Just one Badruddin Ajmal of the AUDF getting elected to Parliament has exposed brilliantly the present vulnerability of the Congress that has always placed party and electoral victory above the country and its integrity and security. This is a legitimate charge that we have levelled against the Congress in this column for decades without the party ever venturing to rebut us on this issue. If anything, the knee-jerk reaction of the Congress to Badruddin Ajmal’s electoral victory and the hazards this spells for the Congress’ prospects in the ensuing Assembly bye-elections constitutes a pathetic commentary on the myopic and anti-national policies of the Congress merely to win elections and remain in power regardless of the consequences of such a course of action to national interests. In fact, one has to go back to 1996 to analyse some of the events that gave rise to disaffection for the Congress among the Bangladeshi voters.
One recalls how, just after the Assembly elections of 1996, there was serious ethnic conflict between the Bodos and the Adivasis living in the Bodo-dominated areas of the State as well as between the Bodos and Bangladeshi immigrants illegally squatting on government land and forest reserves. The AGP had come to power for the second time, and the defeated Congress government had left both the administration and the State exchequer in a shambles before quitting. Bodo militants had embarked on a spree of ethnic cleansing as well. Twenty-two refugee camps had had to be opened in the districts of Bongaigaon, Kokrajhar and Chirang. The clashes of 1996 and a few subsequent ones had led to 11,092 refugees taking shelter in these refugee camps and living in sub-human conditions. As a result of many of the Adivasi refugees having returned home, the majority of the remaining inmates of the refugee camps were Muslims — mainly from Bangladesh.
Badruddin Ajmal’s victory in the Lok Sabha election and the fear of an AUDF candidate also winning the forthcoming bye-election to the Asom Assembly have pushed the Congress to the typical knee-jerk reactions that are inevitable for a political party that cannot hope to win on performance and must look for other electoral equations to prevent the AUDF from taking over the Congress strongholds. What has made matters worse is Badruddin Ajmal’s visit to the refugee camps and his request to the State government that the inmates of the refugee camps be rehabilitated. So what does the State government do? It looks for government land on which it can settle the alien poachers masquerading as Indian minorities. And since it can find no more than just 185 bighas of it, it has even decided to give these alien poachers money to buy land in Bodo territory and hopefully go on voting for the Congress rather than the AUDF. So just because the AUDF has to be countered in the districts of Bongaigaon, Kokrajhar and Chirang, the State government is going to pretend that the Bangladeshis in the refugee camps are the true children of the soil, the true bhoomiputras who have been dispossessed by the Bodos, and they must now be rescued from the refugee camps and rehabilitated! What could be a greater travesty of the truth than to deny the Bodos their very heritage and their age-old status as one of the oldest inhabitants of the State? So just for a few votes against the AUDF, the Tarun Gogoi government is now about to treat the alien poacher as the real Indian and to paint the true dyed-in-the-wool Bodo, who rightly resists the encroachment of the tribal belts and the forest reserves by Bangladeshi intruders from another land, as an offender in the very land of his birth! This is electoral politics as its very worst, practised by the myopic and incompetent lot who failed to foresee the fallout of decades of illegal and anti-national political activity. THE SENTINEL
One recalls how, just after the Assembly elections of 1996, there was serious ethnic conflict between the Bodos and the Adivasis living in the Bodo-dominated areas of the State as well as between the Bodos and Bangladeshi immigrants illegally squatting on government land and forest reserves. The AGP had come to power for the second time, and the defeated Congress government had left both the administration and the State exchequer in a shambles before quitting. Bodo militants had embarked on a spree of ethnic cleansing as well. Twenty-two refugee camps had had to be opened in the districts of Bongaigaon, Kokrajhar and Chirang. The clashes of 1996 and a few subsequent ones had led to 11,092 refugees taking shelter in these refugee camps and living in sub-human conditions. As a result of many of the Adivasi refugees having returned home, the majority of the remaining inmates of the refugee camps were Muslims — mainly from Bangladesh.
Badruddin Ajmal’s victory in the Lok Sabha election and the fear of an AUDF candidate also winning the forthcoming bye-election to the Asom Assembly have pushed the Congress to the typical knee-jerk reactions that are inevitable for a political party that cannot hope to win on performance and must look for other electoral equations to prevent the AUDF from taking over the Congress strongholds. What has made matters worse is Badruddin Ajmal’s visit to the refugee camps and his request to the State government that the inmates of the refugee camps be rehabilitated. So what does the State government do? It looks for government land on which it can settle the alien poachers masquerading as Indian minorities. And since it can find no more than just 185 bighas of it, it has even decided to give these alien poachers money to buy land in Bodo territory and hopefully go on voting for the Congress rather than the AUDF. So just because the AUDF has to be countered in the districts of Bongaigaon, Kokrajhar and Chirang, the State government is going to pretend that the Bangladeshis in the refugee camps are the true children of the soil, the true bhoomiputras who have been dispossessed by the Bodos, and they must now be rescued from the refugee camps and rehabilitated! What could be a greater travesty of the truth than to deny the Bodos their very heritage and their age-old status as one of the oldest inhabitants of the State? So just for a few votes against the AUDF, the Tarun Gogoi government is now about to treat the alien poacher as the real Indian and to paint the true dyed-in-the-wool Bodo, who rightly resists the encroachment of the tribal belts and the forest reserves by Bangladeshi intruders from another land, as an offender in the very land of his birth! This is electoral politics as its very worst, practised by the myopic and incompetent lot who failed to foresee the fallout of decades of illegal and anti-national political activity. THE SENTINEL
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