It was a quite significant event for the city and about 500 people attended, all with banners of their respective organizations. Significant because of the prevailing atmosphere of terror and caution in the state where for any public event indoor or outdoor the police require prior information and formal permission. While some fearless young groups have come from distant small towns to join the rally at very short notice, in some of the bigger towns the response was very cautious and almost hushed with terror.The people I had phoned about it in advance appeared quite cagey and even timid though earlier they had been enthusiastic.

Hardly a wonder since the police had arrested and jailed for a couple of months a young college girl for writing a poem on social media where there were a couple of lines about joining a revolutionary group. In another case a university professor was publicly named and threatened with consequences for commenting on the Chief Minister’s unseemly remarks on a public intellectual.(Yours truly to be specific).And a minister who is known to be close to the CM had threatened the editors of leading papers against carrying news on our rally on the first page. A well-known local liberal daily obeyed and downplayed the rally on page 5 and reduced the protest to inanities. Another mass circulation paper had it on the front page but watered down the content of the message to avoid the wrath of the authorities.

Despite this unofficial but quite menacing censorship, we have made it a practice only to send information to the police whenever we hold our meetings etc indoors or in enclosed areas and seeking permission only for processions and other demonstrations and protests etc.on public roads.

The meeting was addressed by 93 year old well-known CPI(M) leader and former General Secretary of the party Hemen Das, senior Congress leade Jatin Sarma, Munin Mahanta ex General Secretary of CPI State unit of of Assam,Jiyaur Rahman of Asom Jatiya Parishad,sitting Rajya Sabha member Ajit Bhuyan,TMC leader former Congress MP Ripun Bora, Akhil Gogoi of Raijor Dal,Manoranjan Talukdar CPI(M) MLA from Sarbhog,Bibek Das of CPI(ML),Bidyut Saikia of KMSS,Birinchi Bora,Pranab Daley, of socio-cultural groups from Nagaon and Bokakhat respectively.Moina Goswami from Mirzah,and leaders of two indigenous Muslim groups said they did not wish to speak as it was very late but they supported us to the hilt.Two women delegates spoke forcefully on the need to take the message to the villages.Senior politician Jagadish Bhuyan active in regional politics and Abdul Mannan a highly regarded minority leader and Pranab Goswami who represented a faction of AGP not happy with AGP alignment with BJP were in attendance.

These by the way are well-known people active in public life of the state. Sitanath Lahkar veteran stage artist and playwright presented a moving choric song to a folk melody,S oneswar Narah of Jeepal Sangskritik Goshthi presented a rousing protest song with his group.

Due to the number of organizations attending there were some hassles in the packed programme. The refreshments arrived too late and in rather poor shape when half of the delegates had left. But there were still about 300 delegates around.Two members from rival groups who were with the BJP sat through silently, and we left them undisturbed. Inspite of the hassles the programme was a reasonable success. Prominent TV Channels gave it good coverage somewhat tempering poor press response.

All the speakers in one voice condemned the CAA which went against the basic secular character of the Indian state by defining citizenship in terms of religious identity and posed an existential threat to the small Assamese nationality by allowing a huge influx of Bangladeshi Hindus of whom more than one crore still remain there. So far content under Sheikh Hasina’s rule they might face tremendous pressure if ever Sheikh Hasina loses power and decide to emigrate. If Mamata Banerjee sets her mind resolutely against CAA they are likely to pour into Assam and Tripura.

Metropolitan civil society groups are generally unsympathetic to the Assamese apprehensions and thoughtlessly trace them to inherent chauvinism. While some elements might be prone to chauvinism it will be most unfair to deny the Assamese a hearing. Most of the parties joining the protest can hardly be called Assamese chauvinsts! Congress and CPI(M) have been active in this movement since 2016.Now that Home Minister Amit Shah has grimly threatened to frame rules and implement it before elections, tempers are running high in Assam and BJP rulers have tightened the screw on public opinion in response.

In 2019 it had been the flare-up on this cause that had the government nearly at its wit’s end. Until the AASU the ostensible leaders of the Anti-CAA movement deliberated and planfully delayed action and let it run out of steam by wasting several months in songs, poetry recital and high-flown patriotic rhetoric by celebrated musicians and actors at a playground from morning to evening. Later all of them brazenly turned tails, joined BJP bandwagon and sang paeans of praise to Himanta Biswa Sarma. Senior AASU leaders quitletly folded up their tents and followed suit. The public stood dazed and deeply frustrated ever since sceptical of such movements.

But the resentment against CAA and BJP run deep and in private they both condemn AASU for betrayal and the BJP for this crisis and express fears at the impending crisis.But BJP’s present line is that the threat from Muslims( called Moguls to heighten alienness and threat) is much graver and the Assamese Hindus need more Bengali Hindus to unite against them!!

Himanta Biswa has been from the beginning of his term as Chief Minister railing against ‘the Moguls’ in season and out, carrying out measures designed to demonize and upset the immigrant Muslims and striking inner panic among the several lakhs of indigenous Muslims who at times capitulate to the rulers.

However now that elections are close both in Delhi and in Dispur for the present the clangor against Muslims is deliberately muted and quietly and suddenly too. There are showers of unexpected gifts and benefits on all regions where Muslims preponderance, charming even canny politicians like Farouque Abdullah and drowning suspicions. Armed sannyasis threatening to exterminate all Muslims have fallen silent on cue and Bajrang Dal has stopped their menacing parades. The massive BJP election machine is running at top gear leaving all its lesser comrades behind. BJP can adapt its tactics to the need of fast changing circumstances leaving other parties lagging. But Congress has lately shown signs of energy sewing up rifts in the alliance. One hopes it will show more adaptability and tactical skill to match BJP’s known strategy.

The adaptability and flexibility of the BJP owe a lot to its ability to play the game of power. It enters readily into a dialogue with lesser entities of the state, which is called ‘consultation’ in the Constitution and which is a vital organ of the federalism of Indian polity. Congress is so far less adept and more rigid.But it is far more serious in playing by the rules while BJP makes no bones in changing rules as it gets along, eventually ditching the rules and swallowing whole the smaller entity while Congress shows genuine respect to the other party in the dialogue. Because for BJP the end is total power which is against letter and spirit of our Constitution.

Still the reluctance to enter the game and the delay in joining it cost the nation a lot. Consider the impasse in Manipur. For decades Congress govts did not care to cast a glance at the utter lack of economic development until the main ethnic group there the Meitei took to violence and shot down or drove away many mainland Indians. Even then the response was not an attempt to start a dialogue but launch brutal military repression. One hopes readers will recall hundreds of naked Manipuri women taking to the streets with banners displaying desperate messages like ‘Indian Army rape us!’ The militancy died down but BJP pounced upon the opportunity left by vacuum and promoted chauvinistic Manipuri trends until the situation had led to massacre of the Kukis. The story was repeated in Assam, where too it gave BJP a chance to co-opt a major section of the Assamese middle-class.It happened in Punjab where the fallout of the Green Revolution leading to widespread farmer distress had been persistently ignored by Congress until it overwhelmed the latter in terrorist upsurge. It is all very well to blame the Meitei. But they had to bear the full brunt of the economic stagnation for decades. All because of a growing monologic viewpoint at the Centre. One fervently hopes the vital lesson is being learnt and digested in the parleys for seat-sharing.

What has all this to do with the meeting mentioned at length in the beginning? Quite a lot in fact.

