Assam Tragedy: Another Act Again
The class conscious workers in mainland India were shocked by the killing of scores of our class brothers and sisters, migrant workers and families coming mainly from Bihar and some from other Hindi speaking regions to Asom, who were mainly unorganised and day labourers, by some ULFA 'operations', just prior to the Asomiya festive (Pous) Bihu days; and class conscious workers strongly condemn such attacks and killings. This signalled the end of the so-called 'Peace-Process' initiated by ULFA's declaring the 'Peoples Consultative Group' in Sept '05 that was later reciprocated by some round of talks with the PCG by the Central Govt and Central government's ceasefire declaration on Aug '06 in reciprocation to ULFA ceasefire. And the Indian ruling classes got back to their 'Square One': more hoarse cries of Pakistani-ISI hands behind ULFA aroused in media, more military and paramilitary forces deployed, and naturally, more state terror unleashed. Even the some prominent intellectuals of the India's ruling classes like Mr Kuldip Nayar introduced his article Northeast In Ferment in "Afternoon", Feb 7, with such harsh words as "The worst role is that of the army which is trying to maintain peace. In the name of curbing militancy, it has killed many innocent." [Source: 7-02-07 editorial, cybernoon.com] Then again in early this year (by Asomiya Calendar) same ghastly and deplorable incidents, that of killings of migrant labourers, happened.
May the gun-brandishing 'intellectual'-baiting Great-Indian chauvinists of different 'National' parties and of various jingoist varieties like bharat-rakshak.com ones please note ? it was your own intellectual Mr Kuldip Nayar speaking; and he continued: "India's northeast is like Baluchistan in Pakistan or Tibet in China. All the three territories are in ferment. ...The governments are employing arms for registering their authority, and the defiant - their identity. It is a political question which is sought to be solved through violence." Those chauvinists jingoists must also remember that we have been told enough of their 'foreign-hand' theories, most part of the past decades passed through their various 'counter-insurgency operations' and trials of military solutions; various anti-democratic 'acts' gave the military and paramilitary forces free hand in killing and torturing thousands of innocent people. They had their favourite Bajpayee-Advani ministry for six long years... But they all failed, and failed miserably. So this time those chauvinist gentlemen mush shut up.
This time those chauvinist gentlemen mush shut up because their misrule through decades has made Bihar, once a seat of famous civilisation and knowledge, now one of the most backward state and a supplier of cheap migrant labourers ? who could be oppressed like slaves, who could be ridiculed and insulted at every steps in almost all of the Indian states. Some of those chauvinists-jingoists were tacitly trying to whip up anti-Assamese feeling, also attempting to communalise the situation too by spreading heinously tittle-tattles like 'why ULFA didn't kill Muslims...'! Admiringly, the common people of Bihar have shown restraint and did not fall in the trap of bourgeois-chauvinist Bihari-vs-Asomiya antagonism. Those chauvinists, who are now shedding false tears for the slain poor and screaming against ULFA, cannot fool workers and peasants of Bihar. Rather the class-conscious workers of Bihar and India as a whole will probe into the Asom question at it stands now and both sides of it: the government of India side and also the ULFA side of the problem.
We said it again and again and we'll say the same again: the Asom problem is a part of National questions in India ? national inequality, deprivation, humiliation, exploitation, extortion and oppression conducted by the ruling classes of India and their state on peoples of various nations within the boundary of multi-national country India, a political map bequeathed by the British Imperialists. The so-called "India's" Northeast was conquered by the British Empire in different phases in the late nineteenth century and added to the map of British India; but the Indian ruling classes and their chauvinist followers consider this region as their ancestral feudal estate, 'integral part' of their property, where they can do whatever they like disregarding the national feeling of the people there. This behaviour of them is not unique to this region only; they do the same to some extent to other Nations, cultures, languages, etc in the geographical entity India. To cover up their misdeeds in national sphere they have invented their 'one-Nation India' theory with which their media and other brainwashing systems had successfully impregnated the masses significantly, obscuring the multi-national character of this country. By the way, let us not be misunderstood: an 'Indian Nationalism' did evolve in the course of anti-imperialist struggle of the people of India, and in that sense an 'Indian Nation' exists so far as that anti-imperialist struggle exists uniting all nations, nationalities, people of multi-national India. And of course, maps drawn by ruling classes are neither eternal, nor sacrosanct for the people. Look at the map of South Asia of 1946, 1948, and 1972 or the map of India showing States in 1948 and 1998! Consider what happened to Sikkim! Why such changes occurred? Then, who can predict beforehand what 'map' awaits the truly liberated South Asia!
