How the anti-CAA stir in Assam is different

As protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) have taken centrestage in the country, the narratives of opposition to this law have been packed tightly to suit the mainland discourse. However, despite being reduced to an “episode” among a series of “protests” that have now erupted across the cities in India, for thousands of us, it all began in Assam.

The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill which has now become an Act have been taking place in Assam for a long time, primarily led by the student community, but the consternation began with a bandh called by the Northeast Students’ Organisation (Neso) on December 10 to register opposition to it, a day after it was passed in the 2019 Winter Session of the Lok Sabha. Several prominent universities such as Cotton University, Tezpur University, Gauhati University, Dibrugarh University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati, Arya Vidyapith, and so on participated in and extended their support to the peaceful yet vigorous protest. There was this slightest ray of hope that the bill might get withheld in the Rajya Sabha considering the staunch resistance in the Northeast region.

But instead of addressing these concerns, the government took recourse to the divide-and-rule formula and segregated areas of the region the residents of whom were promised protection under the provisions of the Inner Line Permit (ILP) and the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. The bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha by sheer strength of numbers and India got its most unjust, deleterious and undemocratic law. And while the entire country witnessed this sabotage of the ethos of the republic, Assam, on the other hand, was churning.

On December 11, people from all walks of life — students, government employees, artistes, and ordinary men and women — gathered at the clarion call of “Joi Aai Axom”, pouring out onto streets against the Citizenship Amendment Bill all over Assam. In the state capital of Guwahati, students from various colleges and universities began marching, shouting slogans like “Aah Oi Aah Ulai Aah”. There was chaos as police barricaded the roads and tried to disperse them.

However, in no time, the movement turned violent as “fringe elements” took advantage of the situation. They destroyed public property and disrupted what was essentially a democratic resistance. This gave the entire agitation a very ugly turn, leading to the imposition of total curfew in the city followed by gradual suspension of Internet services in 10 districts of Assam. The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) completely dissociated itself from the violence and pleaded with everyone to conduct the protest peacefully.

The AASU called for a public gathering in Guwahati on December 12 for peaceful, democratic demonstrations against the bill, now a law. Amidst curfew and suspension of Internet connectivity, thousands thronged the Latasil playground where a gathering was organised. By afternoon, clashes had broken out between police and protesters in multiple pockets of the city. The state government sought additional forces to maintain law and order in the state. Paramilitary troops in large numbers were deployed and the Army conducted flagmarches in the city of Guwahati and the districts of Tinsukia, Jorhat and Dibrugarh. Schools and offices were ordered to be shut till December 22, hospitals began running out of oxygen supply for in-house patients and some television news channels were sent notices by the ministry of information and broadcasting to withhold airing of footage of the clashes between protesters and the police. By evening, it was clear that Assam was under siege.

Now, although the events of the Assam Movement of 1980 have often been recounted to us, we realised its intensity and fully understood the meaning of the term “bidrooh” (uprising) only when we witnessed some 8,000-9,000 people brave curfew and the brutality of the military, putting their lives at stake. By the midnight of December 12, there were reports of three protesters being killed and many injured in police firing. Among those dead was a 16-year-old student who had gone out to participate in a peaceful demonstration against the CAA, with the belief that as a citizen of a democratic country he had the right to raise his voice against his own government which was trying to take the identity of his “homeland” away from him. It was evident that democracy has not matured since the 1980s and that Assam was once again caught in a vicious cycle of dirty politics. The large outpouring of the public on the streets on December 12 was reminiscent of the six long years of the Assam movement.

Historical and political context of the protests
The Assam movement of 1979-1985 had brought to a halt the normal functioning of the state. The memory of the movement is still fresh in the minds of the people of Assam. One of the concerns that motivated the protest was the Indian government’s policy of admitting “foreigners” in Assam. In a very crude form, history had repeated itself. Today, the government led by the BJP has enacted this law hiding behind the facade of humanitarian concern for the rights of persecuted Hindus and members of five other non-Muslim communities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who have entered India prior to December 2014. By notifying religion as the de facto identifier for claiming citizenship in India, the BJP is fundamentally seeking to alter the secular nature of the Constitution.

But Assam’s problem with this law is not necessarily the same as the pan-Indian consideration. It is important to understand that the immigration issue of the state is chronic as it shares a porous border with Bangladesh, which makes a strong case for unaccounted for Bangladeshis inhabiting Assam.

