Assam imbroglio
and democratic politics : Arup Baisya
(Not to be published without consent of the author)
The
citizenship Question
The political discourse in Assam is
revolving around for and against the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016. This
binary is not antithetical to the ruling class idea of hegemony, and the ruling
class has the entire wherewithal to accommodate both sides in stabilizing their
hegemonic position. But unfortunately, the Assamese speaking official left
forces in Assam are getting trapped in this binary by addressing the issue only
through negation of the bill and thus allowing the masses to be camp followers
on communal and chauvinist lines. While opposing the bill, they are not
spelling out any positive programme for the masses who are apprehensive of losing
their citizenship rights. It is also strange to note that the left
intellectuals like Hiren Gohain is parroting the claim of large scale Bengali
Hindu influx from Bangladesh since 1974, the claim initially propagated by
Hindutwa forces on the basis of inadequate factual data to fan communal passion
in the sub-continent and thus, they are giving legitimacy to the Hindutwa
theory of large scale (more than a crore) migration from Bangladesh due to
religious persecution. A small section of opinion builders who are opposing the
bill on the ground of unconstitutionality and religious overtones is demanding
the inclusion of the names of 2014 voter list in NRC. In their opinion, 2014
voter list was prepared after thorough scrutiny of 1997 voter list in the
spirit of Assam Accord, and many were designated as doubtful (D) voters during
the process of document verification. The D-voters are those whose documents
could not be verified at that point of time and they are now undergoing
judicial scrutiny. The voting rights of the D-voters were curtailed on the
ground that their citizenship is yet to be ascertained. This small group of
people is arguing that these voters of 2014 voter list have passed the test of
citizenship and they have given legitimacy to the power-that-be.
The
nationality Question
During Assam Movement, the left camp was
intellectually represented by the astute social scientist Amalendu Guha and
Assamese intellectual stalwart Hiren Gohain. Hiren Gohain in his article
‘Cudgel of Chauvinism’ (EPW Vol XV, No.8, February 23, 1980) wrote, “… it is
obvious that they (leaders of the movement : this author’s interpretation)
represent a kind of ‘rotten compromise’ between the all India ruling class and
the Assamese ruling elite, involving connivance at monstrous barbarities and
breathtaking mendacity.” But at a later stage, he became critical about the
shortcomings of left’s role. Social movements do not take place in vacuum, and
their definite concrete consequences may not be shrugged off merely with an
abstract commitment to leftist ideology. Gohain emphasized that the Assam
movement has not been seen as a mark of crisis in the Centre’s relation to the
north-east. But he was categorical about identifying the movement as not
directed against the big bourgeoisie. He asked why mobilising support for
economic development programmes and advocating constitutional safeguards for
Assamese identity and welfare could not be raised. He asserted that hegemonic
notions like the ‘unilingual state of Assam’ ought to be combated, but genuine
national demands deserve a stout defence.
He further added in his article “Fall-out
of underdevelopment” (EPW, Vol XV, No 12, March 22, 1980) “has migration had no
other effect than ‘swamping Assamese Identity’ – as claimed by the Assamese
opinion builders? Who built the roads and bridges that brought the different
localities in Assam within reach of one another? …Paradoxically enough, it was
only the coming of skilled people from outside that indirectly laid the
foundation of the Assamese ‘National Identity’ which is bandied so freely by
the Assamese leaders of the movement”.
He criticized the left for
underestimating emotional force of nationalism in a backward environment with
an emergent capitalist class. But he discarded Sanjib Baruah’s rationalisation
of the Assamese middle-class aspirations and anxieties as a chimerical guide to
action. Criticism of the left was more aggressive for the failure of the left
to advocate a development programme that would benefit the Assamese middle
class as much as the working people. Sanjib Barua used the term Assamese
Sub-Nationalism which, in his opinion, not substantially different from Guha’s
notion of little nationalism. When Sanjib Barua termed the Assam movement as
nationality upsurge of an unprecedented scale, Guha in his elaborate argument
established the fact the Assam movement was an assertion of little nationalism
turned chauvinism against the minorities. That the Hindutwa forces was the
mastermind and played a vital role in anti-minority pogrom during the movement
does not in any way contradict the characterization of the movement as little
nationalists turned chauvinist.
