Dr Hiren Gohain, a literary critic and social scientist, flays activists opposing the NRC as having no idea of Assam politics.
GUWAHATI: The process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is an impersonal one, according to Dr Hiren Gohain, a literary critic and social scientist in Assam. Dr Gohain, who was once critical of the Assam Movement, is now among the many supporters of the NRC, which is a product of the Assam Movement. With an active role in Assamese civil society, Dr Gohain has extensively written about Assamese society and its transition. He has been contributing to various academic journals and periodicals for more than four decades. He spoke to The Sunday Guardian about the history of immigration in Assam and the politics around it.
Maintaining why NRC was not xenophobic, Dr Gohain said: “The process, being the invention of Pratik Hajela, NRC coordinator, required the claimant to prove whether they had any Indian ancestors. The aim through this process was to see if the claim was genuine. Hence, it is an impersonal process and no community can be targeted.”
Though documentation in India is at a very rudimentary stage, Dr Hiren Gohain said, “But now since every document has to be accurate, people have been subjected to difficulties without any fault of their own and without the intention of the authority.”
Dr Gohain further said each claim, be it of a Hindu or Muslim or a Bengali, needs to be honestly approached, as often there are loopholes in their stories. He said that the hue and cry about the NRC being “anti-Muslim” or “anti-Bengali” is a product of people being biased about some community. Mentioning the murder of Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal Pradesh who was murdered in Delhi, Dr Gohain said that the untoward incident did not make all Delhiites xenophobic. He said: “Sometimes xenophobia does dominate a particular population, but it is not a permanent character of a population.”
Asked how he reconciled his stand during the Assam Movement and his present support for the NRC, Dr Gohain said that while he continued to oppose the cruelty of the Assam Movement, he took into consideration the reasons behind it and the issues that the people wanted to address.
Calling it as a sort of negotiation, he said that he came to realise the sense of insecurity that the Assam people had felt since the 1920s. “In the 1930s, the British very craftily encouraged a kind of ‘anti-Muslim’ sentiment. First, they opened the doors to millions of immigrant Muslims from East Bengal whose language and culture were different. This gave birth to a certain kind of anxiety among the Assam people, which is not unique. The British promoted immigration to relieve the pressure on them in East Bengal. The peasants in East Bengal were in extreme poverty and there were signs of widespread and violent peasant revolt in East Bengal. It did not help that the immigrant Muslim leaders were supporting Pakistan at that time, which too contributed to the anxiety among the Assamese people,” Dr Gohain added.
However, immigration created an agricultural revolution in the state, but this was against the traditional method of agriculture, Dr Gohain said. He added that with immigrant Muslims wanting to occupy land, it started harming the Assamese people financially. Hence, immigration became a fraught, contentious issue and the sense of distrust and suspicion remained long after Independence.
Dr Gohain added that 1960 onwards, Assam people started having more cordial relations with the immigrant population. The immigrants even took to learning the Assamese language which helped in strengthening the bond, he said.
On the Assam Movement, Dr Gohain said, “The Assam Movement started when the middle-class in Assam suddenly realised that resources at their disposal were becoming more and more restricted. Assam was an underdeveloped state and, therefore, it didn’t have the resources to absorb the rising aspirations of different communities, including the tribals and the immigrants. The Assam Movement was a conservative movement to preserve the economic and political hegemony of the middle-class population.”
Dr Gohain also said that the immigrant Muslims bore the brunt of the Assam Movement because Hindutva ideas were very powerful at the time. “Several BJP leaders visited Assam during the time, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nanaji Deshmukh. They spoke at large gatherings and spoke what the Assamese people wanted them to speak of. They spoke about their prejudices and anxiety of the Assamese people and gradually gave it an anti-Muslim turn. From there on, instead of using the word ‘immigrant’, they started saying ‘Bangladeshi’ people,” Dr Gohain added.
Dr Gohain also blamed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for giving the movement a communal turn, as during that time, according to him, the RSS influence in the state was very profound and underground. At the same time, he acknowledged that the strength of the movement echoed the deepest anxiety of the masses.
According to Dr Hiren Gohain, the Assam Accord, which was an outcome of the Assam Movement, was opposed by the Muslims for 10-15 years. “However, later they realised that they should not oppose it because Assam was on the boil all the time. During that time there was unrest, violence, lawlessness in the state. It was then that the Muslim leaders negotiated with the Assamese and found some common ground so that they could live together. They accepted the Assam Accord and 1971 as the cut-off year,” he said.
However, then came the question of how to make the Assam Accord a reality as 1971 was not the cut-off year for Indian citizenship, Dr Gohain said. Thus, the demand for an NRC gained impetus. Therefore, he said, the NRC is not a conspiracy of the BJP nor is it something that has fallen from above, nor is it an invention of the Assamese people.
Talking about the recent identity assertion by the immigrant Muslim community known as “Miya”, Dr Gohain expressed his fear that the identity politics of the “Miya” was being promoted by the BJP from behind the curtains.
He criticised the activists opposing the NRC as having no idea of Assam politics. He said, “Immigrant Muslims also have their share of opportunists and chauvinists. We must not think that because they are oppressed, they are liberal and democrats. Some of them think only about the Muslim community. According to them, whatever might happen to Assam people, the interest of the Muslims should be safe. It is not the way to deal with a situation which involves a mixed population.”
Dr Gohain also added that those names that have been missed in the final NRC list should be dealt with in a sensible and humane manner. He reiterated that all these immigrations took place under the watch of the Central government and, hence, it is their baby and they should deal with it.