“India Breaking” – Read this and Weep
This is a sad story of the North East.
It is a first-person account of how bad things are in the beautiful land of the “seven sisters” – in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and other neighbouring states in the North East of India.
Having lived for several years in Assam, I have a very special affinity for the region and great personal interest in the developments there.
Assam, together with its six “sisters” is also a region of great strategic importance and critical to long term stability of our country.
Some of you may know that the physical link between India and this region is a tenous “chickens neck” – a strip of land that, at places, is merely 21kms in width – sandwiched between Nepal on one side and Bangladesh on the other.
Bear in mind also that the region has been troubled by various insurgency movements for the last three decades and things look like they are reaching a boiling point. Equally worrying is the pan-Indian links that are being forged by terrorist organisations in the region.
To gauge the enormity of this risk, read “Insurgency in India’s Northeast: Cross-border Links and Strategic Alliances” by Wasbir Hussain…and a more recent news-snippet, “ULFA outsourcing suicide attacks” which mentions growing links between ULFA and Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami (HuJI).
Of course most of you would remember that HuJI is suspected to be behind the recent terrorist attack in Hyderabad.
It feels that the time to act is now…but the government in New Delhi is either sleeping – or wide awake but hoping that the problem will solve itself.
The BJP has a 2020 Vision for Assam but prefers to remain mute except when it is election time. About the “Left”, the less said the better. I am afraid that if we let things continue this way, Assam and the neighbouring states will become another Jammu & Kashmir in less than a decade.
There may not be a peaceful, developed Assam in 2020 what we might have is an unstable state riddled with insurgency, Islamic terrorists and continuing mass infiltration.
If you are still not convinced, read this article “reproduced below” in almost al its entirety – and weep. It is truly shocking that things have come to this pass…(thanks to Anirban who first forwarded this to me a few days ago).
Image courtesy: http://www.surveyofindia.gov.in/soi_maps/atlas/p_21_200.pdf
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Delhi fiddles while the northeast burns!!! (emphasis mine)
By Tarun Vijay | September 07, 2007 | 22:18 IST
Tarun Vijay is editor of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh weekly Panchjanya
Visiting Nagaland makes you feel different. You have to procure an inner line permit to enter. The permit demands to know why I am going there, where I shall stay and to be sure about my credentials I needed a guaranteer to vouch for me, my safe conduct and return within the stated period. Issued by the deputy commissioner’s office this permit is governed under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation Act 1873. Yes, 1873.
The British left India in 1947. We are celebrating the 60th anniversary of that freedom obtained after our motherland’s division and the massacres that followed. Still, I needed a permit, something that the British began to isolate these regions in the name of ‘protecting’ the local indigenous people.
The same procedure is also in vogue in Arunachal Pradesh.
So, we, legitimate Indians, are required to obtain a permit — another name for a ‘visa’ — but these states are reeling under the heat of illegal Muslim infiltrators from Bangladesh, who, obviously do not need to get an permit to enter, buy land, marry local girls and become so dominant that even the state authorities feel afraid to oust them.
Arunachal Pradesh’s student bodies recently compelled Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu to take action against the Bangladeshis. So what did he do? He pushed a couple of thousands to Assam and the matter ended.
In Assam it created a furore. The Muslim bodies, specially the All Assam Minorities Students Union, threatened to oust Hindus from Muslim majority districts like Dhubri, Goalpara and Barpeta, so Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi ‘certified’ that all those ousted by the Arunachal Pradesh government are Assamese and shall be accommodated in Barpeta!
The situation is so serious and Delhi’s apathy so mindboggling that the people have lost all hope. The All Assam Students Union, which spearheaded an unprecedented movement in the 1980s to oust Bangladeshi infiltrators, has in utter desperation said that in the next ten years Assam may have a Bangladeshi chief minister.
Strong and alarming words indeed. But neither the media nor the political parties paid any attention.
