By Ananya S Guha
The violence in the BTAD areas of Assam is once again a pointer towards ethnic intolerance and generalization of beliefs. Every Muslim is an ‘immigrant’ seems to be the conviction here, and even if many of them are, does that justify such atavism and brutal murder? I wonder what Human Rights organizations will have to say about this, or for that matter the media. We cannot condone by any means broad daylight murder such as this. True there is a problem of infiltration by which the local people feel insecure, but surely the government must address it and evolve a mechanism to sort out this long standing problem out. But macabre killings like this including that of women and children cannot be justified at all, and any right thinking individual or organization must protest vocally, not simply make discordant noises, which unfortunately can add fuel to the fire.
In Assam many organizations such as child rights organizations have done introspection and have sought to make a demarcation between a political perspective and a human one. This is a just and dispassionate way of looking at things. We cannot turn a blind eye to the worst kind of genocide under the garb of illegal immigrants. The problem of illegal migrants is not not a new thing, it has been continuing for decades, and every politician utters rhetoric about looking into the vexed issue, but in turn makes political capital out of it, as part of a hidden or not so hidden agenda.
Here what happened was ostensibly a killing of an election officer, and then the inflammatory speech of a sitting MLA expressing apprehensions that the local candidate would not win the elections, because of the vote of the minorities or the illegal immigrants. Within no time there was unabated killing.
The beautiful state of Assam with its diversity, natural beauty and pluralistic cultures is once again plunged into the worst kind of conflagration. Instead of unifying the various threads of cultures and diversity prevalent in Assam, our politicians play to the gallery either denouncing viciously the presence of a Muslim population, or denying the problem of migration. Each has its own logic, one because of an animosity towards a particular religio-ethnic community, the other because of the proverbial ‘ vote bank ‘. How long will this sham and pretension go on, with ordinary people being subject to the worst kind of brutalization and killing? Immigration in a broad sense is a historical and world wide phenomena. Are not the people of America migrants, we have to see at what point cultural assimilation takes place, and that is taking place in Assam and elsewhere.
In such circumstances instead of being swayed by a rabid fanaticism, we need introspection, dispassion and compassion. But by linking hatred and venom to a political situation, the elections, we are tarnishing the human spirit and untying the umbilical chord that have linked peoples and communities for decades and years, and in other parts of the country, through centuries. That is history, but we are messing with it, and if we mess or quarrel with history, then history can take its own venomous turns. Education has failed miserably in this regard, and we are the poorer for it.
Let us for once not turn our back upon history, and the beautiful yearnings of a pan Indian culture. Let us uphold Assam’s best tradition of heritage, its nuances of multi- diversity and ethnicity. Our politicians who could have done this, and upon whom the common man always falls back upon have failed us miserably.
Also instead of pouring vitriol let us all abide by a deep seated humanism, which has marked Indian tradition for ages. For any community or ethnic group to prosper, there must be self examination and self criticism. Without this the word ‘ progress ‘ becomes totally meaningless, redundant, existing in vacuity.