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If the current series of massacres are any indication, Assam seems to be fast sliding into the Kashmir mode and hence needs to be tackled with a strong political will without further delay.
The governments, both at the Centre and in the State, owing to their indifference, have allowed the terrorists turned criminals to spill blood for too long a time.
What makes matters worse is ULFA's (United Liberation Front of Asom) alleged links with Pakistan's ISI, which is well entrenched in adjoining Bangladesh. It had earlier exposed its seditious tilt to Islamabad during the 1999 Kargil operations. ULFA commander-in-chief Paresh Barua's reported escape from hideouts in Bangladesh and taking shelter in the safe havens of Karachi has confirmed Pakistan's connivance in fanning terrorist activity in the North East.
The intelligence agencies are not off mark in their assessment that ULFA is involved in proxy killing on behalf of its ISI masters based just across the Indo- Bangladesh borders. The two decade long militancy in Assam is closely connected with well-organised infiltration from across Bangladesh, which shares long porous borders with the State. Our eastern borders are not fenced on the lines of Indo-Pak borders on the western sector. Since security check posts are few and far apart, it is quite easy for thousands of foreign nationals to walk into the Indian territory, where their already well-settled compatriots help them to start life anew in a foreign land. This has resulted in significant demographic alteration in the region which needs to be noted with concern.
Though the anti-foreigners movement of the early eighties launched by the AASU (All Assam Students' Union) was basically against the Bangladeshi intruders to begin with, it also had some covert undercurrent against all outsiders settled in the state. ULFA's latest killing spree aimed at Hindi-speaking settlers of Bihari and Marwari communities is the manifestation of this feeling harboured especially by a few stray chauvinistic elements in the State. Most of these Indian citizens have been living in Assam for several generations and form inalienable part of the region's social and economic milieu. Their contribution to the State's economic well- being cannot be wished away. But it is jingoistic sentiments against them which seem to have been exploited by ULFA as demonstrated by the latest series of ethnic cleansing of "outsiders."
For more than a century, Assam has been the haven for migrants. In the closing decades of the 19th century, British rulers brought thousands of labourers from the tribal belt of Orissa and Bihar to work in tea estates in the Brahmputra valley. Many enterprising Marwaris and thousands of poor Biharis followed them as traders and low-paid menial workers. Along with them also came in large numbers Muslim migrants, mainly agriculturists from the then East Bengal.
It is these people who still continue to pour in large numbers till today and what rings the alarm bells is the sudden transformation of Assam's districts bordering Bangladesh into Muslim majority regions. If this influx is not checked forthwith, the natives of the Brahmaputra valley, a few years hence, may find themselves in similar plight which the Kashmiri Pandits are presently undergoing in the Vale of Kashmir. The ISI seems to be working on the strategy of balkanising India, through this perennial exodus from Bangladesh.
The objective appears to be to create ripe conditions for carving out a new country in the region which will be sympathetic to Pakistan. It is very likely that hordes of aliens, whose number runs in millions after having altered the demographic balance of the State, are conniving with ULFA terrorist cadres to create fear psychosis amongst the settlers from other Indian states.
Increasing number of Bangladeshi intruders are trying to grab the low level employment opportunities by dislodging Biharis from professions like tilling lands, selling fish and vegetables, and pushing carts. The latest incidents of mayhem proves that a joint conspiracy of the ISI and ULFA is at work to divide the society with the aim of driving out non-locals from Assam. Many people from Bihar who eke out a living in the countryside have indeed left the State.
While the authorities in Dhaka officially deny presence of millions of illegal Bangladeshis in Assam and elsewhere, any action to identify and deport these unwanted elements is condemned as ill treatment of minorities by politicians with vested interests in this slice of population as a potential vote bank. Encouraging the surplus population to migrate to India seems to be the covert Bangladeshi policy pursued in connivance with fundamentalist organisations and the ISI. This is notwithstanding a India-friendly regime being in power in Dhaka.
The gravity of the situation requires
the entire stretch of international borders with Bangladesh to be fenced;
more security check posts to be established as well. (The Union Home Ministry
is understood to have sanctioned the funds for the purpose but progress
of work is very slow.) Finally, the ongoing census can also be utilised
to identify the foreign nationals residing in the State.
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