Amalendu Guha set the tune of left
politics by terming the movement as little nationalism turned chauvinism. The national political
leaderships representing the big bourgeoisie also tried to co-opt the Assamese
‘little nationalism’. The Assam movement, according to Amalendu Guha, was a
programme led by the Assamese middle class at a conjunctural crisis. According
to him, hard pressed by big capital from above and the rising labour and
peasant movement from below, the Assamese upper classes are terribly agitated
about the economic stagnation. Incapable of competing with big capital, they
aspired to monopolise the small industries, petty trade and the profession and
services. This diversion of the movement from targeting the big capital by
raising issue of development, devolution and democratisation of power to
anti-Bengali anit-foreigner’s movement gave the Assamese middle class the
required space to collaborate with the national big bourgeoisie. Hiren Gohain
(EPW Vol XVI, No.9, February 28, 1991) asserted that the movement was seen as a
mark of crisis in Centre’s relation to the north east, the relation which he
described as the Centre’s delegation of the gendarme role to the largely
caste-Hindu Assamese elite in the north-east. But he was categorical in stating
that the movement was not really directed against the big bourgeoisie.
The
reality check
However, the present day ground reality compel
us to believe that Guha had overemphasized the process of assimilation of
Maymansingh Muslims in lower Assam and the tea-garden people in Upper Assam
with Assamese nationality. Adoption of Assamese language in education and in
daily mundane vocabulary was not much influenced by the pull of Market
(Bazaar), it was predominantly due to political reason. But it can be safely
predicted that the process of assimilation would have been accelerated, had the
Assamese sub-nationalism treaded the path of democratic accommodation instead
of chauvinistic coercion which is snowballing into resistance and apathy of the
minorities towards Assamese language and culture. During the late 1970s and 80s,
the Bengali people preferred to speak in Assamese language in public places
especially in cities of Brahmaputra valley. The fear psychosis kept their
voices in mother-tongue used in private places and within the family muted in
public places. But the loud underclass vocabulary in clear Bengali Maymansingh
dialect will not skip the attention of any observer in any work or public place
of present day Guwahati city, where the presence of Maymanshing workers has
increased many-fold. This is a clear sign of spontaneous assertion of the
identity of workers who are predominantly rural agricultural surplus labour of
lower Assam. The recent mobilization of tea-garden Adivasi community in tens of
thousands in many places of Upper Assam in protest against the claim of ‘Khilonjia
(Aboriginals) Manch’ headed by erstwhile ULFA leaders for exclusion of tea-garden
from Khilonjia (aboriginal) category, is also the clear sign of identity
assertion. The complex grid line of synchronization or assimilation gets
tripped by the chauvinist politics of Assamese little or sub-nationalism. The
weakness of class leadership of a motley group of Middle Class who were
spearheading the movement turned the genuine aspirations of the Assamese
sub-nationalism into hostility towards their other fellow neighbours. As the
class character of the small and middle peasant is petit-bourgeois in nature,
they could be easily mobilised by triggering the ethnic fault-lines and
inciting artificial appetite for grabbing the land of other communities. That
the land question was not the major issue became amply clear when the plain
tribes who were mobilized during the movement for violent action resorted for
the movement of political rights soon after Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the
political formations emerged from Assam movement, was installed in state-power
post-Assam Accord. The politics of ethnic cleansing and exclusion in Bodoland
was led against all non-Bodo people including the Assamese mainly to prove the
majority of Bodo people in the domain of Bodoland. After almost fifty years of
Assam movement, under the changed socio-economic polity, this middle class has
lost their ability to play any leading progressive role and they are completely
dependent on the state apparatuses to fulfill their chauvinist plan of action
of disenfranchisement of the minority communities.
The
socio-economic changes
The Assamese ruling elites as described by
Hiren Gohain are much more entangled with big bourgeoisie and foreign capital
than at the time of Assam movement. So we must delve into the emerging
socio-economic scenario to find the answer to the question of how the
democratic movement can be rejuvenated to address all the vexed issues within
the garb of the here and the now. The left forces of Assam who are lurching in
wilderness needs to see the light of the day beyond their narrow horizon. A
large section of left minded people have surrendered to the occasion and
waiting for a tryst with destiny.