I have had the dubious privilege of leading two-three delegations of civil society groups to New Delhi to meet the Prime Minister and the President in an effort to bring to their notice the administrative chaos, serious military atrocities unrestrained by any sound policy in Assam in the late nineties in the name of suppression of terrorism. On both the occasions we had been given a cold brush-off by the Home Ministers, but we succeeded in convincing the Prime Ministers concerned Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh and on one occasion made President Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma to stand up in alarm by showing him photographic evidence of army atrocities in Assam.(It may be added that even the top. brass of the army corps had appreciated my resolute opposition to the militant group ULFA for atrocities on its part.)

Filled with relief and exultation we held packed press conferences next day. And on both the occasions we came down with a thud to the earth the day after to find that except in The Hindu there was not even a faint trace of the press conferences! Senior journalist Kuldeep Nayar pitying called us “babes in the wood” for expecting the contrary. We learnt the lesson that even in the vaunted democracy freedom of expression had set and congealed limits. The plight of the Assamese folks did not deserve a hearing. Teach the bastards a lesson.

Only people like Kuldeep Nayar and Swami Agnivesh tried sincerely and patiently to revive the dialogue so essential to the working of federal state. The BJP which in the words of A.B.Vajpeyee had been ‘a political untouchable’ took full advantage of this deadlock and got deeply entrenched in Assamese society. One can see the results not only in the massacre at Nellie but also in the present Assam government’s dreadful crusade in words and through coercive legal measures to demonize and terrorise the ‘Miyan Muslims’.

To resume and conclude as briefly as possible, the two-pronged campaigns by corporate capital sucking up the entire financial resources of the country and fast depleting natural resources of regions, and RSS led political forces including party subverting regional politics with a view to building eventually an homogenous uniform centrally directed political organ are proceeding according to plan in the Northeast. Both aim at decimating regional identities by befriending and assimilating elements of local resistance and alienating them from their own historical lineage.

With such aims both are working overtime to make local groups oblivious of the looming dangers. First the loose unity of interest and some co-operation among is being broken up by promoting mutual exchange, alliance and co-operation completely and promoting internecine conflict as well as maniacal celebration of the native pristine culture of each of these separately. So that the grand unity of Bharatavarsh may sweep up each separately and easily. Hindi and Hindu are to be sole welding instruments.

Now we have to concentrate on the impact the new economy and ahem! the ‘reformed politics’ out to reshape the state have on lesser entities in the country. In Assam for example investments by the state and corporates are on building huge infrastructure like four and six-lane roads,bridges and tunnels under the main river, leveling hills and clearing large forests. The common man here looks on bewildered as these have little relevance to his way of life and vocation. He automatically joins the garrulous Chief Minister ,now given to issuing solemn Modi-like messages three four times a day,in cheering all this bustling enterprise as the mystic ‘Vikash’.

But tens of lakhs of former farmers and small businessmen are being recruited as idlers living on government doles as ‘beneficiaries’ without a clue to their future. Thousands of educated youths join ranks of the unemployed every year. One dreads thinking of a future when these smugly happy millions are suddenly cut off from doles and thrown out onto the streets. Their only recourse will be to sell off the last vestiges of their small property, especially in land to corporate capital and melt into the nameless precariat(a term popularized by Tomas Picketty). Clearly the aim of Corporate monopolies is to use Assam as conduit for draining the resources of the vast hinterland of Southeast Asia and investing huge finance and advanced technology in ‘developing’ that region.

The small local communities of Northeast are to be reduced to the role of paid entertainers dancing Bihu and Satriya dances and serving other touristy needs. There will after all be an enormous flux of transit passengers and salesmen. One hopes that will not include flesh trade in hapless local girls ensnared by furious commercial propaganda about beauty contests and modeling.

So much for Vikash. To sum it up in one sentence the design is to rob local citizens minus the supine camp-followers of all agency and turning them into tools. This nefarious design has worked elsewhere in the world. The other part of the nefarious design is to keep diverse regional communities continually shaken by suspicion and strife against one another promoted from the centre. The immediate objective seems to be driving the wedge between the Ahoms who have already largely become fascinated by their old and now defunct tribal rites and lore and alienated from their links with the greater Assamese society forged over centuries of co-existence and assimilation. The end in view is an Ahom State or at least an Ahom territorial region, anti-Assamese but aligned to Brahminical North Indian Hindu interests.

Already a 150 ft high satue of Lachit Barphukan,the 17th century Ahom general who had defeated a Mughal invading army and stemmed the tidal surge of that empire in the Northeast, is ready for inauguration by the Prime Minister in March. So far Lachit has been an icon for the entire freedom loving Assamese people. He now has been co-opted into the RSS pantheon using an old tried and tested formula.

Only States in the South have become aware and deeply suspicious of the homogenising design and become active against it.Only word of caution to them from my side is that their project should not stray into chauvinism, but should aim at a united fight to restore federalism.

Congress also has some hard lessons to swallow. The redeeming factor is that it is used to recognizing difference, though nowadays rather mechanically. The real solution is to energetically revive the federal state into vibrant,viable form. The demand of the hour is to abjure its dangerous hegemonic ambitions and adjust to a really progressive role. Congress workers too are to be re-educated to abandon dreams of unimaginable pelf and power and accept this progressive, creative role. To invoke Gandhi’s cosy relations with the Birlas and the Bajaz family in order to justify a renewed friendship with corporates and foreign capital will be a betrayal of people’s trust, the easiest but essentially treacherous alternative.

To wrap it up with a reversion to perception of metropolitan media posing as ‘national fora’,
the latter blithely ignores the simmering resentment of true Assamese national community in their surviving remnants(AASU and AGP having already capitulated to the saffron hegemon) against CAA. Fortunately the Opposition has this time solidly and unitedly backed the Assamese regional entity. The rally and the meeting actually sealed opposition support to this surviving bloc.

The so-called national media have always chosen to look away and obstinately paint this genuine resistance as cussed Assamese chauvinism. Unfortunately the possibility of millions of Bengali Hindus joining their ranks from across the border has kept Bengali resistance against the mother of CAA rather mute and subdued in Assam. The blackout of such news in the so-called national media,as in the section of the press mentioned in the beginning actually is a gross instance of such skewed perception and thinking.

Hiren Gohain is a political commentator

Courtesy: Counter Current

The post Assam As Epitome Of India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Five hundred years ago Francis Bacon, arguably a pioneer of what later became the European Enlightenment, had mooted the idea of four major sources of error and obstacles to clear thinking about truth.He called them idols. For instance ‘idols of the cave’ or ‘idols of the mind, on which we need not dwell at the moment. The ‘Idols of the marketplace’ with which we are concerned are words which pass for thoughts but are actually empty of any real thought. The marketplace is the place of exchange where debased coins are passed on the unwary customer and inferior goods are made to fetch a higher value than they warrant. There are plenty of such examples around us. with words in the marketplace of ideas.

Consider the festival of flags. What could it conceivably mean! We are to display, honor and worship them like never before in a heady atmosphere of pious inebriaion. But why ?Raising it is honor enough. How can repeating it or multiplying it accord it more honor? A friend says his friend who is in business is angry that he has been commanded to honor it and in chagrin he let this year pass without hoisting it for the first time in his life.