In contrast to the all-India cut-off of 1951, the Assam Accord of 1985 that ended the Assam movement had identified 1971 to be the cut-off date for accepting any foreigner in the state as an Indian citizen with rights to enfranchisement. The Citizenship Amendment Act identifies 2014 to be the new date for conferring citizenship and this is in direct conflict with the accord. Moreover, demographically, Assam is home to many indigenous communities who rely on traditional livelihoods and are not adequately protected to face the onslaught of refugees who would settle on their land. By not considering Assam’s complex history and socio-demographic composition, the Centre has showcased its attitude of indifference towards Assam and the Northeast.

Objections to the CAA have been present in Assam and other states in this region since the time it was introduced as a bill in the Lok Sabha in 2016. Due to the concerns raised, the bill was referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee and, amid opposition by student organisations, civil society and some committee members, it failed to clear the Rajya Sabha during the 2018 Winter Session. In the 2019 general election, the BJP witnessed a thumping victory all over India, including in the Northeastern states. The BJP leadership in Assam mostly consisted of people who were erstwhile leaders of the jatiyotabaadi (regional) brigade. It made the people hopeful. They saw the party as a harbinger of change in terms of development, employment, security and recognition of the rights of the indigenous communities in addition to tackling the foreigner issue which the Congress and Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) had abysmally failed in addressing.

Today, the entire state of Assam has come to a standstill. The popular sentiment now is more about the betrayal that they have suffered in the hands of these so-called jatir nayak (community heroes). Amit Shah’s supercilious speech during the tabling and defending of the bill in both Houses gave a sense of how awfully the state leadership had failed to fulfil their duties in representing the people in Parliament. The people are angry and disappointed to see their hopes crushed by these “sons of the soil”.

The paradox of ‘normalcy’
After a week of complete turmoil in the state, curfew is now being relaxed, but the resistance still continues with mass satyagraha and protests by the Shilpi Samaj who are attempting to invoke a sense of cultural unity through music, poetry, mono-act plays and gayan-bayan parades in different parts of the state. The government, meanwhile, continues to resort to brute force by continuing to keep leaders in detention and tightening security measures to create an illusion of normalcy in Assam.

Life here is far from normal. The state government has announced a slew of measures such as making the Assamese language a compulsory subject till Class 10, creating new autonomous councils and granting constitutional status to existing ones, and so on. These are nothing but bargaining strategies of the state leadership, to make up for the passing of the CAA. It wants to give the impression of how committed it is to the welfare of the people of Assam.

As protests against the CAA are erupting across many states of the country, there arises an apprehension that the narrative might be steered to solely focus on the communal nature of the Act. While these protests have turned bloody in the national capital and the situation in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal is deteriorating, it should be kept in mind that Assam is the state that stands to lose heavily if this law is put into force.

In a region where curfew, Army flag-marches and ban on Internet services had been a reality for days, normalcy cannot be restored within the blink of an eye. Normalcy is a state of mind which may be intermittently restored in the coming days, but history will continue to haunt the people of Assam, reminding them that their voices have been ignored, their trust betrayed and their homes besieged. In the last two weeks, five people have lost their lives for the cause of their “home”, but as one pauses to take sight of the resistance emerging across the length and breadth of the country, there seems to be a sense of disconnect between the narratives from Assam and those emerging from the rest of the country.

Ignorance and continued apathy
The Indian state’s vision of bringing the Northeast “closer” and “bridging the gap” between the mainland and the periphery seems to be mere political strategy. The reality is that the Centre has always ignored the voices from the periphery. But it is high time that India starts looking at this region beyond the mainland-periphery binary and educates itself about its history. It is vital to understand that our angst is not just against the divisive and communal nature of this law but is also primarily against “foreigners”, irrespective of religion. Labelling the people of Assam xenophobic for fearing and fighting against loss of identity and livelihood in their own land reifies the ignorance harboured by the dominant sections of the society about the region. The mainstream media has covered the violence in Assam but the narrative of discontent towards the government emerging from the common people has been disregarded.

The Assam movement was a movement entirely spearheaded by the youth that changed the socio-political and historical trajectory of the state. However, as soon as the euphoria of the movement subsided, flaws in the leadership had begun to appear. Now, after three decades, the youth is back on the streets to fight for their rights and protect the dignity of their land, this time cautious not to let the movement be co-opted by a dominant few. The struggle will be long and only time will tell whether or not we will be able to carve a new path or fall back to older patterns of cultural and political chauvinism.

Today, the fight against CAA has also taken the legal route with around 59 petitions being filed by various stakeholders. The judgment delivered by the court notwithstanding, the wounds left behind in the run-up to this law as well as subsequently all point to the fact that democracy in India is crumbling. In hindsight, it seems that we have lost our home once again even while we have failed to bring about a historical reckoning.

Dhriti Sonowal is an M.Phil. scholar at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems in Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Chandreyee Goswami is an M.Phil. scholar at the Centre for the Studies in Sociology of Education in Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.