminded by dreaded militant Hira Sarania and though the security forces came very close to nabbing him on several occasions in recent past, he is still managing to hoodwink the forces.
The Assam police also believes that the members of the 109 battalion of the ULFA are mostly being used for transporting explosives from Bangladesh border to other parts of the State and according to information available, Drishti Rajkhowa and Antu Chowdang are involved in facilitating transhipment of explosives from Bangladesh to India. It is also reported that of late, the ULFA has started supplying weapons and explosives to other militant outfits of the region.
ULFA is now using fresh cadres and semi trained cadres to plant explosives in Guwahati. Since the police have no information on these recruits, they mingle with the population and continue their work unnoticed. These new recruits are put through a short period of training in the basics of assembling bombs and IEDs. As the training period is hardly of three or four weeks duration, these youths never become hardcore militants and remain in the mainstream. Even the neighbours of these recruits do not suspect anything because they are absent from their homes only for a few weeks. Security agencies are convinced that about 25 explosions in the Guwahati this year have been the handiwork of ULFA recruits about whom they knew nothing. The problem is compounded with the availability of PTD switches. Fortunately, the damage has been less serious as on quite a few occasions, the militants got the timings wrong and bombs went off at middle of night or very early in the morning.
These intelligence reports have prompted Dispur to ask all districts to sanitise and secure parade grounds immediately to foil an ULFA plan to replicate the blast it had triggered during the Independence Day function in Dhemaji three years ago. ULFA also sensed that it will be little difficult for it to repeat Dheemaji this time. At the same time, it wanted to do something to make its presence felt in the state. The hapless Hindi-speaking minority workers once again paid the price for this devilish desire of ULFA. To make its attack more brutal ULFA partnered with KLNLF. It has used this strategy in the kidnapping of FCI official P C Ram. This strategy was once again used to spread terror before the Independence Day.
ULFA has not only adopted several new strategies to increase in striking ability, it has also taken some nasty steps to malign the image of security forces. According to army officials in eastern Assam, the outlawed ULFA has virtually formed a 'molesters' unit' with cadres who do not appear local at first glance. Members of this unit impersonate army and paramilitary troopers, raid villages and sexually harass women to give the security forces a bad name. The ULFA recruits have also reportedly been perfecting their Hindi to make their molestation act more authentic.
The security forces got wind of the ULFAs gameplan after a group of ULFA militants, disguised as soldiers in battle fatigues, allegedly raped two women and molested 11 others at Lezai Baruagaon in Dibrugarh district on July 16. This group was led by dreaded ULFA militant Baba Dadhora. Initially, villagers blamed army men for the incident. But when army organized an identification parade of all their personnel in the village the very next day, the local residents found none like the molesters. A similar exercise was undertaken by the CRPF too. To defeat this game plan of ULFA the Assam government has barred civilians from wearing olive green battle fatigues used by Army and paramilitary forces personnel engaged in counter-insurgency operations.
ULFA Repeats Demand of Sovereignty
The success of ULFA in intensifying terror has encouraged it to once again raise the issue of sovereignty. On the occasion of outfit's 'Martyrs Day ULFA asserted that Assam's "sovereignty is the birthright of the indigenous Assamese and there can be no deviation from this path." This was stated by ULFA Chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa, in an email statement to the media in Assam. He also claimed the recent incidents of bomb blasts and killing of innocent people was not carried out by the ULFA, but was allegedly "perpetrated by the security forces to malign and brand the ULFA as a terrorist organisation". Referring to Assam's recent border disputes with Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram, the ULFA Chairman alleged it was the government's policy that had kept the issue alive.
Conditional offer to ULFA
The increasing environment of insecurity in Assam has given a chance to the opposition parties to launch a scathing attack on the Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) has even demanded that that the government should release the five jailed ULFA leaders to facilitate peace talks. Responding to this Gogoi on August 9 told the Assam Assembly that his Government was ready to release jailed leaders of the ULFA to facilitate peace negotiation provided the militant outfit comes forward for direct talks.
