The Influx Issue in Assam

“AASU badly wants a fence”, said my friend. This about summed it up for me. For a while!

The ‘fence’ that people in Assam want is one on the Indo-Bangladesh border. It seems that over the last 60 years about 4.9 to 5.2 million Bangladeshi refugees (called influx, migrants or Banglas here) have crossed over into India. Samujjal Bhattacharya, the leader/chief advisor of the All Assam Students Union, said to me that Assam had taken the burden of the refugee problem on itself for the rest of India.

In some ways the influence of Bangladeshi migrants is felt very clearly. They are the ones that run the mandi at Beltola Bazaar. They are the rickshaw pullers. They are the masons, labor, construction workers, maids, drivers, agriculturalists, sweepers, road workers, fish sellers, etc. What has begun worrying a lot of people these days is also the fact that most Bangladeshi refugees are also Muslim.

Mostly everyone you speak to in Guwahati agrees that the influx issue is a huge problem. N- the biodiversity expert I spoke to, stated that in Manas and Kaziranga national parks encroaching on forest land had increased due to many Bangla migrants making their way to the ample forests and resources therein for survival. In fact, Assamese national parks are still populated with humans. Adivasi groups that have lived there for millennia are now entitled to stay there under the Forest Rights Act 2002. There is raging controversy about this – should animals be kept outside of human contact or can communities which have coexisted with nature and wildlife for centuries be allowed to stay as caretakers of the ecosystem. While this remains unresolved in the Indian context, human rights groups have stated that forcing tribal people out of their ancestral land to protect animals makes little sense.

Anyhow it seems that migrants have been able to make their way to the national parks and a clash of resources seems to have broken out between migrants and the adivasis or indigenous people settled there. Recently, there was an incident where adivasis burnt about 12 migrant settlements. Adivasis have not been reported taking up arms in this region. Quite obviously, discontent and rage at being deprived of resources or having to compete for them has set in motion the wheels of conflict.

Historically Assamese have never been divided on the grounds of religion. Many Assamese did take up Islam when the Mughals ruled here. But language seemed to unify them. It mattered less if you were Hindu or Muslim. What mattered was language. And language has been a very important marker of identity for historical reasons. It seems that when the British took over most of Assam after the Treaty of Yandaboo was signed in 1826, they began introducing Bengalis to perform the clerical and book-keeping functions. Bengalis had an advantage; they spoke English and were good at administration.

By the early 1900’s the Bengalis had begun replacing the old Ahom feudal elite as the new elite and middle class. After independence there was a move to introduce Bengali as the language of the state. But concerted opposition from Assamese people led to the shelving of the project. Strangely, the script for Assamese and Bengali is the same. The languages have much in common. Since I can understand Bengali a little bit thanks to my Bengali friends and being mired in left politics at JNU, following Assamese has not been that challenging.

During the years preceding Independence when the Partition debate was at its peak, it seemed that the Congress was quite comfortable handing Assam over to East Pakistan. This has been the regions greatest travesty – it has never fully entered the imagination of the mainstream Indian or the central government. When the Assamese plus Bengali (now already Assamised) elite realized that a Partition was in the offing they moved to oppose it. They succeeded, and only Bengal was partitioned into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Bengal. It was at about this time that the influx began.

Tangentially, I just noted how when we speak of the Partition of India, we only restrict ourselves to the Partition of Punjab and the events in north India. There was similar unpleasantness and violence experienced by the people of Assam and Bengal, but we scarcely hear it mentioned. As was pointed out to be by a few people the Indian national anthem says “Punjab, Sind, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkal, Banga”. It ends with Bengal to the east and has a fictitious province called Sind, which actually belongs to Pakistan now.