The nation’s flag stands for its freedom,self-respect and legitimate self-confidence. For fulfillment as well as its dreams. Above all it stands for the citizens’ creative potential,and by no means for mindless obedience. But when the nation becomes an impressive but inert idol shorn of those virtues,it may become an instrument of brute power and intimidation. At the dawn of freedom it was an harbinger for freedom from hunger and fear.Now it seems to carry an overtone of threat and coercion. Imperceptibly the word has changed. Flaunted too often it is drained of its original value and may be filled with other alien content,

The circumstances that have brought this change about have compelled the miscellaneous opposition to hurl the term ‘Fascist’ at the rulers. They believe they have scored off the enemy with such precision as to disorient it for some time.But the general public dismiss it as sheer name-calling. For there is little in the defiant gestures of the opposition to show that they realize the implication of a grim life and death struggle the for democracy the word invokes. Of course the use of the term is not inane. A political force has arisen after long gestation and secret nurture that can seize power to wipe out democracy. All independent institutions that could have checked its progress have been suborned. It still needs the democratic façade to cover the last lap of that route.The courts themselves sometimes appear to serve that mission and in public remarks by sitting judges outside the courts there are unexpected strange illiberal noises that mar the harmony of liberal ideas associated with law. But the opposition has been rendered complacent and careless by long habitation in an environment of liberal democracy. Their endless squabbles, sudden somersaults and stop-go efforts do not inspire faith in their unity, without which it will come a cropper. The public is not to blame if they think they are accomplices in the intrigue that has been going on right under their noses. People are busy learning the reflexes that the emerging new order requires for the commands it barks out from time to time. Unless more vigorous and less indrawn responses and initiatives from the opposition suggest a willingness to fight together till the bitter end, the public are unlikely to cross over from the sidewalks to join the march.

The opposition, it has to be said, had had too good a time. Did not they also in their time bask in power and flaunt it insolently, bend and break the norms when it suited them, though perhaps not in such a brazen, flagrant manner? Democracy is a prize whose worth one seems to sense when it is about to be lost. Liberal intellectuals and academics too, who felt nothing could ever touch them in their eagles’ nests and who looked on in serene detachment when the common man jostled and hustled for a few more rupees in their wages and raged and fumed when his  hard-won rights were ‘reformed’ into thin air,  now realize that their security had been tied to the interests of those wretched ragged crowds.

How to breathe life and vigour into those worn-out empty shells of words that are in danger of being filled with toxic brew of state-worship, communal hatred and mental slavery? The liberal ideas that once permeated the constitution and laws in a self-fulfilling manner,and now seem so empty,  had been given life by the spontaneous collective aspirations of the masses who had turned out in their millions to thwart imperialist designs. The constitution had  come riding on their shoulders. They now feel it does not protect their interests. Rather it is being used to plunder them of the fruits of their labour.

How can ideas associated with it be expected to bestow any blessings on them. Reforms are called for and executed with the courts’ benediction to rob them of their earnings and their dues, their hopes and their dreams. How can they trust such words and concepts?

But that has come about during the last thirty years and particularly in the last eight years.

Intellectuals and scribes who were couriers of those deserts and dues, rights and opportunities, hopes and dreams, had not warned them that something had been amiss. They have been cheerleaders of such reforms. And now they themselves appear at a loss,and are crying ‘Foul!’ or ‘Sold!’.A national gathering of scholars were celebrating a fruitful year of scholarship and research and someone had the temerity to remind them the security of their high-minded pursuits depended on support of the masses,and the intruder was sternly put in his place by a lady guarding the door that he had no understanding of the real business of disinterested research. Two years later she was howling to the press that her personal laptop has been seized and her study raided for making just such a disinterested remark. The spoilsport had gone on to search out links between revolutionary movements that put in place the core liberal principles in politics and government and ideas of social democracy that uphold the core of social security,and was tastelessly lampooned in verse for his pains by another stalwart.Such experiences only highlight the purist enterprise of social research devoid of concern for working people,which was bound to lead scholars to the present quandary.

Independence had promised everybody a fair deal.And within everybody there were disguised vested interests like feudal landlords,caste elites and worshippers of a congealed lifeless past.Little was done to isolate and deal with them according to their deserts.And they too had taken upon their shoulders the task of upholding,carrying forward and expounding the core values of the constitution.And quite naturally they diluted and adulterated the heritage to suit their own interests.In the process the coinage got debased and denuded of real value.

Gramsci had in the first flush of enthusiasm for workers’ soviets had led factory councils of Turin to occupy the factories.Ten to twelve years later he found himself and many of his comrades thrown into jail by fascists who had suddenly stolen upon the revolutionary scene.He spent years in pondering on the mystery in his priceless prison notes.How the Italian Resorgimento which had inspired and carried through the democratic revolution had not been thorough-going enough,and how the vital hegemony in the moral and intellectual spheres had left wide gaps,thanks to tenacious feudal survival,and how weakened the democratic current had grown in consequence.And a lot more.But for us this is of immediate relevance.That is how general currency of liberal democracy had become debased and how it has now threatened to become putty in the hands of subverters.(The End).

Hiren Gohain is a political commentator

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org

The post The New Idols of the Market Place appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Suddenly the country is abuzz with freebies.The media resounding with high-minded denunciation of them.Experts,opinion makers,op-ed writers are homing in on them.The Supreme Court is shaking its head.Now a committee of taxpayers are to decide if parties can promise freebies before elections.That too at a time when prices of gas cylinders etc are hurtling through the roof.One question continues to nag the mind:What about the freebies the ruling party has already handed out?The opposition circles are however subdued.Perhaps they feel their hope of going one better than the government in offering freebies is getting dashed.Yet they too may end up demanding a level playing field on freebies.

But why all this pother now,when only a little while ago the government itself was handing out dollops of them to cheering crowds?To find an answer one has only to look at the collapsing economies on the country’s borders.The Covid,the oil crisis and the Ukraine war have put them under severe strain and ham-handed handling of the strain have built up pressures until they have nearly broken down.Their governments failed to respond appropriately to the crisis and their ineptitude aggravated it.Though our government is reluctant to admit it, its cavalier attitude to the economy seems to bring on dangerously similar consequences.Neo-liberal economies are difficult to turn around,as they depend on mysterious market forces while the state just monitors the ups and downs.The great virtue of business that can supposedly self-correct with rational analysis fails to work at this point.

But those whose eyes are not blinkered can perceive how the state in such an economy sleepwalks into a mire with unacknowledged interventions.The magic formula of ease of doing business leads to unacknowledged freebies to big business.Tax rebates to the tune of ten lakh crores of rupees in five years(as acknowledged in parliament on August 7)had not led to any noticeable spurt in investments.What is it if not freebies,though by another name?

But no.Freebies are what you hand out to the people,not what you gift the captains of big business.The same goes for the debt defaults on banks  turned into NPAs,thrice as much in amount.What you mark down for curtailment and elimination are the doles to the cussed lazy and unproductive plebs.The SC had on earlier occasions refused to interfere with policies,but are freebies not also policies?Even in countries with blazing capitalist banners there are subsidies and ‘incentives’ and food stamps during grave economic crisis.Since wise heads have decided that our blessed country is  immune to such crisis,it is therefore fair enough to let prices of essential goods soar and come down with a heavy hand on freebies.And hands off policies!

But when the freebies ARE ingredients of policies designed to protect people from starvation and want and alleviate poverty,is there any point in condemning them because they are not market-driven or not solely designed to benefit the wealthy?

Suppose the same imp  returns to power by casting black magic on the adversaries,as is the roaring practice now?Safe for another five years will it be legally entitled to roll back the flagship MGNREGA scheme?Bharat Dogra in his invaluable article some two or three issues back,shows the government under its spell  is starting to skimp funds for it,in latest move by some 30 p.c.Only fear of massive upsurge all over the country might deter it.But who knows?If they are mesmerized into  feeling securely entrenched,they could be ready for a bloody showdown.All one can say is,‘God forbid.’

But should MGNREGA have been the albatross around the government’s neck?Back in late nineteen sixties,American economist Robert Heilbroner,no fan of socialism or Mao,had admiringly noted that poor Chinese peasants had built massive infrastructure for an agricultural revolution with very basic tools and human labour and it would bear fruit in the next decade.His words proved prophetic and right through the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution it raised the Chinese economy to a higher level for take-off to a higher stage of growth.Why cannot the MGNREGA be  put to the same use and purpose?