India asks Bangladesh to hand over ULFA leaders
India made a strong case for an extradition treaty with Bangladesh to get hold of the militant leaders controlling the terror network from the safety of their hideouts in Bangladesh in the recently held 2-day home secretary level talks in Delhi. In the changed circumstances, for the first time on August 3, Bangladeshi delegation admitted that ULFA commander-in-chief Paresh Barua was on its territory and even promised to track down the man who is heard but never seen. The visiting team said Barua was arrested in 2002 and released the very next year at the insistence of the Bangladesh Human Rights Commission. He jumped bail and has since been elusive. Another ULFA leader, general secretary Anup Chetia, was lodged in a Bangladesh jail for some years and released in 2006 when his term ended. This admission by Bangladesh is a small step forward over the rather ineffective practice of simply exchanging lists of terrorists and fugitives. On earlier occasions, acceptance of the fact that militants from India were operating from that country was almost unthinkable.
Conclusion
ULFA has been able to spread terror in the run up to Independence Day.. In 2004, it did this by exploding bomb in Dheemaji killing several school children. This time it has struck against Hindi speaking migrant workers. ULFA has been desperate to do something sensational before the Independence Day. This gives them an opportunity to get maximum publicity. It also creates an environment of terror and stops people from taking part in Independence Day celebrations. But when its cadres do not succeed in getting their prime targets their strategy is to strike the next available target. The rogue character of ULFA is increasing by the day. This also puts a question mark over the justification of holding talks with the outfit. Instead the government should focus more on putting pressure on neighbouring countries to weaken the operational ability of the outfit.
http://saag.org/papers24/paper2332.html
ULFA has been itching to do something horrible before the Independence Day as it has been doing for many years in the past. The government of India and its security agencies were also aware of this. The increased pressure of security agencies gave ULFA little leeway to act. But this also forced the outfit to look for softer targets. In this search of ULFA, the minority Hindi-speaking migrant workers once again fitted the bill. The only difference is this time the outfit has targeted this population in a different area. In this nefarious act, ULFA is suspected to have been helped by some smaller local terror groups.
It has almost been a ritual for the insurgents of northeast to boycott Independence Day and Republic Day celebrations. The run-up to the events has always been violent, with rebels striking vital installations including crude oil pipelines, trains, road and rail bridges, and security personnel. Even this time ULFA has been able to raise the pitch of violence days before India celebrates its 60th independence anniversary.
On August 10, 2007 heavily-armed militants of ULFA raided two houses of businessmen in Assams remote Dolamora area, dragged their families out and shot 12 people on the spot. Those killed were non-Assamese, whom the ULFA accuses of plundering the state's resources and spoiling its culture. In other attacks, militants triggered two bomb explosions in crowded places in Karbi Anglong district, killing a two-year-old boy and wounding 15 others, including some non-Assamese. The Assam police held ULFA and the Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF) responsible for the incidents. These groups have been working in tandem in parts of Karbi Anglong district. The KLNLF has been fighting for a homeland for tribal Karbis living in the two hill districts of Assam - Karbi Anglong and North Cachar.
Earlier, on August 8, the rebels shot dead eight non-Assamese people, including two children and three women, in the same area and in a similar strike. The latest deaths bring to at least 27 the number of people killed in rebel attacks in Assam since August 5. Nineteen of the dead belonged to the Hindi-speaking community. Nearly 70 more people were injured in the attacks. The security forces also gunned down few ULFA militants.
ULFA has tried to justify this terror by saying that workers from Hindi speaking areas are taking the job of Assamese and threatening local culture. That is completely untrue. Reports have indicated that of late there has been a huge increase in Bangladeshi population in Assam. These people have come to Assam after being evicted from other states in India. ULFA is total silent on this influx of Bangladeshis for reasons known to all.