Assam has been transformed beyond recognition. The state’s cultural identity is symbolised by the great reformer and rejuvenator Srimat Sankar Dev. His birthlace in Dhing, near Bardowa, is a must-visit pilgrim centre for every Assamese Hindu. Now the Dhing assembly constituency has 90.02 percent Muslims. No prizes to guess how this Hindu pilgrim centre became a Muslim majority town because of the Bangladeshi influx.
Assam’s latest political star is Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, a perfume tycoon, who formed a new political party, the United Democratic Front, in 2005 and won 10 seats in the 2006 assembly election, surprising everyone. Previously he used to remote control other secular parties. Now he has taken the reins in his hands.
Assam and other northeastern states have become more volatile than Kashmir, but Delhi’s page three media and corrupt polity don’t see beyond their immediate concerns.
After Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, it is Nagaland’s turn now. Bangladeshi jihadi factories supplying men and material are creating havoc from Itanagar to Kohima and Hyderabad.
They are there before everybody’s eyes, yet no government has shown a steely resolve to identify them and send them back. Aliens are turned into voters for political gain.
The lines dividing traitors and patriots are getting blurred. Patriotic people need permits, they are made to live a refugee’s life, but aliens feel quite confident and vocal to aggressively enter our country, bomb it and yet find sympathies in the corridors of power.
In Nagaland, people are sandwiched between the insurgent groups and the Bangladeshi influx. The headquarters of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Issac-Muivah group) is in Hebron, 30 odd kilometres from Dimapur. Everywhere, while going to Kohima one can see posters demanding ‘quick results of peace talks’ and a greater Nagalim which they want in the name of Christ — a separate independent country. According to government sources there are about 75,000 Bangladeshi Muslims in Nagaland today.
I had come to attend a seminar organised by a daring tribal organisation, the Janajati Vikas Samiti, which had invited about 80 participants from the northeastern states. Nagaland Home Minister Thenucho inaugurated the conference. Former state secretary C M Chang headed the organising committee. It was incredible to see so many tribal leaders engrossed in what can be termed a free discussion on the problems Nagaland faces — Bangladeshi infiltration being the foremost.
Minister Thenucho was forthcoming and said this problem has to be seen as a demographic invasion. ‘The Naga people may be soon reduced to miserable sufferers by these infiltrators, who may appear as an asset for providing cheap labour and easily available hands for menial jobs. But look what they have done elsewhere and there is no guarantee that they will not do the same here. Today they work as labourers; tomorrow Nagas will have to work for them, if we do not stand up and say no to them,’ the minister said. He was serious.
The only problem is the Centre does not share their anxieties. Nothing that binds Naga society with the rest of the country has ever been encouraged and strengthened. Natwar Thakkar started his Gandhi ashram in Mokukchang but could never expand his mission of spreading Gandhi’s sublime thoughts beyond that.
To be in Kohima is still considered a matter of fear, pregnant with life and death questions. There is no icon of India that can be seen here. In the early 1980s a Gandhi statue was installed in Kohima, only to be desecrated and destroyed soon. ‘Nagaland doesn’t need any Indian’s statue’ was the decree issued by the insurgents.
Almost everyone, from IAS officers to traders and teachers, have to cough up a part of their earnings to the insurgents. Their ‘freedom days’, ‘republic days’ are celebrated in full public view with the media from Kolkata and Delhi in attendance. Presently there is a ceasefire between the NSCN (IM) and the Indian Army, but rumours are afloat that this period has been better utilised by the insurgents to reinforce its battalions with new recruits, procure better weapons and resources to press for its demand for an ‘independent ‘Nagalim’, which seeks to ‘add’ parts of Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh to its fold.
This has enraged Manipuri and Arunachali tribals and a tribal war cannot be ruled out if the Naga insurgents’ demand is given any sympathy.
