India: the curious case of a new pan-regionalism

                                                                            Tanmoy Sharma

First published in openDemocracy, London, UK on 27 March, 2012. Click here  for the original piece. 

To define the diversity of India, poet and critic A. K. Ramanujan ^↑ once cited the instance of what the Irishman had said about trousers. On the question of whether the trousers were singular or plural, he said,“Singular at the top and plural at the bottom.” Historian Sunil Khilnani, the well-known author of The Idea of India ^↑ , disputes the view, saying Indian nationalism even before independence was plural at the top: “a dhoti with endless folds.” Given dhoti’s popularity as a pan-Indian traditional garment, the idea sounds remarkable as an emblematic projection of the country’s diversity. Since independence, a major concern in the nation-building exercise of New Delhi could be to keep hold of the dhoti, ostensibly a much looser wear than well-belted trousers.

Yet, although such diversity allows striking poetics, the translation of the same into political democracy and policy-making remains a matter of contention. For India has been ruled for more than five decades by an out and out dynastic party, the Indian National Congress, that claims all the credit for giving India her freedom from the Raj. On the other pole is a front led by a party that seeks to restore ‘the great Hindu civilization’ snatched away from the ‘Indian indigenous people’, by ‘turbulent foreign invasions’. Although the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that ruled India from 1998 to 2004 has evolved to be the other major national party with broadened focus and somehow pluralist socio-economic vision, its core support base is still the right  - conservative Hindu -nationalist network of Sangh Parivar ^↑ . As such, the country’s political fate at the centre, barring a few exceptions, ever since independence more or less, has swung between the dogmatic antics of the Nehru-Gandhi clan and the tireless promoters of a Hindu-revisionist past. However, that may no longer be the case in the years to come.

A pan-regionalist boom

As the emphatic verdict came out ^↑ in the first week of March from the state level assembly elections in four Indian states, a new pattern is beginning to emerge. In fact, the political climate in New Delhi, ever after the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came back to power in 2009, has been that of a daily plebiscite. Now with the new state-level verdicts of the last two and a half years, the message is straight  - pan-regionalism is all the trend in India.

So here are some facts. In the recently-held assembly polls, the Congress was routed to just 28 seats in the 403-strong Uttar Pradesh Assembly by Samajwadi Party ^↑ with a sweeping mandate of 224. This state that could have been the world’s fifth most populous country was for the previous five years ruled by another regional party (Bahujan Samaj Party ^↑ ). In Punjab, another politically crucial state, the Congress that had eyed a cakewalk was devastated by the Sikh-nationalistShiromani Akali Dal ^↑ (allied with BJP), reinstating the incumbent government. In Uttarakhand, the Congress managed a slight lead over BJP with a single seat. While trouble-torn northeastern state of Manipur remained its sole solace, it again made way for BJP in Goa.

Take a look at some of India’s major states - and they are now all run by regional parties. Adding to the examples above, in West Bengal - it’s the Mamata Banerjee ^↑led Trinamool Congress ^↑ that trounced the more than three decades-long communist rule last year (although with the help of the Congress); in Tamil Nadu it’s the Jayalalitha led AIADMK ^↑ , a Tamil regional front that swept to victory defeating the Congress-backed DMK last year; in Odisha it’s the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal ^↑ (BJD), constantly in power since 2000;  in Bihar, Nitish Kumar ^↑ created history with stable governance that led his party the Janata Dal United (JDU) ^↑ to a second thumping mandate in November 2010, roasting Congress to just 4 seats in a 243-strong assembly. In Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, the ruling Congress is in a perennial crisis while the regional parties therein like the Marathi nationalist Shiv Sena ^↑ (an ally of the BJP), the Nationalist Congress Party(NCP) ^↑ , the Telegu Desham Party(TDP) ^↑ and the autonomist Telengana Rasthra Samithi(TRS ^↑ ) with increased strength are eyeing the national picture. While other bigger states like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Gujarat are being ruled by BJP; in more cases than one and especially in Gujarat, it functions as a regional party strongly under the command of its Chief Minister Narendra Modi ^↑ .

