By Abdul Gani, TwoCircles.net,
Guwahati: Political commentators in Assam have expressed serious concern at the increasing demands for the separate states. Accusing the government and ‘Assamese’ society at large for this, they feel most of the times history of the region has been ignored for various reasons.
Speaking during a seminar on ‘Peace Audit: Northeast’ in Guwahati experts from different fields said that it’s the time to find out the root cause to bring a permanent solution to the matter which has poised to be a major hurdle towards the development of the region.
Professor Monirul Hussain speaks during the seminar in Guwahati
“Ignoring the history by many has been a serious fault in this regard. Ever since the days of the independence, the ‘Assamese’ people have done a mistake by imposing Assamese across the state when it is a mixture of diversified people in the state. When in 1960s, Assamese was declared as state language, other tribal people including the Bodos felt neglected. And things started to happen like this,” said Monirul Hussain, professor of Political Science of Gauhati University.
He said that gradually these tribal people became more aware and started demanded for their respective tribes and communities and now separate states.
Underlining the growing communal and ethnic divide in a historical perspective Professor Hussain said that unlike the partitions of Punjab and Bengal, the partition of Assam has never been well researched and published.
“Sylhet was a part of India. We cannot ignore that. And after partition in this part, the Bengali Hindus and Muslims suffered the most while the Assamese people dominated the period unlike what happened in Punjab after partition. In Punjab, all suffered barring the religion. So, here most of the historians ignore the history,” Hussain added.
On the issue of illegal citizens of the state, he slammed the government for not trying to solve the problem seriously. “Congress never wants to solve this problem as if a section of people can be kept in uncertainty, they can be used for votes. And keeping the people in detention camps is an utter violation of human rights which was done by Hitler,” he added.
Former Assam chief secretary H N Das who was also present during the seminar which was organized by Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies and Centre for Development and Peace Studies said that village centric development should be done if the state can really witness progress rather than autonomous councils and separate states.