Especially for planned water management and storage purposes with embankments,tanks,canals with a judicious mixture of local knowledge,civil engineering and environmental science?

It will then no longer be a tainted freebee,but a boon.

People should pay more attention to such possibilities in stead of blindly follow the inhuman maxims of neo-liberal economics.The money spent on them,not as naked bribes for votes,could also be spent in such a way as to enable the common man to produce more for himself and the country.The rebates on electricity in these days of high prices and meagre wages could not only brighten their lives,but also could be in exchange for rotator community service,again properly planned by grassroots activists.Neo liberal economics always ellides the human factor and turns the economy into a Fate. It is still possible to put people back into the scene as active voluntary agents,at least to some extent.As long as the logic of the masters is not allowed to control everything.

A friend from the countryside has complained that every family of small farmers in the state is getting free rice up to  60 or  70 kgs.This is the free gift of the BJP government,and farming being more than the price of rice in the market here,these lakhs of small farmers no longer work on their farms nor engage in any other productive work.As a family does not need so much rice they sell the excess amount for other necessaries,and as a result they are losing their working skills as well as willingness to work.When the Congress government was giving rice to such people at two-three rupees a kg,the BJP used to rend the skies with outraged protests for turning people into dependants,and now they ply the same trade with much greater fervor.Are they giving freebies or not?

The government in our country has for the better part of a decade been treating the economy like an automaton,hoping the market will correct the errors automatically.But the consequences have been unobtrusively piling up until they have  become a huge drag on the economy.And they are frantically searching for quick fix solutions,hoping there would be surgical strikes within reach.They may be disappointed,a small price for them,but the costs will  be huge and frightening for the country and the people.

If better sense prevails they would still admit their mistakes and reach out to the opposition if only to rise from the morass.

Hiren Gohain is a political commentator

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org

The post Free-wheeling remarks on freebies appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Sam Stafford

The Assam Human Rights Commission closed on March 10, 2021, the case filed by Hirak Jyoti Bora, former General Secretary, Cotton College Students’ Union, and now a member of the Assamese nationalist party AJP, against the allegedly unprovoked police firing during the night of December 12, 2019 in Assam, that had killed Sam Stafford and four other youthful protesters against the passing of CAA.

The reason given by the AHRC is that there was neither any counsel nor any complainant in its court on that day when the case came up for a verdict. When there was an appeal against the drastic decision, the AHRC on March 12, 2021, brushed it aside.

When I asked certain members of the family why they had not done anything about it for eight long months, they replied that first they were busy getting treatment for Sam’s mother who had become mentally deranged under the shock of her teenage son’s death, and secondly, they were allegedly put off by Bora’s repeated assurances that he would get things moving. Belonging to a poor family as they did, this does not sound implausible.

As to why Bora was now getting cold feet, they feel that perhaps party pressure kept Bora
undecided. The AJP was born out of the movement and people like us have from the beginning been holding that the forming of the party was actually a measure to gradually drain away the tremendous momentum the movement had gathered. Gradually the initial fury and fire of the movement had ebbed and TV screens had relegated it to the margins. Nationalism had become ‘sound bite nationalism’ and TV an effective tool for damping down the heat of any movement that may rock the boat for the state.
There is not a shred of doubt that the common people of Assam had been really aggrieved and outraged by the cynical neglect of the Centre towards Assamese sentiments which upheld both secular principles and regional misgivings on CAA.

TV coverage showed young men and women defying threats from the police and the Curfew imposed by the military in an unprecedented sign of brave, righteous popular anger. Next day too people swarmed the grounds of a venue in the heart of the city in the face of a second curfew. The AASU leaders organised day-long programmes of fiery speeches and pulsating patriotic songs. The venue was then shifted to another ground somewhat cut off from crowded streets, and the same rounds of fiery songs and thundering speeches went on.

People began to wonder about the denouement and tempers slowly cooled. Belatedly, under public pressure AASU leaders declared the five young men martyrs of the movement, visited their families, offered some support and monetary help. Grand funeral ceremonies were held and discussions on the stage turned to a ‘practical solution’.  A popular singer spoke on the stage about forming a squeaky clean and unblemished regional party and thereafter matters moved into this harmless exercise. The AJP was formed and it notoriously failed to win any seat in the 2019 election.

All this fits in with the loss of interest of such circles in the victims of police firing. Thus, they have remained in the government’s view as mere law-breakers and their martyrdom has not been officially conceded.

Hence it was vital to bring to pass an independent inquiry on the circumstances of their death and the extent of police complicity. Witnesses speak of unprovoked police firing without proper warning and persuasion. An excess of power without any doubt.

The chain of incidents also lays bare the hypocrisy and fraud of many who try to pass off as true-blue nationalists but exploit public sentiment to cozy up to those who wield power for personal gain. How else to explain the beginning in a bang and the end in a whisper?

*The author is a highly respected Assamese intellectual, a literary critic and social-scientist from Assam. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

Other pieces by Dr. Hiren Gohain:

Atrocity as Mode of Governance

The Spectre of Opposition Unity

Ethnicity and Migration: The Assam Story

The post Nativist Drama appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Ex-President Trump in his heyday used to relish use of such phrases as ‘alternate truths’, though he probably had a vague idea of alternative discourses or narratives. The conflation with truth is the crux of the matter. There is, it suggests, no such thing as truth and there is no point in searching for it. Truth, it further implies, is whatever we can make it to mean. This is just naked worship of power of the strong against the weak as they find themselves in the social arena. In our country it ranges from reckless assaults on Muslim vendors or Christian places of worship by bigoted Hindu mobs with impunity to fundamental inversion of results of painstaking research in fields like history.       

Dattatreya Hosabale, one of the top ideologues of RSS, used the occasion of the Independence Day to launch a solemn sermon on history. Though phrased in measured language, it unveiled a far-reaching project of alternative History as and when power and occasion may help to establish it. The leading theme is that “there are other histories than the current ones about the freedom movement in India.”           

He pays routine homage in passing to Gandhi as the most influential leader in the later phase of the movement for freedom, but dwells longer on the exploits of Hedgewar, Savarkar and other icons of Hindutva like Har Dayal. He invokes the contributions of Hindutva luminaries like Raj Narayan Basu for organising ‘Hindu Melas’ in Bengal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Subhas Chandra Bose is always a favourite only for the reason that he had differences with Gandhi, though he had called Gandhi ‘the father of the nation’ and had brigades on Azad Hind Fauj. After Gandhi and Nehru, Ambedkar is credited with uniting (Hindu) society, though many believe he had exposed its ugly hidden fissures. The breath-taking attempts at appropriating icons of social reform movements of modern India and the hosannahs on many who are marginal or controversial figures adopt the tone of recapitulating familiar facts. Bhagat Singh gets a mention for taking the initiative of publishing Savarkar’s book on the ‘First Indian War of Independence’ and circulating copies, but Savarkar’s own turn-about on the Hindu-Muslim unity celebrated in that book is passed over in silence. All important figures of modern Indian cultural Renaissance, from Tagore to Dada Saheb Phalke and scientists like Jagadish Bose and P.C. Ray are swept in. But not a single Muslim name is uttered even in a whisper. As though Badruddin Tayyebji, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Maulana Azad, Maulana Hazrat Mohani  had not even existed.     

But this apparent factual amnesia has an implicit ideological rationale. For early on it is implied that it is not the British alone who had robbed India of her freedom, but waves of foreign invaders who stayed on to exploit and enslave Indians. This, chimes with the reported erasure of an eminent and influential historical figure like Akbar from history courses of a curriculum recommended by the UGC. And renaming Muslim-sounding names with Sanskritised ones. 

