Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own house? Treated like an alien in your own homeland? Seems like an impossible proposition, but ask any native of Assam and he will cite several instances when he felt homeless in his own land.
The larger Indian psyche, often out of ignorance and, at other times, out of apathy, fails to register that Assam and the Assamese consciousness are as much a part of India as the rest of the mainland’s citizens. And that is where it all begins. Assam’s problem has never been India’s problem and Assam’s story has never been India’s story, be it in the media, history books, cultural manifestos, and political and infrastructural ambitions.
Talk of how, year after year, the state sees perennial floods which affect 2-3 million people in over 27 districts, causing deaths, forcing over 40,000 people into relief camps, submerging more than 1 lakh hectares of agricultural land. Yet, Assam suffers silently and nobody knows about it, thanks to the media looking the other way.
Talk of connectivity issues which the region has struggled with for decades now, with its first MMLP being set up only this year.
Talk of the 600-year old reign of the singular and glorious Ahom dynasty, which shaped the region’s prosperous history, preventing both the Mughals in the Middle Ages and the British until 1826 from setting foot there—and which hardly finds any mention in the history curricula in India. It is no surprise, therefore, that Assamese students shoulder a rich legacy, which the rest of their counterparts hardly know of and, hence, often condescend.
Talk of the Assam Agitation, which claimed young lives over the burning issue of indigenous identity and rights, and gave birth to the Assam Accord, which is a reminder of the courage and uprightness of this peace-loving people. While others take their “Indian-ness” for granted, the Assamese have burnt their own flesh and blood on the pyres of citizenship to protect their Indian identity.
Talk of the state’s demographics. According to the Hazarika Commission report (constituted in 2015), the number of Hindus in some of the most vulnerable districts—Goalpara, Dhubri, Bongaigaon, Kamrup and Nagaon—has been falling drastically while that of the Muslims has registered a sharp rise. This is primarily due to the influx of Bangladeshi immigrants. According to some studies, the Hindu population in Goalpara, for instance, was a little over 54% in 1951. It came down to about 38% in 2011 and is expected to decline further to nearly 23% by 2051, going by current trends. Similarly, in Nagaon, it went from 59% in 1951 to 45% in 2011 and is projected to be 30% in 2051. On the contrary, the Muslim population has gone up from 43% in 1951 to 56% in 2011 in Goalpara, from 40% to 55% in Nagaon, and from 29% to 39% in Kamrup. Going by these figures, at least four districts will turn into Muslim-majority ones, after being Hindu-majority for decades, as a result of illegal immigration.
Independent estimates put the number of illegal immigrants in Assam at 1.5 million to 2 million—or roughly 25% of the total Muslim inhabitation in the state. Obviously, this has led to drastic changes in the demographic profile of Assam, creating social discord and unrest. These illegal immigrants have managed to secure all sorts of state-documents and availed various government schemes, including the MGNREGA and National Rural Health Mission. Thus, they have largely cornered the benefits, sheltered and patronized by the then government seeking to create potent minority vote-banks out of these illegal immigrants—leading to legal citizens losing out.
The Bangladeshi illegal immigration has had security implications for India too. Several armed insurgent groups such as the ULFA based themselves in Bangladesh. It was not just a matter of sanctuary. These outfits have been able to operate because of the networking they created among the illegal immigrants living in India. Besides, some of these organizations are said to have developed contacts with known anti-India groups such as the Harkatul-Jihadi-e-Islami (HuJI).
The Hazarika Commission categorically states that illegal immigrants will reduce the indigenous Assamese population to a minority in the region by 2047. Consider the CAA and proposed NRC against the backdrop of the above facts and figures, and it will not be difficult to comprehend why, while the rest of India cries foul, Assam is in favour of the NRC, albeit with certain modifications. In fact, many opine that the drastic demographic alterations in Assam are a precursor to the fate of India if the NRC is not implemented at the earliest.
