Refugees : Biggest headache for Assam
By Pradeep Dasgupta, Habitual Cassandra’s apart even some political leaders in Assam seem to foresee an eventuality which may stall the State Assembly elections early next year. Else it was now high time that they forsook their sedentary comforts in the party headquarters and deployed themselves in rural areas to start ground works for the poll. Especially so in the case of those parties which suffered a dumbing debacle at the recent Lok Sabha hustings.
For, the ensuing few months in Assam prior to the Pujas will experience the worst monsoon, which usually swamps the people’s habitats in the countryside, snaps the means of communication and scuppers, for instance, all enthusiasm of political gimmickry. The season that follows the Pujas however comes with a bracing climate but the winter days are too transitory and besides it is precisely during the late winter that the elections take place.
What has made the political parties in Assam as well as others outside skeptical about the prospect of the ensuing General Elections is obviously the Bangladesh episode which not only has enough bearing on Assam’s economy but is also acting as a powerful catalyst in this border State’s social and political fabries. Although the people here have a moral support for the oppressed humanity of Bangladesh in their struggle for emancipation the continued influx of evacuees from that territory into this problem laden State appears to be viewed currently as a fly in the ointment. And, nobody knows yet to what extent this influx will continue and what new dimension it will add . to the problems which Assam is already smarting under.
It is thus feared that a situation may develop soon which will counter vai the scheduled General Elections. Opinions about the shape of that situation, however, differ in the absence of a clear perspective about what the Government of India wants to do with regard to the evacuees as well as the haunted land that these happy humanities have been fleeing. . The problems that an incessant flow of refugees from Bangladesh has created to Assam are vast and numerous. The Chief Minister of the State Mr. Mahendra Mohan Choudhury delineated some of them last Saturday while addressing a meeting of the Pradesh Congress Committee at Gauhati Mr. Choudhury said that as many as 3,60,000 evacuees had already entered Assam of them approximately 2.5 lakhs in Meghalaya alone and more were coming Most of the arrivals so far were duly registered though so that they could be sent back to their homes when normalcy returned.
This influx not only resulted in a sudden spurt in commodity prices especially in the border regions of the State which could be considerably checked when the supplies from the Central Government started pouring in but had also spread epidemics in and around the evacuees camps killing as in the Karimganj sector 50 local people apart from 25 refugees. The condition of health and sanitation was worse around the camps in Meghalaya where getting pure water for drinking was a perennial problem.
However it was not these problems that the Chief Minister wanted to underscore. These problems he said could largely be tackled with the financial and other assistance received from the center which has shouldered full responsibility for the evacuee relief and with the help and succor that the refugees had been getting from various philanthropic organizations. Indian and international. The problems which Mr. Choudhury assiduously tried to emphasize and on which the BCC later adopted a resolution were different. They related to Assam’s internal law and order on one hand and the State’s geographical security on the other.
There are many factors of the danger to which Assam’s internal law and order has been susceptible in the wake of the refugee influx from Bangladesh on an unprecedented scale. “Not all of those who have come, the Chief Minister bemoaned “are genuine evacuees. Some of them are spies, some saboteurs and some have come only to create linguistic and communal troubles”. Nearly 100 of them spies and other scheniers according to him had been arrested and the State intelligence personnel were on the heels of several such others.
Illustrating how the Pakistani saboteurs were trying to spark off linguistic and communal troubles in Assam the Chief Minister indicated that there were the ugly hands or instigation of these elements behind most of the recent incidents, at Badarpur, Lumding and elsewhere including campuses of some educational institutions. And on the basis of these incidents he also sought to justify the arrests of some youths and others under the Maintenance of Internal Security ordinance.
Loss visible than palpable though, some amount of disillusionment about the conduct of a section of the countrymen has also occurred to some political and social organizations in Assam in the wake of the Bangladesh tangle. It is now being sadly realized that some people’s demonstrated clinamen for democracy and secularism is hardly genuine but a charade, which is not salubrious for the growth of a national life. This has really astonished at least some political leaders in the State who honestly believed that anybody living in this country could never have allegiance to or weakness for any other land than Bharat.
The State’s territorial security has directly been threatened as the Chief Minister pointed out, by the aggressive designs of the Pakistani army. On May 23 and 24 that army intruded into our territory in the Karimganj sector, captured the Sutarkandi check post, occupied two tiny villages in the neighborhood, killed two Indian civilians and kidnapped one. Incursions by the Pakistani troops took place also in the Dwaki and the Dalu sectors of Meghalaya more than once besides shelling and strafings. Although in all these cases the Indian BSF succeeded in throwing out the invaders and capturing their arms, ammunition, vehicles and other wherewithal, the fact remains that the intruders too succeeded in killing a few Indian border guards and civilians besides damaging properties and scaring the villagers.
So the question that everybody in Assam now asks is : what is the way-out of these predicaments ? Will the Prime Minister Mrs. Gandhi, who is coming to Assam this weekend on a brief visit to the evacuee camps and is also expected to address two public meetings provide a concrete answer to this question ? The Prime Minister paid a visit to some of the evacuees camps hardly a month ago and a second visit to them now is in a way redundant unless it brings some firm assurances to the fugitives and the people who have sheltered them at the risk as it appears of even the security of their motherland.
The Chief Minister and the PCC of the ruling party have called upon the people of Assam to be prepared for any eventuality on the Bangladesh issue and to maintain internal peace in the meantime. But an eventuality should present itself pretty soon. For in the context of Assam’s current situation any delay may spell danger even to its internal peace. Mr. Choudhury who reportedly invited her for a second visit is expected to purvey this theme to the Prime Minister.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 12.06.1971