
The BJP government in Assam had crowed after the 2021 election that going by the results the people of Assam did not have any grievance over the adoption of CAA, or they would not have voted BJP into power again. But they are given to exulting over things brought about with intricate and elaborate fabrication and manipulation as something most natural and expected.
The night of 12th November 2019, saw thousands of Assamese people pour out into the streets in highly agitated state,defy hastily imposed Curfew and express their anger and resentment over the casual decision of the Union government posing a hazard to the future of Assam. In upper Assam a small but busy rail station was set on fire and there were other stray acts of wild vandalism by upset crowds.Next day too the crowds in Guwahati had defied curfew and voiced their demand that leaders of the anti-CAA movement form an action-plan and take the movement forward.
In this confusion the AASU leaders including adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya and President Deepanka Nath called a public meeting where citizens and some popular actors and musicians voiced their outrage and vehement anger at passing of the CAA act with fiery speeches and soul-stirring songs and poems.Swelling crowds attended the meetings every following day till the proceedings settled into some sort of a routine.Thundering speeches,superb acting of patriotic roles by skilled actors and sky-rending slogans. But no concrete programme of action to undo the injustice was taken up.Other leading organizations that had organized protest rallies,impressive torchlight processions and submitted protest letters and memoranda to President and Prime Minister of India watched from afar,unpersuaded by such dramatics.
AASU laid down that there would be no protest after 5 PM! And that protests would be peaceful and lawful.It was strange as no one had called for any violent or lawless course of action.Besides the 5 PM limit barred larger numbers of people from attendance at the daily protests.
What was stranger was that five totally innocent young men who had been gunned down by armed police,who could not provide a shred of evidence before courts that these victims had been involved in any act of violence,were not declared as martyrs five days into the protests! In fact AASU leaders were forced by public protest to accord the deceased such an honour.
The endless daily masquerade was then shifted from the heart of the old town to a comparatively remote venue though the decibel limit was raised higher.After more than a month of such shows and dissatisfied public response the AASU leaders declared that the best way to fight on the issue was forming a new and clean political party!! So much for shedding blood for ‘mother Assam’.
This writer who had been denouncing these antics throughout then flatly and promptly declared the tame ending as a ‘shameless sell-out’.Many others including some who did not support me took it up and condemned it as abject surrender.
Not long after AASU leaders were seen fraternizing with BJP team-mate AGP, and then pipe down completely. The new line apparently was “We reject CAA but in greater interest of the state we are in BJP camp today.” A classic case of eating one’s cake and having it intact.
No wonder the people of the state got utterly disheartened and confused at the somersault by skilled political players who had jacked themselves into leadership of a spontaneous mass uprising.And no wonder CAA was not a decisive issue in the election of 2021.
It is thus a patent falsehood to say that people of Assam have accepted CAA.They have only lost faith in the self-styled ‘national’ leaders. The following letter to CJI only reflects flickers of the smouldering fire.
Has the SC Exceeded Its Brief?
(Press Statement of Co-ordination Commitee,Parties and Organisation’s against CAA)
The people of Assam are deeply shocked and distressed that an SC bench in a recent judgment seems to have endorsed CAA despite more than 200 petitions pending before the highest court of the land. The main grievance against it in the mainland is its patently communal and therefore unconstitutional interpretation of citizenship.Assam shares the resentment against it as the communal outlook is emphatically not part of native tradition here. But natives here has a unique reason for their anxiety and distress about this controversial act. It has to do with the grave danger to the very identity of the language and culture of Assam.
People outside Assam fail to understand their existential anxiety and some seize the opportunity to besmirch their outlook and character as blindly chauvinist. Most of such denigrators are unaware of the relevant historical roots of the anxiety. Few realise that the provinces created by colonial rulers were by and large administrative units of the Raj which did not properly represent the major nationality and culture of the region.Nor were they the answer to the aspirations and conscious demands of the peoples native to such regions.Hence the leaders of the freedom struggle, in this case AICC had adopted a resolution that all colonial Indian provinces of this country would be re-organized on linguistic basis.Language was accepted as the mirror of the distinct regional cultures representing the main national groups of the regions.
In as early as 1954 States Re-organization Commission headed by Sardar K.M.Panikar was formed to reconstitute and demarcate the provinces on linguistic basis. But Assam was haunted by the fear that since colonial times an immense number of people from other regions of India had entered Assam and made it their home.Certain elements in this mix of population had been agitating to replace Assamese as the representative language of the region,which seemed to the natives like a threat to their identity and traditions.That has already become a long-standing Imbroglio.
If CAA is enforced unilaterally over-riding the fears and anxieties of people native to the region and that in turn leads to a political conflict,there is every reason to apprehend a cultural and political suppression of natives.Civil rights would not serve to insure them against such a calamity. The danger now of large-scale influx of Bengali Hindus into Assam causing an outright reversal of demographic trends is very real and it portends serious and prolonged unrest.Manipur remains a burning example of the consequences of such inept handling of a sensitive problem.
Besides we are flummoxed by the casual haste with which the honourable judges had passed the judgment in regard to a decision of West Bengal government to declare a certain individual ‘an illegal migrant'(THE PRINT,10.12.2024). While it is true that the migrant from Bangladesh might have suffered from the high-handed treatment by the West Bengal government,that cannot be the reason for promptly conferring citizenship on him.Apart from the question whether with the CAA itself in dispute before the
Court such a verdict was proper,we wonder if the credentials of the individual can be accepted without demur.There is no evidence that he had fled from religious persecution and that aspect has been examined.Further if the CAA has indeed been endorsed,then the question arises if the Court had come to judgment without a proper hearing of arguments against it .
Our committee of responsible citizens and law-abiding parties and organisations therefore hold that the implied endorsement of CAA by the SC deserves a review.
Hiren Gohain(President)
Deben Tamuly( Working President)