NTUI Statement on Assam Violence: Unite all working people against organised violence, genocide and chauvinistic politics

By Dilip -
New Delhi, 10 May 2014: 
Unite all working people against organised violence, genocide and chauvinistic politics
The death toll in the premeditated attack in Assam's Kokrajhar- Baska region of the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) has risen to over 40, a majority being women and children, with several others missing. This is accompanied by mass eviction of innocent people including women and children in this region. This is not the first instance of such a violent genocidal attack in this region. This violence is rooted in the very demand and the subsequent creation of an autonomous Bodoland combining areas of the 8 districts of Kokrajhar, Dhubri, Bongaigaon, Barpeta, Nalbari, Kamrup, Darang and Sonitpur under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India.
The applicability of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution was intended for predominantly tribal areas (which meant in areas where tribal population was over 90%). As per the 2001 Census, all Sixth Schedule areas have a tribal population ranging from 56% to 98% of the total population except for the BTAD (established in 2003) where the total tribal population was only 38%, while the Bodo population was even lower. The Bodo accord signed in 1993 gave legitimacy to the chauvinist groups, who use organised violence to advance their politics, to suppress the majority non-Bodo population in this region thereby violating the democratic norm and values of society. The Assam government undermined the report of the Bhupinder Singh Committee (which was formed by the then Central Government in 1991) that proposed a democratic framework with multiple levels of autonomy which, if implemented, could have ensured the rights of all communities including the Bodos. The present attack as well as the earlier ones, are carefully orchestrated attempts of extreme-nationalist forces among the Bodos to alter the demographic structure of this region through state-supported violence in order to secure their control over the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC).  The present attack was on the muslim minority population in this region but on earlier occasions the attacks were against the Santhals, also tribals, to ensure the supremacy of the Bodos in this region.

The present spate of violence started with 8 armed Bodo youth attacking a house in Narasinghbari village in Baksa District on 1 May. The next day over 40 Bodo militants surrounded 77 houses in Narayanguri village in the same district and fired indiscriminately. Simultaneously, in Balapara village in Kokrajhar district, armed Bodo youths attacked non-Bodo villagers. Reports from the ground indicate that this ‘planned’ genocidal attack against the muslim population is a reprisal for allegedly not voting for the Bodo People’s Front (BPF) candidate Chandan Brahma, a minister in the state government, in the Lok Sabha election for the Kokrajhar constituency held on 24 April. The violence was a direct fallout of the inflammatory media statement issued by Pramila Rani Brahma, former state Minister and presently the sitting BPF MLA from the Kokrajhar East constituency on 30 April, in which she accused the Muslims in the BTAD of not voting for the BPF and the complete failure of the state machinery to apprehend the situation and ensure safety and security of innocent citizens. The attack has even, in one instance, involved a Forest Ranger and .303 rifles belonging to the Forest Department being used against the targeted minorities. The statement of the BJP presumptive Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in a rally in neighbouring West Bengal following the attack in Assam lashing out at the state government for being soft on Bangladeshi ‘infiltrators’, was a clear indication of the communal hysteria that is being created across the country against minority religious communities thereby strengthening extreme-nationalist forces and justifying such inhuman and brutal attacks.

There is strong evidence that the orchestrated violence against minorities in Assam has displaced scores of families who have lost their livelihoods. There is emerging evidence that minorities in the BTAD are being discriminated against in employment even for casual and contract jobs. There can never be any doubt that divisive chauvinistic politics and sectarianism affects the working people the most. The NTUI stands in opposition to the politics of chauvinism and hatred and calls upon the Government of Assam:

1. Ensure peace in the region and provide security to the non-Bodo population of the region and take severe action against all those who incite or engage in acts of communal violence.
2. Immediately repeal the Bodo-Accord and implement the Bhupinder Singh Committee recommendations.

Gautam Mody
General Secretary

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the ...
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227...
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested...
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certai...
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, ...
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the...
Read more

James Gilligan on Shame, Guilt and Violence

By Dilip -
Shame, Guilt, and Violence / James Gilligan During the past 35 years I have used prisons and prison mental hospitals as "laboratories" in which to investigate the causes and prevention of the various forms of violence and the relationships between these forms and to what I will call (with a nod to William James) "the varieties of moral experience." In the course of that work, I have been struck by the frequency with which I received the same answer when I asked prisoners, or mental patients, why they assaulted or even killed someone. Time after time, they would reply "because he disrespected me" or "he disrespected my visitor [or wife, mother, sister, girl-friend, daughter, etc.]." In fact, they used that phrase so often that they abbreviated it into the slang phrase, "He dis'ed me." Whenever people use a word so often that they abbreviate it, it is clearly central to their moral and emotional vocabulary. But even when they did n...
Read more