Identity politics in Assam

Identity politics: where it is leading

by M.S. Prabhakara

A profound anti-democratic mindset and the total absence of any understanding of larger socio-economic realities of Assam are a common feature of all separatist organisations.

Anxieties about ‘identity’, a catch-all term for a variety of contradictory perceptions and passions by a people about themselves and the ‘Other’, and political mobilisation exploiting such worries are not unique to any one part of the country. Such mobilisations in Assam and its neighbourhood are seen as threatening regional and national stability and security. However, this is not a recent phenomenon, nor is it region-specific.

Historians and anthropologists situate ‘ethnicity’ at the very beginning of human history and civilisation. However, the articulation of ethnicity in Indian political idiom is a more recent phenomenon. For instance, though the term was not used, the consciousness of a unique identity that could not co-exist with the firang was a crucial element in the mobilisation of the 1857 uprising. The struggle for Pakistan, ‘the land of the pure’, though essentially a political struggle of non-denominational Muslim nationalist assertion, was articulated almost entirely in terms of the threat Muslims of the subcontinent (and Islam, though Islam is opposed to nationalism) faced if they could not secure a physical and political space exclusively demarcated for them.

Post-independence, the linguistic reorganisation of India was closely related to anxieties about protection and advancement of a people’s language, which required a clearly demarcated political space coinciding with real or imagined historical memories. Caste as a weapon of political mobilisation has been a permanent given in Indian politics, reflecting an inescapable reality of social and political divide.

If religion and language were the markers of such anxieties during the freedom struggle and in the decades following independence, these are now being articulated citing threats to a variety of other identities (caste and tribe, very broadly) which, for want of a better word, are claimed as ‘ethnic identities’, the imprecision of the latter part of the expression compounded by the introduction of an equally imprecise element of ‘ethnicity’. For, ‘ethnicity’ encompasses and transcends ‘religion’ and ‘language’ and ‘caste’ and ‘tribe’ and other identity markers even while introducing new elements into its struggle vocabulary.

It is generally assumed that caste has not played a major role in political mobilisation in Assam. This is not strictly true, though this is a view cherished by the higher Hindu castes, Brahmin and non-Brahmin. Of the 13 Chief Ministers the State has had since Independence, all but one are from the Congress party or from the Congress stream, and only one belonged to a Scheduled Caste. He became Chief Minister by accident and default, during the chaotic politics of the post-Janata Party government headed by Golap Barua, and lasted all three months and seven days.

Of the rest, the first was a Ganak-Brahmin, six were from the decidedly upper caste Kayasta-Kalita stream (these hyphenations would probably not be accepted by any of the four juxtaposed communities), three Ahoms, including the present incumbent Tarun Gogoi, one was a Muslim and one a Koch, a community that was once seen as being in transition from a tribe to absorption into the lower orders of caste Hindu society. In an interesting reversal of this once historically recognised phenomenon of ‘upward’ mobility and as an instance of ethnic assertion of a different kind, the Ahoms, once part of Assam’s ruling dynasty, are now seeking ST status.

However, the State has never had a Scheduled Tribe Chief Minister though its ST population even now, more than three decades after the reorganisation of Assam (1970-72) when the tribal majority districts of present-day Meghalaya and Mizoram were separated, accounts for 12.8 per cent. In 1961, it was 17.42 per cent. Important and able tribal leaders had occupied leading positions in the governments formed under the Government of India Act of 1935.

The attainment of a separate Meghalaya was the first practical demonstration of the triumph of an exclusive ethnic assertion in what used to be referred to as the ‘composite State of Assam’. The unravelling that began then has not stopped. Unlike in the 1960s when the movement for separation was led by some tribal people in the Hills, barring exceptions like Mavis Dunn, a minister of the provincial government from Shillong and Khasi, who once famously claimed that she belonged to the sisterhood of Assam, the current ethnicity assertions are from within the Brahmaputra valley, historically viewed as the core homeland of the Assamese-speaking people, the Assamese.

Going from the West to the East, this is the trajectory of the ethnicity-based separatist movements in the Brahmaputra Valley. The Koch Rajbongshi spread over both banks of the Brahmaputra, once seen as occupying an intermediate social space between a tribal status and a caste Hindu status, are now seeking a separate Kamatapura State. Kamatapuri, the language of the fortnightly Voice of Kamatapura, is recognisably Assamese, and not Assamese; and in a pointed gesture, the paper has a separate section in Assamese. In the neighbourhood of Koch Rajbongshi are the Bodo, one of the nine plains tribes of the Brahmaputra Valley, who see the present Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District as a transit point on the way to their attaining a full-fledged Bodoland State outside Assam. The Rabha, another plains tribe, who have an autonomous council the territory of which is not demarcated, want to be covered by the Sixth Schedule, now applicable only to the Hill tribes of the two Hill districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills, though these two districts want to be constituted into an ‘Autonomous state within Assam’, the transition that Meghalaya went through in 1970-72 before becoming a full-fledged State.

Further to the East, three other plains tribes, the Tiwa, the Mising and the Sonowal Kachari, all having non-territorial autonomous councils, also want to be ‘elevated’ to the same status as the Hill Tribes and covered by the Sixth Schedule. Six other communities dwelling on both banks of the Brahmaputra (Ahom, Moran, Mattock, Chutia, Adivasi and Koch Rajbonhshi, now classified as OBC or MOBC), want to be re-classified as ST. Each of these demands, if conceded, will have the potential to inspire other agitations for similar reclassification or ‘upgrade’. However, far more fearsome are the developments in the two Hill districts. In North Cachar Hills, extortion and murder have become the rule seemingly to advance political objectives, ranging from greater autonomy within the existing framework to secession and independence. In the three months since the return of this correspondent to Guwahati, hardly a day has passed without reports of abduction, attacks on public transport, extortion, and murder, directed as much against the state as against those hated ‘Other’ who live in the district. Insurgencies, of a kind, active in both districts are as usual split into ‘pro-talk’ and ‘anti-talk’ factions, a piece of overclever manipulation by covert agencies which, again as usual, has boomeranged. For, to divide also means to multiply.

The situation is murky beyond belief. For, the ‘ethnic mix’ of the two hill districts is incredibly complicated, with every community of the Hills and the plains of Assam having a presence in the districts, though the plains tribal people are not ‘recognised’ in the districts, The reality on the ground simply does not admit any exclusive ‘ethnic’ homeland’ even in the smallest of political spaces. The district is home to the majority Dimasa tribe as well as many other tribal and non tribal people: Assamese, Bengali, and Hindi speakers, and several Naga and Kuki tribes. Indeed, almost every community enumerated in the State’s census has been mentioned in this district.

The situation is further complicated by a most curious recent development. The Chief Executive Member (corresponding at the district level to the Chief Minister) of the North Cachar Hills Autonomous District Council was arrested on May 30 following the recovery of Rs. 1 crore from two militants of the Jewel Gorlosa faction of Dima Halam Daogah (DHD-J), the insurgency making all the news, who have alleged that the money was given to them by the CEM to help the DHD-J purchase arms. Indeed, Chief Minister Gogoi admitted, following the arrest, that ‘development funds’ meant for the district were being diverted to the militants by the District Council.

This broad survey has not even mentioned the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) which too in theory are fighting to attain a sovereign Asom and a sovereign Bodoland, the contradictions between them not coming in the way of some cooperation, again showing that there is a gulf of difference between the stated objectives of every one of the so-called insurgencies and the reality.

Finally, a common feature of all these organisations are their profound anti-democratic mindset and the total absence of any understanding of the larger socio-economic realities of the state. What they do share, however, is an equally profound hatred of the Other, alien.