Securing land from 'land-hungry' migrants

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has made a very significant statement on Sat urday. According to him, the recent eviction drive that was conducted at Gorukhuti in the Darrang district was the beginning of a decisive battle that the BJP-led government has launched to secure and protect the lands of the state which have been in the grip of some anti-national forces. He also very emphatically said that this battle would continue till the government made all such lands free from encroachers in all districts across the state. Though some members of the State Assembly once in a while raise the question of land encroachment in Assam, figures that the government presents do not project the actual picture. This is because no survey has been conducted to ascertain the land under encroachment. Simultaneously, the government should also identify the citizenship status of these encroachers – whether they belong to some landless ethnic and indigenous families of Assam, or are illegal migrants from East Pakistan/Bangladesh. That immigrants from erstwhile East Bengal (of pre-partition days) origin have been targeting land in Assam to occupy this part of India has been a fact since Lord Curzon had partitioned Bengal and clubbed Assam with the then newly-created Eastern Bengal in 1905. It was the British who had opened up Assam to Muslim invaders after the Assamese had successfully thwarted repeated Mughal invasions. It was also at Lord Curzon's patronage that the Muslim League was formed in Dhaka, which Saadullah – unfortunately an Assamese Muslim – had fully utilized to help land-hungry Muslims of East Bengal swarm to Assam. The present generation of Assamese, as also the contemporary historians, commentators and journalists of the country should read that part of Assam's history which speaks about how Assam has been systematically occupied by land-hungry Muslims since 1905. Very few people – and particularly the self-styled intellectuals – want to believe or accept that the demography of Assam was different before the systematic influx had begun. It was only a few days ago that the Government of Assam had conferred upon noted historian Nirod Kumar Barooah the prestigious Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi Award for National Integration. It is very timely to note that Barooah had conducted extensive research into the conflict between then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the then Assam Premier Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi over the former's attempt to arm-twist Bardoloi when the latter vehemently opposed Nehru's scheme of letting the East Bengal/Pakistan Muslim migrants settle down on the so-called 'wastelands' of the Brahmaputra. Such was the scheme of the Congress at the national level at that time that Nehru had even threatened to stop central assistance to Assam if Bardoloi continued to refuse to take the migrants. After the untimely demise of Bardoloi in 1950, his two successors Bishnuram Medhi and Bimala Prasad Chaliha too took the same stand and had earned the ire of Nehru. Medhi was removed from the Chief Minister's office mainly because of his opposition to taking in the Muslim migrants from East Bengal/Pakistan. Chaliha had singlehandedly expelled over 1.78 lakh Muslim migrants from Assam in the early 1960s until he was threatened by Nehru. In the post-Chaliha era, a host of spineless Congress leaders, instead of protecting Assam like Bardoloi, Medhi and Chaliha, took to helping the migrants settle, occupy and encroach upon government land in the state. Tribal blocks and belts were allowed to be encroached, leading to a situation where particularly Bodos and Rabhas of western Assam and Tiwas of central Assam have been practically reduced to a minority on their land. One Congress chief minister failed to ensure that the refugees of Bangladesh were sent back home after their country was liberated by the Indian Army. Another Congress chief minister had to withdraw a statement that there was 40 lakh, illegal migrants, in Assam after the Muslim lobby inside the Congress threatened to throw him out of office. About the Asom Gana Parishad the less said the better. The regional party had two opportunities to free Assam from the illegal migrants. But it missed both opportunities due to a combination of factors including lack of vision and courage and absence of a commitment towards the indigenous people in particular and the country in general. The BJP, which had come to power with the promise of protecting the 'jaati-maat-bheti' of the indigenous people has the huge task of actually doing something. Though some attempts were made during 2016-2021, that is not enough. Similarly, evicting illegal migrants from one Garukhuti is not enough. Assam needs to closely look at all sar areas, reserved forests, PGRs and VGRs, all river-banks, all wetlands and prepare a roadmap to secure every inch of land from the illegal migrants. The Supreme Court had described the migration as a silent demographic invasion of Assam which has the potential to adversely affect India's sovereignty and integrity.