By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
While a section of media––not to speak of the BJP alone––highlighted the recent violence in Assam as bloody riots between Bodo tribals and Bangladeshi migrants, who illegally infiltrated into India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, after his visit to Kokrajhar on July 28, went on to make a significant statement: “We are all Indians and we must remain united. This is not the time to make allegations and counter allegations. We all have to live together.”
Not only that he announced Rs 300 crore relief package for the survivors of the riots and payment of Rs two lakh to the next of kin of those who died and Rs 50,000 to the injured. Besides, Rs 30,000 each would be given to those whose houses were completely damaged, Rs 20,000 under Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund to those whose houses were partially damaged. He termed the large-scale ethnic riots in Assam as a “blot on the nation”.
Herein lies the crux of the matter. No Prime Minister of the country, with all the information and intelligence inputs at his disposal, would announce compensation of so much money for the infiltrators killed in his country. He would not shed tears on their killings and would not have issued a statement that “we are all Indians.” So if Manmohan Singh was there in Kokrajhar to share pain, suffering and grief caused by violence between two groups of Indians how is it that a section of media is making a sweeping generalization that the Bodos clashed with Bangladeshi migrants. Or is it that the Prime Minister of the country poorly informed about the status of the people living in Assam, the state which he has been representing in the Upper House of the Indian Parliament for over two decades.
While the BJP might have its political objective in calling all the Bengali Muslims living in Assam as Bangladeshis what is strange is that some electronic channels and print media have also been following the same line.
The problems of infiltration and smuggling are quite common all over the world. People from the country having poor economy cross over to the country with better economy; for example from Mexico to the United States. But then all such border crossing are not illegal and today there are about 17 per cent Hispanic population, also known as Latino, in the United States, who are legal citizens of that country.
In the eastern India itself a large number of Gorkhas, originally from Nepal, live in north Bengal while thousands of people of Indian origin live in Nepal and are called Madhesis. Though many of them have been living there since long yet many have crossed over after independence too.
But then the presence of illegal migrants cannot be ignored too. Such infiltration needs to be stopped, but how appropriate it would be to declare all the Bengali speaking Muslim as Bangladeshi. Since the violence took place in the western Assam bordering Bengal over 10,000 of those who fled from Kokrajhar and other riots-torn places––and a sizeable percentage were these Bengali speaking Muslims––took shelter in the adjoining districts of Bengal. If they were Bangladeshi infiltrators they should have first fled over to their own country to save their lives rather than opt to move to the neighbouring state of India.
Assam has witnessed several such ethnic violence in the last few decades yet why is it that these Bangladeshis are not going back to their own country, and are risking their lives in India.
Another big question is as to why Bengal, which has a much longer border with Bangladesh than Assam––or even for that matter Meghalaya––had hardly witnessed any such violence involving the ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’. No doubt there is much better economic opportunities for them in more industrialized Bengal than Assam.
After all there is a history of Bengali-speaking people––both Muslim and Hindu––living in Assam since long. But there is definite design to give a communal colour to the ethnic conflict in Assam.
Bodos have their own demands and have not only clashed with Bengali-speaking Muslims but with others too. For example, since mid-1990s Assam–– especially Kokrajhar and adjoining districts––has witnessed several large scale ethnic cleansing of Adivasis, who were forcibly brought to this state by the British about 150 years back from Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. These Adivasis have now no link with their roots and are in all practical purpose Assamese, yet they do not enjoy Schedule Tribe status in this state. Though several hundreds of them––Adivasis groups say thousands––were killed in large scale riots in 1996 and 1998 and lakhs of them rendered homeless and no effort was made to solve their problems. After all they were not killed by the Bangladeshi migrants.