The recent troubles in the Kokrajhar area of Lower Assam, where incendiary violence caused well over 50 deaths last week and rendered homeless nearly two lakh people, may have been brought under control.
The visit to the affected area over the weekend by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — who has provided leadership in dealing with the tense issue with wide ramifications — certainly helped in getting officials to coordinate their activity to alleviate the situation. But we do know that the violence we have just witnessed was due to a problem that has deeper roots.
The “anti-foreigner” agitation, which rocked the state in the early 1980s, drew attention to the question of illegal immigration from Bangladesh, which has become an extremely serious problem. But it is worth appreciating that even in pre-Partition India there was regular transfer of populations to Assam from the erstwhile East Bengal. These were primarily poor rural Muslims who moved to Assam as farm labour. They were then welcomed by Hindu landowners as there was a shortage of labour supply.
There was another factor at work as well which has only grown in magnitude: that is the issue of people moving for the sake of livelihood security. Even after the formation of Pakistan and then Bangladesh, the population shift to Indian border states has remained unabated, abetted by the geography of the region. This is not dissimilar to the Mexico-United States equation at the Tijuana border. In the case of Bangladesh and Assam in India, the religious factor (Muslim immigrants on the land of Hindu small farmers) tends to offer easy fodder for politicians on occasion.
To these complications has been added the one of immigrants settling down in reserved areas, such as the Bodo Territorial Autonomous District. Their numbers are raising a question as there is a sense now that local residents may have even been turned into a minority. All things considered, our society and politics has to contend with something that may have become a historical fact, with immigrants settling down in Assam (and some other states, including West Bengal) in numbers over a long enough period to qualify as being of the place. Finger-pointing and narrow search for tactical political advantage will not do any longer as systemic pressure has grown. In the first place, this would call for accelerated effort by the Centre and the state over a sustained period to make the economy dynamic so that reliance on land as a factor for survival for the bulk of the population is no longer crucial. No matter which party is in power in Assam or at the Centre, this is an important consideration, on which consensus needs to be built.