So the freedom movement is more than a millennium old and from the nineteenth century onwards there has been a protracted struggle to regain the land and the culture for its ‘true descendants’. Facts get bent on such aspects as the real character of native kingdoms who had nominal freedom in exchange for unqualified loyalty to the British Raj. The leaders of the freedom movement had bewailed the social backwardness and prevalence of superstitions in those ‘native states’. Hosabale 

claims these preserved India’s native culture intact, whereas with two or three exceptions these had the notoriety of fossilised feudal institutions and mores. 

This casual flouting of facts is supported with evidence from ‘neglected folk memory’ and suppressed traditions. This overlooks the fact that in such sources plenty of chaff gets mixed up with the grain. This is no innocent amateur bungling but a deep-laid plot to makeover the very concepts of Indian nation and state, part of an agenda to rebuild everything from the scratch. Therefore, it should alarm everybody committed to the constitution. Further, it rejects the contribution of science to the  development of the methods of history as a discipline, and paves the way to a tidal surge of prejudice and mythology into the consciousness of a modern nation.       

Though some people might dislike it, the motor of history is social and cultural contradictions both internal and external. It is the task of history to lay them bare and throw light on their impact in forming new institutions and traditions or renovating them.

Any kind of seamless history is just a one-sided and potentially dangerous cultural retreat into obscurantism and despotism.

*The author is a highly respected Assamese intellectual, a literary critic and social-scientist from Assam. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

Other pieces by Dr. Hiren Gohain: 

Mumbo-Jumbo will Voodoo you!

The Spectre of Opposition Unity

The UAPA noose

The riddle of ‘Elected Autocracy’

Riddle of Assam elections 

The post Alternative History appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Five hundred years ago, Francis Bacon wrote in his pithy way, “Revenge is a kind of wild justice.” Surely it gets wilder if you stretch your vendetta to a thousand years past. This is what we can conclude from what our External Affairs Minister said in a colloquium to a fairly bland remark of Anthony Blinken, US secretary of state.

S Jaishankar, who had been a veteran at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) before formally joining the BJP, and then getting appointment as the Minister of that department, seems to be using an argument that has become common enough in the West today. Teresa May, who had served as the British Prime Minister before Boris Johnson, had apologised for the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, Australian parliament made an elaborate show of respect for aboriginal culture recently. These did not cost much. But following the change of attitude of official America to native Americans (the ‘savages’ of once highly popular film genre ‘Westerns’), various indigenous tribes of America have successfully sued the federal and state governments for cash compensation and restoration of some territory for wrongs inflicted on them in the past. Mass graves of indigenous children snatched away from their families have now been revealed provoking widespread outrage. There is similar tendering of apologies for slavery to descendants of slaves.

Jaishankar had in the same vein replied to Blinken’s mild hint about offences against human rights with a sombre pledge to “correct historical wrongs”.

What kind of wrongs are implied here? Not to beat about the bush, these seem to be the plethora of allegations by the militant Hindu right against Muslim rulers, like destroying temples, butchering of holy cattle for beef, invading and occupying Hindu kingdoms, forced conversion of people to Islam, molesting and raping Hindu women, imposing the Jizya tax on Hindus and so on. Rulers apart, even ordinary Muslims are said to have been complicit.

This is like saying that Norman invaders or their descendants must now pay for the injuries and oppression they had inflicted on Anglo-Saxons. Or that people of Greek origin in Turkey today must receive compensation today for conversion to Isla.m Unlike the descendants of African slaves in America, or native Americans, the Saxons and the Normans are now part of the British people. Indian Muslims do not quite fit into the scheme, but they are at least strikingly different from other Muslim nations of the world and a lot closer to Hindus in language, culture and manners by and large. So, attempts to correct ‘historical wrongs’ or impose restitutions on Indian Muslims make no sense. (The quest of Pakistan to seek a pristine Muslim nationhood has foundered on this rock, and barely subsists on Islamic fanaticism.)

There are thousands of Hindu temples, some with undiminished grandeur, that stand tall and erect after the alleged ‘thousand years of bondage’. Hindus vastly outnumber Muslims in India. Most importantly, the Indian Muslims are in general in the bottom rungs of poverty and various deprivations. Those in government employment account for well below 10 p.c. of the total number. What kind of compensation can be extorted from them, and what kind of penance be imposed on them for their supposed crimes centuries ago? Generally, compensation and repentance are expected of races or nations who have gained from such historical wrongs. Indian Muslims do not appear to have gained much, if at all.

Rationally speaking those sections of Indians who do seem to have suffered from centuries of social oppression and cruel discriminations are the untouchables and certain scheduled castes. Atrocities on Dalits get reported by the media from time to time even today. Aspiring meritorious Dalits like Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi have been driven to suicide. So, if historical wrongs need urgent correction today, it is those of hoary vintage inflicted on Dalits. Very little is being done about it. The few measures of affirmative action directed by the Constitution have come under a process of deliberate evisceration.

A major project is that of reconstructing history to salve the alleged Hindu wounds. Already Akbar the Great has been given the boot from the Indian History syllabus, leaving a huge gap in the text and making subsequent periods less comprehensible. What’s more, throughout the Mughal rule staunchly Hindu Rajput kings like Rajah Man Singh, Rajah Jai Singh and Raja Jaswant Singh had no compunction in serving them as ranking generals in their armies. Rana Pratap and Shivaji on the other hand, had Muslim generals of Pathan descent in their armies. Hence delivering justice via rewriting history turns out to be so messy as to reduce it to babble.

What the project will do however is to forever divide the nation against itself and kindle criminal offences petty and big to keep things forever on the boil so as to render social peace untenable and pursuit of happiness a delusion. (During typing these articles on my android mobile I can often hear the telltale humming sound that indicates digital recording by the usual suspects. They actually need not bother as these are meant for circulation and publication.)

*The author is a highly respected Assamese intellectual, a literary critic and social-scientist from Assam. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

Other pieces by Dr. Hiren Gohain: 

Mumbo-Jumbo will Voodoo you! 

The Spectre of Opposition Unity 

The UAPA noose 

The riddle of ‘Elected Autocracy’ 

Riddle of Assam elections 

The post Dire lessons from history appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Most people in India do not know that the majority of the states in Northeast India were once part of the undivided province of Assam during British colonial rule. Several of them also happen to be in the most earth-quake prone zone (zone 5) of the world. But the gruesome recent violence at Assam-Mizo border also forces us to recognise the region as politically quite unstable too. This however is not a natural phenomenon, but a legacy of long-lasting colonial manipulation of geography, ethnography and demography in the interest of the British colonial power. Does the successor government follow the same track, only deepening divisions and raising the level of damage to indigenes?       

States like Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Mizoram were districts in the province then and were respectively called Naga Hills, Khasi &Jaintia Hills, Garo Hills and Lushai Hills. They were mostly inhabited by hill tribes, with each district dominated by one major tribe but there were smaller tribes too in them. There were rules in place to strictly control travel and migration as well as interaction with people of the plains, (e.g. the Inner Line Permit) though traditionally the tribes periodically have been meeting people of the plains in designated trade fairs in the vague border areas. Because these were districts and the hill tribes had little interest in affairs of the plains, the borders were not sensitive. The British drew the borders, and changed them several times according to their purely administrative and military convenience.           

But unremarked by anyone, things were changing both in the plains and, a little slowly, even in the hills. Under the impact of the two World Wars, the freedom movement in the plains, (it had reached the Zeliyang Nagas in the south-eastern part of the Naga Hills district, but none of the other numerous Naga groups), spread of Christianity as well as modern roads and transport, rudimentary education and health-care, the hill tribes were awakening to a new sense of identity built on traditional bases of inclusion and exclusion, but also aspiring for development into some sort of a united modern communities with their own political agendas. But they were deeply suspicious of the plainsmen who might dominate them unless checked in time.         