The Assam Public Works (APW), the non- governmental organization engaged in a campaign against ULFA has stated that the terror outfit was targeting the Hindi-speaking group in an effort to please its Bangladeshi masters. The organization has termed the recent attacks on the Hindi speaking community as a ploy of the ULFA to divert the attention of the people from the burning issue of illegal migrants and secure a footing for the infiltrators that are strongly entrenched in several districts. Appealing to the people of the State to come out openly against the ULFA, the APW has said that it was time to drive out the ULFA along with the Bangladeshis from the State.
ULFA has been indulging in this kind of violence for a number of years. In a most abominable act of terror in 2004, ULFA had carried out a blast in Dheemaji on the occasion of Independence Day. In this incident ten schoolchildren were among 13 people who were killed.
ULFA had planned similar explosions this year during Independence Day. With this objective it had smuggled large quantities of explosives in the state. The Assam police had recovered an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) on June 25 from the heart of the Dibrugarh town and arrested one ULFA militant who confessed that it was meant to be planted at the Parade Ground there.
Another hardcore ULFA militant Bitopan Moran was arrested in Dibrugarh with four kilogram of explosives on July 24. His arrest further proved that the ULFA was out to create disturbance in the Independence Day celebrations. During questioning by the police, the arrested militant admitted that his task was to plant a bomb in the field where the Independence Day celebrations was to take place and he was also asked to lob a grenade at a police station. Following the arrest of Moran, security of all the parade grounds in the state was increased.
On July 28 Assam police unearthed yet another ULFA plot to replicate the 2004 Dhemaji blasts across parade grounds in the state during official functions to celebrate Independence Day. The plot became known after two arrested ULFA militants were interrogated by Sivasagar police and Guwahati police grilled two others. The four insurgents were arrested in separate operations.
On July 30 police in Dibrugarh once again recovered huge quantities of RDX, weighing about 25 kg and suspected to be meant for use by the ULFA to disrupt Independence Day celebrations. This explosive was recovered from two different villages. In this connection police arrested four persons, including a 15-year-old girl, who allegedly has a relationship with a hardcore ULFA cadre of the 28th battalion. The explosives were brought by another hardcore ULFA cadre of the outfit's 28th battalion Amar Tanti.
On August 2, the Assam police revealed that the capital city Guwahati was sitting on as many as 10 explosives dumps that police know about but cannot locate. These explosives were smuggled into the city a few months ago.
These recoveries of explosives in different parts of the State and arrests of senior cadres exposed the attempts of ULFA to carry out subversive activities during the run-up to the Independence Day celebrations. According to reports available with the forces, apart from trying to plant explosives on parade grounds, the ULFA leadership also instructed the cadres to target oil installations including pipelines, security forces and even Hindi-speaking people in the run-up to the Independence Day celebrations.
Assam police also has the information that several members of C company of 28 battalion of the ULFA have managed to penetrate into the upper Assam districts to carry out subversive activities despite the fact that the battalion as a whole, which is considered to be the strongest of the battalions of the militant outfit, suffered severe setbacks in anti-insurgency operations in recent past. The operations of the battalion are mostly masterminded by hardcore militant Jiten Dutta and it is suspected that he is operating from the bases of the outfit in Arunachal Pradesh.
On the other hand, most of the operations in lower Assam including in Guwahati city are being masterminded by dreaded militant Hira Sarania and though the security forces came very close to nabbing him on several occasions in recent past, he is still managing to hoodwink the forces.
The Assam police also believes that the members of the 109 battalion of the ULFA are mostly being used for transporting explosives from Bangladesh border to other parts of the State and according to information available, Drishti Rajkhowa and Antu Chowdang are involved in facilitating transhipment of explosives from Bangladesh to India. It is also reported that of late, the ULFA has started supplying weapons and explosives to other militant outfits of the region.
