The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) which led the ‘anti-foreigner’ agitation in Assam from 1979 to 1985 (then its name was All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad or AAGSP), drew a blank. The party that had ruled Assam for two terms, failed to win a single seat. Its social base among the Assamese-speaking people has been appropriated by the BJP. Many of its erstwhile leaders like former Agriculture Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary have joined BJP. Even Sarbananda Sonowal, the present Union Minister of State for Sports and Youth Affairs and president of the State unit of the BJP, was once an AGP leader himself.

The gain of the BJP at the cost of the AGP was expected. The AGP spearheaded the movement for driving out the Bengali-speaking Muslims because in its eyes all Bengali Muslims are ‘illegal migrants’ from Bangladesh who deserve to be evicted and sent back to Bangladesh irrespective of how many generations or years they might have lived in Assam.

The immigration of Muslim peasants from the then East Bengal was encouraged and facilitated by the British rulers from the eighth decade of the eighteenth century to step up food production. They settled in Assam more than a hundred years ago. They are all Indian citizens. Under the Indira-Mujib agreement, all those, irrespective of religion, who came away from East Pakistan till March 26, 1971, the day Bangladesh declared independence, have been accepted as Indian citizens. But these historical facts do not matter to those who have a political agenda.

As the AGP leadership was found to be corrupt, inefficient, continuously squabbling and losing touch with the people, the Assamese people were disillusioned and started gravitating toward the BJP which was also equally committed to the driving out of the ‘Bangladeshis. The AGP could not deliver on its promise. The BJP promised to do. During the election campaign this time, as the prospect of a BJP victory appeared certain, there was a groundswell of support for the BJP.

To be sure, the BJP has not disappointed them. Early this month, the newly-elected BJP MPs from Assam issued an ‘ultimatum’ to the ‘illegal infiltrators’ from Bangladesh to leave the State ‘voluntarily’ They were warned that if they did not comply within a fortnight, then the activists of the youth wing of the party would embark on a door-to-door search for the Bangladeshis. The people were asked to boycott the Bangladeshis socially (the language used was ‘not to engage with the immigrants in any way’).

The decision to evict and deport the Bangladeshis was taken at a meeting of the office-bearers of the BJP’s youth wing which was presided over by Sonowal. He told his colleagues that he had discussed this matter with Kiren Rijiju, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs. It was evident that the decision to evict the Bangladeshis had been cleared at the highest level.

What was not explained, however, was how a political party or any of its front organizations could do something that fell in the domain of the police and the administration. There is a standard procedure for the identification and deportation of illegal immigrants. In every district of the State, there is a Foreigners’ Tribunal set up under the Foreigners’ Act. If a person is suspected to be an infiltrator, the police produces him before the Tribunal of the district concerned. The tribunal serves a notice on him and asks him to produce certain documents to support his claim to be an Indian citizen. If he fails to do this, he is declared a foreigner who illegally entered the State. He is then deported.

A CPI leader and a former Deputy Speaker of the Assam Assembly, Giasuddin Ahmed, claims that of all the cases referred to the Tribunals, in only five per cent cases it was found that the person concerned was, indeed, a Bangladeshi and he was deported. Ahmed said many of them admitted they had come from Bangladesh and named the village and district they had come from.

The decision of the State BJP leaders to evict en masse whom they call ‘Bangladeshis’ has made the Bengali Muslims panicky. Those keeping a close watch on the situation fear that if an organized drive is launched to evict them, there will be stiff resistance by those who have been settled in Assam for years and generations. The situation might become explosive. Some others, like Ahmed, do not think that matters would come to such a pass. They think the BJP’s campaign would be symbolic rather than substantive because a communal flare up in Assam would badly reflect on the Modi Government at the Centre. But the fact is that the communal temperature in Assam is rising.

The Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) has decided to submit a memorandum to Modi, urging him to include the deportation of the illegal migrants to their country of origin in the 100-day work agenda announced by him. The myopic protagonists of this line do not realize that a large-scale driving out of alleged infiltrators ‘to their country of origin’ would provoke the communal forces in Bangladesh to target the minority Hindus and a reverse flow of refugees to India would begin.(IPA Service)