The shadow of the foreigner

While the influx issue then was a tool in the hands of youthful rebels taking on the establishment, the first salvo this time was launched by none other than the Governor of Assam, Lt. Gen. Retd. Ajai Singh. In the early 1990s he was the GOC of the 4 corps of the Indian army based in Assam and had commanded two Indian army operations against ULFA. With Operation Bajrang and Operation Rhino, says Singh in his official resume, 8220;I smashed the ULFA insurgency in less than three months, creating a record in counter-insurgency operations.8221;

In a speech prepared for a conference of governors in February of this year that had to be cancelled and widely reported in the local press, Singh described the Indo-Bangladeshi border as 8220;one of the world8217;s most fluid borders, crossed daily, border officials say, by some 6,000 Bangladeshis who come in search of work, often staying on to join the estimated 20 million illegal immigrants already in the country.8221; He expressed concern that Bangladeshi settlements in border districts could provide 8220;trans-border support for secessionist and separatist insurgency movements in our state.8221; Singh8217;s speech has had perhaps unintended resonance in Assam. A little known youth group in Dibrugarh gave a call for economic boycott of 8216;8216;Bangladeshis8217;8217; that led to hundreds of poor people fleeing the area. If the improbable actors in the drama were not enough to make this a farce, the means that the youth group chose to spread its message surely did. It sent an SMS message that read, 8220;Save nation, save identity. Let8217;s take an oath: no food, no job, no shelter to a Bangladeshi.8221; An English-language SMS as a tool for political propaganda is a far cry from the wall posters, street plays and popular music of the 1980s.

There is no risk of this farce destabilising the elected government. Chief minister Tarun Gogoi has called Governor Singh8217;s numbers 8220;baseless8221;, though one wonders how he seems so certain. The opposition AGP leadership has expressed sympathy for the action of the Dibrugarh youth group. But given its inability to act on the influx issue while in power, the AGP does not have the credibility it had two decades ago. ULFA8217;s chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa has warned that the eviction of suspected Bangladeshi illegal migrants puts indigenous Muslims at risk.

No one would argue that Assam8217;s problem with immigration 8212; legal and illegal 8212; is not real. Indian census figures read against Bangladeshi census figures make it abundantly clear that the region continues to attract immigrants from Bangladesh as well as from other parts of India. Northeast India is one of South Asia8217;s last frontiers. The Partition did not put an end to the population movement from land-scarce areas of eastern Bengal to these historically land abundant areas that began in the early part of the last century. By adding Hindu refugees to the flow, it only intensified the trend. Assam remained an attractive destination for potential settlers partly because of the government8217;s cavalier attitude to its responsibilities as custodian of public lands 8212; be it forests or the flood plains of the Brahmaputra. This has had serious costs in terms of the environment and quality of life. A compromised system of obtaining official documentation enables foreigners to become citizens.

Most suspected Bangladeshis fleeing from Dibrugarh were poor people working in building sites as well as rickshaw pullers. Random conversations with people in these occupations indicate that these days a significant number of them are seasonal migrants from other parts of India as well as from Bangladesh. They come in response to the massive labour demand in the region8217;s booming construction industry. While the discourse on Bangladeshis in Assam assumes that they are all potential settlers like earlier generations of immigrants, the reality may be more complex. The mass seasonal movement by the labouring poor in South Asia has now acquired a transnational dimension. Yet to save themselves from police and vigilante harassment, even seasonal migrants may have to seek protection in some form of official documentation claiming Indian citizenship.

Chief minister Gogoi8217;s critique of Governor Singh is an acknowledgment of the ground reality 8212; the importance of the 8216;8216;immigrant8217;8217; vote to the Congress. The same compulsions of electoral politics had led even the ethnic Assamese-centric AGP to soft-pedal the foreigners8217; issue once it entered electoral politics. Their detractors might call it vote bank politics or the power of the 8216;8216;Bangladeshi lobby8217;8217;. But one person8217;s vote bank is another person8217;s survival shield. To end the stalemate, we must begin looking for solutions that are not unlilateral, but built on cooperation with the source country. ULFA8217;s warning about the dangers of trying to evict Bangladeshis suggest that even what was once the radical fringe of the Assam movement is today sensitive to the risks of instigating vigilantism on the influx question. But unfortunately, our counter-insurgency establishment would much rather describe this position as evidence of its complicity with the Bangladeshi 8216;8216;enemy8217;8217;.

The good news is that there are trends in Assam8217;s politics today that seek to address the influx question in ways that look to the future. The bad news is that our security establishment seems bent on fighting these trends. The former Assam Governor Lt. Gen Retd. S.K. Sinha even had a word for it: he called it a psychological weapon in his counter-insurgency arsenal.

Baruah is author of 8216;Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India8217;