The emotions are high and fears griping the minds of the
Assamese people. In such volatile time we must not lose our objectivity.
We are doing the protest against providing citizenship for
the Bangladeshi immigrants (illegal + legal post CAB). We want government to
take actions so that Assamese people’s interests are protected.
There are many misconceptions and some people with vested
interest are trying to miss guide the people within and outside Assam, so it is
important we don’t forget why we are doing the protest and what we want to
achieve.
The citizenship amendment act 2019 provides citizen to those
refusies who came to India before 31st December 2014. So, this act
doesn’t make thing worse then what we currently as some people are saying.
To understand why Assamese people are so fearful about our
language, you have to go back to the British era when Bengali language was
imposed on us as an official language. Our ancestors had to fight to change the
official language of Assam to Assamese. The Bengali speaking people in Assam is
increasing drastically (some already existed since independence + some are illegal
immigrants) as per 2011 census data. So, fear is real, we don’t want to keep
fighting for our basic rights, we want to focus on our growth and think about
our future.
There is no iota of doubt that the protest started with true
intensions by the people and student unions. However, some political &
religious parties intervened to give a political and religious colour to it. As
a result there was vandalism, destruction of public properties which we all
must condemn together. The protest will weaken if we allow these people to hijack
this protest. To keep the protest stronger, we must keep them at arm’s length.
Administration didn’t manage the situation effectively, but we all know when
there is chaos people make mistakes and government must take required actions
to address it.
The citizenship is a central subject; we can find solution only
by working with the central government and not going against them. Last 40
years we are living with these problems and every passing year solution of this
problem become more complex. We have seen all political parties ruled our state
and center and what those governments have done till now. We have to ask this
question to ourselves that who is actually working for a solution. Recently NRC
(National Register of Citizens) was implemented, there were flaws, but it was a
positive step towards the solution. Our choices are not between good and bad,
but between bad and worse. So, make you choice carefully, or else we may need
to live with this problem for another few decades.
Those who follow the prime minister will know that he clearly
said in the election rallies that CAB will be implemented. We all trusted our
local political leadership and Prime minister thinking that our concerns will
be address before the CAB becomes a law. I think this is where our leaders
failed us. They could not provide a clear plan with time line to solve these
problems and all of us are hurt and protesting as we all fear that we lost the
WAR.
We are part of this great nation and can’t think only about
ourselves. We need to give careful thought about the nation’s views and
concerns. In my view we can’t reject the CAB totally, we have to accept the CAB
in principle and continue our protest till our leaders find and implement the
solutions to protect our interests. We must distinguish these two aspects to
ensure our message is correct to the
outside world. There is another important reason, Assam is a very small state with
14 Lok sabha(lower house) seats out of total 545, so politically we are very
insignificant and can’t negotiate harder. I am not suggesting that we accept
anything less than what we deserve, but should not forget our limitations as
well.
When we continue our protest, we must not forget that there
is a huge loss to the economy and to the state treasury. So, while we continue
the protest, we need to ensure the business/offices are functional, this will
only impact us no one else (Contribution of Assam’s GDP to national GDP is not
in top 15 states). One of the options is that we can continue the protest on
none working days (Saturdays & Sundays). All of us know that the visit of
Japan’s Prime minister has been postponed which is not a good news for us (probably
the first head of states visiting Assam from a developed nation). It has many
economic importance and we need to ensure it is not postponed indefinitely.
The structure of Assamese society is diverse and complex. There
are already two autonomous councils (Karbi & Bodo) which includes 7
districts to protect the indigenous people and its cultures, 3 districts where
Bengali speaking Assamese people have majority. There is a huge influx of
Bangladeshi immigrants in 9 out of 23 remaining districts where Muslim
population have majority and it is spreading further. So, the solution is very
complex.
The ideal solution is that we stop new illegal immigrant to
come to Assam (India) and send back all those illegal immigrants who came
earlier. As we all know there were lot of efforts till now to stop new illegal immigrant
to come to Assam and NRC helped to achieved that. The identification of the existing illegal immigrants
is a challenging task and all of us aware of it from the NRC exercise. However,
there is some progress. The other aspect is to protect the rights of the
indigenous people as part of Assam accord clause 6 which talks about Constitutional,
Legislative & Administrative safeguards of Assamese people. Government is
already working on it, we must demand for a time bound solution from the
working group. Additionally, we can support the government by providing ideas
to address these problems. Mizoram, Manipur have inner line permit, this could
be another option. However, that will hamper economic growth.
As a state we have achieved some successes to address this
historic problem, few more steps need to be taken. We have to continue the protest
without impacting (economically & politically) ourselves. We have not lost the WAR, CAA is a temporary
blocker, but has national importance so we should support it as long as our
leaders provide a clear path to address our concerns as part of ASSAM accord
clause 6.
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