By Prasenjit Biswas,
The history of displacement and dispossession is re-enacted for the victim-survivors of Bodoland riots. Implicitly proscribing them from returning to their homes by asking for their valid land documents, the government is also disqualifying them both from being recognized as a victim and from being a legitimate citizen of this country.
In a moving testimony, one of the survivors among the the thrown outs of ‘Special Guwahati bound train from Bangaluru’ incident in North Bengal, Sheikh Saddam, a resident of Hailakandi of Assam recalled how mere mention of their intent to return home for Eid got ten of them pushed out of the running train. Hailing from the Northeast and yet treated as an other or different, the victims’ identity became the marker of difference for punishing them. While many of the Norteasterners from other parts of the country experienced racial otherization, the same is repeated in relation to an ‘internal other’. In another heartbreaking incident, an established businessman in Mizoram, who migrated from Silchar in the early eighties and got married with a Mizo woman and remained as head of a family for two decades with a ten year old daughter is forced divorced by vigilante groups. The vigilante group dictated separation for the Mizo woman and her daughter Julian from their alien husband and father. Such a heartbreaking enforced divorce presumably sets an example for any ‘Bhai’ or outsider suspected to be an ‘illegal immigrant’. The difference of language, culture and religion with the added marker of being a Bengali Muslim or being from the plains can invite subjection to a legal or extra-legal procedure. In the process, many Bengali Muslim and Hindu Indian citizens are turned into ‘D’ voters and even pushed back inside Bangladesh, some of whom later were restored their Indian citizenship after a painful legal battle.
Right groups such as Citizens’ Rights Preservation Committee (CRPC) working in Assam has found an utter intransparency and shady dealing by the Police to suspected ‘illegal immigrants’. Not only many genuine Indian citizens are sent to detention camp, but many of the detainees there also are declared Bangladeshis in an ex-party manner. The recent edition of Foreigners’ (Tribunal) amendment order,2012 makes it mandatory for any person issued a summon to prove her Indian citizenship to come with all the proof within maximum ten days. Right groups worry that how can such a person produce certified copies of voters’ list of past years such as 1971 in such a limited time period? Even an application for certified copy takes a minimum of a month. This leaves open the possibility of many more ex-party judgements declaring a genuine Indian citizen to be a foreigner. Within the provision of Foreigners’ Act,1946, only the suspect has to prove her citizenry while any misplaced intent of the accuser remains unimpeachable. Right groups now fear that foreigners tribunal with its latest amendment would go into declaring lakhs of suspected Indian citizens of Bengali origin as ‘foreigners’ in ten days time without any time for adjudication and then they will be pushed back through the border with Bangladesh. This opens up a legalized and juridified process of dispossession of the ‘internal minorities’ living as ‘other’ in Assam’s multi-ethnic social space.
When the major ethnic students’ and youth bodies of the Northeastern region are coming together for a greater pan-ethnic solidarity for driving out the ‘illegal immigrants’, the state of fear among the minority Bengali population of lower Assam is rising. Even those who have been living in Bodoland districts for a century and possess valid land documents live in a fear of being dispossessed. The depressive effect of riots and killings this time is that many of the old settled families are selling their properties and looking for a safe shelter. Living in perpetual fear of being declared as stateless and deported makes an exception to their constitutional right to life and livelihood.
The situation is fully exploited by the Hindu right in spreading fear among the Hindu population by creating a situation of Muslim backlash. On 28th August last, the day of the bandh, the right Hindu forces mobilized a section of Bengali Hindu community to keep their shops and establishments open in Assam’s Barpeta road area that resulted into some death, clash and arson. The strategy of the Hindu right has always been to organize a Muslim backlash by way of provoking them to attack and then use such attacks as their ploy to launch an all out attack on Muslim minorities. The fact finding team from CRPC after august 28th violence in Barpeta road that left a few hundred people belonging to Hindu Bengali community homeless came to the conclusion that the clash there has been an outcome of the ploy to organize a Muslim backlash for not joining the bandh call by AAMSU.
This planned division between Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims by the Hindu right gels well with what the ethnic students’ bodies of the region cry out in the name of protection of ethnic and tribal identity. An idea of ethnic identity is constructed on the basis of a possible loss of identity if it is outnumbered by settlers. A conflation between Indian citizens and Bangladeshi immigrants is played out here to otherize any non-ethnic non-tribal citizenry. Within this, if it is Bengali Muslim, they become the most vulnerable, closely followed by Bengali Hindus as well. The whole propaganda against Bangaladeshis target the Bengali speaking population as possible suspects. Due process of law is curtailed in order to differently apply law to the so called suspected Bangladeshis. Seemingly the rights guaranteed by national and international law in the case of suspected Bangladeshis is overruled by some fiat or diktat of executive without allowing any judicial review of the procedure adopted in such cases.
Ethnic student and youth bodies of the region passionately argue about encroachment of tribal land by illegal settlers in Bodoland areas. In many of the tribal blocks and belts of Assam as well as in river islands, the rise of a land-market created the difference between the ‘resource-owning’ and ‘resource-using’ communities. The legal bar on owning land is now held against the non-land-owning and resource-using communities to make them ineligible even to be a citizen by connecting them with ‘illegal immigration’ and its attendant legal arbitrariness. To dispel such a fear of the other, strong protective discrimination combined with a sensitivity towards the dignity and right of the immigrant Other needs to be reframed in the sphere of law and politics. The governing ethnic elites must recognize this simultaneous need of openness and closure. The current turn towards regional re-ethnification of homelands in Northeast then would become inclusive and democratic. It will auto-correct the failing law of the land as well as the fear of the Other.
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Dr.Prasenjit Biswas is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. He is also Director (Research), Barak Human Rights’ Protection Committee, Silchar.
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