By JyotirmoyProdhani
History has a peculiar tenacity to often get repeated. In order to avoid the disasters of history it is rather prudent sometimes to reopen some pages of history itself, even if apparently of a distant land. Kashmir, quite paradoxically, faces a possible future which was the past of Assam. More importantly, if the present regime is a keen follower of history then some pages from the history book of Assam might well become extremely handy to implement some of the most pernicious and most devastating policies which, as it happened in Assam, would definitely change the face of Kashmir forever. Ironically, Kashmir might well become the second Assam.
The post Article 370 abrogation and the virtual collapse of Kashmir, quite uncannily engendered some dominant narratives that are doing the round, some might be in lighter vein but some are definitely with real intent. They are mostly around the land of Kashmir, even women as well. For the torrid imagination of the rest of ‘Bharat’ the most attractive package of this ‘Monday master stroke’ is the sudden availability of land and women for possession from a place which has been rightly mythified as the ‘Paradise on Earth’. The ominous prospective of disorientation of the ‘terra Kashmir’- the land of Kashmir- is so profound and seemingly imminent that when ‘Bharat’ is spinning on its head out of uncontrollable jubilation, the original inhabitants are gasping in mortifying silence looking vacantly at the prospect of ruthless dispossession. If it happens, can they resist this? They can, but they would be robbed of the moral ground if they try to do so, for they would be made into despicable targets of loud and deafening rhetoric slur to be branded as ‘anti nationals’, ‘anti Human Rights’, ‘anti-development’ and of course as ‘xenophobic’. Ironically, some of these terms have been randomly used by a section of the ‘enlightened intellectuals’ in a different context, for a different set of people who had to initiate acts of resistance against similar fate of dispossession. Nevertheless, given the extraordinary determination and pace to accomplish the stated objectives of the present regime, the irredeemable demographic disorientation of Kashmir and the marginalisation of the Kashmiris are almost a foregone conclusion, though one would be genuinely relieved if proven utterly wrong.
What is most likely to happen now in Kashmir, in fact, had happened in colonial Assam in the late 19th century till the years preceding India’s independence – unprecedented state engineered influx to Assam, the most devastating colonial experience of the state unlike anywhere in India. Assam during those days was an orientalised territory; exoticised and oriented as a land of lazy, indolent, worthless people; a territory of hostile geography, a place of ferocious wild animals, infested with venomous insects and disease, torturous terrains of thick dark jungles and at the same time vast, vacant, endless stretch of uncultivated fertile land and of course the seductive presence of countless luscious women. This orientalisation was so effective and complete that it had provided the unquestionable legitimacy to colonise the land. Kashmir too, perhaps, is likely to get orientalised with similar essentialist rhetoric for settler colonisation. In fact, the major image of Kashmir that has occupied the popular imagination of Bharat at present, instead of being the ‘Paradise on Earth’, is that of a wretchedly undeveloped, poor, backward, corrupt fiefdom of a couple of ‘families’ and the people of the land as largely ‘anti-nationals’, ‘pro Pakistanis’, ‘Islamists’, ‘racist’ and ‘xenophobic’ – a veritable ‘area of darkness’.
It is interesting that one East Bengal cleric and the Indian Muslim League leader, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani, who was the most active protagonist to have Assam annexed to East Pakistan after the 1940 Lahore resolution of the League for a separate Muslim homeland, considered the ‘virgin land’ of Assam like the “luscious young woman beckoning the men from the neighbourhood which the landless Bengalis could not resist”. (Saiful Islam, 2017, p 108) Almost similar prospect has obsessed the popular imagination of ‘Bharat’ – “vacant lands and fair girls of Kashmir”. The English colonial officials and leaders like Bhasani were belligerent in their arguments favouring large scale land grabbing in Assam by the East Bengal immigrants to make the land of Assam ‘productive’ and bring more ‘development’. According to them “to bring development and turn the jungles into crop producing land, the poor landless, hardworking, skilled, industrious and land hungry immigrants from the overpopulated East Bengal must be settled in the vacant lands of Assam”. It would not be a surprise if the pro development section of ‘Bharat’ speaks the same language arguing for the rampant occupation of the vacant lands of Kashmir by the ‘poor’, ‘landless’, hardworking’ ‘industrious’ people from the over populated states of the rest of India like UP and Bihar.
In 1872 the Commissioner Agent, Col. Hopkinson wrote to the Secretary of Bengal to “implant surplus Bengalis in the vacant lands of Assam”. Assam Commissioner Sir Henry Cotton was explicit about his colonial agenda when he wrote, “the millions of acres of uncultivable lands now lying waste represent millions of rupees which might be dug out of the soil, but are now allowed to lie useless like the talent wrapped in a napkin”. This is a seductive discourse for any ruling regime to justify colonising land of the colonised. There would soon be many like Bhasani and the British colonialists to put forth similar logic in the context of Kashmir replacing the relevant nouns. In fact, to such an argument the entire Bharat would jump with unbridled enthusiasm to ‘save Kashmir’ from ‘poverty’ and bring ‘development’ leading to endless inflow of people towards the valley.
The Union Government is most likely to come up with a special programme for fresh settlements like the most notorious “Grow More Food” scheme of 1940 and the equally sinister Assam Land Settlement Act of 1942 (ALS) which coincided with the Lahore Resolution for Pakistan. The notorious “Grow More Food” was devised by the Assam Prime Minister Sir Syed Saadulla and his Revenue Minister, Manowar Ali, also known as the ‘famous duo’ of that time, under which few lakhs of acres of land were thrown open for settler colonisation. (Heads of provincial governments in colonial India were called Prime Ministers) Under the ALS ACT, 1942, every landless Muslim immigrant family from East Bengal were entitled to get 30 bighas of land in Assam but no indigenous people was entitled to get even an inch of the government land under the same Act. Through this Act, barring a few, almost all the reserved and grazing fields were thrown open for grabbing by the immigrants. One would not be surprised if the vast grazing lands of Kashmir are also being encircled for similar colonisation. In 1920 a provision was adopted, the Line System, to give some protection to the land of the indigenous population but there was huge opposition by Bhasani and the Muslim League. In 1942 66 lakh 900 and 33 acres of land were allotted to the East Bengal immigrants under “Grow More Food” programme. Soon many districts became immigrant majority districts in Assam. Assam experienced what later became the fate of Tibet- the indigenous becoming homeless in their own land. In 1945 over Sir Saadulla wrote enthusiastically to Liaquat Ali Khan that “in four districts of lower Assam the Muslim population quadrupled.” (see Sanjoy Hazarika, Strangers of the Mist p58) One never knows, a similar letter of joy might also be written from Kashmir on the possible demographic overhaul in the land.
Will the same fate begin to haunt Kashmir that would turn the natives of Kashmir into unwanted ‘xenophobic’ nuisance as the settler colonisers used to consider the indigenous inhabitants of Assam to be? In that case it would not only change the geography of Kashmir but also the culture and language of the land. The way the eco system was destroyed as mere jungles during the “Grow More Food” campaign in Assam, Kashmir might also soon resemble the arid stretches of the over populated states of India in the name of “Develop Kashmir More” programme, or something similar. If such disappearance of Kashmir occurs that might well be the ‘Mission Accomplished’ for ‘Bharat’ but a great loss for ‘India’. We have lost Assam, let us preserve Kashmir.
(The author teaches at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Email [email protected])