The ruling coalition UPA is all at sea for more reasons than one. This has been happening for quite some time now. Last year, the Congress government was in tatters as the Anna Hazare ^↑ -led anti-corruption movement drew to the streets millions of Indians, substantially damaging the credibility of the system. The Anna wave is no longer at a crest now; nevertheless the ghost that had haunted UPA is gone. And the tempest comes even from its allies. While the government keeps counting the number for its survival to avoid a midterm poll, the regional parties have started exercising phenomenal influence at the national level. Dubbed as the ‘Angry Federalists’, they stalled the centre’s National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) ^↑ invoking principles of federalism, rejected the Lokayukta provisions of theLokpal Bill ^↑ , opposed foreign direct investment in India’s multi-brand retail sector and even went as far as to block legislation on land acquisition.   

The picture would tempt any psephologist to make projections for the coming General Elections in 2014. However, it takes me back to the intriguing question of the endlessly folded dhoti as a rich metaphor for India’s diversity. The lacuna of innovative federalist politics left by the national parties has been filled up by new regional bosses. If the diversity of this ‘impossible’ (read incredible) country was not a myth, it is increasingly finding expression in the growing strength of the regional parties that are basically local with local concerns. The former Uttar Pradesh (UP) CM Mayawati ^↑ may address a rally in the distant Nagaland; Trinamool Congress under Mamata’s dictum may win a few seats in Manipur; but by and large their parties represent regional aspirations in various forms - in the former case, a voice for the oppressed Dalits in UP, in the latter case a Bengali revivalist party, seeking greater says at the centre.

The issues raised by a Sikh-centric Akali Dal or any other such front were bound to be at loggerheads with the Congress (Congress was instrumental in the massacre of thousands of Sikhs in 1984 ^↑ following Indira Gandhi’s death). The idea of a Hindu nationalist political space by BJP will never find a pathway in a predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley where even the ruling National Conference ^↑ (regional party again) is spending sleepless nights. History reminds us how as far back as in 1967, the Congress was permanently ousted from the political realm in Tamilnadu which has for five decades seen an exchange of power only between regional parties. It was the perceived imposition of Brahminical Hindi hegemony in its cultural life that provoked into being Tamil secessionism and later animated political subnationalism. In the case of Assam, heartland to India’s tea and oil production, New Delhi’s political injustice and economic exploitation played a central role in the mobilization of regionalist and at times separatist politics. On the other hand, diversity is so fierce in India that states like Nagaland have never considered themselves to be a part of the republic.

If this is the case, one might revise John Stuart Mill ^↑ ’s view that democracy is “next to impossible” in multiethnic societies and completely impossible in linguistically divided countries. While Indian democracy survived in large measure, Atul Kohli, a scholar on ethnonationalism, provides a better and perhaps precise angle -“democracy in developing countries tends to be as much a source of, as a solution to power conflicts”. Regional politics in India is an amalgamation of a complex set of factors that shine a light on such power conflicts. Most interestingly, the ideologies of these parties constantly evolve with time. Take for instance, the Samajwadi Party (Samajwadi means socialist) that made its base with a peculiar north Indian idea of socialism - Hindi vernacularism and upward mobility for backward castes. But its recent win in Uttar Pradesh is credited to its new young chief Akhilesh Yadav ^↑ , who, breaking the old party-line vehemently campaigned for computer literacy and English education. Similarly in Punjab, the Akalis are no longer the old school Sikh theocrats; instead their central focus has shifted to good governance and development politics. In the other case, the national parties at times try to appropriate their positions in unique pockets. Such instances include the BJP allying with the tribal rights party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha ^↑ in Jharkhand to form the government; Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi (of the Congress) vocally flirting with soft Hindutva in the last year’s assembly election, at clear odds with his party’s blatant pro-minority stand.

What next? A third front?

As often is the case, election verdicts stimulate a periodic frenzy in the Indian media. New speculations and new theories are out. The focus is all on a Third Front that will be comprised of all regional parties and may as well take the Left parties along with it. This front, in fact exists unofficially and imaginatively as a pressure group within the parliament. A non-Congress, non-BJP front that is secular to the core may of course sound like a refreshing idea. The Congress has historically resorted to various definitions of secularism, sometimes flirting with fundamentalist ideologies at the cost of another religiosity, some other time, most unashamedly appeasing their ‘Muslim votebanks’ with absolutely non-secular rhetorical politics. The BJP on the other hand explicitly promotes Hindu religiosity as the ideal Indian ‘way of life’. It is yet to stand clear against the allegations of its indirect involvement in the Gujarat riots ^↑ that saw the killing of some 2000 Muslims in 2002.

