If you are a celebrity starving for some popularity or a politician hunting for some unrest in the country for your personal gains and you think Assam NRC issue is your golden break, then you seriously need to shut up immediately.
It’s disappointing to see such ignorant casual tweets from some popular figures of the country regarding the NRC list of Assam. Stop portraying this as robbing a particular group of people of their citizenship. It should be understood that they are not Indian citizens in the first place. These are people of Bangladesh who cross over to India illegally (thanks to our pathetic border system) and start living, breeding, and of course creating nuisance in Assam.
I understand your needs for showing off your humanity, bigheartedness and of course the knowledge of what’s going on in the country. But let me ask you first:
What do you really know about Assam’s NRC issue?
Have you ever come across the term ‘Axom Andolan (Assam movement)’ or for that matter, how much do you even know about the state of Assam itself?
Let me tell you a small story here. Back in 1978, Hiralal Patwari, a MP in the Mangaldai constituency of Assam, died requiring a re-election in the place. In the re-election, the dramatic increase in the number of voters was the first noticeable hint that voting rights were given to some foreigners to increase the vote count for a particular political party. This led to the start of an agitation led by a student party and a local political party of the state which was supported by the whole state. Massive protests were held across Assam against granting of voting rights to infiltrators at the cost of huge damage to the overall development of the state. Assamese people- youths, elderly, and women gave their lives for this cause (the death count was 855). They died in order to protect their motherland from these illegal foreign infiltrators. The agitation subsided with the assurance by the then government in the form of the ‘Assam Accord’ signed in 1985 between the then PM and some “incapable” leaders of the Assam movement. This later turned out to be a joke as rather than freeing Assam from these outsiders, their influx increased like wildfire throughout the state and continues even till date.
Infiltration is the main cause of most of the problems in the otherwise comparatively peaceful state. If you look in any Assamese daily, about 90% of the crimes in the state are committed by this particular illegal bunch of people.
Locals are afraid to go into some areas that are illegally occupied by these immigrants even in broad daylight? Do you think you can live peacefully among these people who are forever encroaching our lands, literally polluting our beautiful realm, committing heinous crimes like rapes and murders and of course always multiplying like rabbits?
The cut-off date for detection of foreigners in Assam is 24th March 1971, whereas the cut-off date for citizenship in the rest of the country is July 19th 1948? We are still liberal than the rest of the country and yet we are expected to accept these infiltrators. Would you accept Pakistanis or Afghanis all over your land if they illegally cross the border and just start living there? I know you wouldn’t, but we here at least tried. We tried to keep quiet, tried to bear with the numerous inconveniences, tried even accepting them but what should we do when our own identity starts becoming a threat in our own lands.
Have you heard of Arnamai Bora or the numerous other brutal rape victims in the hands of these infiltrators. Have you ever lit a candle for them?
Not many would know that Assam has the highest number of kidney and cancer patients due to the cheap and banned fertilizers and pesticides imported from Bangladesh and used in our crops by these people, who have already acquired and started their farming businesses in our lands.
Showing humanity for these people in front of the Assamese is a joke on you itself because if you have ever been to Assam, the big hearts and hospitality of Assamese people would put your humanity to shame. Were you ever aware of the annual disastrous floods that affect the state or the various other grave problems faced by us? Did you ever raise your voice on any issue of Assam or is it just the NRC issue that seems sensational enough to gain popularity?
The fight here is between Indians and illegal trouble-making foreigners. Shameless politicians who see these people as vote banks have always tried to defend and shelter them, turning a blind eye to the dangerous future that awaits the state. Intellectuals for whom secularism has become a fashion, without bothering to adhere to its actual meaning have protected them just because they belong to a particular religion.
This is not about the communal hatred that a leader from a neighboring state wants to portray for her personal benefit; this is about what the Assamese people from Assam have been facing for a long time. Even now, although a list is out, we know that the actual problem is nowhere near being solved. Stop making it about Muslims. Stop making it about Bengalis. It is, I repeat, a last hope for the indigenous people of Assam to save themselves from being trampled over by a group of outsiders.
Also, of course there maybe flaws in the NRC but that can be corrected or further more transparently investigated. But the bloodshed that some people are trying to initiate will be incorrigible. We don’t know if all these illegal Bangladeshis we see around everyday are even included in the NRC list. We don’t know that even after the names are sorted if anything will actually be done regarding the issue. We also don’t know till when we will have to keep fighting to safeguard our beautiful language and our beautiful little state. But, I know that we will fight. And we can fight for Assam because we are the same Assamese that stopped the Mughals from entering our lands when they invaded the rest of the country. The history books of India never bother to print anything about the only kingdom that defeated the Mughals. Recently there was so much controversy over a Bollywood movie that showed Rajputs losing a battle to Muslim invaders, but no one even knows about the brave Lachit Borphukan or the glorious victory of the Battle of Saraighat.
Let me get it straight, Assam is for the Assamese but yet people of various communities like Bengalis, Marwaris, Biharis, and Nepalis have been living here as our kith and kin without any trouble. But we have realized it the hard way that we cannot keep sheltering the illegal Bangladeshis anymore if we have to keep our Assamese identity alive. And by no means should a person from mainland India, who has never visited Assam and who most likely know nothing about the graveness of the issue, have an opinion in support of the illegal immigrants living as parasites in the state. We have sheltered these miscreants long enough only to be repaid by increased crime rates, abnormal population increase, unrest in the state, and threats to the native people of Assam. It’s high time they go back to their own country or to the neighboring state that is so ready to welcome their new foreign vote bank.