The press is lively but cocooned in its own world. “We have never been invited to join any prime minister’s party on his foreign visits, Delhi and Kolkata papers reach us very late, after a day or two, that too the dak edition,’ said Geoffrey Yaden, editor of the Nagaland Post, the main daily newspaper in the state. “They don’t understand us properly, they write to please their egos. Nobody has the time and interest to understand our people or to make serious efforts to create bridges and strengthen national feelings here. Are politicians sitting in Delhi are bothered about us or the nation?” he lamented.
I know it is very difficult to have a Delhi leader or social activist or cultural tsar to find time for a northeast visit. How many of us would go to Manipur or Nagaland or Arunachal for a family trip? Do we know that the most scintillating lakes, mountains, rivers and forests are in the northeast, bettering even Kashmir’s panorama? Unfortunately the northeast has yet to register in our minds as markedly as Hardwar, Manali, Goa or Rameshwaram.
Corruption to the northeast’s politicians is ‘taught’ by politicians in New Delhi. Even to get a central grant released for these states, central ministers and their durbaris have to be suitably ‘pleased’. The grants that go to the northeast finally come back in large parts to the Delhi durbar through traders, contractors, commission agents and sanctioning ministers. The rest is divided amongst local ‘beneficiaries’, including the insurgents.
In view of the infiltration threat faced by Nagaland and other northeastern states, an observation by E Ramamohan, the former director general, Border Security Force, who was with me in Kohima, should be an eyeopener. He warns about the insurgent groups’ long-term planning for 2015 — “Today there are several Islamic fundamentalist insurgent groups in Assam, all created with the help of the Director General Forces Intelligence of Bangladesh and Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence. The main groups are the Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam, the Muslim United Tigers of Assam and the Islamic Liberation Army of Assam… what is most interesting that these Islamic fundamentalist groups have not started operations so far. Interrogations of the suspects and intelligence reports have revealed that they are in a preparation phase. Motivating and recruiting cadres, training them in Pakistan, stockpiling arms and explosives for the insurgency is their present strategy. The target is (to launch an assault) in 2015.”
Why can’t we understand that India shrinks from every inch that is occupied by Bangladeshi infiltrators in our territory?
In less than 100 years India has shrunk like no other nation on earth.
We lost Taxila, Karachi, Dhaka. Post independence, we lost 1.25 lakh square kilometres of land to Pakistan and China. Beijing still eyes Arunachal Pradesh.
Then Indians lost lands and homes in the Kashmir valley and became refugees for the ‘sin’ of supporting India.
Now, jihadis, Maoists and church-supported insurgents want their share.
Where will this all lead to?”
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Sadly – only in one direction. And the consequence of neglect and continued indifference could be fatal. Is there any hope?
Related Posts:
More on Muslim Population Growth in India
See also: Carnage in Assam, by Jagmohan 29th-30th Jan ’07, Part 1 and Part 2
Its high time we vaporize bangladesh
Dear Shantanu
The solution to the illegal (economic) immigrant problem is much harder than it appears at first sight. There are cut-off dates well beyond independence, eg. 1 January 1966 and 24 March 1971, which enable later migrants to get residency and, later, voting rights – as a consequence of the Assam Accord of 1985.
I have experience with this issue since 1985 (indeed ever since Rajiv Gandhi came to Assam on 15 August 1985 to declare the Assam Accord) when I was first sub-divisional magistrate in Guwahati, then Hojai, upto 1992 when I was Additional Chief Electoral Officer of Assam. I’ll mention only the key issues here.
Virtually everyone of East Pakistan/ Bangladeshi origin quickly manages to get a valid paper certificate either genuinely, or by paying a suitable bribe to some conniving official somewhere.
a) These certificates include: school certificates, certificates from pre-1964 (or 1966, I forget) refugee camps in Cachar, etc. These are considered to be valid for residency/ citizenship.
