Assam Kills for Votes – Modi Incites

How does democracy work in India, when on the one hand, it calls for the welfare of the people and their consensus in every decision, and on the other hand, its flag bearers, the Congress and the BJP, believe in fascist control of a population, driving them to the desired polls with the whip of terror!

“You can write it down. After May 16, these Bangladeshis better be prepared with their bags packed,” said Modi, in Serampore, West Bengal, which shares a porous border with Bangladesh, on last Sunday.

On Thursday, deadly attacks on the migrant Muslim community were generated in the wake of the Indian electoral fever, where ethnic militant groups linked to different political factions left 32 dead in kill-and-dump tactic, and hundreds of homes burnt down.

The state government accused the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) of carrying out the killings, while Assam Minister of State for Border Areas Development has claimed that Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) is involved in the recent killings. The BPF is known to have alliance with the Congress while the BJP is being accused to have allied with the NDFB.

This Sunday, as if Modi’s thirst for blood has not yet quenched, another reiteration has come, ‘You are concerned about infiltrators and not your own people … they must go back, they are robbing the youths of India of their livelihood’.

Perhaps it was in anticipations of such Indian mentality, that in 1946, in the same Serampora, Gandhi said, “It (Assam) must become fully independent and autonomous … If you do not act correctly and now, Assam will be finished.”

Assam has been ridden of violence, riot killings and arson for four decades now, starting from the Assam Agitation (1979-85). Estimates of lives lost to date are over 30,000, but it is hard to confirm such figures in a place where there has hardly been any population consensus in decades. 1,87,052 people are still living in relief camps, unable to return for dread of their lives.

Migrants from Bangladesh to Assam have been a reason of contention, as the Assamese and Bodo people have considered them contenders of their land. Though the Assam Accord of 1985 recognized all those who entered the Indian territories before 1971 as Indian citizens, yet at times of tension and riots, all ethnic Bengali Muslims come under the same label of migrants for the lack of consensus and identification of communities.

Yet, the migrants are not the only problem of Assam; local Assamese and the Bodo people, who are of the scheduled class, have vied for more autonomy on the resources of their land, such as natural gas, oil, tea and plywood, which in their view has been colonized by the central government, rendering the locals deprived of the fruits of their land. The Bodo also accuse the Assamese to have imposed their language and culture upon them, and considering themselves the right heirs of the land, have made intense agitation for a separate Bodoland state.

In this pretext, when Assam is already a jungle of diverse issues, where dozens of insurgent groups are operating and the population has been living in a war like situation, and where the government-led counter-insurgency has also caused counter-fear, devastating the populace even more, the spirit of the democratic process would not mean to incite violence just to snatch votes..

Democracy is theoretically a system wherein the parliament is supposed to deliver the basic human rights to life, property, peace, health and education. But democracy, in its prime event of the ‘electoral process’ in India,seems to be dancing on the suffering of a terrified populace. How doesdemocracy work in India, when on the one hand, it calls for the welfare of the people and their consensus in every decision, and on the other hand, its flag bearers, the Congress and the BJP, believe in fascist control of a population, driving them to the desired polls with the whip of terror!

Modi has yet again proven his extreme Hindutva mentality, which feeds more on hate of the ‘other’ than on love for the ‘own’. Hate-speech and the election campaign are and must be 180° apart, but Indian politicians have proven that they feed their people with hate, incite them on it and expect acceptance from them for it.

India should wake up from this dispassion for human life; each human is worth humanity and no single life is dispensable. Democracy can become the soothing light that can bring prosperity and human right to them, but not if it is blind to the rights and suffering of its own people, not if it will serve the Indian plutocracy alone.