ULFA is now using fresh cadres and semi trained cadres to plant explosives in Guwahati. Since the police have no information on these recruits, they mingle with the population and continue their work unnoticed. These new recruits are put through a short period of training in the basics of assembling bombs and IEDs. As the training period is hardly of three or four weeks duration, these youths never become hardcore militants and remain in the mainstream. Even the neighbours of these recruits do not suspect anything because they are absent from their homes only for a few weeks. Security agencies are convinced that about 25 explosions in the Guwahati this year have been the handiwork of ULFA recruits about whom they knew nothing. The problem is compounded with the availability of PTD switches. Fortunately, the damage has been less serious as on quite a few occasions, the militants got the timings wrong and bombs went off at middle of night or very early in the morning.
These intelligence reports have prompted Dispur to ask all districts to sanitise and secure parade grounds immediately to foil an ULFA plan to replicate the blast it had triggered during the Independence Day function in Dhemaji three years ago. ULFA also sensed that it will be little difficult for it to repeat Dheemaji this time. At the same time, it wanted to do something to make its presence felt in the state. The hapless Hindi-speaking minority workers once again paid the price for this devilish desire of ULFA. To make its attack more brutal ULFA partnered with KLNLF. It has used this strategy in the kidnapping of FCI official P C Ram. This strategy was once again used to spread terror before the Independence Day.
ULFA has not only adopted several new strategies to increase in striking ability, it has also taken some nasty steps to malign the image of security forces. According to army officials in eastern Assam, the outlawed ULFA has virtually formed a 'molesters' unit' with cadres who do not appear local at first glance. Members of this unit impersonate army and paramilitary troopers, raid villages and sexually harass women to give the security forces a bad name. The ULFA recruits have also reportedly been perfecting their Hindi to make their molestation act more authentic.
The security forces got wind of the ULFAs gameplan after a group of ULFA militants, disguised as soldiers in battle fatigues, allegedly raped two women and molested 11 others at Lezai Baruagaon in Dibrugarh district on July 16. This group was led by dreaded ULFA militant Baba Dadhora. Initially, villagers blamed army men for the incident. But when army organized an identification parade of all their personnel in the village the very next day, the local residents found none like the molesters. A similar exercise was undertaken by the CRPF too. To defeat this game plan of ULFA the Assam government has barred civilians from wearing olive green battle fatigues used by Army and paramilitary forces personnel engaged in counter-insurgency operations.
ULFA Repeats Demand of Sovereignty
The success of ULFA in intensifying terror has encouraged it to once again raise the issue of sovereignty. On the occasion of outfit's 'Martyrs Day ULFA asserted that Assam's "sovereignty is the birthright of the indigenous Assamese and there can be no deviation from this path." This was stated by ULFA Chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa, in an email statement to the media in Assam. He also claimed the recent incidents of bomb blasts and killing of innocent people was not carried out by the ULFA, but was allegedly "perpetrated by the security forces to malign and brand the ULFA as a terrorist organisation". Referring to Assam's recent border disputes with Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram, the ULFA Chairman alleged it was the government's policy that had kept the issue alive.
Conditional offer to ULFA
The increasing environment of insecurity in Assam has given a chance to the opposition parties to launch a scathing attack on the Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) has even demanded that that the government should release the five jailed ULFA leaders to facilitate peace talks. Responding to this Gogoi on August 9 told the Assam Assembly that his Government was ready to release jailed leaders of the ULFA to facilitate peace negotiation provided the militant outfit comes forward for direct talks.
India asks Bangladesh to hand over ULFA leaders
India made a strong case for an extradition treaty with Bangladesh to get hold of the militant leaders controlling the terror network from the safety of their hideouts in Bangladesh in the recently held 2-day home secretary level talks in Delhi. In the changed circumstances, for the first time on August 3, Bangladeshi delegation admitted that ULFA commander-in-chief Paresh Barua was on its territory and even promised to track down the man who is heard but never seen. The visiting team said Barua was arrested in 2002 and released the very next year at the insistence of the Bangladesh Human Rights Commission. He jumped bail and has since been elusive. Another ULFA leader, general secretary Anup Chetia, was lodged in a Bangladesh jail for some years and released in 2006 when his term ended. This admission by Bangladesh is a small step forward over the rather ineffective practice of simply exchanging lists of terrorists and fugitives. On earlier occasions, acceptance of the fact that militants from India were operating from that country was almost unthinkable.