Most schools in Assam are so run-down and shabby that they do not keep records of their past students or even teachers (Assam’s weather and insect infestation can literally eat up many of these old records, too). We therefore don’t readily know if the ‘seal’ of the alleged principal on a flimsy certificate is true or false. Or if it is, whether the signature is genuine. Some of this can be done, but such verification is very expensive; and given our corrupt police, I suspect (this inflammatory, but I’m afraid the truth must be spoken) anyone who pays a bribe would perhaps get the validity of their certificate confirmed.
b) Alternatively, [and this may also appear inflammatory to some, but I acknowledge that genuine cases also exist] every young illegal migrant can readily link himself a person in the pre-1966 electoral rolls. That appears to be very easy. Since most male Muslim people’s name is “Mohammad” followed by something generic, it is very easy for every young illegal migrant to claim that their ‘father’ listed in their school certificate obtained from India (a thin typed-out piece of ‘rice-paper’ that may actually be genuine) – is actually the Mohammed ‘something’ cited in the pre-1966 rolls of a distant constitutency.
As the Deputy Commissioner (in Barpeta in 1989-90) I was one of the very few DCs who personally spent days in interior remote areas going house to house and verifying the voting/ residency rights of a large number alleged illegal migrants (these were people identified as illegals by AEROs). In each case I was shown one or the other of the certificates above, and despite sending some of these certificates for verification to far off districts, I recall that not one person could be identified as illegal.
This is, in my view, almost a lost cause for India — in the manner India has pursued it. India’s corrupt and shabby Third World governance comes to haunt it at each stage (mind you even the First World – USA finds it very hard to prevent illegal migrants).
Suggested solutions (among others, that surely exist out there):
i) Upgrade governance to world standards to ensure that corruption is wiped out and records are completely computerised and made fool-proof. Some of my proposed solutions (in my book) talk of recording a unique ‘number’ against each Indian child. This can be done with the use of modern technology such as iris recognition and if possible DNA details and photos, etc., so that the parental details can also be included, in a smart card. That will ensure that we don’t need to take recourse to flimsy bits of paper to establish someone’s true identity.
ii) Second, much stronger prevention. However, our borders are porous. Not only are they extremely difficult to guard, they are riddled with corrupt police officials who allow illegal immigrants to cross the borders for a small fee. Mind you, the BSF has a very good reason to claim that theirs is an impossible job: thousands of kilometers of border under the most difficult terrain – it is genuinely virtually impossible to guard against.
Regards
Sanjeev
Sanjeev,
Wonderful, thought provoking post.
We are paying the price for 50 years of neglect and corruption. This is why we need a more federal structure, where states keep the greater portion of their revenues and are more responsible for their governance. It may still not have worked because these states do not have a significant output and India has never promoted tourism to these states.
I agree with you, Shantanu, that these are some of the most beautiful places in India (been to Assam and Sikkim) and like Goa, they could have easily run their economy on tourism. Just required some thought and planning. But, of course, the planners are no where to be seen when they are really required.
The RSS honcho makes some valid points but his fundamentals are deeply flawed. These so-called frontier states were never part of India, during pre-british era. And, even the British ruled them extremely lightly, largely living them to their own devices. Very similar to Wajiristan, NWFP, etc in Pakistan. No Indian ruler (hindu or muslim) has ever held sway from afghanistan in the west to burma in the east. Northern India traditionally meant Sind, undivided Punjab, UP, Bihar, MP, and maybe even undivided Bengal. East of Jalpaiguri was ruled by tribal kings.
At Independence, these tribal territories joined India and became part of a modern India. However, the fact that they never “belonged” earlier or did not feel that they belonged was not adequately understood by the Congress. So, they never made any special efforts to integrate them into the mainstream like they did with other areas/communities. They have been neglected and the amount of development has been so pathetic in the north-east that can you blame them if they would prefer to be independent? Joining India did not generate any benefits.