Nobody of the Indian ruling classes and their parties, not even their 'ally' parties like the CPIM, ever tried to gauge the deep rooted national feeling of the common people of Asom, their 'hurt' feeling, their deprivation, humiliation, oppression on them, their agony till their cumulated desperation, frustration, anger exploded in the late 1970s. And when that happened, they all saw only 'separatism' aided by 'foreign hands' and let loose a reign of terror. They tried their 'Assembly Election' for Asom in 1983, where army bayonets and police atrocities combined couldn't manage even 15% voting. The shameless stooge of the ruling classes CPIM said even 13% voting in Asom was a victory of democracy ? their actions only helped Asom people to get alienated from them, and unluckily from the banner of communism that those CPIM men tainted! But within 5-6 years they saw the impossibility of maintaining their 'democracy', their 'rule of law', and their 'peace' at gunpoint. Fortunately they had an escape route: through the Asom national movement a bourgeois, petit bourgeois 'national' leadership of Asom emerged, which was not averse to finding a 'solution' to the national question within the framework of present power set-up by some power share and bargaining. From AASU emerged the political party AGP, and what a mockery of history that this party once became an ally of CPIM; AGP eventually rode to govt power of the state in 1985 after the so-called Asom Accord. If AASU and AGP showed a facet of the militant national movement of Asom that capitulated to power-share cum bargain, antithetically there emerged another side, ranging from a bit defiant like AJYCP to a more avowed national-independence seeker ULFA. But the leadership class composition of all those organisations can be termed as national or regional-national bourgeois cum petit bourgeois, as proletariat was nowhere in the scene ? that latter class was very sparse and numerically tiny in the made-backward state Asom in particular; moreover and more importantly, that class could not stand up with their independent class position due to the overall weakness of working class movement on the wake of the defeat of the first offensive of the international proletarian movement.
As we have mentioned in the 'Election Analysis' of Asom Assembly Election in the Nov 06 issue of this journal, the 'national' mood in Asom was in the wane due to several reasons mentioned there, but nonetheless we warned: the deep rooted feeling of national deprivation, embittered by the betrayal of the ruling classes of India and the degeneration of AGP during their rule, through their coalition with BJP and sharing central power via the BJP led NDA alliance, etc, has not disappeared, but is only dormant at this moment. Also, the proletariat of India must pay heed to the precariousness and vulnerability of Asomiya national Identity: the Asom people have seen before their eyes how the original nationality of the state of Tripura was marginalized to a sheer minority by more than a century long Bengali immigration! It is reported in many websites and print media that a recent opinion poll carried on among millions of Asom people showed that not even 5% of Asom people want 'cessation' from India ? but this cannot at all negate the deprived and hurt national feeling prevalent among them, though not in a 'boiling form', but in a latent-inside form! And the bourgeois 'experts', 'analysts' couldn't understand that.
That is the failure behind their sudden maddened state after every spurt of violent and distorted outburst of that feeling. Consider the condition of the ULFA ? on the one hand, it was seen for months after Sept 05, they were eager to find a solution, but the govt, be it by the pressure of the generals or by any other factor, tried to make the peace talks impossible, as was hinted by the respected litterateur Mamoni Roysom Goswami (Indira Goswami) who was one of the mediator, and that, it seems, made ULFA leadership frustrated ? on the other hand they were getting alienated from the masses of people, which was evident in a roundabout way from the above mentioned opinion poll too. It may be presumed that all these factors pushed them to desperation. The revolutionary working class knows that unless the shackles of national oppression-deprivation-inequality etc are broken once for all, such abrupt violent distorted outbursts will occur again and again; and that will happen not only in Asom, but also in J&K and such other states. Moreover, every fresh armed-'peace'-keeping attempt of the ruling classes provokes this possibility.
We mentioned more than once the word distorted in italics in the above paragraph. Why? The working class of India inclusive of migrant unorganised labourers, of the Hindi-speaking region including particularly Bihar, must blame themselves before condemning-criticising that militant section of the Asom youth for this distorted outbreaks: Have we by our acts project ourselves as the leader of the coming revolution for liberation from exploitations-oppressions including National ones? Could we show the way that the rest of the masses, the toilers, including those youth who want to rebel against the system, that ? See sisters and brothers, this is the revolutionary way of protest, resistance...? How can we expect proletarian revolutionary consciousness and practice from petit-bourgeois leadership, a leadership who due to its class-limitation is bound to fall in the quagmire of narrowness, small-nation-chauvinism, non-revolutionary ways including lumpency in some fellows to some extent and hatred towards toiling people of other nation...! The class-conscious workers of India, particularly of Asom and Bihar must prepare themselves, must engage themselves in revolutionary agitation-propaganda regarding all such incidents giving due importance and respect to hurt national feelings, and carry forward their tasks to emerge as the future leaders of the peoples revolution that will pave the way for eradication of all kinds of exploitations including national oppression.
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