Tasks Before AASU

The All Assam Students' Union's four-day-long general conference that is currently underway in Dhemaji assumes significance from various angles. Though the present AASU organization is already more than 50 years of age, it definitely bears the legacy of the student movement that was launched way back in 1916 with its first convention held in Guwahati in December that year being presided over by none other than Sahityarathi Lakshminath Bezbaroa. The nomenclature of the first-ever student body in Assam was Asam Chatra Sanmilan, with Heramba Prasad Barua and Jnananath Bora serving as the first general secretary and assistant secretary of the organization. Others who presided over Asam Chatra Sanmilan's annual sessions in the first few years included Col. PRT Gurdon, Padmanath Gohain Barua, Prafulla Chandra Roy, CF Andrews, Nabin Chandra Bardoloi, Deba Prasad Sarbadhikari, Rev JJM Nichols Roy, Salauddin Khudabux, Tarun Ram Phookun, and Krishna Kanta Handiqui. This is enough indication of how important the student movement has been in Assam since its initial years. While several other student organizations were constituted in Assam in the subsequent decades, it is the All Assam Students' Union constituted in August 1966 that has emerged as the most powerful and influential one in the long run. While the history of Assam's student movement itself is a subject worth deep research – a few scholars have in fact done research on different aspects of student movements in Assam – the present AASU has been playing a very crucial role in focusing on various burning issues facing the State. It came into prominence since the movement for the medium of instruction in 1972, in which as many as five students attained martyrdom. In the cases of Muzzamil Haque and Anil Bora, those were gruesome murders that a section opposed to making Assamese the main medium of instruction in the State had committed, with some people of Mangaldoi and Nagaon even reportedly knowing the names of the culprits. It was, however, the issue of large-scale infiltration from erstwhile East Pakistan and present Bangladesh that catapulted the AASU to the center-stage of public life in Assam, with its leaders often being considered even more powerful and influential than chief ministers. Had it not been for the AASU's leadership that pointed out this massive influx, Assam would have by now become a Bengali-Muslim majority State, with the indigenous Assamese and other communities reduced to a minuscule minority. The dangers of influx continue to loom large even after signing of the Assam Accord back in 1985, with the recently published National Register of Citizens (NRC) proving that there are several lakh illegal migrants in the State. While a section of people in Assam – including a few Assamese individuals – want to claim there has been no such dangerous and large-scale infiltration, the Nehru-Bardoloi correspondences as documented by Prof. Nirode Kumar Barua, the several judgments passed by Supreme Court from time to time, as also statements made on the floor of Parliament by successive governments clearly establish the fact that infiltration is not just real, but is akin to a silent invasion of India's Northeast. While a very powerful lobby has been working overtime, both inside and outside the State, to dismiss the NRC and generate public opinion that there has been no infiltration, it is for the AASU to launch a vigorous yet calculated movement to counter such dangerous designs. What the AASU can probably do in the present convention – or immediately after that – is to constitute a couple of task forces with a clearly defined agenda. The first one can concentrate on the legal battle to identify illegal migrants, the second one can work on how to exert economic pressure on illegal migrants by instilling an effective work culture among the youth, and the third can look at the skill and employment aspects of youths in indigenous communities. The AASU can probably also examine co-opting members/experts nominated by various other student bodies like the All Bodo Students' Union in these task forces. And finally, the AASU should set up a strong career counseling forum so that students of the State get better guidance in the backdrop of most government institutions failing to provide it.