This kind of incipient ethno-nationalism felt safer within the ambit of the British empire than in a unity with the plains. Arguably, this too was not a natural development but a consequence of longstanding British colonial policy adapting and guiding such changes to suit imperial mercantile, military and political interests. At the same time, the Assamese nationality of the plains which for historical reasons had travelled farther down the road, unconsciously cherished a hope of integrating these heterogenous tribes under its own umbrella, an ambition that had a touch of arrogance as well as insensitivity which rubbed conscious tribals the wrong way.         

The British officials too were reluctant to sever relationships with the tribes under their protection, and a section of the top officials in the administration of the province made plans to separate these areas from India after independence and maintain them as a ‘Crown Colony’. The plans were meticulously prepared by an Oxford professor. But World War II had broken, the back of the empire and the authorities in London had no stomach for these imperial adventures.         

Independence of India found many of the tribes confronting a new set of conditions that were now to preside over their destinies. A few of them had come closer to the freedom movement and their leaders like Reverend J.J.M.Nichols Roy played a significant part in drafting the Indian Constitution, especially the chapter on the 6th Schedule. 

While the tribes were not yet in a position to claim statehoods, they bargained for some sort of autonomy and had to be content with such rules that left the state government in possession of power to take major decisions. For example, the budget of areas under the 6th Schedule was prepared by the state governments, and the autonomous councils had control over land, forests and primary education.            

These modest gains left them quite content for some time, and they tried to live with the increasingly domineering Assamese in peace. Probably the Centre allowed the Assamese some space to try out their experiment, but it flopped thanks to cultural arrogance. However, the Nagas demanded independence outright even then, and as is common knowledge now, fought a strenuous and uncompromising war with the Indian army to the bitter end of virtual devastation of ordinary life, horrifying casualties and losses on both sides and blood-spattered stand-still. The Mizos followed in the late sixties till the Mizoram Accord of 1986, as the Indian administration’s lack of foresight and concern brought about a grim famine in 1959. They had the support of China and the Islamist sections of the elite of Bangladesh. (However, Bangladesh has actually shown little sympathy to its own indigenous hilltribes, as borne out by the mind-boggling pogroms it had organised against the Chakmas, the Hajongs and the Garos who fled to Assam in their thousands for shelter.) There were militant groups among the Khasis and the Garos too, but they did not seem to have enjoyed mass support among their compatriots. That did not prevent them in their heyday from atrocities like burning alive two visiting college-girls from Assam in Shillong in the nineties. Nepalis who had lived in Khasi Hills for more than half a century were periodically driven out by organised Khasi students as ‘Dkhars’ (outsiders). However, moderate groups who preferred some sort of a modus vivendi with the government of India have come to prevail politically by now in the hill-states. But they too come to terms with militants or former militants at some cost to their own exercise of power. For example, the Naga militants openly levy taxes on all outsiders in government employment and trade in Nagaland. This may also be some degraded form of assertion of pre-eminence in their own land.       

So, the presence of militants is a major factor in these states, and politicians of ruling parties use them to overawe their opponents and stake the claims of their power against outsiders and neighbouring states.         

It must be added at this juncture that the award of sumptuous scholarships for education and reservation in jobs for Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution, further aided by the encouragement of the Church, created within a couple of decades a class of highly educated, skilled and dynamic leadership who rebelled against plainsmen’s patronising attitude, and helped fuel the movement for separate tribal states in former districts of Assam. The final result however has been the steep rise of social inequality and oblivion of the original tribal equality and solidarity, which have been replaced by chauvinism.         

Coming back to the border problem, it is quite common for these tribes to make some sort of revanchist demands on the territory of Assam, the state out of which these states have been carved. They cite district borders as demarcated by colonial rulers at different times as proof that the borders conceding the largest territory to them had been the ‘original boundaries’ of the land of their forefathers. The simple answer to that is that the British had been least bothered by the question of the ‘original homeland’ of those tribes in demarcating district borders, but were solely guided by administrative convenience. But these are simply bargaining chips for expansion of territory. The major blame for these conflicts must be laid at the door of successive governments in Delhi who granted statehood as political bounty without caring to fix the borders. The parliament too has not bothered to raise the question. Media in Assam have often bewailed the purblind character of such carelessness, but to no avail.         

Unlike clashes between two neighbouring countries which assert their respective sovereign power and prestige, these border clashes have a much more immediate material end in sight. The hill tribes were traditionally used to a slash-and-burn type of rice cultivation conventionally called ‘Jhum’ culture. There was no need for use of the bullocks and the plough. And swathes of forests were regularly burned down to make room for ‘Jhum’, which however regained the green cover a couple of years later if left fallow. But with the increase of population there was growing pressure on, and hunger for, land. Besides affluent sections hankered after fertile land of the plains for raising crops with modern technology so as to accumulate more wealth.       

The border ‘clashes’ have been mostly one-sided with firearms used against helpless common farmers of the plains who lacked any kind of protection from their own government. It can be fairly presumed that militants who had turned lumpen (as it happened in Assam at a time) when shorn of any serious ideological purpose and end, frequently serve as the muscle for the lumpen capitalists too.           

A series of murderous attacks on dirt-poor Assamese small farmers in areas adjacent to the undecided borders has over the years left a toll of nearly two hundred dead and injured in the Nagaland-Assam border, not to speak of houses razed and cropland destroyed. The victims are poor Assamese, Bodo, Gurkha farmers and indigent tea-tribals lacking employment. 

The Assam police are no match for the ex-militants who had undergone military training and often have much better fire-power too. The worst atrocity so far was the massacre at Merapani in Golaghat district of Assam in June 1985, where forty-one people from Assam including policemen lost their lives. That the Nagaland government is somehow complicit or at least conniving, is proved by the fact that soon after such incidents it rushes to establish police outposts and administrative offices in such areas, forming subdivisions with telltale names like ‘Newland’! Even Arunachal Pradesh, home to divergent tribes, nowadays seems to follow the now familiar route. Only about ten years or so back, Assamese and Nepali villagers came under attack from armed gangs from Arunachal Pradesh in a similar territorial aggression in Shonitpur district of Assam. 51 people on the Assam side sustained grave injuries and some later succumbed. Many chose to shift to less exposed areas. However, it has got to be said that the heavily armed encroachers are usually strangers from interior areas and local neighbours of these states are often not involved in such vicious attacks.         

The incident in the Hailakandi sub-division of the Cachar district of Assam on July 26, ended in the death on the spot of six policemen from Assam, and a total of sixty-five policemen injured, including the gravely injured District Superintendent. According to the press release of the Assam Government, the members of the Assam Police had gone to enquire about a reported encroachment on Assam’s territory from the Mizoram side. The strength of the contingent indicates they were prepared for some trouble. Initially the SP from Assam engaged in discussions with the SP from Mizoram and requested him to persuade the attacking Mizo mob, and the latter went to meet the mob leaders and returned to express regret that he had failed to dissuade them. The press release went on to say that soon after, the Assam Police contingent came under a hail of bullets without any provocation. If true, this is gravely disquieting. For it means the police in Mizoram have confessed their inability to control lawless elements in their state. The merciless attack was obviously meant to teach Assam Police a lesson not to be forgotten.        