Conclusion
ULFA has been able to spread terror in the run up to Independence Day.. In 2004, it did this by exploding bomb in Dheemaji killing several school children. This time it has struck against Hindi speaking migrant workers. ULFA has been desperate to do something sensational before the Independence Day. This gives them an opportunity to get maximum publicity. It also creates an environment of terror and stops people from taking part in Independence Day celebrations. But when its cadres do not succeed in getting their prime targets their strategy is to strike the next available target. The rogue character of ULFA is increasing by the day. This also puts a question mark over the justification of holding talks with the outfit. Instead the government should focus more on putting pressure on neighbouring countries to weaken the operational ability of the outfit.
http://saag.org/papers24/paper2332.html
India's violent north-east
A wave of violence in the north-eastern Indian states of Assam and Nagaland has again highlighted the tensions and fissures in this part of the country. News Online looks at why there is so much violence in north-eastern India.
Why is north-eastern India so restive?
Before the British, none of the previous empires in India had managed to control the remote north-eastern areas. So the region had enjoyed a long history of independence. There are also sharp differences in culture and tradition with the rest of the country. Separatists in Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Assam have tapped into these differences and been able to challenge the control of the Indian state. The central government has used military force to quell these rebellions, which in turn has often provoked more violence. Recent years have seen the growth of conflicting demands for independent homelands between various ethnic groups in the region, which have also resulted in much bloodshed.
How serious is the violence?
Very - particularly the violence between the various ethnic militias of the region, into which innocent villagers and non-combatants have often been drawn. Violence unleashed by ethnic rebel armies against the settlers from outside the region has also assumed serious proportions.
How is the central government trying to end the violence?
It uses military force to try to contain the rebels and weaken them. Naga rebels want independence from India But Indian military commanders admit that only political solutions can resolve the many conflicts. The Indian government has opened dialogues with many of these groups and correspondents say its attitude is more flexible than in the past. Its basic position is that the various rebel groups have to accept Indian sovereignty over the region and give up violence. The central government also pumps in a lot of federal funds to promote economic development that is seen as crucial to win the hearts and minds of the locals. But local people complain that lot of these funds are pilfered by a corrupt local elite in collusion with unscrupulous contractors and businessmen resulting in a lack of development.
Are the conflicts restricted to Indian territory?
They are largely restricted to Indian territory but rebels from north-eastern India have ethnic cousins across the borders . They find shelter in those countries, particularly in the remote border hill regions.
Are there any beacons of hope?
The peace settlement in Mizoram, signed in 1986 between the Indian Government and the Mizo National Front, has held good and the once-troubled state is largely peaceful.
The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), the strongest rebel group of Nagaland and perhaps in the whole region, has also been negotiating with the central government for six years now. Civil society groups in the region are more active than ever before. They are playing a leading role in initiating dialogues and sustaining the peace process. After 50 years of bloody guerrilla campaigns, many civilians are tired and desperate for peace.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3224670.stm
A wave of violence in the north-eastern Indian states of Assam and Nagaland has again highlighted the tensions and fissures in this part of the country. News Online looks at why there is so much violence in north-eastern India.
Why is north-eastern India so restive?
Before the British, none of the previous empires in India had managed to control the remote north-eastern areas. So the region had enjoyed a long history of independence. There are also sharp differences in culture and tradition with the rest of the country. Separatists in Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Assam have tapped into these differences and been able to challenge the control of the Indian state. The central government has used military force to quell these rebellions, which in turn has often provoked more violence. Recent years have seen the growth of conflicting demands for independent homelands between various ethnic groups in the region, which have also resulted in much bloodshed.