What we presently observe in the rural
landscape of Assam is to a great extent similar to the Myron Weiner’s pregnant
observations of West Bengal in his survey done in 1959. The left-based
occupational organizations such as unions and peasant organizations are missing
in both urban and rural Assam. The political hegemony on the masses is
established and controlled by various socio-political, economic and ideological
institutions. But these institutions are rapidly losing their credibility under
pressure from neo-liberal policy drive. Large scale proletarianisation and/or
precariatisation has occurred both in rural and urban sector. The space for
regional bourgeoisie to maneuver has shrunk and they are becoming the
appendages of foreign capital and comprador bourgeoisie. Whatever may be the
amount of investment in development work till 1990s, all the works were
parceled in various small trenches and implemented through a decentralized
administrative set-up to facilitate the local investors to participate and grab
the contracts, and these norms had acted in favour of encouraging small scale
investment in production of supply materials, albeit in a limited scope. But going
by the logic of neo-liberal policy drive, all the trenches for work and supply
are now amalgamated in common centralized pool for funding by the foreign
multinational banks and to facilitate global tenders and contracts for foreign
companies. These foreign companies engage the local small bourgeoisie as
sub-contractors, and the chain of sub-contractors terminate at the rural and
urban work sites. The large section of officers and employees also get
entrenched in this chain through the mediation and intervention of political
class who serves the interest of these foreign investors. This typical chain of
social-relations that emerged in backward region like Assam through the
involvement of finance capital in neo-liberal phase of economy has already
eaten up the vital of the middle classes to fight for regional autonomy. The
profit and the corrupt money are amassed through over-exploitation of toiling
masses which constitute predominantly of the minority communities and the
flight of capital as profit arrests the industrial development of the state. That
is why; the progressive organizations and citizens get lukewarm response from
these middle classes when issues like privatization of oil sectors, withdrawal
of special status category of the state etc are opposed.
The
working class and the democratic movement
It is pertinent here to quote the remark of
Ajoy Ghosh, the then General Secretary of CPI, on the resolution adopted by the
party congress in 1953. He said, “We should note that the demand for Linguistic
States is a demand which unites all classes inside a nationality, including the
feudal classes. We do not reject such a unity, but we consider the unity of the
toiling masses of different nationalities as the most precious thing which must
not be violated at any cost.” He further affirmed, “….while struggling for
Linguistic States we have always to bear in mind that the overriding
consideration in all cases must be the unity of the toiling masses and not the
unity with the bourgeoisie inside each nationality. The unity of the toiling
masses is the biggest asset of the communist party which must never be lost” (Modak
: 2006 :125). The CPI was advocating this line in the early 1950s when the
feudal relation of production was predominant in agriculture, and the feudal
forces had a strong influence in the power-that-be. The CPI in practice had
long drifted away from this position in Assam, and it seems the marginalised
CPI(M) leadership are now busy in burning the mid-night oil to draw a strategy
to accommodate chauvinist content and to pander chauvinist forces. But this is
the opportune moment when the left can rely on the toiling masses to build the
democratic struggle anew and to defeat the reactionary politics of communalism
and chauvinism once for all. This becomes relevant when the social relation of
production is rapidly changing, and the productive forces and the
socio-political institutions are failing to accommodate the emerging social
relations. But the resurgence of left-democratic movement cannot become a
reality until the left ideology does not become the motive force. From a
working class perspective, the programme for sustainable development generating
job opportunities and preserving vast eco-diversity and for addressing class
and nationality aspirations of Assam needs to be formulated. This programme
needs to be taken to the masses by building class organizations in rural and
urban sectors, and through the united efforts of disparate forces who are
committed to fight the twin menace of communalism and chauvinism.
The
resolution of conflict
With the changing social relations of
production, class-caste-nationality dimensions are undergoing a change. Caste
is a class in feudal relations of production where both economic and political
institutions are not segregated in time-space and are dominated by upper
castes. But the economics and politics are visibly getting segregated under the
influence of imperialist-capitalist model of combined and uneven development. This
process of segregation has accelerated in the neo-liberal phase of development
and under the spell of capitalist market forces. All the data indicate that in
the vast expanse of Indian nation, a homogenous working class is emerging
cutting across caste-nationally boundaries and this is also visible in this
backward state of Assam too. Without organizing and depending on this newly
emerged working class, final push for democratization of society and politics
cannot be achieved. The conflict between the idea of nation conceptualised by
hindutwa brand of politics from above and the multi-cultural multi-lingual idea
of Indian nation can be settled in favour of the latter only under class
leadership of newly emerged toiling masses.
References
:
(1) Ahmed, Abu Nasar Saied
(2006): Nationality Question in Assam, The EPW 1980-81 Debate : Akansha
Pulishing House.
(2) Baisya,
Arup (January 2018) : Citizenship Question and Assam Politics : Article
published in frontier Weekly. (http://www.frontierweekly.com/views/jan-18)
(3) Desai, A.R. (1998) : Recent
Trend in Indian Nationalism : Popular Prakashan Private Limited.
(4) Moday, Debnarayan (2006) :
Dynamics of National Question in India, The Communist Approach (1942-64) : Progressive
Publishers.