The mystery is deepened by the fact that barely two days before the incident Home Minister Amit Shah had flown in from Delhi on receipt of news of simmering inter-state border tensions and met the Chief Ministers of the region in a conclave to restore peace. Does it mean a loss of grip of the powerful Central Home Minister, or something more mysterious like a possible diversion from an even greater threat to his government? Speculations are rife, but the secret lies deeply buried along with the mystery of leaving inter-state borders undefined for decades together. A journalist friend has remarked that such tensions within the Northeast do not result in any damage to the Centre, which prefers a state of simmering tension here among member-states rather than peace and neighbourliness.

*The author is a highly respected Assamese intellectual, a literary critic and social-scientist from Assam. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

Other pieces by Dr. Hiren Gohain:  

Mumbo-Jumbo will Voodoo you! 

The Spectre of Opposition Unity 

The UAPA noose 

The riddle of ‘Elected Autocracy’ 

Riddle of Assam elections 

The post Tectonic Zone: Northeast appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In my early youth, when the sheer magic of sound, rhythm and verbal atmospherics cast a spell on you, I remember having been captivated by a now-forgotten poem by the American poet Vachel Lindsay. It used stereotypes of Africa as a land of black magic in incantatory verse to evoke a feeling of dread of unknown mysteries. Named ‘Congo’, it used the words used in the headline to this piece as a haunting refrain.           

I have a similar kind of frisson going through reports on the widespread use of the Israeli spyware Pegasus in our blessed country. First, it is hidden and clandestine. You don’t know who is targeting you and why. Secondly, you don’t know on what legal authority. Thirdly, since there is no question of your consent to this illicit snooping on your private conversations, you suspect it may ensnare you in consequences by no means intended by you… and so on.         

According to PTI reports, the Government of India has brushed it off as aimed at ‘maligning Indian democracy’. Home Minister Amit Shah has elaborated on it to remark that the international outcry about it is actually a compact between native ‘obstructors’ who oppose the government’s innocent and benevolent acts (like the three Farm Laws for instance, or arrests under UAPA), and international ‘detractors’ who publicise them.         

It sounds rather like the emerging pattern of turning victims of lynching and riots into criminals who richly deserve their fate. But that apart, there is the larger problem of security of fundamental civil rights. Has the Voodoo of national security been cast to enfeeble and erase fundamental rights?             

For the government has not denied outright that it is a party to this monstrous surveillance. The Israeli merchant of electronic snooping malware NSO has only governments as its customers. It is of course common knowledge that intelligence agencies have been used for long to trail and inform on opposition political leaders and hostile critics of the government in power. But this kind of sweeping surveillance which makes no distinction between dissent and subversion of the state, and which may very well be abused to help government undermine civil rights, is something not only larger in scale but also far more destructive in effect.         

Only a couple of years ago, honourable judges of the Supreme Court had responded to a query from the present government on record that the right to privacy is the soul, the very essence of the citizen’s inviolable dignity, the source of his fundamental rights. And here is evidence that this privacy has been grossly invaded and mutilated.             

It is imperative that the present government is called upon to throw some light on the matter and it cannot withdraw into a Sphynx-like silence. Who is behind this surveillance and why? Should not that person or those persons be investigated and booked for trampling on the bedrock of the democracy the government swears by?

The Politbureau of the CPI(M) has raised the question: who authorised this massive and deeply intrusive snooping? A most pertinent question. An online magazine has revealed that according to the law of the land phone-tapping is authorised by a high officer in the Home Department and it is vetted by a committee of senior bureaucrats. This is scandalous. For electronic surveillance goes much further and deeper than prying on conversations on the phone. If these bureaucrats happen to be pliant time-servers, or worse, adherents of some noxious ideology, the surveillance is bound to wreck the very foundation of the citizens’s privacy, dignity and rights. He becomes an unwitting cog in the designs of the government in power.

Therefore, the Parliament must go deeper into the matter, and more, the judiciary cannot sit idle. The concern about overreach into executive policy does not extend to passivity when the citizens’ fundamental rights are suborned. Law involves reason, not Voodoo.

*The author is a highly respected Assamese intellectual, a literary critic and social-scientist from Assam. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

Other pieces by Dr. Hiren Gohain: 

The Spectre of Opposition Unity 

The UAPA noose 

The riddle of ‘Elected Autocracy’ 

Riddle of Assam elections 

The post Mumbo-Jumbo will Voodoo you! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

How, or indeed why, should parties that are bitterly opposed to each other (who come election time jump at each other’s throat) are toying with the idea of coming together, is a much-discussed topic in the press today. 

First thing to say is, of course, that we live in very very different times. We are enjoined by circumstances to unite in order to defend something more fundamental and valuable than our specific party agendas. That is, the idea of and scope for a free society where political power is used to liberate individuals from inherited social and economic constraints, not only to realise their general creative potential, but also to enrich and improve the social order for betterment of life for the people.         

Parties in question are agreed on this, but apparently without clarity on the main issues. For instance, regional parties have arisen out of conviction that national parties have pursued the above-mentioned aims in ways that have imperilled regional identities. And there are parties seeking social justice that fear that particular sections of society have been left in the lurch by a kind of national development that has furthered the interests of the socially privileged. In their view, those are the immediate and vital issues. Left parties focus more on the needs and claims of the oppressed classes and believe the big national parties have turned their backs on them and worked mainly for the bourgeoisie and the feudal elements. So on and so forth.           

But the very logic and dynamic of events that have thrown them apart are now forcing on their recognition the fact that the very political order framing their differing aims is now in grave jeopardy. Recent developments in the country portend a new order that simply refuses to acknowledge their concerns. It embodies a new and radically different idea of India and threatens to bury for good the constitution that has sheltered them so far. And the added danger is that like the freedom movement of yore that brought into being the constitution, this new political vision(some might say mare)also seems to have its own  legions of soldiers ready to lay down their lives. More, they seem ready to sacrifice any number of lives other than their own.         

This recognition is not all that luminous in the minds of all. Some are so mired in their old rhetoric and passions, so entrenched in interests they have created through their chequered careers, that they are ready to split at a moment’s notice at the first suspicion of threat to those interests and passions. It will require immense patience, tenacity, and negotiating skill to bring and hold together this motley crowd.           

Well-meaning people acclaim and earnestly desire it. But the parties themselves are not so willing to shoulder the yoke. Will sheer electoral calculus deliver the results? But unless cemented by clarity of perception and firmness of purpose, the unity will remain fragile and may splinter later even after initial success, in the end, enhancing the strength of the common enemy. It has many times more resources than all opposition garnered through questionable use of state power. It has sponsored an organisation to proliferate and spread to the grassroots to support it, which works in the shades beyond the scan of the Media content to focus on political parties that by no means match its reach and ubiquity. Opposition unity is the only rational response to such a pervasive danger.         

That then is the need of the hour and not a common leader so repeatedly harped on by popular publicists.A common platform adopted together will help much more at the moment than an elusive common indisputable leader. 

And that platform has to be based on acceptance of and adherence to certain principles above the gains and losses of short-time politics. And those principles must be deeply rooted in the interests of the great and broad democratic masses who have borne the brunt of the economic and social turbulence of recent decades. Without that mooring the ‘idea of India’ is an arid and sterile concept. And this vision  is also akin to the spirit of the phrase ‘We the People’ in the Preamble to the Constitution.           

That means a reckoning with the towering presence of things that have emerged in these decades to dominate the geographic and political horizons in the country. First, the corporates which seem to be dictating many startling new policies like wholesale auction of national assets including forests and water resources. 

Second, blitzkrieg-like strikes at lingering bargaining strength of primary producers like farmers and organized labour. Third, the growth of the government like a behemoth of brute power against all conceivable freedoms of citizens. At exactly what moment did security of the nation get narrowed down to security of the government in power? And when did police start degenerating into a rag- tag band of enforcers of the will of those who wield power? And when and how did a menacing security-and-surveillance state loom into view?       

