Aditi Phadnis: Assam's ethnic mess

PLAIN POLITICS

All the reports from the Congress Chief Ministers' conclave in Chandigarh last month said Defence Minister and senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee warned Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi not to to play politics with ethnic groups because while politically, it may be profitable, it was dangerous business. Soon after, almost as if on cue, violence broke out on September 26 between the Karbi and Dimasa tribes of Assam's North Cachar region. Between then and now, more than 70 have died.

The hallmark of tribal violence "" whether Kuki-Naga or between Karbis and Dimasas "" is its extreme bestiality. Babies have been beheaded in Assam, whole families have been hacked to death in North Cachar and passengers in buses have been asked to get down and been killed. Thousands of families belonging to the two warring tribes have fled their homes and are living in relief camps. Dimasa families from Karbi areas have taken shelter in the adjacent Dimasa-dominated North Cachar hills, where they presumably feel safer among their own.

What on earth is happening in Assam?

Like politics elsewhere in the north-east, in Assam too, community "" especially tribal "" loyalties rest close to the skin and are easy to stir up. Traditionally, as Dev Kant Barooah once put it, so long as he had the Ali (the migrant Muslim), the coolie (the labourers in the tea gardens) and the Bangali (Hindu settlers from West Bengal and now, Bangladesh), the Congress was home and dry in Assam. These communities continue to be the Congress backbone in the state. But new layers have been added to the support base of the Congress. And the race is now on, before 2006 when Assembly elections are due, to add more.

The North Cachar Hills are, theoretically, under Guwahati's administrative control but are ruled by an autonomous council. The seeds of this arrangement were sown by the British because of the martial and rebellious tradition in the region, where the Dimasas are the single largest tribal group in North Cachar Hills, accounting for roughly one-third of the district's total population. Fratricidal violence among ethnic groups has been common in the district, spread over a 10,434-square kilometre area, half of which is covered by thick jungles.

There have been clashes between Karbis and Khasis, Karbis and Kukis, and other ethnic confrontations in recent years. But the Karbi-Dimasa animosity has grown in intensity since mid-2004, when tension emerged in Dimasa-dominated areas. The area is close to Nagaland and the tension was over reports that parts of the area was under illegal occupation by Nagas. The Karbis, who thought the land belonged to them, charged the majority Dimasas of selling out to the Nagas. The Dimasa tribal leadership does not accept this accusation.

The region is close to Dimapur (Nagaland) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland Isak Muivah (NSCN IM) controls Dimapur. It has its own agenda "" dreams of a Greater Nagaland, incorporating new and previously non-Naga inhabited areas. It was worrying enough that the NSCN IM was extending its hold to areas from where it had been absent. But that all the attendant problems "" tacit political patronage to militant groups "" were accompanying the NSCN IM's gradual growth was worrying for New Delhi.

So when the violence mounted and Chief Minister Gogoi was asked by New Delhi to talk to the two groups "" the Dimasas and Karbis "" he did. In the past, the Congress has supported the demand of the Dimasa that a larger Dimasa state "" Dimaraji "" be created. This is the point Pranab Mukherjee was making: It was not the violence by small militant groups representing small communities that the chief minister needed to be concerned about. It was the patronage these groups got.

How does this work? Not unlike the way DK Borooah spelt it out. An insecure chief minister does a deal with this or that militant group, promising to look the other way while they're creating the fire, but rushing with fire engines to douse them, so that the "community in danger" theme can be exploited to the hilt. Gogoi has accused Janata Dal(U) leader George Fernandes of creating the disturbances in North Cachar. Fernandes has responded with a defamation suit.

The North Cachar problem is not the only ethnic issue besetting Assam. Gogoi and the Assam Governor, Lt Gen (retd) Ajay Singh, had an unseemly public argument recently over the governor's observation: that 6,000 migrants were crossing over every day to Assam from Bangladesh. The last word on that controversy has not been said yet, but last month the Indian Army was told by New Delhi to call off a manhunt against militants in Tinsukia forests where more than 14 rebels were killed. The Army was responding to specific reports that the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), which had been flushed out of Bhutan in a historic operation in 2003, had been regrouping in the jungles. Why did Delhi feel the need to call Lt Gen Hardev Lidder (the General Officer Commanding in charge of the operations) unless Guwahati felt its political assets were threatened? When Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister and a proposal was made to set up a unified command for the north-east, Gogoi was one of the chief ministers who opposed the proposal vehemently. For the record, he said he did not want to be saddled with a set-up that the BJP controlled. But there has been no talk of that even after the UPA has come to power.

The north-east is a smouldering fire of competing ethnic and economic identities and these are sharpened at election time. And a senior minister (and indeed one who's seen it all) Pranab Mukherjee was telling the Congress in Assam not to make the same mistakes it has made all these years "" exploiting ethnic identity to form a government in the state somehow. It has dangerous and long-term consequences.