Perils of Knee Jerk Reactions in Assam By Sanjay Barbora Yet again, print and electronic media in Assam have relied on intelligence sources and apportioned responsibility to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction)-- NDFB (S) – for having started the current violence that began on just before Christmas in Assam. This has become a reflex action in every episode of violence in western Assam’s Bodo Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD). The conflicts in 2012 and 2013 were also blamed on the NDFB (S), until a recent ruling by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) focused on a former constable of the Assam Police as the prime instigator of the 2012 riots. Similarly, media reports emanating from beat reporters in Bodo, Assamese in English had pointed out the role of armed guards of the forest departments in fomenting the 2013 violence. The current clamour for action against NDFB (S) does not take into consideration any of these discordant facts in the search for enduring pathways to end the violence in Assam. This is not to argue that the NDFB (S) activists are champions at upholding the rights of indigenous communities in the BTAD. They have been responsible for the deaths of innocent villagers, many of who are Bodos, over the past three years. Their victims are casualties in the exhausting internecine war between different factions of Bodo armed groups. If anything, NDFB (S) represents a political fringe in Bodo politics and like all groups in the fringes, is prone to carrying out extreme actions to prove a point. This article is not about the NDFB (S) alone. It is about the different actors who are capable of carrying out such acts of violence in Assam, as also about the futility of policy decisions based on facile and self-serving interpretations of conflict. Also, this is not to argue that CBI and investigative journalists are closer to the truth regarding the identity of those who have started these conflicts. It is possible that everyone – from NDFB (S) to rogue police constables – are to share the blame. If so, this intriguing spectrum of political actors says more about the militarisation of society in Assam than it does to the ability of investigative agencies to unearth some degree of truth from the layered social and political world in the region. The CBI report on former Assam police constable – Mohibur Islam – is a telling indication of how easy it is slip from one seemingly airtight universe to another. Islam was the founding president of the All Bodoland Minority Students Union (ABMSU), before joining the police force. This is a familiar trajectory for local political entrepreneurs, mainly since the signing of the Assam accord in 1985 and the formation of a non-Congress government under the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). Then, as now, political activists who could mobilise grassroots opinion were quickly inducted into the government’s payroll and offered jobs that entitled them to salaries as minor public officials. Almost overnight, those who were used to confronting authority were entrusted the responsibility to maintain it. This process was put to better use in the 1990s, especially when surrendered militants were used as informants and rewarded with lucrative businesses, in order to whittle down support for insurgents and their alleged supporters. Senior journalists and counter-insurgency think tanks like the South Asia Terrorist Portal (SATP) have been very vocal about the existence of this Burmese-style policy of appeasement and co-option of small and big political voices of dissent in Assam and other parts of Northeast India. So, why is it so easy to forget this side of the granular narrative of violence in the region? Perhaps this flat, linear interpretation of good versus bad political actors is easier to understand and sell to a citizenry that is far removed from the consequences of the actions that follow. After all, those who clamour for more military and police action are less likely to bear the brunt of what happens thereafter. Hence, the sheer insanity of relying on methods of militarisation that have failed – tougher armed action, more draconian laws, calls for a tougher state – is disturbing. The recent violence has underlined two major features of militarisation in Assam. First, it has exposed the myth that the government is able to provide security to different regional, ethnic and civic constituencies in the state. Over the last few years, the government of Assam has provided relief to different groups affected by inter-ethnic conflict, but this is not quite the same as providing security. For this, many look to different actors from within a very broad spectrum available to them. Second, militarisation has gone on despite, or in addition to economic deprivation of a large segment of rural society. This is the constituency that a wide array of political actors appeal to, when they raise their demands for homelands and autonomous territories. It is tragically, this same constituency that bears the brunt of any ill-conceived military and police crackdown. Under such circumstances, the government’s pronouncements to go after NDFB (S) seems to be nothing other than a knee-jerk reaction to a problem whose solutions lie in nuanced political engagement and not military responses. Any such response will undoubtedly result in further polarisation of communities into separate camps where perceptions of loyalty – to government and rebel militia alike – will be subjected to cruel tests of intimidation and coercion. Given these conditions, the seamless move from using intelligence sources to allocate responsibility for the massacres of Adibasi villagers to NDFB (S), to “cracking down” on Bodo militants in order to appease political opinion in the region, seems like another attempt to avoid dealing with the substantive issues that lead to protracted conflicts in Assam: militarisation, impoverishment and political polarisation of different communities in the state. morungexpress/editorial/126610.html
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 03:45:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015