The reckoning will require honest, searching self-examination, among the entities groping for unity, on their own role through greed for heedless power and blank opportunism for the same end. They have all had a hand in weakening the foundations of democracy and paving the way for the present dreadful strength of the despotic forces.         

Had they been more circumspect in happier times, more respectful to rule of law, and more concerned with the BASIC needs of the people, things would not have come to this pass.  

The example of West Bengal may have given rise to the myth of some electoral calculus bringing about the desired result. But it is not regionalism by itself that has won this spectacular victory. Mamata Banerjee, whatever her antecedents, has rightly embraced a much larger vision than dominance in West Bengal. During the phases of the election, she had rung out an impassioned appeal for broader goals like secularism, social justice and the preservation of the constitution and multitudes of non-Bengalis had voted for her. Now, it will be difficult for her to backtrack and confine herself to pottering with the ricketty resources and the meaner trickles of power that had been her lot so far. One hopes she too will engage in that self-searching and corresponding changes in her political project.

The outcome of this national exercise for democratic forces will be portentous, as not only normal politics, but even such elementary human virtues as decency and sanity are in grave peril.

*The author is a highly respected Assamese intellectual, a literary critic and social-scientist from Assam. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

Other pieces by Dr. Hiren Gohain:  

The UAPA noose 

The riddle of ‘Elected Autocracy’ 

Riddle of Assam elections 

The post The Spectre of Opposition Unity appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It is now out in the open. There seems to be quite a lot of dissatisfaction in the higher judiciary about the burden placed on their shoulders by the rising number of UAPA cases. The phrasing of the act is so wide and sweeping, that it gives a government powers to practically put under arrest and detain anyone it finds inconvenient or an obstacle to its political aims. And the mere production of a chargesheet before the court seems to provide prima facie basis for denial of bail. Even the necessity of filing chargesheet within ninety days is waived on the ground that the crime is grave beyond imagination, and far too complex for preliminary investigation to be completed in ninety days. Further, not to speak of a real crime against the State, even a supposed intention is enough to commit the accused in the clutches of police or security agencies.           

This allows malicious prosecution, sometimes years even to produce a chargesheet. And then at last, the court has to examine a complicated and confusing morass of details spun out to a never-ending chain of guesses and hunches resting on faint footprints on shifting sands. A clear decision on the status of the evidence becomes impossible. And no wonder, rather than declaring the state biased in a matter of serious threat to national security, the court sometimes is tempted to defer the onerous task of arriving at a definite conclusion by dismissing the argument for defence as inconclusive. And hapless detainees have to spend years waiting for the long-winded trial to come to an end. And that too not because the crime itself is planned with hideous subtlety and meticulous design, but because in fact there is too little solid material to grasp firmly.         

Of late such cases have proliferated to such an extent that many members of the higher judiciary must have been worried. On the one hand, there is the citizen’s priceless birthright of freedom, and on the other, the perceived grave threat to the state. Add to it the growing chorus of serious journalists, responsible lawyers, reputed retired bureaucrats and senior police officers, eminent jurists and academics who protest bitterly against rampant abuse of law under the garb of protecting the state.       

The next serious concern expressed by honourable judges of Delhi High Court is the gross attempt to muzzle criticism and protest against policies and decisions of the incumbent government. The attempt to gag dissent and protest has led to outright suppression of liberty of life and movement. This too appears to many citizens of weight and stature as patent violation of constitutional rights. It would thus follow, that these two denials of freedom have threatened the very basis of democracy as a viable political system in India.         

It is also a fact that several such cases have been trashed and the accused given bail by judges with probity and character even in lower courts. The Supreme Court has been approached by many for a binding verdict on the constitutionality of the law both in its original and more stringent versions, and unfortunately the matter remains pending.           

The situation has undoubtedly become too unwieldy for expeditious and convincing delivery of justice. 

The honourable judges of the Delhi High Court simply took the bull by the horns and made a courageous and strenuous attempt to bring some clarity on these issues. They have strenuously examined the charges and found them violative of the principles of justice. Teesta Setalvad has given a succinct summary of their argument for the benefit of readers like us. The honourable judges have concluded that given the gravity of the allegation and the punishment it may invite it did not attract the exactitude and rigour of proper application of mind from the police. The laxity and sweeping scope of the charges and the vagueness of the charge of terrorism and the slipperiness of the evidence produced are not only improper on behalf of a state agency but disturbing portents for our democracy.         

The honourable judges were evidently compelled by a quite reasonable apprehension of a dangerous abuse of power by state agencies, just like many other eminent citizens of the country. For after all, they too are citizens of a democracy and not an authoritarian state ruled by beastly regulations.           

It is therefore something of a puzzle that while not reversing the bail order the bench of the Supreme Court that heard the appeal of the Delhi Police against the High Court order observed that it could have much wider repercussions undermining a law passed by parliament and covering a multitude of dangerous crimes against the state. That, at least, is what I make of these observations. Many such cases are under way and the HC order according to their lordships could at one stroke 

torpedo them all.That appears to have been the concern raised by the SG.         

One would like to differ in all humility. If the danger to national security is undoubtedly a matter of grave concern, so is the danger to democracy from overweening rulers who twist and bend the laws any way they choose. Or the laws are made so wide and baggy that they swallow everything rulers dislike, leaving citizens robbed of their fundamental freedom to express dissent and protest strongly against any government policy.       

The UAPA has been used, for instance, to incarcerate certain academics, lawyers and social activists who can scarcely be conceived of as engaging in monstrous conspiracies against the state. The chargesheets that are taken as prima facie basis of such vile and vicious plots basically rely on incriminating documents ferreted out by diligent police from a single laptop, documents replete with details that look bizarre and far-fetched.     

A reputed American forensic lab armed with state-of-the-art technical expertise, Arsenal Consultancy,

has categorically declared these documents fake and insinuated through a malware for a period of twenty-two months before a raid into the house of one of these accused. During an ongoing trial the NIA, which is in charge of the case now, flatly refused to accept that evidence as the Pune based National Forensic Laboratory had vouched that the documents were genuine and no malware was detected.

And there the matter rests till now.       

While the SC is expected to look into the debate and decide with acumen and wisdom, the NIA’s stand can scarcely be considered the above question. Given that Arsenal is a reputed firm with firm credentials, there is no scope for suspecting it of mala fide intentions in coming to a conclusion in its appraisal. NIA has neither produced any proof of lack of professional integrity nor adduced any serious reason for rejecting its findings except a subjective bias. At the very least the situation calls for an impartial assessment by a third expert group of equal reputation. Yet progress of the trial is stalled and those accused undergo further ordeals. There lurks in many decent observers’ minds a gnawing suspicion that it may in fact be the state which is engaged in an ominous conspiracy against democracy.

One is once again reminded of the exceptional Hollywood film, Judgment at Nuremberg, with stellar roles by Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Maximilien Schell and Judy Garland directed by the illustrious director Stanley Kramer. It films with vivid drama the trial of the most powerful German judges, some with international standing, who did not or would not use their judgment to countermand the vicious and inhuman orders infringing elementary principles of justice given by the Nazi regime and carried out by robot-like officers in Germany. True, we have not yet come to this pass. But any hesitation or lack of alertness on the part of our judiciary at this point might eventually help unleash similar terrors and cruelties on ordinary citizens of India.

*The author is a highly respected Assamese intellectual, a literary critic and social-scientist from Assam. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

Other pieces by Dr. Hiren Gohain: 

Riddle of Assam elections 

Raging storm: People as flotsam 

War imagery turned upside down!

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