Pogroms in Assam: the Modi effect India squeaking | Mustafa Khan

Pogroms in Assam: the Modi effect

India squeaking

Mustafa Khan

Stephen Cohen speaking at the Brookings Institution said of India: “India has not squeaked at all and squeaking wheels get the grease and India’s got to be squeaking loud. It’s got to be doing things, some risky, some dangerous, some positive.” Narendra Modi’s foreign policy will of course be of concern. The visa ban on Modi was the result of the genocide of Muslims in 2002 from which despite the clean chits issued to Modi the legal battle is still going on.

Among the three things risky and dangerous have been there before the 2014 polls started, through the polls and even post poll. The pogroms in Assam are the most portentous ones after the Muzaffarnagar’s share of the preplanned events. All on account of what phenomenon Narendra Modi has created. It is bound to have tectonic changes if Modi is to assume office as prime minister of India. India has been squeaking without the foreigners taking serious note of it except the US Commission on Religious Freedom. It did and recommended visa ban. Cohen says that once Modi is in office India may squeak “with a vengeance with the advent of a Modi foreign policy.” [1]This is undeniable because Muslims were massacred in 2002, 2013 Muzaffanagar and Assam in 2012 and the same repeated in May 2014. The last was on account of the poll which has churned out the Modi phenomenon as a presidential type of electioneering tsunami. It sucked up the highest amount of money so far spent on election by a single party. The human rights violation by the police and the militia in Gujarat and Assam and also the upsurge of the Hindutva militia be it in Muzaffarnagar or Gujarat 2002 have marred the image of India as a multiracial society. Its repercussion is there to see: the US ambassador Nancy Powell has resigned for opposing visa to Modi. Cohen has had this in mind among other things when he observed: “Modi has close relations with China, Japan, and South Korea, and bad relations with the US.” It is not Modi who had bad relation. Cohen is ironic. It the human rights violation and concern over religious freedom that is at the heart of the matter.

On Sunday May 4, 2014 the death toll in massacre of Bengali speaking Muslims in Assam rose to 34 when two more bodies were found. The atrocities on Muslims had begun in the night of May 1. They had not voted for the Bodos was the blame upon them. This was poll revenge exacted upon them under the inspiration of and by the kind of hatred Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had been pouring against the Muslims in disguise of innuendos and sarcasm and outright chicanery. They had worked up the audience into a frenzy of lusty cheering during their declamation in every rally. One such was in the night of May 4 where Modi dared the unthinkable: rubbing salt into the wounds still bleeding. Accusing the state government of Mamta Banerjee of West Bengal Modi remarked: “You are concerned about infiltrators and not your own people ... they must go back, they are robbing the youths of India of their livelihood.” [2]West Bengal has always had Bengali speaking Muslims who had lived there even before the partition of Bengal. The Bengali speaking people also had lived in Assam, too, before 1947. But owing to the agitation against immigrants in Assam the Indian Muslims of Bengali origin became aliens in the land of their birth and also choice, they were indigenous Assamese. Many had been surviving only on what they can get at the end of the day to buy food in the evening. Such penurious ones had gone to market to buy food or for work at 3.30 pm when the killers entered the hamlets and assaulted the children and women left in their huts. The recriminating campaigning of Narendra Modi against the Muslim minority everywhere including West Bengal and Assam is responsible for the plight of the Muslims.

The river had given them life but man ended their life using river as the boundary. The riverine islands grew up when the river piled up the silt at one place and then continued amassing until it rose above the water level of the river. Having been sufficiently dried up for the seeds to fertilize and the sprouts to show up and then slowly grow into bushes and the grounds to harden enough to bear the weight of man and goods is how inhabitation of the humans opened the way for community life. Man moved in such newly formed land sufficient for vegetation and for man to live, the islands slowly acquired the appearance of a human settlement where there was no need for any passport, visa or identity. Nature’s plenty was enough to supply food and fuel. The poorest had god’s kingdom come to them.

The marauders secured the banks first. The men of the Muslim settlement had left for distant places to buy provision or attend work leaving their children and women at home. The attackers took out their AK series assault rifles and sprayed death. The victims in traumatic commotion took to their heels and ran to the opposite direction for the river bank without knowing that more attackers were hiding there in bushes to finish them. In the meantime some children hid behind bushes and trees too petrified to run any more. They were chosen by fate to see what the marauders did to their mothers, sisters and brothers and the elderly. That is the story of Narayanguri.

The doorway to the splendours of nature in North East of India had become the corridor of death, murder and mayhem.