How serious is the violence?
Very - particularly the violence between the various ethnic militias of the region, into which innocent villagers and non-combatants have often been drawn. Violence unleashed by ethnic rebel armies against the settlers from outside the region has also assumed serious proportions.
How is the central government trying to end the violence?
It uses military force to try to contain the rebels and weaken them. Naga rebels want independence from India But Indian military commanders admit that only political solutions can resolve the many conflicts. The Indian government has opened dialogues with many of these groups and correspondents say its attitude is more flexible than in the past. Its basic position is that the various rebel groups have to accept Indian sovereignty over the region and give up violence. The central government also pumps in a lot of federal funds to promote economic development that is seen as crucial to win the hearts and minds of the locals. But local people complain that lot of these funds are pilfered by a corrupt local elite in collusion with unscrupulous contractors and businessmen resulting in a lack of development.
Are the conflicts restricted to Indian territory?
They are largely restricted to Indian territory but rebels from north-eastern India have ethnic cousins across the borders . They find shelter in those countries, particularly in the remote border hill regions.
Are there any beacons of hope?
The peace settlement in Mizoram, signed in 1986 between the Indian Government and the Mizo National Front, has held good and the once-troubled state is largely peaceful.
The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), the strongest rebel group of Nagaland and perhaps in the whole region, has also been negotiating with the central government for six years now. Civil society groups in the region are more active than ever before. They are playing a leading role in initiating dialogues and sustaining the peace process. After 50 years of bloody guerrilla campaigns, many civilians are tired and desperate for peace.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3224670.stm
alamgir
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to much slow it exist from 1979
su-47
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in 1979 it wasnt such a major threat. IA made a big mistake by not wiping em out when they were weaker. had this major offensive been launched a decade earlier, ULFA would have faded into the pages of history.
However, better late than never. Better to finish them off now with brute force than to negotiate and make them stronger
However, better late than never. Better to finish them off now with brute force than to negotiate and make them stronger
ply_europa4000
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believe me ULFA ain't a major threat nowadays. even the assamese people hate them now
Flintlock
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You are right. They tend to intimidate the locals to support their ideas, and extort money to keep their c*rap going.
Assam is no longer isolated and its development is on par with the rest of the country.
alamgir
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Mischievous propaganda
By: Mithu Choudhury(NEPS)
Print media has been used for the last two decades shamelessly by different agencies of occupation India to crush the struggle spearheaded by ULFA.
Already ULFA is about to reach 25th struggling years overcoming all the possible hurdles created by IOF.
Fabricated news of killing leaders, false stories of differences between leadership parroted by renegades, hundreds of surrender ceremonies have failed to bend ULFA till now; moreover, it is going to be more powerful than ever before.
Another mischievous propaganda has been spreading against us is regarding ?waning of public support?.
The local collaborators have been always furnishing it. The then puppet chief minister Prafulla Mahanta first
invented this phrase who is now languishing confined life in India by the grace of his own ?hyper people?s support?. It?s a live lesson of the
propaganda chapter against ULFA in Assam. ULFA is ever ready to gauge the
public support for the cause it advocates by any democratic means under
impartial supervision. ULFA has uttered it many times. ULFA has not come from any alien satellite to gather people?s support for any other purposes but it is only for the cause of the struggle.
It is very simple and spontaneous. Any differences concerning ideal and mode of struggle should not have any impression on the just cause.
If somebody would like to deny our great cause he should provide other honorable means for the all out sustainable development of the people of Assam.
Crushing ULFA can?t simply diminish the just cause of the struggle. We have noticed that some enthusiastic sycophants has been advising governments through editorials in some English newspapers to squeeze ULFA in
?this ripe moment? for draining out the last drop of lively blood from it. As if ULFA is a piece of lemon in the dining table.
