http://www.frontierweekly.com/views/aug-19/13-8-19-Assam%20Accord%20Clause%206.html
Assam Accord Clause 6 : The bone of contention
Arup Baisya
NRC and Khilonjiya (Indigenous)
Along with the NRC process in Assam, another contentious
issue that may cause festering sores in the body-politic of Assam is the
exercise on the basis of clause 6 of the Assam Accord. The BJP brought this
issue to the fore during the social turmoil surrounding the process of updating
of NRC and the Citizenship Amendment Bill that generated immense passion within
the mainstream Assamese society.
The clause 6 says that the Constitutional, legislative
and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to
protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and
heritage of the Assamese people. Various actions have already been taken on the
basis of the provisions of this clause. Out of these actions, one action was
related to the Government request to the different political parties, Sahitya
Sabhas, Youth organizations, All Assam Student Union and reputed N.G.O’s to
furnish their views/ suggestions for preparation of definition of “Assamese
People”.
The dispute continues on the question of “Assamese
People”. AASU defines the “Assamese people” as “Axomiya, Khilonjia (indigenous).”
To take all the tribal organisations on board, AASU modified its stand a little
to define Assamese as “khilonjia Axomiya and khilonjia janajati”. AASU
has been batting for “constitutional safeguards” to people of the state on the
basis of NRC, 1951. But many Bengali Muslim organisations also opposed the AASU’s
demand for 1951 NRC to be the basis of verifying permanent residents because
they were not included in it. That it was completed within 20 days was also a
reason for many to doubt its accuracy. After completion of the updating process
of NRC, the issue of safeguard of ‘Axomiya or Khilonjiya’ will once again be
raised from various quarters to disturb the social harmony to ensure
communal-chauvinist hegemony over the geopolitical landscape of Assam. As the
NRC updating process itself rests on an undemocratic premise of dividing the
citizens in the categories of ‘original inhabitants’ and ‘non-original
inhabitants’, the completion of NRC itself will not settle the issue related
with the clause 6 of Assam Accord.
New passion and new force
The issue of the protection and safeguarding of the
Assamese language and culture is rooted in the apprehensions ingrained in the
Assamese psyche that they will be outnumbered by the Bengali people in their
own state. The Assamese ruling class which was hitherto composed of the petty
and proto-bourgeoisie and the landed gentry considered it convenient to whip up
nationalist sentiment whenever their hegemonic control was weakened due to
subaltern or class challenges from below. “Axomiya Jati in danger” is the
catchword which fits well with the perception of an imagined enemy of the
linguistic and religious minority. The bonhomie with the Indian ruling class
could easily continue without much conflict as they could accommodate this role
of the Assamese ruling class in a space defined by covalent bonding between
both the ruling classes. But the here and now, this old Assamese ruling class
has been weakened and replaced by a class developed from the womb of
neo-liberal policy persuasions and this new class has no distinct role of its
own to contest for a hegemonic space for them in Assam under the aegis of the
Indian ruling class. The molecular structure of covalent bond has now collapsed
due to changes in social chemistry and it turned into a flat space of
concentric circle with Indian ruling class at the center. In these
circumstances, the BJP and Sangh Parivar are very conveniently using all the
issues in a communal-chauvinist framework without much resistance from any
quarter. The official left and liberal forces failed to rise to the occasion
and they tried to twist their arms in the shrinking space of so-called Assamese
nationalism and had to retreat leaving the space open for the Sangh Parivar to
occupy. But consistently with conviction, a small group of radical left people has
been trying to consolidate the opinion that this is the best of time to combat
both communalism and chauvinism and ensure their defeat by simultaneously
addressing the democratic rights of all including the minorities and against
the neo-liberal onslaught. This initiative is now gaining ground within the
Assamese society. The call of about 200 Assamese intellectuals against
harassment of the minorities in the name of NRC process and against detention
camp, the signature campaign organized by a leading citizens’ group called
‘Gonotantrik Sanghati, Asom’ sent a positive signal across the society for
democratic consolidation. The way the Assamese common people of upper Assam,
the bastion of Assamese chauvinist movement spontaneously came forward en masse
to help the poor minorities who had to bear the pain and agony to travel a long
distance to appear before the NRC officials in Upper Assam within short notice
reveals the democratic undercurrent. This indicates that there is every
possibility of the emergence of a new passion and new force for democratic
change. Like Citizens Amendment Bill, clause 6 of Assam Accord is another such
two-edged sword which can be used to divide and subvert the democratic unity.
Clause 6 and the land issue
The question of safeguarding the Assamese nationality is
revolving around the question of land rights and linguistic hegemony. It is
difficult to ascertain the issue of land scarcity caused by the migration due
to lack of data and land profile, but initially, the migration was induced by
land abundance in Assam. The Government reckoning reveals that the quantum of
loss of cultivated land has reached a gargantuan level of 400,000 hectares in
the last 50 years. Almost 8000 hectare of land per year along with already
constructed physical infrastructure on this land has been destroyed due to
natural calamities.