The truth, however inconvenient is that a third front always comes third in the elections! In 1996, the combined strength of the regional parties that made up theUnited Front ^↑ had failed to exceed that of either BJP or the Congress. The national coalitions led by H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral  in the late 1990s were marked for instability, that could be brought down anytime on the political whimsies of a single ally. What goes missing in such coalitions is peace and cohesive policy making. A package in favour of Karnataka may ignite the allies from Kerala: a leftist economic policy would invite opposition from the pro-market forces.

That finally leaves the evolved Indian electorate with two options. The first one is a new national federalist front with substantial representation from all regions, with a cohesive, secular, pro-people vision and especially committed to backward regions. Traditional wisdom suggests that such a front will remain a castle in the air at least for the near future. Reasons are simple. The most obvious being,  the emergence of a new national party requires the annihilation of either the BJP or the Congress, if it is not to hang in the balance like a third front. However, the two national parties still have extensive strength across India, leaving little room for yet another pan-India party. Many of the regional parties are even running state governments with direct or outside support from these national parties, although the marriages are breaking up.

There’s another serious problem. Consider this. Larger states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar have 80, 48, 42, 42 and 40 seats in Loksabha, India’s national parliament. But India’s long-troubled, conflict-ridden states, especially the ones in the Northeast are abysmally underrepresented. Nagaland, home to one of the world’s longest running separatist movements, has just 1 seat. Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh too share only 1 seat each whereas Manipur and Meghalaya can at best send 2 representatives to the parliament.

Hence it so happens that a national party too acts as a region-specific front in New Delhi with its obvious bias towards states that have numbers. Ironically, in a pan-regionalist front at the centre, like the much talked about Third Front, the states that may become the maximum casualty are the ones that are in desperate need of healthy regionalist voices to elevate them from underrepresentation. Who will look to 1 member-strong Sikkim’s or 2 member-strong Goa’s concerns, when there would be so much else to bargain among the squabbling leaders from large states in such a coalition? 

Towards a new idea of India!

So what exactly is the difference between the regional and the national? India is a polity and an entity that grew and strengthened during the course of an anti-colonial struggle. There have always been ideational debates over the idea of India, someone famously calling it:“India is a state of mind.” The nationalist elite that politically led India to her freedom, although it came from different backgrounds, had one thing in common - they strikingly believed in a united idea of India. However, while India, as a newly independent political space was drifting from the colonial hangover to become a modern post-colonial state; politics, with the great triumph of democracy, embedded the grass roots of Indian society.

In fact, that very triumph of democracy gave voice to a myriad concerns that saw the emergence of a whole new spectrum of political organizations and leaders. The postcolonial leaders were no longer the old school nationalists that had put the country together in the first place. The deepening of democracy ensured that new leaders came to power representing a particular community, tribe, caste, religion and region. A Jat leader from Haryana will by all means fight for the reservation of his community at the national level, even defying his party line; almost a month back an Indian union minister of the Congress, openly dared the central government to hang him for fighting for the institutional  reservation of Muslims.

In the new coalition era in India, there are of course hazards in such politics, where the numerically strong allies will increasingly assert their preferences with supreme indifference to the welfare of the other marginalized regions and peoples. Coalition politics itself has come to be known as “Collision politics.” Such action at times might lead to disruptions in cohesive governance and socio-economic policy making, when securing one’s own political interests becomes the priority for the allies. Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, the nightmarish ally of the Congress at the centre, in the last two weeks went hammer and tongs all out to demand a rollback of the train fare hikes, primarily to woo her local voter-base in West Bengal. A few days back,  DMK ^↑ , the cultural nationalist Tamil party (that has been ruling Tamilnadu alternatively with AIADMK), again an ally of the Congress in New Delhi, has forced the UPA government to vote against Sri Lanka (a friendly neighbour with India) in a UN resolution on human rights violations during the civil war in 2009 ^↑ . 

Things become all the more chaotic when one finds 40 political parties in the Indian parliament today. A large number of these parties came into existence with legitimate demands from underrepresented regions and backward peoples. These parties claim to represent regional interests with moderate success but the real issues in such central-state, central-region and central-people confrontations can barely be addressed by them in the present centralized set up of the nation state. At the end of the day, these parties too, succumb to political compulsions, most times becoming agents of noise rather than that of stability.  While there can be a healthy equilibrium between regional and national parties, the principal focus should rather shift to the structure, that is the root of allreal movement.