Ever since the CAA came into force on 10 January 2020, there have been many voices from the region demanding how the number of tentative migrants could be as low as 40 lakhs. It is expected to be much higher, having built up over decades. Similarly, Assam insists on having a cutoff date for migration from Bangladesh, precisely 1951, instead of March 24, 1971 (while the cutoff date for rest of India is July 19, 1948), irrespective of the religion of the migrant seeking refuge in India. Although, the Indian government seeks to make an exception for Bengali Hindus who migrated to India from Bangladesh before 1971, Assam is completely opposed to this provision, and, if you consider how the state has been economically and socially burdened to the point of dilapidation due to illegal influx over several decades, it makes sense.
The conflict that has erupted in many pockets of Assam is also fallaciously viewed through the prism of Hindu-Muslim tensions alone. The ethnic aspect of the matter cannot be ignored here. A significant chunk of people in Assam is averse to citizenship being granted to Bengali Hindus who fled Bangladesh as refugees. According to them, the present national government is attempting to make Assam a dumping ground for Bengali Hindus through an amendment of the Citizenship Act which seeks to grant citizenship to minority communities in neighbouring countries. In other words, the Assamese are sceptical that the present government seeks to replicate what the Congress regime did for decades – building minority vote banks by legitimizing illegal migration with relevant documents and patronage.
Due to this, there is a significant possibility of the state witnessing a three-way communal strife between the Assamese, the Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims. However, there is another section of Assamese people, a much larger section presumably, although not as vocal as the other, who are of the opinion that Bengali Hindus do not pose a threat to their way of life, as compared to Bengali Muslims, and that those primarily responsible for the ongoing influx of illegal immigrants into Assam are Bengali Muslims. Therefore, depending on demography, conflicts have taken a religious angle in some regions and an ethnic angle in others.
However, the dominant response from all over the country, to Assam’s opposition to CAA and NRC in its present form, has been calling the native Assamese as “anti Bengali”. But the facts are far from this and the Assamese is only voicing his existential predicament through protests. Anakshi Dev Choudhury, a consumer insights professional and an Assamese settled in Mumbai, says, “As a proud Assamese, I do not want to be a minority at home. My family did their bit for the state, now how do I watch the culture and heritage be washed away? People who are not considered legal citizens of the nation in other states, how can they get voting rights in Assam?”
Tripura, for example, was home to a diverse mix of over 15 tribal communities. Today, it is a 65% Bengali state. What then happened to the indigenous people? Look at the international borders around the state if you need an answer. The insecurity of the Assamese is due to several factors and a Citizenship Bill and the NRC should aim at assuaging those sentiments rather than opening a can of worms that will erode the socio-political and cultural fabric of this beautiful and peaceful region further.
To these are added the reduction of CAA and NRC into brazen political ammunition, whereby politicians across most political outfits are using it as an election agenda and furthermore as an unabashed tool of harbouring Islamophobia. Assam is a fertile ground for the blossoming of diverse cultures and religions in harmony: Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Bengali, Assamese, Marwari, several tribal ethnicities, all flourishing together without asserting hegemony over the others. However, political motives and vendetta aim to project Assam as averse to cultural and religious multiplicity in the wake of the CAA and proposed NRC.
We have to be realistic about current circumstances. There doesn’t appear to be a solution which would please everybody, and Assam with the entire Northeast appears to be on the verge of turmoil which it cannot escape. Illegal immigration is like cancer and, sometimes, the only solution to chemo. Many a times, even chemo may not help. A forced deportation of 40 lakh people (the numbers might reduce considering they still have time to appeal and prove their citizenship) might be that chemo, although such an exercise appears impossible to carry out. The Assamese, who are very naturally and thankfully still a majority in their own state, feel threatened by existential and political abnegation.
Let us therefore address the elephant in the room for the way it is, and not as a Hindu versus Muslim or Assamese versus Bengali issue. The CAA and NRC, framed in a way that reflects the wishes of the nation, its people and its inherent socio-political soul, would perhaps be our best foot forward to deal with the cancer of illegal immigration under the present circumstances.
The writer is founder and editor-in-chief of Tribe Tomorrow Network. The views expressed are personal.