RE: Illegal immigration from Bangladesh – my personal view is that the only long term solution is the assimilation of Bangladesh into India. The immigration happens due to economic reasons and try as we will we can not stop it, because the borders are so large and so porus. It is very much like the illegal immigration of Mexicans into US. It is very difficult, as Sanjeev explains above, to really distinguish the illegal immigrant from the local due to the easy availability of papers (for that you have to blame Indian officials, right?) Of course, politicians who use them as vote banks need to be strung up as well, starting with the communist traitors.
So, we will keep seeing the change in demographics but it is difficult to stem it. At least, I don’t have any practical idea other than the one above.
And, remember that we have China on that border …….
Sanjeev and Patriot: Thanks for very thoughtful comments.
I shall respond in detail in a day or two.
Here’s some vinatge reporting on Assam.
From India Today’s edition dated June 30, 1980 (by Arul B. Louis) which provides additional evidence that the AASU/AGP led Assam movement (precursor to ULFA) was really a reaction to increasing influx from Bangladesh.
(Reproduced under the “60 Revolutions” special issue of Dec ’07)
“An Open Border”
The key factor in the current Assam agitation is the influx of a large number of foreigners into the state, mostly from Bangladesh.
Assam agitators estimate the annual infiltration at 3,00,000….
The leaders of the Assam agitation allege that border contrl are lax, providing unlimited opportunities for would-be infiltrators…”
It is all due to 1. Nehru & Gandhi 2.Congress & Communists.
Congress has to be rolled dn and dumped permanent along with Jihadis and missionaries.
great reading all your analysis, keep it up
Thank you Akum…I had a look at your site…Good mix of local news coverage and national issues…
I will be visiting frequently. Thanks.
From Anti-Bangladeshi wave in Assam , August 9, ’08 by Syed Zarir Hussain in Guwahati
This may be the link to the above judgement:
http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1189769/
To be verified.
Do read Sh Maloy Krishna Dhar on India’s melting and fermenting borders and strategic ocean boundaries
No treason case against Arundhati Roy by impotent BJP-RSS lawyers:
Till date for hosting anti-Indian Kashmiri Independence Programs or don’t have enough money to pay an advocate for even this important issue!
RSS should also discard its Muslim Morcha & force BJP on Hindutva or both will loose credibility & public support very soon. Leaving Swadeshi & Hindutva BJP is already on the verge of extinction. Pampering minorities have moved away Hindu votebank from them and Muslims as usual voting more sickular Congress & Communists! 5 crore & growing illegal Bangladeshi Muslim infiltrators vote those seculars and influenced results in Delhi, Rajasthan & Maharashtra hugely as BJP failed to extradite them to Islamic Bangladesh from even their ruled states and these pests will soon destroy nationalists like currently torturing local Indians in Bengal, Assam, etc!
Playing to tunes of foreign funded sickular Indian media has also become of no use as even negative publicity as “communal†was good publicity but have none now except charges of ‘Hindu Terror’. Ironically so, Rashtriya Muslim Morcha chief Indreshji of RSS is fakely involved by Congress Govt & its investigating agencies now on Ajmer Sharif Dargah blast case like earlier did same though now no proofs, court conviction or legal punishment for Sadhvi Pragya & President’s medal holder Military Intelligence officer Colonel Purohit the ‘Pioneers’ of Hindu Terrorism as per Congress and rotting in jail for years without bail after 4 illegal Narco Analysis tests turned them into vegetables. BJP leaders never speak for their rights or arrange Bail through good nationalist lawyers while Congress paid legal aid money to Jamia Millia Student Jihadis and released Jihadi Prof. Gilani, associate of Afzal Guru in Parliament attack case!
Involving RSS leader Indreshji falsely by Congress in terror as old ploy to divert people’s attention from CWG scam first by questioning BJP leader Mittal for a small contract of Rs. 280 crore while Congress General Secretary Raul Gandhi & Man Mohan not arrested for sanctioning extra 78000 crore!
Claiming Indreshji of Rashtriya Muslim Morcha of RSS is involved in blasting Ajmer Sharif is as laughable & absurd as claiming Rashtriya Sikh Sangat of RSS & not Congress was involved in 1984 anti-Sikh riots massacring 2,000 Sikhs!