Ten of the attackers were forest rangers and five were former Bodo guerilla terrorists. They were coordinating the attack for they knew the terrain well and were in service, at least the forest guards. They were tainted with the bias against the Muslims being “the other” taking their land and jobs and making their future bleak. Modi’s ideology worked in them as rebellious against the official line that Assam included the victims as citizens as it did the Bodo tribals. Pramilla Rani Brahma was the MLA from East Kokrajhar and formerly a minister in the Tarun Gogoi government in charge of the forest land. The forest guards and the forest minister had common share in the claim that the [to use the words of Robert Frost] ‘land was theirs before they were of the land.’ Those who came later were the spoilers of the virgin forest. The obvious choice of ways to remove the outsiders was violence and terror.

Brahma was involved in the bomb blasts in the Paltan Bazar in 1992 in which 20 people lost their lives. She was arrested. But later she was released because the case was withdrawn as political expediency overruled terrorism. It was she who had said in her speech of April 30, 2014 that Muslims had not voted for Bodo People’s Front candidate Chandan Brahma and therefore there was no chance for Bodo candidate to win. Modi had already been threatening and Amit Shah was also talking of revenge for honour.

Another accused in the bomb blast of 1992 was the president of Bodoland Peoples Front Hagrama Mohilary who is also chief executive member of the Bodoland Territorial Council. It is this council that runs the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts comprising of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa, and Udaiguri. Former boss of the Bodoland Liberation Tigers which also included Thibeta of which Mohilary was the chief.

Brahma had accused that the Muslims had voted Naba Kumar Sarania who enjoys the support of ULFA which is against separate territorial rights given to Bodos.

More details of deeper political conspiracy behind the killings in Assam show that it was well in line with the policy of Modi and Shah. Both played communal card alternating with caste card to divide the society wherever it suited their need. If Modi played the caste card in UP it was aimed at BSP of Mayawati. In Assam it was a carefully thought plan to enhance the enmity between the Bodos and indigenous Assamese Muslims who speak Bengali. It came handy to the right wing Hindutva party BJP to blame them as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Their circumstances in life are so indigent that they hardly have their three meals a day let alone utensils or having identification documents. Their condition is that of existential level of the lowest strata of society. It is thus easier to play Hindutva politics of framing the Muslims as immigrants and disenfranchising them. This was done earlier in the case of the pogroms in Muzaffarnager where BJP MLA Hukum Singh said that the Muslim refugees had lost their power to vote because they had become squatters. He threatened that he would not let them vote. Another aspect of the same is “The canard of illegal "Bangladeshi" immigrants has been used primarily by the Hindu nationalist BJP as a red herring in order to leverage ethnic rivalry between Bodos and Muslims and gain political mileage.”[3]

In the same way the Bodos enjoying state patronage in share of jobs also joined in the preplanned and targeted massacre. As a victim recalls: “I guess we are attacked because of the way people voted in theLok Sabha polls this time…a majority of the non-Bodos, especially the Muslim community, has voted for non-Bodos. The attackers were fromer Bodland Liberation Tigers (BLT) rebel who had jobs in Forest Department.”[4] This is a long simmering problem and cannot be wished away. It would be incorrect to say as does Cohen that “Pogroms against Muslims in India -- I don’t think that’s going to be his [Modi’s] policy. He correctly argues in his defense that whatever we did in 2002, look what the Congress (party) did in 1984 against the Sikhs.”There is a clear difference 1984 was one momentous event albeit a pogrom against the Sikhs but not a result of any entrenched hate ideology against the Sikhs. In the case of the Muslims the hate ideology is very deep rooted and the Hindutva forces could use Sikhs against the Muslims but not vice versa.

If the west represented by US and UK speak out against the human rights violation as in Gujarat, Muzaffarnagar and Assam it would not amount to what Cohen thinks damning Hinduism for the pogroms. It would be for equity and justice. Therefore Cohen is less convincing when he says the danger to Modi: “Will be from his right and the belief, the theory that America and the United Kingdom are in a conspiracy against India trying to undercut India by being anti-Hindu.”

Much of the violence in Assam is on account of the polls. There have been more such deadly scenes. Even in the peak of the deadly attacks on Hindus by the militant Sikhs in 1984 there were daily massacres. The Akali Dal party wanted greater share in power. The editor of The Times of India, Girilal Jain wrote on March 27, 1984, a day after the Akalis withdrew their agitation: “I sincerely believe the agitation [of Akalis] is misconceived because Sikhs cannot, in my opinion, possibly have any genuine grievances.”[5] Their grievance included that they had only one member in the parliament. A fortnight ago RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras had asked the government to accept the religious demands of the Akalis. In contrast RSS and its conglomerate do not want to accept any demands of the Muslims who have of course not demanded anything in this regard. The grievance of RSS and Modi and Thackerays and the Hindu right is what the government appointed Sachar Commission has recommended and the government has agreed to implement for job reservations for all minorities and not just Muslims. Those killed in Narayanguri were the poorest of the poor.