When borders don’t exist people move freely from one region to another. Even indigenous Assamese (adivasis etc) have practiced shifting agriculture called jhumming for eons. While this changed rapidly thanks to the British starting tea plantations and imposing modern Lockean property rights over the land. Once the Indo-Bangla border was decided, anyone crossing over became a refugee, a migrant. In all honesty, from a human rights perspective, one cannot blame Banglas from crossing over to India. The Brahmaputra wreaks havoc in the delta region annually. Farmland is limited and coastal Bangladesh is submerged and apparently more and more land is coming under water. The military junta and democratic governments of Bangladesh have both been unable to solve problems of inequity and development. Annual cyclones destroy many coastal and inland villages. On the other side of the border there are plentiful forests, land on which anything will grow with little effort and a democratic government that seems unable to deal with the problem of influx.

So why not cross over along the miles of porous borders? I certainly would!

The Assamese do not like this one bit. AASU’s entire spiel today centers around the problem of influx. This is the one issue that keeps the movement alive. There are AASU sympathizers from all sections of society from IAS officers, to former commissioners, politicians, students, local people, etc. They all agree that AASU is the only body/organization which takes this issue up seriously.

So yes, AASU indeed badly wants a fence.

The political parties have been accused of going soft on the migrants. This is because migrants are a bloc which can help parties win elections. The INC that has controlled the state for most of Assam’s post-1947 history has never begun an initiative to seal the borders. The migrants are able to get false papers, ration cards and voter id’s. They go back en masse to vote. As one security advisor states, a day before elections the entire bazaar is empty because everyone has gone back to their constituencies to vote.

Even the Asom Gana Parishad, the regional party which was an outcome of the AASU has gone soft on this issue. It seems playing the electoral game is a tad more important to everyone than actually addressing issues.

Samujjal, Chief Advisor of AASU, told me how for the rest of India 1948 was the cut-off point for refugees. Anyone who entered after 15 August 1948 was deported. During the Assam Accord it was decided that the cut-off point for entry would be 1973. Anyone coming in after 1973 from Bangladesh had to leave. AASU agreed to this concession. The GOI put in place an act called the IMDT Act, where anyone suspected of being a Bangladeshi could be deported. This was a draconian legislation, which allowed the police to decide who was an illegal immigrant and who wasn’t. Often people were hauled in off the streets on suspicion and arrested and tortured. There were great big loopholes in the Act (which I need to research right now). Recently, it came to notice that a migrant had actually been able to contest elections and had WON. He was since deported. But not before the system realized it needed to ACT (pun intended.. :D).

I asked one security advisor how I could identify a Bangla by just looking at him or her. To me everyone here looks the same. You can make out Assamese people quite clearly, they have slightly mongoloid features – a holdover from Ahom kings who came in from Mongolia. But as it goes in South Asia – it is very hard to determine ethnicity from looking at someone. I was told Banglas wear loongis, skull caps (because they are Islamic), their Bengali is very different and recently they have started growing Islamic beards (whatever that means). So an ASSAMESE can actually tell who a Bangla is and who isn’t.

I must admit, I am thoroughly confused. Determination of ethnicity was never my strong point.

The outcome of the influx issue has been the polarization of society to some extent, between those who are the actual influx people and others threatened by insecurity and contestation over jobs.

Thankfully, this has not become a Hindu verus Muslim issue yet. AASU has been very categorically stating that they don’t care if the migrants are Hindu or Muslim they should all just go back. The introduction of the right-wing BJP has complicated matters. The BJP seems more inclined to deport the Muslim migrants and keep the Hindu ones. This makes it almost impossible for an alliance to occur between AASU and the BJP. However, there is a shaky tie-up between the regional AGP and the BJP. The plan is to unite all non-Congress parties. The arrival of the BJP does worry me because it does think in terms of majoritarian democracy. It is easier to parcel society as Hindu and Muslim and then ask for votes, since interests are broadly aggregated this way. Who wants to deal with troublesome tribes, adivasis and tea-estate tribes? Too much trouble running to them for votes. They are neither Hindu nor Muslim. So much better for the parties if they were. But this is not the case.

