Mock Concern for Clause 6

On Wednesday, the Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the setting up of a high-level committee for implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord and measures envisaged in the Memorandum of Settlement signed with the Bodo Liberation Front (BLT) in 2003 and other issues related to the Bodo community. Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, as most people will recall, envisaged that appropriate constitutional and administrative safeguards shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people. We are not aware as to how many other communities or States of the world have felt the need to have an accord with federal governments for safeguards to their identity and heritage. But we are aware that no other community or State of India has deemed it necessary to have such an agreement with the Union government for the protection, preservation and promotion of their cultural, social and linguistic identity and heritage. The need to protect, preserve and promote the identity and heritage of any community is generally deemed to be a sacred duty of the administration to be undertaken with all seriousness and sincerity. No other State of India seems to have felt the need to have a special accord in order to remind an elected government of its normal duties. In Assam, things have been somewhat different because the bureaucracy here has generally comprised a larger number of officers from outside the State rather than Assamese officers. These officers from elsewhere have often failed to evince the commitment to the welfare of the State and its people that officers belonging to the State are generally expected to have. However, the equation is not as simple as it might appear to be. Much of the failures of the government to achieve the expected development of Assam are due largely to the failures of the entire bureaucracy of the State.

The real concern about the failure of the administration to ensure the appropriate constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards stems mainly from two factors. The first is our inability to stand our ground against the machinations of other communities due to the numerical strength of the Assamese. They are small in number and have had to face competition form an ever-increasing number of people from other States settling in Assam. The spirit of competition has only now been triggered off by the dire need to survive in the face of competition in our own State. The second reason stems from a diabolical determination of the Centre to settle as many Hindus from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan as may want to come to India and to seek Indian citizenship. We all know where the largest number of expatriates will come to India and from where. The largest number will be from Bangladesh and they will all make a beeline for Assam which is nearer to their country than any other State of India barring Tripura and Bengal. The perverse decision of the Centre to ram through the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 against the wishes of the people of Assam will result in the migration of millions of Bangladeshi Hindus to Assam. This lot taken together with the Bangladeshis (mainly Muslims) who have already migrated to Assam illegally will push up the Bangladeshi migrant population of Assam to around 80 million people. This is an unbearable and unfair burden for just one State of India to bear. And this injustice is about to be foisted on the people of Assam because the Centre is thinking more of electoral advantages to the ruling party with the help of foreign nationals turned Indians than about the fate of the indigenous Indians living in Assam. As such, setting up a high-level committee for the implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord means absolutely nothing in the context of the plan hatched by the Centre to grant Indian citizenship to millions of Bangladeshi Hindus who have literally been given a welcome call to migrate to India and to put an end to Assam and the Assamese. The whole business is an unholy anti-national initiative to create a larger vote-bank with foreign migrants in order to ensure that the ruling party can be installed in power for another term without any performance to merit a return to power.