Such penurious and also unpredictable is their life that Syeda Hameed and Gunjan Veda draw a frightening scnenario:

“Some three million people or twelve percent of the state’s [Assam’s] population live over 2, 500 islands of the Brahamaputra. Most of these are poor migrants or tribals. At last count, there were 2, 300 villages floating on the river (many chars, and, hence the villages on them, are semi-permanent). Country boats are the only means of connectivity, and these are usually dugouts pulled by oars. During the flood, people’s lives are shattered. Every year, lakhs of women, children and men become homeless and take shelter in temporary relief camps. Here they huddle together for weeks, waiting for the water levels to recede.” [6]

Given this low level of indigence the most disempowered Indians on the islands of the river/s were hapless and at the mercy of the dominant majority tribe of Bodos. The forest minister, MLA, the forest guards and others mentioned earlier were not only former surrendered rebels and terrorists accused of bomb blasts they were also empowered with jobs and resources of all kinds. The former rebels used AK assault rifles but the guards used their service guns. The slain had the bullets as silent witness to the pogroms. Yes, they were pogroms.

A high court judge hearing the pogroms case and fake encounters of 2002 and after years has gone on record saying that pogroms, holocaust and genocides are foreign terms not applicable to India. His pretension of ignorance is quite understandable because he does not cite as he should the previous such instances. As a judge he should refer. It is his duty. Holocaust deniers are not only in the west but in the south east also. To give one instance. There were the pogroms of 1979 in Jamshedpur in which 108 Muslims were killed. No Hindu was even injured. This was the finding of an official commission whose report was published in The Times of India and Indian Express on September 14, 1981. The commission was appointed by the Janta party government when there was no split in the Janta government or the party. Among other findings, nine Muslims were burnt alive in their house. In one horrible instance an ambulance carrying injured children and women was firebombed killing everyone in it. If this is not pogrom what else is this? The learned judge’s myopic vision is revelatory of how rank communalism works in the Indian polity. Cohen also must know that pogroms have always taken place and it is the RSS in particular with its affiliates has been in the forefront. Five days before the pogroms of 1979 RSS boss Balasaheb Deoras had visited Jamshedpur and had aroused the raw passion of the Hindus against the Muslims. Deoras,Modi, Pramila Rani Brahma, Hagrama Mahilary, Pravin Togadia, etc along with their lieutenants like Maya Kodnani have insistently urged Hindus to attack, kill and rape and burn Muslims. Even government officers like the deputy commissioner of Chotanagpur was involved in the pogroms of 1979, as the commission of inquiry found it. The most recent pogroms have made India squeak.

Modi cannot stop it even if he becomes PM or leader of the opposition in Parliament because it is not he but his ideological group RSS that will make India squeak. Even the Jamshedpur educational institutes were rife with the RSS cadets and leaders. It was for this that the South Virginia based Terrorism Research Centre named RSS as a terrorist organization.

Vengeance is a recurring feature of pogroms now as highlighted by Modi and Amit Shah. In Assam Modi said in Dhemaji, Assam, that the government was allowing the extermination of the endangered rhinoceros to let the illegal immigrant Muslims settle there. The audience would naturally be instigated to violence against Muslims. Shah asking the voters in western part of UP state to take revenge against those who killed the Jats is as serious as the Jats in their grand kham panchayat or assembly instigated their members to kill Muslims in order to protect Jat women! The Bodo leaders also had egged on the audience to attack Muslims who had not voted their candidate who had no chance of winning on account of the Muslims. BJP had always castigated vote bank politics ascribed to Muslims and days before the polling the Bodo leaders wanted to avenge it.

[1] http://www.rediff.com/news/report/ls-election-danger-to-modi-as-prime-minister-will-be-from-his-right-stephen-cohen/20140513.htm
Danger to Modi as prime minister 'will be from his right': Stephen Cohen

[2] http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/04/modi-assam-muslims-immigrant-congress-idINKBN0DK0FQ20140504
Modi rails against illegal immigrants after Muslim killings

[3] www.iamc.com

[4] http://www.tehelka.com/assam-violence-the-killings-never-stop-bodoland/

[5] Times of India March 27, 1984

[6] Syeda Hameed, Gunjan Veda. Beautiful Country stories from another India Harper Collins Publishers India. New Delhi (2012) p 5