No room for hooligans

The emergence of certain reactionary and hooligan elements in some districts in the name of protecting the identity of the indigenous people is not a good development. While Dispur has been trying to free large tracts of land falling under reserved forests and other government and other public institutions with the help of specific provisions of the law, what these lumpen elements are doing is only helping create confusion and mistrust among the people. It is good that the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU) and other credible students’ bodies have extended full support to the government’s eviction drives. Every organisation with a patriotic zeal, commitment to the people and respect for law ought to support the government’s move. They also have the democratic right to bring out rallies demanding eviction, but without disrupting normal life. But trying to take the law into their hands is not acceptable. It is also not proper to run vilification campaigns against certain communities. What, however, is happening in Assam is that some individuals and self-styled organizations have been trying to cause disturbance and confusion by making all kinds of unjustified noise, without knowing the ground realities and without having proper understanding of the demographic and socio-economic situations of the state. Assam is a unique multi-ethnic, multilingual state where communities are bound together by certain common aspirations. Two of the most important of these common aspirations are protection of identity and achieving upward socio-economic mobility. One must always remember that Assam has been the biggest victim of the Partition of 1947, both on the economic and demographic fronts. Moreover, it is always pertinent to keep in mind that the cyclic scourge of floods and other natural disasters has only further worsened the socio-economic situation. Decades of neglect by New Delhi, which triggered insurgency and separatist movements, have also pushed back Assam by several years. As insurgency and agitations have now become things of the past, it is for the young generation to contribute towards accelerating the pace of development. Causing disruption through hooliganism will be in nobody’s interest.