There emerges a second and the most important option for an India that can no longer be ignored at the wake of this new pan-regionalism. It is radical but worth implementing before things get out of hand. That is that India must now fulfil its six decades old promise of federalism to the truest extent. Ever since the country became a republic, there was a systematic erosion of the federal content that has fuelled anger and loss in diverse political dimensions. The Sarkaria commission, set up in 1983, recommended among other things, that enforcement of Union laws, particularly those relating to the concurrent list, be secured through the machinery of states. Its reports largely remain unfulfilled. On the other hand, misuse of the constitutional articles such as 355 and 356 has led to an overbearing New Delhi’s abrupt dismissal of elected state governments by regional parties. Then there are far more inflammatory issues in India’s complex political landscape such as financial, administrative and legislative disputes that need to be resolved in a federal framework. Turbulent protest movements, whether they are socio-economic or environmental, have occurred in India’s history, largely due to a gradual manipulative encroachment of state subjects by the centre. Demands of greater redistributive intervention, from regions that felt exploited, found strength in extremist militant movements. The one that India sees as its ‘greatest internal security threat’- the Maoist Movement ^↑ in the heart of Central India strongly echoes such voices.

There is a subnationalist dimension to the debate as well. Many of the regional parties, covertly or overtly exhibit subnationalist tendencies which can change from time to time. In his last election campaign, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar increasingly asserted a “Bihari Asmita” (subnational Bihari consciousness). This was remarkably significant because for the first time, the socio-cultural willingness to be seen distinctly from the others in the North Indian Hindi Heartland was articulated in Bihar’s democratic politics. Similar rhetoric works wonders especially in the politics of states like Assam, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh (the Telengana region) and Kashmir, where cultural or linguistic nationalism is a dominant mobilizing force. Much of such politics shares greater autonomist visions, whether socio-cultural or socio-economic in nature. Indeed throughout postcolonial history, newer ideas of India have emerged in different locations of the country, where the regional vision of itself was central.Notably, such subnational or regional challenges could also be seen as a challenge to a ‘Hindi hegemonist’ centralized idea of India, seeking to replace monopoly with pluralist multi-cultural visions.

Political scientist Sanjib Baruah, the pre-eminent scholar on conflict and Northeast India, too argues for a restructured federalism in the case of such durable tensions between subnationalism and pan-Indianism. In his well acclaimed book, India Against Itself ^↑ , assessing the turbulent politics in Assam, he proves how a decentralized form of governance and strong federalism could have averted violence and much of the secessionist movement that had rocked Assam for three decades. However he finds out that in the case of the troubled Northeast, federalism simply meant creation of more states, without restructured economic policy. This he terms ‘Cosmetic Federalism’, where the space is ‘nationalized’ with little likelihood of incorporating local visions of the future. As a result, Northeast India is still an enduring theatre of low intensity separatist guerrilla war. Indian Army atrocities and human rights violations deserve an an essay of their own…

As regional parties dominate the landscape, Indian democracy should claim success in this upsurge of pan-regionalism. But seemingly, this upsurge is perhaps more focused on petty manipulations over the 2014 General Elections or maybe a midterm poll. If that becomes the case, India will surely lose a great opportunity to modify and deepen its democracy by revisiting its promised federalism. History’s lesson that catastrophe follows when a strong centralized state wants to hold on to the ‘illusion of power’, was most emphatically vindicated by the collapse of Soviet Union.

India cannot afford to live with that illusion. For it must realize that a large and loosely decentralised federation with all the vibrancy of diverse and even conflicting regional and sub regional interests, make for a colourful democracy, a better home for liberty and a safer haven against tyranny. This perhaps is the time to liberalize, pluralize and modernize the idea of India, if it must not go against itself! 

Mega dams: campaigning against the plans of the Indian government

                                                                             by Tanmoy Sharma

First published in OpenDemocracy on 20 January, 2012. Click here for the original link. 

