BJP, Liberals and Mayang Settlers in the time of CAB
- Imphal Times Editorial :: May 31 2019 -

The issue of CAB, NRC and mayang migration is going to spring up again, given the motivation BJP has gained in the last parliamentary election.

Hemanta Biswas has boldly declared that CAB is on the plate again.

CAB is an anti-Muslim version of NRC exercise in Assam, especially designed political propaganda for the consumption of the mainland Indians.

BJP alleges that Congress has been doing the same thing for both Muslims and Hindus coming from Bangladesh in the region.

The tactic of BJP to accumulate power in peripheries and the mainland must differ, if they have any sense of how this country was made.

It seems they do have sense, at least from what Ram Madhav says in the “preface” of Rajat Sethi and Shubhrastha’s book The Last Battle of Saraighat.

He says the strategy should be to groom local leaders who can represent BJP’s interest.

However, he cautioned the desire to sound nationalist and integrationist for the time being in the region.

This instruction seems to be for the mainland Indian advisors of BJP in the region.

Madhav says “even in the desire to look and sound national, one should not disrespect or discard the diversity and uniqueness.”

He understands that BJP is walking in a terrain which has never suited the nationalist and integrationist parties.

So, the task is to tolerate the aspiration of the masses for sometime till they are in a position to dictate the people of the land.

One way of attaining this dictatorial power that any nationalist parliamentary party, including BJP, want is by bringing more mayang settlers. Mayang settlers are not just votes.

They bring a different culture, a politics loyal to the nationalist and integrationist project and a whole new economy.

Congress did it quietly, according to BJP.

BJP wants to do it and show it to the world to gain more support among regular, mostly Hindu, voters in the mainland India. Hence, CAB becomes a must.

Congress, on the other hand, have no issues in bringing people in the region.

It just does not like the fact that the bill is not inclusive. Same goes for CPI or other national parties.

No national party has talked about the contradiction between the indigenous people and people coming to settle in the territories of the Indigenous people, except Trinamool Congress.

Trinamool Congress tried to milk the contradiction between the indigenous people and bengali settlers in Assam.

It wanted to exploit the contradiction between the Indigenous people of the region and Bengali settlers and wanted to emerge as the shepherd of the Bengali settlers.

Both mayang liberals in India and pro-mayang liberals in the region only saw it as a Hindu-Muslim matter and as a problem of dalit migration in the region.

For them, the world is an even ground. The cow-belt stretches from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Raan of Kutch to Moreh.

There are no oppressed nationalities, there are no oppressed indigenous communities in the northeast region, everyone is either a Hindu or a Muslim or an upper caste or a Bahujan, for them.

Indigenous communities are not sites of historical injustices.

They are the people who are Islamophobic and anti-migrants.

The concrete analysis of the concrete situation is completely abandoned.

Such an understanding, conveniently takes the burden of the mess from those who perpetrate it and shifts it to those who are going to suffer because of the coming of settlers.

Mainland India reels under severe agrarian crisis.

The gap between the rich and the poor is sharply increasing in the mainland.

The economically and socially persecuted dalit masses because of their feudal social order of caste system are moving out from their native places under these pressures.

The same goes for the Muslims in mainland India. To make the matter worst, Hindutva fascist forces have come to power in this country.

Bangladesh is not a happy story too. It suffers from huge inequality and severe economic crisis.

The burden to make things better for the toiling masses of mainland India and Bangladesh lies on progressive forces of those place, those who are capable of doing so in mainland India and Bangladesh.

Forcing the responsibility to accommodate the settlers in a land inhabited by a people already under subjugation is nothing but running away from addressing the matter at home.

It is pushing out the responsibility those they can, without taking the responsibility themselves.

It is case of not taking moral responsibility for the suffering of toiling masses of mainland by the mainland Indian progressives that they are forcing the indigenous people to accept those they do not want to keep in their homes.

A question should be asked to test their hypocrisy, will they support the Israel’s policy of settling marginalised people from different parts of the world as Israeli citizens in the territory Israel has snatched from Palestine?

Most will answer no because they are not Zionists.