The tribes have a mind of their own. So far I have been in contact with Bodo students, Koch Rajbhanshi student sympathizers. But apparently there are Tai Ahoms, Dimasas, Motoks, Karbi, Rabha, Tewa, Tea Tribes, etc. Pretty complicated. Not all tribes are Scheduled Tribes. Some are just adivasis and are vying for ST status. Other tribes want to be included as OBC’s. Some others like the Bodo Liberation Tigers wanted an autonomous district council now called Bodoland Territorial Council. But within the Bodo itself a new group called the NDFB (National Democratic Front of Bodoland) wants a separate Bodoland country.

I can’t imagine why no one has ever done concerted work on this region. It is definitely the most splintered place on the face of the earth. Several hundred Ph.D type questions can be found here. Also once you come here, you realize just how remote this place is. I will speak about the telecom rules and services here in another post.

My Meeting with a former ULFA

Imagine my absolute happiness when a former wannabe ULFA and actual AASU Agitator who got packed off to study architecture in Chandigarh (and so didn’t join ULFA), was more than happy to introduce me to his friend, S.

Mr. S. it seems was a member of All Assam Students Union, got tired and read a little Marx, moved on to the United Liberation Front of Assam which engaged the Indian government in a low intensity armed conflict for almost two decades. He was the official spokesperson for the ULFA. When ULFA wanted to make a statement, Mr. S spoke for them to the press (all in undisclosed locations).

So Mr. S. walked into our rendezvous that was set up by my architect friend. He arrived in a great big SUV, and apparently had a few others to keep this SUV company. He was pretty nice and welcoming. He chain-smoked but that didn’t bother me. I wanted the stories.

So we started talking. He jumped right in. “When we were young”, he says, “we were tired of the center’s neglect. There are no jobs, where is Assam for the Assamese? The Chinese come in and take the region over and the only thing Nehru can say, “My heart goes out for the people of Assam.” That’s it! When the GOI couldn’t protect us, we had to protect ourselves. The language agitation galvanizes us. AASU comes out of this history of protest. We realize AASU itself is pretty middle-class set-up and at the same time ULFA comes in.”

The CPI(ML) apparently had an important role to play in the ULFA indoctrination. The ideas of class-conflict and the deprivation of indigenous peoples of Assam by the Bengali middle class was a common refrain in the movement.

The Assam Agitation came directly out of the language agitation of the 1960’s in the state. The forced imposition of Bengali as the language of the state was not a move welcomed by anyone. According to me it introduced a certain level of insecurity and uncertainty in the lives of ordinary folk. If the language of the administration and that of employment were to change overnight, those who did not speak the tongue would lose out.

It seems to me that many such movements acquire a momentum of their own. The language agitation directly affected students. The students mobilized against this condition of uncertainty and in doing so inadvertently galvanized another movement. They dissent against the central Indian state that has historically been guilty of neglecting this region of the country politically, administratively and developmentally. But AASU also reacts to the threat posed by Bangladeshi migrants which today are numbered at about 49 -50 lakh. A number which has been kep under wraps till very recently.

This dissent against the existing political structure fed off the energy of young people. During the years from 1978 – 1985 everyone was part of AASU. You didn’t have to be a registered member. And then again the movement branched out into a moderate and extremist line. When I spoke to some people, they mentioned how this was similar to the two strands that existed in India during the national movement – the naram dal (soft bloc) and the garam dal (hot blooded bloc). The ULFA was a direct outcome of the hardliner stance taken against the Indian state. Assam for Assamese, it cried!

There was free-floating membership of each organization. Two of the people I spoke to had started out as AASU members. One had progressed to the Asom Jatiyawadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) and then onto ULFA. Many of the top leaders of the ULFA came from the AJYCP. Then others moved from AASU directly to ULFA. They thought AASU was too moderate and was unable to capture the center’s attention. But ULFA itself had a couple of factions. It seemed that some of the top leaders of ULFA (Gogoi, for one) belonged to the old Ahom feudal class and aristocracy. The others joined ULFA because they truly believed in a socialist Assam. A third group of people joined as they were economically deprived and joining in the insurgency made for good business in the absence of employment opportunities.

