Jehangir Hussain :
In 1979, All Assam Students Union (ASU) launched mass agitations against Indians from other provinces, but soon two police officers and the RSS changed the course of the protests against imaginary Muslim migrants. ASU was against the other Indians who they said controlled Assam’s economy and jobs. The Assamese felt side-lined in their own province.
Within months, the RSS and the police officers twisted the course of the protests against the so called foreigners, specifically ‘illegal immigrants from Bangladesh’.
In the book, ‘Infiltration: Genesis of Assam Movement’, published in 1917, a former professor statistics Mannan of Guahati University, recollects the forgotten memoir of one of the officers to show how the ASU leaders were persuaded to change the popular anger towards imaginary immigrants from Bangladesh.
Professor Mannan wrote his book drawing from police officer Premkanta Mahanta’s memoirs, ‘Rajbhaganar Para Kal Thokalike’ in English, ‘From Dethronement to the Plantain Grove’.
Mahanta himself published his memoirs in 1994, to ‘help historians with some truth that might be forgotten’. Mahanta recounts his accounts from 1978, when Golap Borbora’s Janata Party swept the polls in Assam and ousted the Indian National Congress from power once for all. The Janata Party was formed by a group of Parties including what was then the Jana Sangh, now Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), originally the Hundu Mahasabha, created by Syama Prasad Mukherjee in Calcutta.
The other police officer was Hiranya Kumar Bhattacharya. On October 1, 1978, the new government appointed Bhattacharya as deputy inspector general of police to head the Border Police Division. In his memoirs, Mahanta wrote that he was appointed in the Boder Police Division in the following Februarry.
Mahanta wrote that ‘out of zealousy’ Bhatacharya got him transferred from the post of head of Police Training Camp to the post of Superintendent of Police of the Border Police Division.
‘By that time, Bhattacharya had begun identifying and expelling Bangladesh immigrants, Muslims and Hindus, from Nalapara, Mangaldoi and Tamulpur in Rangia, kicking off a political storm’, wrote Mahanta in his memoirs. He recounts, ‘I affirm that …the six-year-long Assam movement (1979 to 1985) would not have taken place in we hadn’t come together.’
In March 1979, about a month after Mahanta joined the Border Police Division, the All Assam students Union held a conference in Sibsagar, now Sivasagar, when Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was elected as the president of All Assam Students Union and Bhrigu Kumar Phukan was elected as general secretary. The conference adopted 21 resolutions, one of which spoke of the ‘menace posed to the existence of the Assamese by the outsiders who controlled Assam’s economy’. The idea of the so called Bangladeshi immigrants was not there in the resolution until then.
In the same month, Hiralal Patowari, MP from Mngaldoi died, requiring a bye-election. On April 27, 1979, the customary notice was issued to revise the voters’ list. Bhattacha wanted more time to delete the names of many voters, therefore, he persuaded chief secretary R S Paramasivam, to ask chief election commissioner S L Shakdhar to give more time to revise the voters’ list.
The chief election commissioner granted an extra week and Bhattacharya used the time to strike of many voters from the electoral rolls of 1978. As it needed a cumbersome process, and the deleted voters could submit complaints, Bhattacharya and Mahanta launched a media campaign against the so called ‘foreigners’ and the media began tracking the identification process.
Mahanta called for roping leaders to sway public opinion on the issue and accordingly Bhattacharya hosted a dinner for Purbanchaliya Loka Parishad leader Nibaran Bora and Assam Jatiyatabadi Dal leader Nagen Hazarika, both known to Mahanta since their school days.
In the memoir, recalls Mahanta, they decided to focus on the All Assam Student Union leaders. Almost about the same time in March, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was elected as the president of All Assam Students Union and Brigu Phukan as the general secretary, recall Mahanta in his memoirs.
‘The 21-Point Charter of the All Assam Students Union carried an alarming point of unbridled influx of outsiders into Assam. At our suggestion, the two student leaders were brought from their University hostels in order to motivate them about the problem caused by foreign nationals. We provided them with adequate data and information. Then onwards, they agreed to treat the issue of foreigners with priority and delete theirs names from the voters’ list.’
At the executive committee meeting of the All Assam Students Union on May 23, 1979, AASU adopted a resolution calling for a province-wide 12-hour shut down in June demanding ‘Expulsion of Bangladeshi infiltrators’.
In the meantime, the names of many voters were deleted from the voters’ list, drawing protests that the ‘police had hatched a conspiracy to identify Indian citizens as foreigners,’ recalls police officer Mahanta.
‘By then, the Indian Election Commission received protests from 47,658 voters that the names of 36,658 Assamese voters had been identified as foreigners,’ wrote Mahanta.
The controversy over Mangaldoi’s voters’ list became the new driving force for the Assamese agitations and the All Assam Students Union’s new war cry became ‘Three Ds’ -Detection of Bangladeshi immigrants, Deletion of their names from the voters’ list and their Deportation. Assam went into shutdown for almost a year.
One day, Bhattacharya went to Mahanta’s residence, writes Mahanta, ‘We were overjoyed, sensing the possibility of such a great success. With rapture and passion we awaited the sun to rise. That night we imagines a bunch of thoughts and ambitious plans, Rented buildings of the Maruwari, where the office of the border Police Division was housed from where the foreigners expulsion movement originated, we will purchase that and construct a memorial there.’
‘If we two had not come together, the movement called ‘Assam Movement’ would not have happened,’ recalls Mahanta.
In 1983, when India Today journalist Chaitanya Kalbag met Bhattacharya at his luxurious house ‘Wilderness’ he also found that both Bhattacharya and Mahanta were vehemently anti Left. Many interviewers found that the two police officers had RSS links.
(Mr. Jehangir is a senior journalist. Email: [email protected])