On the foothills of the Eastern Himalaya, lush green tea gardens fill up the North Bank of the Brahmaputra in Assam’s Sonitpur district. Driving further up, through NH 52, towards the northern towns of Lakhimpur and Dhemaji, one sees countless rivulets and tributaries flowing down from the northern state of Arunachal Pradesh. In recent years, in a drastic change of topography, the green landscape has gradually given way to dried up rivers and sandy floodplains - thanks to massive sand deposition in the lower reaches of these swirling rivers. In the summer of 2011, sand deposition due to the changing course of the Gai River alone had buried farmlands amounting to thousands of hectares. Jiadhol and Misamari, smaller rivers once known for causing flash floods in Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts have now sanded up one village after another. Whereas in June 2008, the released load waters from the dam in Ranganadi, another tributary flowing from Arunachal-Himalaya caused heavy floods and engulfed as many as 3 lakhs people.

Blame it on the new river engineering employed by the Indian central government in the myriad tributaries of Arunachal Pradesh that converge to become the mighty Brahmaputra. The dispossessed, displaced and distressed peasantry of these sleepy villages along the national highway are now all out on the streets day and night, braving the winter cold. For they fear further devastation once the under-construction dam on Lower Subansiri, the largest tributary of the Brahmaputra, begins operating. And at present they have the crucial backing of a whole range of people - from organizations and parties to middle class elites. In fact the long-enduring anti-dam movement in Assam, mainly geared against the state’s Congress government and NHPC Limited has gained an unprecedented momentum in the past few weeks; so much so that it has brought the construction work at the project site in Gerukamukh to a complete halt. People in the state are now fighting together against a proposed gargantuan network of 168 mega dams across Arunachal Pradesh, one of the world’s six most seismically active regions. The project is thought to be India’s largest ever hydro-power adventure.

Street Resistance by peasants in Lakhimpur District, December, 2011. Photo-UB Photos. All rights reserved

The anti-dam convulsion in the Northeast Indian state of Assam, especially the one against the Lower Subansiri project has a decade long history. The project itself was envisaged by the Brahmaputra Flood Control Commission as back as 1955 with a view to flood moderation and irrigation. Finally the Brahmaputra Board transferred the project to NHPC in May, 2000 without any decision regarding the scientific investigations. As the riparian anxiety and the uncertainties about its socio-ecological impact grew by 2002, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) started campaigning against the mega dams. At the same time a few other NGOs too joined the rally and held protest marches at various points. Finally in December, 2006, a tripartite meet was held involving the Assam Government, NHPC and AASU, after which a scientific expert committee was set up to investigate the 2000 MW project.

Ironically, NHPC had begun the construction work at a furious pace without carrying out a downstream impact study. Only after AASU launched yet another agitation did the NHPC start cooperating with the expert committee in September 2008. So when the final recommendations of the scientific study came out on 28 June, 2010, they put the public mood in Assam into a panic. The revealing report states, “The selected site for the mega dam of the present dimension was not appropriate in such a geologically and seismologically sensitive region. Therefore it is recommended not to construct the mega dam in the present site.” On 17 July, 2010 the House Committee of Assam Legislative Assembly, formed after shrill demands by the opposition parties, asked the government of Assam to follow the expert committee recommendations and take necessary action with the centre.

AASU stages protest by soaking in the river Subansiri, December, 2011. Photo- UB photos. All rights reserved.

Fuelling fire to the suspicion of their being New Delhi’s puppet, the oblivious Assam government took no stand in regard to downstream anxious concerns. After a public hearing in Guwahati on 10 September, 2010 former Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, wrote in his letter to the Prime Minister, “Personally I believe some of the concerns that were expressed cannot be dismissed lightly…Right now the feeling in vocal sections of Assam’s society particularly appears to be that ‘mainland India’ is exploiting the Northeast hydro-electricity resources for its benefits, while the costs of this exploitation will be borne by the people of Northeast.”

Despite such directives, when a defiant NHPC continued the construction of the Lower Subansiri Mega Dam, AASU allied with 26 ethnic organizations including local Mising bodies such as TMPK and MMK in 2010 to kick off a fully-fledged agitation. Significantly, another major organization that has appeared as a powerful player in the anti-dam disquiet since the beginning is the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS). Its general secretary Akhil Gogoi, RTI activist and peasant leader, who shot to fame with his crusade against corruption in the last five years, has been able to successfully mobilize popular sentiments against the dams over the last one and a half years. 

Akhil Gogoi leads a mass rally in Tezpur in September, 2011. Photo- UB photos. All rights reserved.