My interviewee surrendered when he realized that the top leadership was feudal and envisioned a neo-kingdom of sorts for Assam, which would reinstate their own lost positions of power and privilege. Assam was only for the aristocratic Assamese, in their vision.

It seems surrendering to the Indian forces itself was a great strategy for most insurgents. Many realized there would be hell to pay once the bumbling Indian forces did catch up with them, they began planning group surrenders. But they had a strong incentive. The Government had announced a reward of 2 lakh rupees and no prosecution under the Criminal Code. The money was to help them reintegrate back into society. And many jumped at the chance. In fact this law made it possible for poor men from villages to join ULFA, wave a gun around for a while and then go stand in front of a police station in surrender. They pocketed the sum and went back home.

But the legacy of their involvement in ULFA lived on. They came to be feared in society, became entrepreneurs and because they embodied a certain threat of violence or monopoly over coercion, they got hard to get licenses and were able to become ‘local notables’. This group of people came to be known as SULFA or Surrendered ULFA. I was told that many of the big malls, Cineplex’s and even the Big Bazaar in Guwahati were owned by SULFA. They began to command a high prize in the marriage market. Women from noted families were willing to marry a SULFA because of the social capital SULFA had as a group, and the money and ‘connections’ it entailed for them. Today the SULFA is part of what a couple of people have referred to as a ‘legalized mafia’. Everyone knows who they are, but they are also incredibly influential in politics and society.

ULFA still exists with a highly depleted force which today stands at about 500 combatants. It has apparently changed tactics now. ULFA’s leaders live in Bangladesh and remote control operations in India from there. They have significant backing amongst political parties in Bangladesh because they fund them. Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, which admittedly has a presence in Bangladesh has begun steering the ULFA. While this may seem to be an overstatement for many, it nonetheless has some element of truth if Intelligence Bureau reports and security analysts that I spoke to are to be believed. ULFA leaders are deeply entrenched in Bangladeshi politics and in many ways their source of rent continues to be extortion based and now, contributions from the ISI.

According to a bio-diversity expert here in Guwhati, ULFA has also changed its strategy. Now instead of cadres it recruits mercenary-type villagers, who are given responsibility to plant a bomb here and arrange a lockout there. A one-time deal! This way there are no backward linkages that might compromise the top leadership.

At the height of their power ULFA made money by forced contributions (read extortion) made by tea estates, shopkeepers and business men, factory owners and some genuine sympathizers pumped in money to the outfit. Extorting from tea estates was relatively easy. Most estates are located in extremely remote areas and access is not very easy. The CRPF and army mostly sent periodic patrols. Once a manager received an extortion note, he had to drive 45 kms away to the nearest police station and file an FIR. After which, he got protection for 48 hours. The ULFA simply waited for the policemen to leave and went and got their money including a raised fee for calling the cops.

Interestingly, the tea estate management could never count on protection from their workers, usually tribal men and women. This is because, according to Rakhee Kalita (a professor of English at Cotton College), the managers kept a very strict distance between themselves and the workers, following an age-old British pattern of separating themselves from natives or commoners. This separation not only occurred in manager-worker relations, but also in terms of living quarters and campuses for ‘officers’ as opposed to those for ‘workers’. Simply speaking, most tribal workers did not bother themselves with the fate of the management. If the ULFA extorted, so be it. The ULFA at the end of the day was on the workers’ side.

Assam is undoubtedly in a state of crisis. The ULFA story is only one dimension. In Assam caste breaks down in the face of the influx issue, language and tribe. With the arrival on the scene of the right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party, the influx issue has moved beyond concentrating on numbers of migrants to the number of Muslim migrants – colloquially called the ‘ali’s’. Most student organizations in the state with the exception of AASU are tribal in nature. While someone who sides with Huntington will argue that this is evidence of a revival of tribalism and/or primordialism, I think I may have a slightly evolved explanation of the same phenomenon hinging on states of insecurity and institutional design throwing up certain incentives for political parties on the one hand and students and communities on the other. 