We indeed feel very amused regarding their advice and dreamed way to solve Indo-Assam conflict. They have even never addressed any burning problems of Assam and it would be a hopeless effort to ask those sycophants for the remedies of the problems even sans the existence of ULFA. ULFA has successfully met all the challenges from the occupation India and beaten by all bitter experiences.
If anybody still dreams of any possible stringent measure to crush ULFA he is surely nothing but a fool.
These sycophants are seemed to be more impatient regarding the Indo-Naga dialogue. In this regard, we urged all our compatriots before to hold patients for the peaceful resolution of the conflict. Six years have passed but political dialogue for the basic issues of differences is yet to be started.
We would like to say again that before going to formulate any theory to crush ULFA one noble should twice think about the ways and means to rescue the people of Assam from the clutch of Indian occupation.
Dhemaji has already been disconnected with rest of the world. OIL prepares to
loot the remaining mineral oil reserve within ten years. North-Cachar is still burning and IOF are playing violin.
Togaria ,Madani and so many are trying to administer Indian communal vapor in Assam. We are much surprised why these guest columnists are mum for these present issues except delivering similar machinegun chatters against ULFA.
We hope these people will stretch their necks a little bit and try to envisage the Middle East problem
KanglaOnline ~ Your Gateway to Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya
By: Mithu Choudhury(NEPS)
Print media has been used for the last two decades shamelessly by different agencies of occupation India to crush the struggle spearheaded by ULFA.
Already ULFA is about to reach 25th struggling years overcoming all the possible hurdles created by IOF.
Fabricated news of killing leaders, false stories of differences between leadership parroted by renegades, hundreds of surrender ceremonies have failed to bend ULFA till now; moreover, it is going to be more powerful than ever before.
Another mischievous propaganda has been spreading against us is regarding ?waning of public support?.
The local collaborators have been always furnishing it. The then puppet chief minister Prafulla Mahanta first
invented this phrase who is now languishing confined life in India by the grace of his own ?hyper people?s support?. It?s a live lesson of the
propaganda chapter against ULFA in Assam. ULFA is ever ready to gauge the
public support for the cause it advocates by any democratic means under
impartial supervision. ULFA has uttered it many times. ULFA has not come from any alien satellite to gather people?s support for any other purposes but it is only for the cause of the struggle.
It is very simple and spontaneous. Any differences concerning ideal and mode of struggle should not have any impression on the just cause.
If somebody would like to deny our great cause he should provide other honorable means for the all out sustainable development of the people of Assam.
Crushing ULFA can?t simply diminish the just cause of the struggle. We have noticed that some enthusiastic sycophants has been advising governments through editorials in some English newspapers to squeeze ULFA in
?this ripe moment? for draining out the last drop of lively blood from it. As if ULFA is a piece of lemon in the dining table.
We indeed feel very amused regarding their advice and dreamed way to solve Indo-Assam conflict. They have even never addressed any burning problems of Assam and it would be a hopeless effort to ask those sycophants for the remedies of the problems even sans the existence of ULFA. ULFA has successfully met all the challenges from the occupation India and beaten by all bitter experiences.
If anybody still dreams of any possible stringent measure to crush ULFA he is surely nothing but a fool.
These sycophants are seemed to be more impatient regarding the Indo-Naga dialogue. In this regard, we urged all our compatriots before to hold patients for the peaceful resolution of the conflict. Six years have passed but political dialogue for the basic issues of differences is yet to be started.
We would like to say again that before going to formulate any theory to crush ULFA one noble should twice think about the ways and means to rescue the people of Assam from the clutch of Indian occupation.
Dhemaji has already been disconnected with rest of the world. OIL prepares to
loot the remaining mineral oil reserve within ten years. North-Cachar is still burning and IOF are playing violin.
Togaria ,Madani and so many are trying to administer Indian communal vapor in Assam. We are much surprised why these guest columnists are mum for these present issues except delivering similar machinegun chatters against ULFA.
We hope these people will stretch their necks a little bit and try to envisage the Middle East problem
KanglaOnline ~ Your Gateway to Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya
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