BJP must raise only Bangladeshi ouster to revive & save India !
Apart from making people aware about Hindu heritage of Taj Mahal the Tejo Mahalaya Palace-Agra Fort-Qutab Minar (Iron Pillar), Sheikh Sallah Dargah over Punyeshwar Temple in Pune, Dhar Idgah over Bhojshala Mandir, Lal Masjid of Haroa, Bengal and liberating Kashi-Mathura from Aurangzeb built mosques over our ancient Temples.
Ban conversions only way to save India but BJP-RSS don’t care on it !
Apart from necessity for Uniform Civil Code like Europe, Goa & maximum two children policy for Indians of all religions.
Lastly, Kashmir or northeast wherever Hindus minority there is separatism so India be made Hindu Rashtra of Hindu-sthan with rehabilitation for all 18 million persecuted Bangladeshi Hindus in east India and Pakistani Hindus in Kashmir making these troubled regions Hindu majority and ending the long problem of being Muslim majority!
Mr Chidambaram , Is there a Saffron-Green nexus in the Nation?
http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=12420
Muslim Girls, Sorry you cannot afford ‘Love Jihad’ – http://www.hindu.com/2010/10/22/stories/2010102250270500.htm
Should German chancellor be denied an Indian Visa?
http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=12411
That is precisely I say resolve the problem of Kashmir. Let it go except the areas, if any, dominated by non-muslims back in 1947. Do not waste any more resources there. It is gone. Sooner or later it is going to go. Concentrate on what is salvagable. The alternative is a slow attrition. You may keep calling all such parts, as you are now saying about Kashmir, integral parts of India. If that makes you proud, well that is fine.
@Morris (#15),
Let it go except the areas, if any, dominated by non-muslims back in 1947. Do not waste any more resources there. It is gone. Sooner or later it is going to go. Concentrate on what is salvagable.Ok. That is what people thought in 1947 just before the partition. The thought process is returning in 2010. It is quiet possible that thought process would return in 2020, 2030, 2040, …. May be by 2060 or 2070, we do not have anything to salvage?
I propose: let us give away Kashmir valley preceded by exodus of all Pakistan lovers led by likes of Shekhar Gupta, Geelani and Arundhati Roy.
Read http://www.sandeepweb.com/2012/08/11/the-ongoing-jihad-in-assam-part-2/
and
http://www.swapan55.com/2012/08/assam-will-never-be-same-again.html
From Distant thunder by Aditya Sinha
August 19, 10:00 IST
My father-in-law was extremely annoyed by the election of President Pranab Mukherjee because as the proprietor of the Assam Tribune (my wife’s grandfather, RG Baruah, the paper’s founder, is considered one of the builders of modern Assam) he supported the Assam agitation in the early 1980s. President-da was at that time Union finance minister, but more importantly he was hatchet-man to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. When the late Mrs Gandhi asked him what the matter in Assam was, hatchet-man replied that it was an anti-Bengali agitation — not an anti-Bangladeshi one — and that became the Congress party’s template for the “Assam problemâ€. Hatchet-man tried to get my father-in-law to “come to the mainstreamâ€, as he put it; but even a conservative paper like Assam Tribune was not going to go against the popular mood despite innumerable personal entreaties by the then Chief Minister Hiteshwar Saikia (in whose house Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dubiously claims residence and thereby current membership in the Rajya Sabha, technically if not morally fulfilling the criterion of the PM having to be from Parliament).
…
It’s no secret that a storm is brewing, so what is the government going to do?
Placing this link here for the record:
West Bengal May Be Headed For A Kosovo-like Situation With The Rise of Islamism by Jay Bhattacharjee, 18 Jan 2016
Dark ‘State’ Called Nagalim: Arunachal’s Evangelists Pose Grave Threat To National Security by Jaideep Mazumdar, Feb 15, 2017