A dangerous campaign

Some call them ghar-bibhishan. Going by the experience of Assam history, the more appropriate term is ‘Badan’, i.e. Badan Barphukan who invited the Burmese hordes to ravage Assam over two centuries ago. Yes, this is about a handful of Assamese people – who are presently engaged in running a campaign against the Assamese community as a whole. It has been happening particularly since the publication of the final National Register of Citizens (NRC), with these people engaging in writing all kinds of venomous propaganda not just to dismiss the very legitimacy and necessity of the NRC, but also to protect the Assamese community as uncivilized, barbaric, xenophobic and chauvinist, out to hound a section of people in the name of detecting illegal migrants. This section of Assamese people has been finding space in various digital platforms and news portals to write against their own community and trying to tell the outside world that the Assamese have been pursuing a mission to oust members of a particular community belonging to a specific religious faith. A couple of them have been trying to tell the outside world that there has been no illegal migration whatsoever to Assam from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh and that all those who have been left out of the final NRC are indeed Indian nationals belonging to a particular community. A few others have been trying to tell the outside world that the Assamese is a community of savages who have already massacred a large number of innocent people and are now out to perpetrate a fresh genocide. One such recent article written by an Assamese – who apparently is a research scholar in a university in another country – has not only described the NRC as “nothing but a mutation of the Assamese psychology of hate towards the outsider”, but has gone to the extent of writing that the “NRC psychology shares disturbing similarity with the history of Nazism whose, sympathisers, not only share similar profile with the well-wishers of NRC, but they share the hatred against racial and political minorities as well.” This ‘research scholar’ has also equated the idea of detention camps, confinement and reduced rights of people with the kind of horrible things the Nazis had done. At one place, this particular ‘research scholar’ has written about the Assamese community in the following manner – “NRC sympathizers are also captivated by a theory of scarcity, similar to how the Nazis thought of scarcity. It is certain in their minds (minds of the Assamese) that the ‘Bangladeshis’, the aliens are the primary causes of landlessness, even ecological degradation. This notion of scarcity and purity is not just in terms of material things, but perceived culturally and psychologically too.” The above is just one of many such articles and so-called analyses that a few Assamese persons – as evident from their names – have been writing in different news portals. Any educated person in Assam, irrespective of whether he is an Assamese, Bodo, Bengali or belongs to any of the several Hindi-speaking communities living in the State, can easily find how ignorant these writers are about the history of immigration and infiltration into Assam for nearly a century. This is something that needs to be looked at seriously, especially by the Supreme Court, the law-enforcing agencies and more particularly the Home department of the Government of Assam as well as the Assam Police. The All Assam Students’ Union, Asam Sahitya Sabha and other such organizations which have been playing a very crucial role in the protection of indigenous communities of Assam, should also take serious note of this dangerous vilification campaign. While criticising the defects in NRC and highlighting the plight of some individuals left out of NRC is one aspect, the kind of untruths and misconceptions that these individuals have been spreading about Assam and the Assamese people in the context of NRC can easily put at risk the life of any person from Assam living in a foreign country or traveling abroad. The role of the editors of the news portals and other digital platforms should also be brought under the scanner. None of them should be allowed to go scot-free.