After sporadic disruptions over the 2011 assembly polls and other issues, a full-blown statewide agitation broke out in the last month. On 1 December, more than 3000 activists led by AASU and KMSS filled the Lakhimpur town to block the further movement of an equipment-carrying 14 wheel jumbo carrier towards the Subansiri dam site. One month of full scale protests and an effective blockade against NHPC in Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts have fired the Assamese public imagination, and given birth to a regional movement. Barely reported in the national or international media, the anti-dam unrest has nevertheless attained such gigantic proportions that a tense state government had to call the agitating groups to the negotiation table on 5 January. So far, though negotiations continue, no consensus has been reached.

After leading a weighty more-than-a-month long blockade, turning aggressive at times, KMSS general secretary Akhil Gogoi is now in Assam's capital city of Guwahati for the first round of talks. Speaking to this correspondent after the dialogue, Gogoi says, “Although we appreciate Government’s wish to hold talks, there was no indication that they were ready to draw the project to a halt. In fact, experiences from all other anti-dam movements across the country tell us that the centre will use this as a strategy to calm the protests and delay the process.”

Gogoi believes instead that New Delhi’s absolute apathy contrasted with its huge peasant participation make it a sustainable movement. Although downstream impact remains a major concern, there are other key issues as well that have fuelled profound resentment and agony in the public debates. The left-progressive faction within the movement has focused primarily on the issue of right over resources. Corporatization of water resources by the centre, they argue, through framing ‘imposed laws’ such as the National Water Policy is a clear violation of the state’s constitutional right over water. “If this is not neo-colonial exploitation, what is?”- retorts a heated Akhil Gogoi.

Dubbing their struggle as an ‘anti-imperialist’ fight, KMSS has already vowed to resume and intensify the on-street resistance movement. On a slightly different note, AASU however maintains their inclination to pursue a non-radical democratic approach. In an exclusive interview, Dr. Samujjal Bhattacharya, Adviser to AASU and Chairman of North East Students’ Organization (NESO), says,“We believe in a peaceful resolution of the issue through talks.”

Calling each of the mega dams a Hydro-bomb, Dr. Bhattacharya adds, “We are not against development. But if development comes at the cost of the life, security and civilization of the people of Assam, no way would it be allowed.” AASU attributes the project to a biased profit-making motive of the centre where Assam’s water resources may serve the national interest, without addressing the decades-long problems of its people. Calamitous floods and erosion create havoc every year in Assam, only to go unaddressed by the government.

Assam’s regional politics has always been framed by perceptions of New Delhi’s political injustice and economic exploitation. Even a dispassionate look at history validates the sentiments and conditions that animate subnationalism in the region, to the extent of turning militant in the form of the separatist ULFA.  In a state where a single public refinery could not be attained without launching a fullscale agitation, despite it being an epicenter of India’s oil and natural gas production, what Assam will ‘get in return’ is a central theme in the mega dams debate as well. The total estimated power generation of the proposed 168 mega dams in Arunachal Pradesh would be around 75000 MW, much of which will be driven out of the region. Call it a cruel joke; Assam, despite having equal rights over the inter-state rivers, will receive only 50 MW as a royalty - 25 MW from the Lower Subansiri Project and 25 MW from the Kameng project.“Such simple arithmetic explains why anti-Delhi sentiments arise in this region” Dr. Bhattacharya remarks.

The future of the anti-dam movement

AASU views this campaign as not only a national issue in Assam, but to a great extent pan-northeastern. For that matter, their movement does not limit itself to Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts, but also encompasses the environmental concerns of other projects such as the Kurichu dam in Bhutan or the Tipaimukh dam on the Barak River in Manipur. As experts have warned of a plethora of environmental, geological, demographic and socio-economic problems, the Lower Subansiri project alone would use 31,000 bighas of pristine forestland in Arunachal, out of which 25,000 bighas will be submerged.

“Given such dangers, we demand a cumulative downstream impact study over the entire stress of the rivers. If peaceful negotiations fail, a full scale blockade movement will remain the only option,” warns Dr. Samujjal Bhattacharya. His comment cannot be ignored. Showing a remarkable level of restraint, AASU has so far maintained a completely peaceful movement. With its impressive history and the unparalleled influence it enjoys in the Assamese public sphere, a leap into the role of a resistance movement by AASU would paralyze normal governance in Assam.