Mt. Everest and the Flooding of Bihar

This is a hurried blog post written from Bagdogra airport, while waiting for the next leg to commence from Bagdogra to Guwahati. I just saw the most amazing and terrible sights. I saw Mt. Everest in the distance sticking out of the Himalayan mountain range and also saw the devastation left in Bihar by the flooding of the river Kosi. The landscape looked like someone ran a particularly bleak, black, green and brown impressionist painting under a water tap. Several thousand have died in the floods and 2 million people are reported to be affected.

In case you're wondering how I got to see these two things together, my Kingfisher Red flight basically flies east over UP and Bihar, pretty close to Nepal. You can see the entire Himalayan range in the distance and look at the landscape below. The contrast is pretty vivid.

I'm Not Fair, But I'm Lovely

I was walking around Connaught Place today with a bunch of friends and came across this advertisement. A dark complexioned woman glances over her bare shoulder and proclaims that she is worthy of being called beautiful even though she is darker than most other Indians. While I know that many Indians consider white skin as a sign of beauty, I must admit to being completely confused by this ad and its message. It wasn't really selling a fairness cream and at the right hand bottom corner there is a picture of Obama *??!!??*

My interpretation of this ad for a newsmag is this - the content of news in this paper is not exactly "fair" or "balanced", but it's a good read anyway. The cryptic lines at below the first two lines read, "I'm not Yesterday!" HUH?

Anyhoo, this ad stands out because in a way it reflects the extension of the practice of apologizing for darker skin into ads for products which are not even selling a skin cream.

The promise of all good things falling into your lap if a woman is fair is a common refrain in ads which sell skin-whitening, lightening products. An old Fair and Lovely Fairness Cream ad depicted a father giving his daughter a tube of the magic cream. After four weeks of use she was fairer than before and grooms began soliciting her hand in marriage. The massive insecurity in Indian women about the shade of their brown skin (and no matter how fair one is we are still BROWN) has been created by a colonial hangover and perpetuated by cosmetic companies exploiting a ready market.

Preference for fair brides, fair air-hostesses, fair-skinned office girls and secretaries has led to some extreme skin-whitening treatements. The Kaaya Skin Clinic, Vandana Luthra Curls and Curves (VLCC), and several beauty salons offer such treatment. In many cases the cosmetics prescribed contain products called "penetration enhancers" which facilitate the breakdown of melanin in the skin. An EWG report on cosmetics labels these as "cancer causing" agents.

Even more interestingly, the same products are sold in the US as "radiance boosters". L'Oreal has a line called "Blanc Expert" where a bottle of magic fluid retails for 125 dollars. Other companies offer similar products all priced above 30 dollars for a 100 ml bottle.

I guess the highly evolved debate on race in the US has made it virtually impossible for any company to openly sell a skin-whitening product that suggests that darker people should be unhappy with their skin color. The recent controversy surrounding Beyonce's artificially enhanced fair skin in a L'Oreal ad drew attention to the growing influence of this new kind of skin care product. No longer is it enough to have good, clean, healthy skin. Your skin, if you are female, has to be white as snow.

All of this is very sad indeed and reminds me of this book I read a long time ago where a female offspring of a British army officer and an Indian maid, when sent to live in London in the wee 1900's; spends much time concealing her brown skin by over-powdering it. The cost of being discovered as 'not exactly white' are too horrific for her to imagine.

I am still waiting for a day when I can actually tromp around India and not have some one comment on how fair or dark I am (the comments vary depending on how fair or dark the commentators are). In the meanwhile I am going to satisfy myself by putting my cell-phone camera to good use to take more incriminating pictures of this insidious form of racism.

And in case the men think they're exempt from this pressure, try searching for "Fair and Handsome Fairness Cream".