By Ashis Biswas
KOLKATA: With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruling in Assam and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal, it is not surprising that official policies adopted by the two state Governments regarding the minority communities are strikingly different.
Avoiding the usual bureaucratic verbiage of sober language/words in official statements, it can be said that Muslims as a rule do not feel unsafe in Bengal, while a totally different situation prevails in Assam.
In Assam, according to various media reports and several expert studies, the majority of Muslims feel threatened by the recent policies of the BJP Government. Except for Assamiya-speaking Muslims or the relatively better off citizens within the minorities, it is the poorer Bengali-speaking Muslims (Miyans, in local parlance) who are strongly protesting these days against various steps taken by the state Government in matters relating to education, job opportunities and land allotment.
This somewhat large chunk of the population, supported in some measure by the Congress, the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) and a few state-based smaller parties, has often approached the higher judiciary seeking relief from what they allege to be police excesses and discriminatory official harassment.
Various influential HR groups rally in their support legally and in other ways. Both the Guwahati High Court as well as the Supreme Court have pulled up/rebuked various official departments for their overzealousness or prejudice against targeted sections of a particular community, in Assam. .
Interestingly, Muslims account for an estimated 35% of the population in Assam, and 27 per cent in West Bengal at present. In both states, especially in the districts sharing the international border with East Pakistan/ later Bangladesh, there has occurred an unusually high increase of the Muslim population over the past decades.
Since the BJP-led NDA government came to power, there is no doubt the Central government has shown greater initiative and interest in guarding more strongly than before the areas vulnerable to illegal infiltration. It seemed over the years, the pattern of illegal infiltration had undergone a change — in the fifties and sixties, the Hindus came over to India in large numbers, but in later decades, many Muslims had illegally entered into and settled in India.
In some ways, successive administrations in Assam found it much harder to deal with illegal immigration than the West Bengal government. The population profile in Assam and the Northeast, with its larger tribal content and more divisions among different ethnic groups in terms of their religion is far more complex than in West Bengal. Naturally, the people of Assam and the NE states have more reasons to be upset and worried by the ever increasing number of ‘non locals’ swamping their territories and threatening their old settled cultures within a few decades, than people in other states.
It is easy at one level to excoriate the Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for his aggressive approach towards illegal Muslim infiltration and the illegal encroachments on relatively underpopulated areas by ‘foreigners’ from Bangladesh or states like Manipur and, Mizoram getting singed by inter tribal hostility in neighbouring Myanmar !
It was indeed shocking to hear Himanta Biswa Sarma , talk provocatively about ‘strangers’ who would take over and rule Assam in a few decades, even on Independence day, as a ruling Chief Minster! He was rightly condemned by various parties and in different sections of the media for deliberately spreading the poison of separatism among the people..
But somewhere along the line, the critics while rightly opposing Sarma, may be ignoring a much larger question: what should the Union and state Governments do in this situation — simply shut their eyes and allow the demographic changes to go on unchecked or try to ensure better security for the region through certain measures, which may or may not offend, some people?
Judging by his actions as a Chief Minister, it seems doubtful that Mr Sarma will take the slightest notice of his critics, He will go on doing exactly what he has been doing so long — demolish unsanctioned Muslim properties with bulldozers, often without prior notice.
One analyst claims that he would simply remind his opponents that unless the state showed greater awareness of and efficiency in restricting illegal infiltration, Assam would have its first non Assamiya Chief Minister in a decade or so.
‘This line always works big even on political fence sitters. And now as they see on TV the excesses against the Hindus continuing in Bangladesh, more people would admit in private that Sarma is right, not Congress or AIUDF leaders’, he added.
It is truly unfortunate, yet undeniably correct that Mr Sarma may actually end up winning some support for the wrong reasons. He might get sharply rapped on the knuckles again in the High Court or the Supreme court if someone files a PIL on the issue. In fact he had said far worse things in public in the past and got away with it.. He is fully aware as a seasoned politician of the dangers of encouraging negative ethnic passions among the masses, yet there is no authority to rein him in!
Also, his abominable political style has enabled him to win elections and emerge as one of the leading lights, if somewhat controversially, within the NE region. His Assamiya majority vote bank gets more consolidated, and even a section of Bengali Hindus vote for him.
Therefore he, as well as Ms Mamata Banerjee his less polished counterpart in West Bengal, can openly indulge in opportunistic vote bank-based politics. She has in the past instigated women voters in mixed population areas to physically resist/attack CRP personnel by way of opposing as she alleged, the ‘BJP’s anti-national policies’, on several occasions. As with Mr Sarma, such speeches only add to her popularity and power in elections in Bengal!
The inescapable conclusion seems to be as of now, there is really nothing anyone could do to improve relations between the major communities in either state, through regularly arranged meetings, cultural or sports competitions or through mini trade/business schemes in selected areas to attract positively-minded youths.
Therefore no matter what the society needs, or the communities want for themselves, leaders like Mr. Sarma and Ms Banerjee will add to their power and prominence in their own similar way. Mr. Sarma will win elections bashing the Muslims and Ms Banerjee will follow a different form of treatment which many might take as a sort of appeasement of Muslims including soft pedalling of the anti-social activities of some Muslims. But the West Bengal Chief Minister takes politically correct stands and in her speeches, she projects always a highly secular and liberal face. There is a wide difference between Himanta and Mamata, though both are political beneficiaries of their respective policies.
After all, Mamata Banerjee’s captive Muslim votebank only continues to expand, thanks to women voters who do not conceal their eagerness for a monthly allowance of Rs 1200 which is a big relief for them.! If Mr. Sarma does not deign to be diplomatic about expressing controversial opinions while fully backing the’ Hindutva ‘line, Ms Banerjee is more diplomatic in defending her Hindu background and encouraging all Hindu festivals in Bengal. (IPA Service)