The flood and erosion problem of Assam is singularly
different from other states so far as the extent and duration of flooding and
magnitude of erosion is concerned and is probably the most acute and unique in
the country. The flood-prone area of the state as assessed by the Rashtriya
Barh Ayog (RBA) is 31.05 Lakh Hectares against the total area of state 78.523
Lakh Hectares i.e. about. 39.58 % of the total land area of Assam. This is
about 9.40% of the total flood-prone area of the country. Records show that the
average annual area affected by the flood is 9.31 Lakh Hectares. The
flood-prone area of the country as a whole stands at about 10.2 % of the total
area of the country but the flood-prone area of Assam is 39.58 % of the area of
the state. It signifies that the flood-prone area of Assam is four times the
national mark of the flood-prone area of the country. (https://waterresources.assam.gov.in/portlets/flood-erosion-problems)
As many as 86,536 people have become landless in Assam in
the last five years due to soil erosion, the minister of state for water
resources, social justice and empowerment, Rattan Lal Kataria, told parliament.
(thewire.in, 09/July/2019). So to save the agricultural land and to avoid
scarcity of land for food production for all the cultivators including the
Assamese agriculturalists, the policy focus must be shifted from the grabbing
of land by illegal migrants to the ever-increasing intensity of the natural
disaster. The big dam which is constructed by a private company in Arunachal
Pradesh may be considered as the water-bomb which, if burst for any extraneous
factor, will wash away the huge part of Brahmaputra Valley with a devastating
consequence. The recent study by IIT, Guwahati also rings the alarm bell of the
devastating consequence of climate change. The cumulative effect of rising
temperature, declining rainfall and the least irrigation facility in Assam may
cause havoc in Assam’s agricultural production in the near future. (http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org). So
instead of focusing on the real issues on land and agricultural questions, the
ruling class diverts the attention by migrant-centric discourse.
Clause 6 and the language and culture
The second big concern which is brought to the focus to
impress upon the urgency of the implementation of clause 6 of Assam Accord is
the possibility of losing the hegemonic position of Assamese language and
culture in the state of Assam. The Assamese ruling class and the nationalist
intellectuals apprehend that the Bengalis may outnumber them numerically and
tilt the political balance in their favour. The past world history tells us
that the oral language of the plebeians could transform itself into the
language of an empire replacing the hegemonic language of the ruling class.
That’s why the Assamese intellectuals become so jittery and come down heavily
on the “Miya Poetry” which manifests a sense of subaltern rebellion against
repression. The Assamese nationalist intellectuals miss the point that
subaltern or plebeian culture is located within a particular social relation,
the polity of exploitation and resistance to it, within the relation of power,
and the material base is masked by culture. The Assamese middle class and
nationalist intellectuals are also apprehensive based on a proposition that the
Miya Plebeians or subaltern community may switch over to the Bengali linguistic
group and outnumber the Assamese linguistic identity in the state of Assam. All
these apprehensions are the constructs within an idea of static society. The
staticity of mindset of the Assamese nationalist intellectuals compels them to
live in a numerical world where everything is decided by simple arithmetic.
They do not dwell upon the changing social dynamics within which the relation
between diverse cultures is constantly defined and redefined.
The democratic alternative
The middle-class power of the Bengalis in Brahmaputra
valley to assert their linguistic identity was finally decimated in the 1960s.
The Bengalis in Assam can assert themselves only through the power of
class-consciousness of the toiling masses. This consciousness is not only
derived from the past but also moulded through praxis. The existing hegemonic
position of Assamese language and culture is not anathema to this praxis
provided this hegemony is not designed to intermittently resort to coercion and
repression of the subalterns. The language and culture take the form of a
system under compelling pressure of nationalism, religious orthodoxy or class
consciousness. The Assamese sub-nationality chose to adopt the most regressive
path of defining Axomiya or Khilonjiya in a static framework of constructing a
bounded circular space in which all the Khilonjiya groups will revolve around
the upper-caste Axomiya at the center and non-khlonjiyas in Assam will find its
place outside the circumference of the circle or an arrangement of concentric
circles. This preferential treatment to a dominant community of a state
instills a sense of alienation as second-class citizens in the minds of the
people who are thrown outside the circular space of citizenry. This static
formulation of any sub-nationality is detrimental to its own interest in
nationality building. The process of building of nationality must be a vibrant
dynamic one which always promotes wide-scale social interaction to finally lead
to its withering away for the emergence of a generalized human community. The
conscious efforts for the building of any nationality must also keep its focus
on its negation to always ensure the democratic process to emerge. The present
electoral democracy in Assam has not anyway challenged the hegemony of the
Assamese language and culture. So, the Assamese nationalist intellectuals have
nothing to be apprehensive if the guarantee for maintaining the status quo of
the linguistic character of the state can be obtained and the democracy is
ensured by recognizing multi-lingual demography of the state and the rights of
the people for education in the mother tongue. Indian federalism based on
constitutional provisions on center-state relation is now facing its worst kind of onslaught from the most reactionary centralizing force. As such, the unity of
the people of Assam is, ipso facto, the most desired goal, and the programmatic
call on the question of democracy and economy, eo ipso, can achieve this most
desired result.
