Protecting the indigenous

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal's call to the indigenous and ethnic communities of the state to fight against foreigners – read infiltrators and their progenies – made on Friday appears to be a well-timed one, especially in the backdrop of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) reportedly using Arabic in a banner of a recent event of the pro-immigrant party. Though Sonowal had made his appeal at a function in which the United Bodo People's Organization led by Mihineswar Basumatary merged with the BJP, apart from a few leaders of the Bodo People's Front (BPF) joining the saffron party, it was definitely targeted at the AIUDF and its proposed pre-election alliance with the Congress party. As has been reported by this newspaper as a lead front-page story in its Saturday edition, Chief Minister Sonowal has said that an invisible Mughal aggression of Assam was still going on, and it was high time the indigenous communities stood united in order to thwart such an aggression.

Sonowal, whose PIL in the Supreme Court of India had led to the landmark judgment of July 2005 scrapping the notorious Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act of 1983, has very rightfully expressed the apprehension that the very existence of the indigenous communities of Assam would be wiped out if their land, language and literature were not protected. As has been pointed out by Sonowal, the sons of the soil have already lost their land rights and majority status in many districts of the State to the immigrants and infiltrators whose population has been increasing defying all theories of multiplication. Sonowal's call is directed not just to the Assamese-speaking communities, but is also intended towards all ethnic indigenous tribal communities of the state. The people of the state will recall that the BJP and its two allies Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodo People's Front (BPF) had, during the run-up to the state Assembly elections in 2016 had raised the slogan of protecting 'jaati-maati-bheti' of the indigenous communities of the state. In fact this slogan should have been coined by the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in 1985 itself.

But then, the regional party which had captured power within less than ten weeks of its birth in 1985, failed to see the danger posed by the illegal migrants and immigrants as one posing a threat to all ethnic and indigenous communities of the state. Instead, it only spoke about the Assamese people, thus creating a gap between the non-tribal Assamese-speaking communities and the various tribal communities like Bodo, Rabha, Tiwa, Mishing, Karbi, Dimasa and so on. The Axam Xahitya Xabha, which too had contributed towards the creation of Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) too had failed to identify the problem as one threatening all the indigenous communities of Assam. Yes, there is one reason behind it, that being the continuous threat and conspiracy to outnumber the Assamese-speaking population by increasing the number of Bengali-speaking population, which was hatched almost immediately after Assam was annexed to British India in 1826. In this backdrop it is important that the BJP – which has emerged as the strongest political force in Assam and the Northeast in the past few years – take up the cudgels on behalf of all the indigenous and ethnic communities of the region to launch an effective battle against the immigrants and infiltrators having roots in erstwhile East Bengal, erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh.