Allow me to say that there is a prevailing confusion in the metropolitan press about the ethnic situation in Assam. Assamese chauvinists compound it with their folly, and Bengali chauvinists do the same with their closed minds.      

Is there such a thing as indigeneity relevant to Assam? I dare say there is. The indigenes of Assam are descendants of the inhabitants of old Assam, and that part of Barak Valley ruled by Cacharee kings before the British occupied and integrated the region with the rest of India. Assam was never a part of
the different Indian empires, from the Mauryan and the Gupta empires down to the Mughal empire. Like Nepal its culture formed part of the broad and variegated Indian culture, but socially and politically it had a different identity.       

Civil war, Burmese occupation for over two decades, and epidemics had depleted native population and the new colonial rulers allowed a huge influx of population from other parts of India to use this new acquisition to their profit. Migration was necessary to restore the economy and some sort of order. But the British were not benevolent guests. Under British patronage, migrant, by and large, forged ahead of natives, particularly owing to their better acquaintance with modern ideas and skills. But it is quite obvious that the advantage had been a product of colonial management and by no means fair competition on a level playing field.       

Modern education and the freedom movement to some extent narrowed the gap, but the unease remained. Following independence, owing to belated development and benign neglect by the central government the gap remained, as well as the sense of deprivation. Assamese chauvinism arose out of this stagnation and disempowerment, and was fuelled by patronage of different governments in Delhi. This is a dangerous shortcut, and has been used with cunning by different pan-Indian parties.

But that does not mean that the natives have been the oppressors and migrants the victims. Enlightened, democratic sections of Assam have NOT cheered on gunning down of alleged encroachers, and the BJP is today posing as the saviour of the native Assamese and stoking communal chauvinism.       

The char areas or large sandbanks, some more stable than the rest, appear on various parts of the Brahmaputra, a far bigger and more turbulent river than the Ganga, and in olden days native Assamese used to grow Ravi crops there in winter. Since the great earthquake of 1950 it has become even more
turbulent and wayward. Immigrant Muslim population was originally confined to Western Assam, but in the last few decades frequent erosions and wholesale disappearance of numerous villages in the swelling rivers have forced immigrant Muslims to come upstream and settle in chars that were left unoccupied and uncultivated in winter.      

This has caused simmering anger and heart-burning among people of native origin. It is also an unmistakable reality that there are lakhs of poor landless people among native Assamese too. BJP has predictably used this opportunity to turn the embers into a blaze.     

Consider for a moment what was the crying necessity to evict thousands of families settled in some chars for forty to fifty years in military-type operations? 

Their ringing calls are first, “free Assam’s land from foreigners” for home consumption, and “develop the land for modern agriculture”, in a disguised campaign to make hundreds of acres of land available for Indian corporates eager to poach on such land these days.       

So, the ruckus about Bengali and Muslim victims of Assamese xenophobia had better be put in clearer perspective rather than clench one’s teeth and foam in the mouth against phantom enemies. Assamese chauvinism is only a bit-player in this Armageddon.

Post script:

People who do not know the history of this region had better digest one genuine historical fact. No one in his senses can deny the secular credentials of the Communist Party of India. The Assam provincial committee of the All India Krishak Sabha, an organisation under CPI influence which had both Assamese and Bengali members, shared the indigenous people’s anxiety at the unprecedented and enormous influx of Muslim peasants from Eastern Bengal to Assam as planned and promoted by the British colonial government and the stridently communal Muslim League, and passed a resolution in its open session at the provincial conference in 1945 expressing deep concern at it.

It shows that this influx which drastically altered the population pattern of the province in just two decades and planted the seed of long-standing division and conflict had been no figment of frenzied Assamese imagination. The challenge today is to redirect the people’s ideas and energies towards peaceful reconciliation and unity.

*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

Mumbo-Jumbo will Voodoo you!

The Spectre of Opposition Unity

The UAPA noose 

The riddle of ‘Elected Autocracy’ 

Riddle of Assam elections 

The post Ethnicity and Migration: The Assam Story appeared first on SabrangIndia.

People squirm in unease when I refer to the legacy of Nazism while discussing present proponents of Hindutva. But once one sets aside quibbles, the mindset of both camps cannot fail to strike one with their remarkable likeness.

The fundamental generic unity lies in their deep discomfort with any strand of thought, culture or language that does not agree with their paradigm of nationhood. Only purity in their eyes bestows legitimacy and stature, and therefore anything indigestible to it becomes a besetting obstacle haunting their dreams. So, Hitler thought of the Final Solution. One fears, the logic of their assumptions also pushes advocates of Hindutva in the same direction.

The attempt at purification takes the form of repeated pogroms and atrocities. These are planned thoughtfully and executed with dispatch and resolve. The consequences are met with excuses and arguments thought out well ahead. The strikes are sudden, indeed ‘surgical’, as it goes in the parlance of the tribe.

Closely linked to it are such flanking attacks as on land and livelihood. Once the targets are deprived of both they lose their ability to survive.

The eviction drive in Assam at present has assumed such a character.

The immigrant Muslims of Assam have been, for the greater part of their history, a riparian population. The river has been an extremely turbulent one, especially since the great earthquake of 1950, and heedless incremental building of embankments to contain its fury have resulted in massive breaches and erosions engulfing entire villages at times. The consequence has been the unavoidable movement of victims of erosion up the river’s length to find new shelters. They have thus spread farther up North. But both, sheer ignorance of such facts and entrenched bias, have turned this migration into an ‘alien invasion’ of sorts. The previous governments just looked away, hoping that things would settle down in due course. But the present government finds in it an opportunity to sate its thirst for purity and meet the demands of its overseas allies. Incidentally, both talk peace while planning endless wars.

In the campaign for the 2016 elections, Himanta Biswa Sarma worked like a demon, both to win seats for his newly adopted party and prove his loyalty to its creed by unreservedly driving a communal campaign. It was a clash of civilizations, nothing less, that must be won putting the party in power. He has not since relented in spreading the message of imminent peril from presence of aliens.

Soon after assuming office, he called for an ‘historic’ meeting of minds with ‘Muslim intellectuals’. However, as it turned out, only Muslims of indigenous origin were invited. Some such ‘local’ Muslim leader expressed gratification at the opportunity, though the occasion was only a crafty method of acquiring some legitimacy and some sort of secular legal justification. We are not against Muslims, the message went, but we shall have no mercy against ‘illegal migrants’.

And now the real motive has been uncorked. The Chief Minister of a state may come from a party, but he is supposed to protect life and liberty of all citizens without discrimination. A Chief Minister abdicating this constitutional responsibility is behaving strangely. He has vowed to ‘free’ the land of the state from the clutches of illegal migrants, foreign infiltrators and, resoundingly, ‘from the clutches of the enemies of Assamese nationality’. He pleads that without securing the land of temples and ‘sattras’ (Vaishnav monasteries) which have been regarded as the iconic centers of Assamese culture, Assamese nationality cannot be saved from extinction. But there are many tribes in Assam who owe no loyalty to these centers, and people from lower castes were once treated with utter scorn and demeaning disrespect by many of these ‘sattras’. Besides with the progress of modern ideas of equality and the rebellion of the undertrodden, who cared more for education and dignity, many had fallen into decay and oblivion. Now there is a concerted and determined drive from above to revive both them and a religious fervour of social and spiritual servitude. Large sums are being given away to them and religious ceremonies now have open backing of the government. But these are not enough to reclaim land lost to ordinary benighted people long ago.

The time for such forcible and selective reclamation may come, but the present eviction drive is to free government land.

It has unfortunately not been a serious concern of jurisprudence in India as to who owns the land since the departure of colonial masters. The government is a transient authority, but the State does not exist above the people. And it is the people who institute and constitute the State, not authorities delegated with the power of the people. Hence why should not the people, other things being equal, have a prior claim on the land?

One hackneyed argument with the ruling camp is that those evicted are ‘illegal migrants’. How is that proved? Do their names not occur on the NRC? In fact, one reason the NRC in Assam is being put in cold storage in spite of the Supreme Court’s brusque dismissal of the newly appointed pro-saffron coordinator’s concocted complaints against it, is that the hollowness of these unfounded allegations might be exposed. (This is the basic reasons why some of us have stood by an Assam-specific NRC in the teeth of attacks, as a safeguard for all citizens including immigrant origin Muslims).

Democratic, progressive path-finders of Assamese nationality from the 19th century downwards like Bezbaroah, Jyoti Prasad, Bishnu Rabha and Bhupen Hazarika have urged upon unity as the key to the survival of the Assamese nationality, and they have specifically stressed inclusion of the ‘new Assamese’, immigrant Muslims. The spokesmen of the government have specifically excluded them from their concept.

I have long held the view that the gory excesses of the Assam Movement (1978-85) were the results of secret infiltration of saffron activists in its ranks. As a survivor of those eventful days, I seem to sense the renewal of the same distracted passions. Indeed, there are disturbing recalls in local press about the martyrdom of eleven Assamese youths in the disputed area. Actually those were unfortunate results of clashes between two communities fomented by such demented propaganda. No one talks about casualties on the other side.

The government is now talking in two voices. Perhaps because some people are not convinced of its case. On the one hand, it says it is willing to give the ousted people land elsewhere (no one knows if one can grow rice there), and on the other hand, it says they absolutely have no claim at all. Now there is the excuse that ‘ten thousand’ Muslims armed with lathis and spears (Chief Minister), ‘six thousand’ according to his close comrade Pijush Hazarika, had rushed at the police party and the police fired in self-defence. But at the time of the incident no TV channel covering it live, nor any newspaper next day carried any footage of such a huge assault. A dangerous lie blown out of all proportion; one is inclined to believe.

The trend of events in future appears to be continuation of more such eviction campaigns, which the CM has sworn by, more unrest and tension and division, and the perpetuation of an atmosphere of distrust, fear and hatred, unless the general public all over the country and the courts call a halt. In the process, the police are certain to get more brutal, as in UP, and common citizens left at the mercy of the ruling cliques. The opposition has raised strong protests, but has not called it out on one voice.

*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

Mumbo-Jumbo will Voodoo you! 

The Spectre of Opposition Unity 

The UAPA noose 

The riddle of ‘Elected Autocracy’ 

Riddle of Assam elections 

The post Final Solutions appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Even a couple of days before it, hapless Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, , or anybody outside a charmed circle, had any idea that they would be set upon by hordes of murderers and hate-filled fanatics. Secrecy and suddenness are the basic elements of such mass assaults on life and property of victims of pogroms.

Secrecy is no longer so important as there is fear and disarray among opposition groups kept apart from one another by electoral calculations even as these chances are increasingly set at naught by obvious plans to alter the very nature of the state. But suddenness, so that intended victims cannot prepare effective resistance at all levels, remains the key. Critics and opponents can only bewail and condemn after the event and these are met by pre-planned measures.

Very much like the Nazi KRISTALNACHT which inaugurated large-scale violence against Jews, the mass evictions of peasants of largely immigrant Muslim origin from supposedly government land have been planned and set in motion within a short span of time.

The scene was set by ringing declarations by the newly anointed Chief Minister of Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma that the sacred land of Assam where the cow is a sacred animal will have to be liberated from the clutches of ‘foreign encroachers’ and ‘illegal migrants’.

Little time was lost and people who thought the storm would blow over if they lay low faced its full fury.

On the September 23, at about 1:30 PM, a well-armed and large police force arrived at the Dholpur village No 3 in Sipajhar revenue circle of Darrang district in a flotilla of boats and started leveling down the thatched cottages where for the last fifty years generations of families have spent their lives. The semi-military nature of the campaign revealed that the armed police were not there simply to maintain peace. They were there in force as an assault party to help forcible eviction. Some local newspapers and channels claimed the alleged ‘Illegal migrants’ had first attacked the police party with lathis and sharp instruments, but unaccountably the TV footage missed this prized scoop and showed only stone-pelting by an enraged section of victims. Some policemen were injured but the casualty was small compared to the violence perpetrated on the evicted villagers. Two were left dead, and many gravely injured. By this time shocking details have been viral on social media. There were apparently quite a few members of ‘the general public’ among the police personnel, and they are unlikely to have been there simply to see the fun. More likely they were deputed by a civilian organisation to monitor the success of the campaign. Such monitoring seems to have become common.

The area chosen by the government is interestingly not a temporary fertile sandbank that frequently appears and disappears in the channel of the turbulent Brahmaputra, but a fairly stable well-settled village. Under previous governments its status as a stable settlement seems to have been recognised and in course of time it would have become a proper village. But the present government is determined to cancel the process and ‘free all such villages’ from ‘illegal occupation’.

There are many such villages in land under declared forests decimated by rampant tree-felling, now a heaven-sent opportunity for pauperised, indigent tribals, immigrant Muslims, tea labour without employment and poor Assamese to eke out a marginal existence. Natural calamities, heavy burden of debt and rapacious capitalist development animated by much-lauded ‘animal spirits’ have driven all of them to such straits. The day is not far off when they too might face an array of bulldozers and an armed police force to drive them out of such refuge. For the moment the plea is Hindu indigenes versus Muslim encroachers of foreign origin. This tickles some Assamese chauvinists, but they do not notice the government is not keen to hand over the land to landless Assamese. All such land is at once taken over by ‘agricultural co-operatives’ covering hundreds of bighas of land, and most probably being primed to be handed over to giant corporations eager to reap profit from agri-business. This probable scenario also helps expose the unfortunate knee-jerk reactions of some Bengali scribes who see in this the hand of Assamese chauvinism raised against Bengali victims. The roots are more far-reaching and they extend to the centres of Indian and foreign big capital allied with political Hinduism. The state has its destined role in this design, and its rapid descent from welfarism to rank oppression of working people has something to do with this ghastly incident.

There is much righteous indignation at large over an ’embedded’ photographer assaulting a prostrate man felled by a bullet, and the government has responded with equal sanctimony to the incident by booking the man. One only hopes it does not eventually dissipate in smoke like the famous case of the protester who had allegedly dishonored the country’s flag on ramparts of the Red Fort.

The latest information I have is the report of police arriving at the venue of a proposed public protest meeting in Guwahati against the bloody outrage and preventing it with the solemn declaration that at this moment they cannot allow mobilising public opinion about the evictions!

First the farmers may not protest against their eviction. Then the public is forbidden to protest against it even though the spot is not under 144.

*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 Atrocity as Mode of Governance appeared first on SabrangIndia.

With substantive politics, which has serious concern with the economy having been quietly shelved, and now being shaped by masters of global finance in the shadows, politics has steadily turned into a noisy theatre. A few decent politicians are still struggling against the current. But the pull of the current seems simply overwhelming. One is disquieted by shows like passionate protests verging on violence and copious shedding of tears, with bills being passed into laws at lightning speed. So, one wonders, what is one to make of high-flown terms such as ‘transparency’ and ‘happiness index’ and so on?

‘Transparency’ is apparently the desired manner in which governments run, ideally. Little is thus left to confuse, doubt or speculate about the functioning of the government, as though it is some machine with humans like cogs, leaving little room for human agency. What is actually at the bottom of it is a process of active participation of the people governed. It implies that any significant act of the government has the INFORMED consent of the people. That means active public consultation where there are a few knowledgeable people who might lead the debate, but the people do not follow like tame sheep. It is disturbing that some such leading lights tend to pretend to have a monopoly of knowledge of matters in which the common people have very much of a stake. The rhetoric of sacred cows does not consult, but dictates or guides under hypnotic media incantations and dazzle of money. Transparency is ruled out under such conditions. And really serious issues get thrown out the window like some rubbish. Thus the legislatures have turned into resounding echo-chambers effecting little. It is some relief that the courts seem to be waking up from a trance, but still there is a lot of literalism of the law with natural justice getting short shrift. The principle of national security has real sense, but sometimes it seems to serve as cover for much that is sick and sickening, like the Protean plea for endless incarceration for inane unprovable charges that rob victims of decades of their life.

It is this context against which we are obliged to discuss the present rule of surveillance, with junior ministers of sundry departments denying any breach of the Constitution, and heavyweights either moonlighting or maintaining a dour silence. Is this the famous transparency? When only a few brief words from responsible quarters can settle the doubts, but entire sessions of parliament end in din with the Speaker shaking his head in sad and saddening pathos. 

The farmers’ demands are simply not heard, with the government sticking to its own beguilingly benign interpretation of laws that appear menacing to lakhs of farmers, even when the whole world is appalled, and several hundred elderly and physically weak farmers succumbing to the rage of summer and winter. On the other hand, one wonders if under a vast umbrella of surveillance which ostensibly cannot be countered, certain forces are watching for a chance during a momentary inattention or distraction to detonate the solid wall of human fortitude and tenacity. Transparency to the oppressors and an enveloping policy smog for the oppressed. The traditional devices of resistance and resolution in democracy seem to have been upended, and search for alternatives goes on in utter absence of light. Are terms like transparency losing their meaning, and a vast fog of lies is covering these signposts?       

So, we do not have the choice of waiting it out. The need is for urgent and energetic political search for a practical democratic resolution with sincere participation of ALL the people.       

History, as I had remarked earlier, turns into a brutal natural force unless and until there is some genuine attempt to come to grips with it. Better people than me are engaged in it and perhaps we are not listening and spreading the message wider. 

*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 The Haziness of Transparency appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Justice must have a heart. It cannot be just an arena for legal pedantry and fireworks, though that unfortunately has been the case since the rise of Rhetoric in ancient Greece. If one does not FEEL the pain, suffering and loss an injustice causes, the outward demeanour of calm objectivity makes little sense. CJI Ramana had inspired some hope that we have left behind the long period of stony silence as the government pretended and the highest court in the land agreed that all was well as the thousands of migrant workers were trekking hundreds of miles on foot under a scorching sun without food and water. But what did we actually witness in the case of Father Stan Swamy?           

When he felt the end was near, and the grinding wheels of institutional torment would find ways of circumventing his bail plea on specious grounds, he made a direct heart-felt appeal to the bench of the High Court to let him die in peace and some dignity. I think anybody can feel the resignation and the absolute sincerity of that final and direct appeal. But the court unbelievably decided to send him back to the hospital where he breathed his last. Only one act of the court has some grace, it transferred him from a hospital where he thought he was receiving poor treatment. But, post-Covid complications have usually proved fatal. And on retrospect it is clear he knew the end was near. How did this fact not register?           

Let us come to the brass tacks. He would probably have escaped cruel fate had he not been charged and arrested under the UAPA act and exposed to Covid 19 in prison Arrests and detention under this act have been visibly bizarre and sadistic. 

People have been accused of plotting to murder the Prime Minister, no less, and organising a massive armed rebellion against the State, on the basis of digital files said to be recovered from laptops of one or two accused. Father Stan Swamy repeatedly pleaded before court that no proof was produced before the court to link him to the suggested plots except mention in those files which have now definitely come under a cloud. But no, that would not cut any ice. Why? Because the top security agency of the state was on oath saying that ‘the matters are very serious’.       

Now a leading forensic laboratory of the world has examined the files and detected use of malware to infiltrate laptops and insinuate ‘incriminating documents’. This is a firm with proven integrity and expertise. Even if the NIA refuses to consider that evidence, there is no reason why the court should not seek independent expert opinion (not one recommended by the government) on whether it is authentic. After all many cases filed by NIA have been shown to be without proof in many courts in various parts of the country. It is particularly disturbing that on the ground of pending investigation, people should have been robbed of their liberty for years. What if there are rogue elements in the agency using the cover of State security to implicate people they dislike or in their own personal or group interest? That no longer seems such an outlandish idea.           

To call a spade a spade, all the accused who are denied bail are in some way or other involved in working for tribals and also the most depressed among scheduled castes. It is also obvious that the areas in which they have been working are areas where the tribal people of various ethnic origins have in recent decades come under corporate onslaught, with the land of their ancestors and their livelihoods suddenly being snatched away from them. And the State is active in supporting corporates, and criminalising tribal resistance. 

It has long been a crying scandal. Maoists have made use of this patent oppression and injustice to mobilise tribals against it in the light of their own agenda. Since the CRPF is alleged to be assisting corporates in their ruthless assault on tribals, human rights activists who have no sympathy for or link with Maoists, have felt compelled to come to the rescue of the tribals in asserting and exercising their constitutional rights. Father Stan Swamy, for example, was involved in helping hapless exploited tribals to claim their rights under the Forest Rights Act. Since a section of the tribals have come under Maoist influence, it has been possible for state agencies to conflate the two groups in floating the idea that the two are but two sides of the same coin. If you oppose corporates and side with the tribals, the argument goes, no other proof is really necessary to raise the ghost of their involvement in Maoist sedition. The alleged computer files giving details of the nebulous plot just clinches the proof, according to the prosecution. And it is this that has caused international outrage, prompting the External Affairs ministry to issue an unusual statement that all this is just misguided blather, and that everything has been done according to laws of the land.          

Can this state of affairs be understood as normal, and can the courts not even raise an eyebrow at such a turn of events? Pray what is the meaning of justice in this context? Can the judiciary claim to be independent if they take for granted the reckless and dangerous course the executive has followed to degrade law into its cruel whims and paranoid fancies?        

One hopes the nightmare will end with the courts taking a decisive, but entirely rational, view of the chaos into which the justice system seems to be slipping. If they do not call a halt the executive will surely engulf all the powers of the state and overturn all that we understand by law, justice and democracy. It must be said that the recent reasoned verdict of the Delhi High Court granting bail to three accused detainees under UAPA act is historic, in the sense that the bench has consciously chosen to stop the slide into moral and judicial chaos. If that does not jolt the state including the courts into sanity, it may even become necessary to lay the evidence before the scrutiny of best and unquestionably neutral international legal and judicial experts for a truly just opinion on its tenability. One hopes that we shall be spared that pain and shame. 

*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 Judiciary on trial! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Political scientists are using the term ‘elected autocracy’ frequently to characterise a fairly widespread but puzzling phenomenon. A political leader who gets duly elected in a democratic electoral system but uses the power to ride roughshod over all existing norms and conventions, either to bend and twist laws or disregard the laws in place, in order to impose his will on the state and its people.

The point is if it is an accident or something in transition to something more unsettling. Powerful circles in many countries have come to regard democracy as a great hindrance in the way of fulfilling their intentions. These include powerful corporations and big finance. But they also come into close alliance with mass parties and groups holding furious anti-democratic ideologies starkly opposed to the very foundations of the democratic state. It stands to reason to conclude that such parties are interested in using the democratic system only to undermine and replace it. To put it blankly, it is a proto-fascist force that works to ruin democratic institutions and eventually install a fascist regime. For, given the dynamics of social and political life, the regime is driven to curbing more and more civil rights and throttling the press and dismantling democratic institutions. As Edmund Burke had presciently observed during his liberal phase, once force is used to suppress political dissent and opposition, there is no escape from using it more and more often.

It will be of some interest and significance to ask how such a ruling group holds on to and exercises power. Roughly, we can divide such countries into two sets:

(a) Those where such a group uses the army to suspend or eliminate all basic civil and political rights except the minimum required to carry on ordinary life. Needless to say, all political expression, discussion, not to speak of dissent and protest, are muzzled with force. At the slightest sign of unrest and disturbance, tanks roll out into the streets. No political challenge can survive in ordinary life and all opposition is driven underground. International condemnation leaves heads of such states unfazed.

Examples: Egypt, Brazil under Bolsonaro, some other Latin American and African countries, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Thailand as candidate members. It matters little that army generals alternate as political functionaries in such countries.

(b) Countries where ruling dispensations make active use of a popular support-base imbued with a given anti-democratic ideology, say like Islamism. The army is kept in reserve and public space is filled more with frenzied popular support for the regime.

Examples: Turkey with apparently fanatical support from swelling crowds on streets.

It is obvious that the background could be either aborted evolution of the state to democracy or regression from popular democracy owing to increasing poverty and misery of the common people who get disillusioned with democracy.

This is of course not a simple rectilinear advance or retreat. Democratic and anti-democratic forces are locked in a contest to seize State power with either one winning or losing out.

Where does our country fit into either of these two types?

The Constitution of the country has put in place many democratic institutions and upheld certain democratic norms and practices. There are also three quarters of a century of political struggle to uphold and expand the scope of democracy, of democratic political practice including more or less fair elections, governments that with certain exceptions have adhered to democratic norms. The struggle against the Emergency is looked back upon as a shining example of affirmation of people’s power against encroachments of a despotic government.

It is a matter of record that the advent and sweeping advance of neo-liberal economics in the policies of former third world countries have led to dissolution or abandonment of state-supported strong social security systems that ensured free or affordable education and health, and food security for the masses. It is these trends that disenchanted the distressed masses with the charter of liberal democracy. That allows the aspiring despots to suspend, weaken and dismantle its institutions and conventions. It also prompts them to bend existing checks and balances in exercise of power conferred by the Constitution and general elections.

The press comes under increasingly severe state scrutiny and censorship. Online communication also gets under routine surveillance and repression. Civil society initiatives once touted by supporters of the open market get brushed aside as bottlenecks in the progress of economic freedom. The judiciary also comes under the crushing weight of executive power. The doctrine of separation of powers is shredded by a succession of laws that extend the executive’s reach at the expense of the rest. Agencies enforcing the law start enforcing the rulers’ will. Sections of the public and the democratic parties cry foul and mobilize resistance. But they find arrayed against them hordes of blind supporters of the regime baying for blood. The question is whether and how much our country fits the slot. Readers decide for themselves.

The moment may be ripe for magisterial intervention of the judiciary. As in some historical moments in a nation’s history, it may come, never again. Never. This may not mean a lot of painstaking tinkering and repair. It goes deeper than that, calling for bold and radical decisions. There may well be laws that turn the constitution into a joke, practices that enable a complete rejection of the rule of law, crying out for redress for years and yet pending. And there is now scope for such resolute departure from meek evasion or postponement as the people get restive and bristle with anger. One feels it in the air. How will the honourable judges behave at this historic juncture? Will they watch the State tumble down the slope towards fascism in a mechanical conformity to the letter of the law or act to reverse the momentum? Justice, truth and humanity must become living realities, not fading memories. People like me may not live long enough to feel the breath of freedom turn into a healthy gust or wither under the scorching heat of an advancing desert. But there is no middle way left.

*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!

The post The riddle of ‘Elected Autocracy’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The local TV channels, the staple mental fare for many locked at home, are beaming hours of solemn oath-taking by new MLAs, and flowery praise of the new ‘dynamic CM who gets things done’ but even they are forced during news time to face and show the harrowing shambles Covid care is in the state. and the ordeal of the common people during this explosive health-crisis.

They do not remind viewers that even in late April the then Health Minister, who is now heading the government, sounded confident that the second and deadlier wave was yet to arrive in the state and energetic steps could be taken promptly as soon as it made landfall. The idea perhaps was that it would fly in in some kind of super-missile and yet would allow a time for putting up defences. The poll results were declared on May 2 and the next two days were filled with triumphant celebrations. Then nearly a costly week of suspense before choice of the Chief Minister by the alternative High Command.

Meanwhile, the health services were left in doldrums as the one person ‘leading from the front’ was missing from the scene during the interim, and in the face of surging infection and severe wants and strains in the supply of essential life-saving items the doctors and nurses and paramedics were simply at a loss to handle the situation worsening by the minute. The second wave had already made its footprints visible in all major towns and were spreading fast to rural areas.

The toll must have been substantial though there are no independent data apart from that supplied by the administration. By the time the new CM had taken up the reins after being feted and extolled, soon there were several oxygen plants working in hospitals and elsewhere, though scores had in the meantime succumbed to hypoxia and breathlessness. It then appeared mere supply of oxygen would not overcome the menace and there was a universal outcry for vaccines. The authorities assert there is absolutely no shortage of oxygen cylinders and vaccines, though the Union Ministry of Health has boasted that there was a stock of twenty million doses of vaccines for states to lift and Assam alone has a population crossing thirty million. At least three-quarters of that would have to be vaccinated.

If you want to administer oxygen you will at least need a bed and there are simply not enough beds around when the daily surge is said to be more than six thousand. In many Covid centers the sick are left prone on their beds without medical attendance and medicines and with drought-hit bathrooms. This is what this writer gathers from videos in circulation. The local press reports that private hospitals are fleecing poor people of their life’s savings and driving them into ruinous debt.

They crowd there as, with a few exceptions, government hospitals are said to be woefully short of staff, medicine and essential items. It has been reported that public distrust is so deep that people ‘feeling unwell’ and probably Covid-positive conceal their real condition and move around freely until matters turn critical. The daily death-toll now hovers around ninety and one frequently hears of acquaintances falling ill or collapsing. We have not yet had scenes like bodies floating down rivers or the horizons lit up by rows of burning pyres. But things are disturbing enough.

The situation has definitely arisen out of a certain pattern of crucial policies as well as a kind of leadership launching them. First, while people talk about a systemic failure, there is actually no system in place, at least no social system. What you have in place is a bureaucratic machine-like apparatus where human cogs are left without any human initiative or warmth. It responds to commands down the levels and the sick are so many figures on a data sheet. At the apex of the pyramid there is one person from whom all vital decisions flow. It is just about adequate (that too only in towns) in normal conditions, but in a pandemic of this scale this is simply unworkable. The aversion to sharing and delegating power and responsibility runs so deep that the resourcefulness, resolution and courage of the people are simply left untapped, and everyone is in panic and unprovided for. People mourn their loved dead and feel a creeping despair.

This runs into a consistent neglect of expert scientific opinion in the leadership, which cherry-picks ideas out of political expediency. So when experts were saying, look out for the second wave, earlier preparations were folded up or left to decay. Meanwhile spiritual charlatans peddled contempt for modern medicine and succour in timeless wisdom of the shastras. The only experts who matter are political wizards armed with that esoteric wisdom.

No. This has got to stop. We must strive to restore a social system that encourages co-operation, collaboration and faith in people’s creative energies, and eliminate political and cognitive quackery. As Bertold Brecht’s Galileo:” Unhappy is the land that is in need of heroes”.

*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:

On academic and other freedoms 

When the State conspires against its Citizens 

Politics of Micromanagement

The post Raging storm: People as flotsam appeared first on SabrangIndia.

There is an overcharged religious atmosphere here today that upsets many people of the older generation and quite a sizable section of the youth. It adds a frenzy to religious observances that is new and quite unnerving. It asserts the Hindu faith very loudly on season and off season, and there is a barely concealed animus against other faiths. The skies are rent with strident religious chants and prayers from old, scratchy CDs relayed over large distances by loudspeakers that unsettle the nerves. That is most unfamiliar to us though some people do seem to lap it up.

In our younger days the caste system was quite rigid though the freedom movement and an emerging sense of democracy were loosening the caste shackles a little. The public schools served as the great meeting ground of children from well-to-do and indigent families, Hindu, Muslim and tribal groups. They were  all playmates and good companions. The teachers were strict and caned all with generous strokes for not catching up with studies and breaches of discipline.

We were urged to be good upright members of society, though frankly we did not know what it meant.The school textbooks not only had stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, but also stories about Akbar the great, Hatem Tai’s exemplary charity and life of Mohammed at some stage or other. So we did not think the Muslims were a race apart. We knew they were different but did not think them inferior or alien in some disagreeable or revolting way. That is how the mixed Assamese society had developed over centuries, and our social and political leaders also tended to promote that heritage. In those days no one had to harangue us to adopt such an attitude.

The old temples of Guwahati were in secluded spots covered in greenery and near murmuring streams or rivers. Apart from observances at home on religious holidays we used to visit those places of pilgrimage and drink in their serenity. Nowadays those places have become a crowded and raucous centres of uninterrupted religious frenzy, and certain elements are borrowed from events like the Kumbh Mela, with weird rites, much noise, and an invasion of sants with matted hair and beards half a yard long, some of them making inflammatory speeches on public address system against Islam and Muslims to milling crowds. I am no longer a believer in any religion but shall be content to live with that simple piety, but this new kind quite discomposes me and many of my friends agree. Many progressive youths also find it sick and condemn it though many other young men and women seem ready to die for it in some imagined battle.

I don’t quite know  what Hinduism was like in other parts of India. When I came over to Kolkata for my graduation, I did find a difference. The caste-system was rigid, and often I had to tackle questions on my caste, sometimes ingeniously. Muslims appeared to be at a distance perhaps because of the trauma of partition, but the liberal rationalist strand of the great 19th century Bengal Renaissance still held ground, and my fellow-students, across a pretty stark Left-Right divide, were prepared to argue dispassionately on the merits of any issue. A senior contemporary of mine at Presidency, Surajit Dasgupta later devoted much of his life promoting Hindu-Muslim unity and the syncretic heritage of Bengal. Hara Prasad Shastri, belonging to pre-independence times, an orthodox Brahmin scholar of enormous learning and renown, could still argue that the heavily Sanskritised Bengali of our time had actually shed old Bengali usage that showed much Perso-Arabic influence. That lost heritage must have been a product of a lot of vigorous interaction.

The places of pilgrimage in Northern India  drawing thousands of devotees every day were apparently quite different in character. They were important commercial centres as well as thriving places for study of scriptures, philosophy and Hindu theology, and in some cases, of music. So there was noise and bustle as well a restlessness in the air that was unfamiliar to me. There was a lot of religious exploitation and some fast practices and cheating. Still when I stayed with a friend, scion of an old family residing in Benares (since re-named Varanasi) for generations, soon after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, I found him quietly disgusted. When in the morning I walked down an old part of the city in an area called Sogoliya, (if after such a long period of time I have it right), and mingled with the crowd drawing them into conversation I found few who approved of it. But the noise then was that ALL Hindus rejoiced in that act.

So what has come to pass? Has an evil spirit so ubiquitous in our popular myths and legends, come to possess us?

*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:

When the State conspires against its Citizens
Politics of Micromanagement
Usual suspects!

The post The Hinduism I used to know appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Come on, there’s a limit to credulity. You start a chase with shouts like ‘stop thief’, and lead people on a wild goose chase by spinning further stories about it, and there seems to be just no end to it. Perhaps there IS no end to it, and the end is just the chase.

So Yogendra Yadav, known all over the country for his commitment to peaceful democratic methods of protest and resistance, and some even raise their eyebrows at it, was charged with “attempt to murder” as part of a “deep-laid conspiracy”, no less! At least that is what press-reports have said.  It seems they cannot stretch it more and it must snap with a bang at some point. But no!

They argue the non-violence must be just play-acting because for a conspiracy to succeed it must be so deep-laid as not to leave a ripple on the surface. People appear to have no inkling of the fact that in a moment the earth is going to burst asunder under their feet.

So that is all there is to it. Thus, everyone is suspect. Your warmest friends, your familiar grocer or shop-keeper at the street-corner, your paper boy with whom you exchange a greeting when taking a morning walk, the professor whom you look up to for his learning, may be involved in a plot to bring down the Indian state.

And you just got to trust the acumen of sleuths to unravel on a thousand pages over months the hair-raising conspiracy. This is just the charge-sheet and the evidence may be unrolled over tens of thousands of pages.

And the judges who pore over them for weeks on end to form a rough idea of the charge for weeks have to go by the book when the bewildered accused ask for bail. The UAPA which is coming to look like a monster gas nebula hundreds of light years away from us seems capable of gobbling up anything that crosses its path. It may even draw into its cavernous maw things looking far enough away from it. Seems the poor judges are only to see to it if the charge conforms to the clauses of the Act. If not, bang goes the accused’s chance of getting bail. His family comes under a pall of suspicion in the neighbourhood. The other prison inmates may be guilty of the worst crimes. But every inch as patriotic as the citizens flaunting their ‘desh bhakti’ they fling their punches at him as soon as he leaves his cell.

Is this justice at work? The puzzled commoner wonders but prudently keep his doubts to himself. For who knows if that might get noticed by watchful sleuths helped out by scores of earnest volunteers.

In normal times and in a relaxed healthy society these signs in behaviour would be regarded as the syndrome of a serious mental disorder developing over the years. Given the complexity of human behaviour a healthy dose of scepticism or doubt is quite in order. But if such symptoms become regular and grow more starkly aggressive, one advises the other members of the family to consult a physician. And what does one do if the state itself develops such abnormal symptoms over a period of time?

Look at the reverse side. The masked intruders who entered the JNU campus under the very eyes of the security staff two years ago and beat up marked victims mercilessly and left the campus without a scratch on their bodies, rouse no suspicions and the investigation into the rampage is yet to start. Then the right-wing politicians whose tweets had been widely believed to have triggered communal tensions in Delhi some time later are yet to attract any attention from investigating agencies. These are no minor hitches but a terrible mess.

Common sense refuses to admit that these features are typical of a healthy system of justice or a healthy democratic society. But the wheels of Justice seem to be grinding on tracks towards an uncertain destination fraught with unspeakable dangers.

Does one just wait in tense anxiety for a disaster to happen or pull the alarm chain?

*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:

Of fishes and fouls

The People Vs the Mob

The people: The Sovereign 

Politics of Micromanagement

The post Usual suspects! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Nidhi Razdan’s revelations about the extremely clever and elaborate confidence trick on her should not, in my opinion, be accepted on its face value as a mere ploy to filch her of a hefty amount. The very audacity of the impersonation and the theatrics, the flawless plan and execution of the design, the forgeries of seals, emblems and signatures of top officials of Harvard on letterhead point to the involvement of shadowy agencies close to non-state centres of power in the United States though not necessarily located there. Their power had been partly on display in the hair-raising assault on the Capitol which aimed at stopping a Congress session and hijacking its decision. Those were non-state but evidently close to certain political circles.

Why would they do it? Possibly they wanted to put out of harm’s way someone who had been a pestering nuisance in a friend’s turf, a friend who needed some help. Nidhi Razdan with her sharp intellect, quick reflexes and thorough-going objectivity in her handling of talk shows had kept the baying crowds of the ruling party under control by her intelligent anchoring of talk shows, and the fact must have caused a flutter in the dovecotes. Razdan unwaveringly kept shouting brigade of a certain quarter on track to lead the discussion to a logical conclusion, often to the disconcertion of that crowd and its patrons accustomed to easy victories. Presumably the contract of getting her off the track and keeping her absorbed in a delusory prospect had been assigned to one of the many seedy but well-equipped agencies so thriving now in the land of liberty. One good turn rewarded by another. May be the elaborate events in India to boost Trump’s morale and prestige called for this out of sheer gratitude.

The use of the university’s letterhead and the forgeries of the signatures of the purported officials would have been impossible had there not been some sort of access to them. Not quite the stuff your common and garden variety con-men targeting a rich guy would be capable of. And Nidhi Razdan is not exactly known to be so fabulously rich as to tempt such fraudsters.

The 90-minute interview as prelude to confirmation reportedly appeared quite professional and rigorous. The only thing that appears out of line was the direct offer of faculty position to one not in the academic profession. Normally such people are offered fellowships for periods up to one year or longer. The money angle that strikes Razdan as a possible clue does not seem to account for the systematic, well-planned and resourceful plot. But yes, had it succeeded the loss of money would have helped to deepen the victim’s despair and prevent recovery of her morale.

Incredible? It is at least much more credible than the vast and capacious net of alleged Maoist conspiracy that seems to be catching in its toils all and sundry human rights workers and dissidents.

*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 People Vs the Mob

The people: The Sovereign 

Politics of Micromanagement

The post Of fishes and fouls appeared first on SabrangIndia.