The state government however argues that mega dams are a must if India is to prevent the diversion of the Yarlung Tsangpo (the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra in Tibet). As China plans for the world’s largest hydro-power project in the upstream, New Delhi in that case will have to go to the International Court of Justice to show the beneficial use of the river in India. “But the people of the Northeast will become a pawn in the race between Beijing and New Delhi,” Dr.Bhattacharya argues. “Assam’s power need is at the maximum 1100 MW which is attained from state’s own production and buying electricity from other projects. If we are to be granted First User Rights of the Brahmaputra by showing its beneficial use, we have suggested some multipurpose micro-projects which will both generate electricity for Assam and contain floods and erosion,” the AASU leader adds.

In the first week of the New Year, a mega dam broke apart near the Brazilian city of Rio De Janeiro, rendering 13000 homeless. Such earth-shattering accidents have ushered in a new era of decommissioning. As recently as on September 30, 2011, Myanmar's President Thein Sein surprised many by stopping the construction of the $3.6 billion Myitsone hydroelectric project in the Kachin state. A recent report of the World Register of Dams (WRD) suggests all the capitalist economies in the world including the USA have hugely reduced the construction of mega dams. In fact, the Indian Government, itself, of late has shown greater alertness on the issue of river dams across mainland India. The government has passed strictures on a whole slew of projects from Uttarakhand’s Loharinag Pala (on socio-religious grounds) to the Polavaram dam in Andhra Pradesh (on grounds that mandatory public hearings were not held).

Whether such national standards apply to the peripheral Northeast remains the elusive question. The anti-dam movement in the Brahmaputra valley, a local commentator writes, has already surpassed the celebrated Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in terms of numerical strength. The social impact in Indian environmental struggles, be it the NBA or the Chipko Movement, largely remains confined to the affected areas and NGO circles.

In Assam, it has already acquired a significant subnationalist colour that has driven the whole of Assamese civil society towards supporting it. In a region where politics is premised upon the metaphorical poetics of a river as the lifeline of a nation, the anti-dam mobilization is here to stay. As the buzz grows louder, the book that easily attained best seller status in the recent NE Book Fair in Guwahati, was Akhil Gogoi’s anti-dam dossier Morubhumi Ahe Lahe Lahe (Gently comes the Desert). The dams, without doubt, could turn the downstream valleys into a desert. But if they collapsed, an apocalyptic flood could swallow all in its path.

Balladeer of the Masses: "A Tribute to Bhupen da!"

                                                                                             Tanmoy Sharma

First published in the 21 November, 2011 issue of Open magazine. Re-posted here. Click here for the original essay.

This anecdote goes back to the 1970s, during the peak of the Naxal uprising in eastern India. Bhupen Hazarika, after performing at a late-night show in Kolkata, was returning home in an Ambassador car. To avoid traffic, he took a shortcut. But within minutes came an obstruction: the car was stopped by a gang of young shawl-clad, bearded gunmen. Petrified, Hazarika stepped out of the car. Seeing the singer—to their grand surprise—the ferocious young men dropped their guns, touched his feet, and said, “Who on this planet will kill you, Bhupenda?” The next morning, Hazarika got phone calls from other star singers, informing him that they had been looted by the same ‘dacoits’ while returning from the venue.                                                                                                 

This is one instance among hundreds of others that could help explain how a man who never was a conventional megastar could shatter such a huge mass of land and people with his death. On 6 November, the day after his demise at the age of 85, all newspapers in Assam had one thing in common—not a single story other than this was carried in any of the 14-page broadsheets. All roads in Guwahati led to the historic Judges Field, as hundreds of thousands thronged for a last glimpse of the music maestro, whose body was kept there for two whole days.

Bhupen Hazarika was the balladeer of the masses. Immensely popular as the ambassador of east India’s rich folk music, ‘Bhupenda’, as he was fondly called, became nothing less than a legend in Assam, his birth land. Our grandparents, the aged of today, narrate stories of how a young Bhupen Hazarika would come to sing in the remotest of small towns. My father, who came to be closely associated with him during the tumultuous Assam Movement in the 1980s, tells me, “Assam was burning in inter-ethnic violence after the imposed elections of 1983. The All Assam Students Union (Aasu) decided to launch a month-long integration drive to be led by Bhupenda. We travelled through nooks and corners of the state. At every village, our convoy would be stopped, anguished villagers would draw him out of the car and accord him a hero’s welcome—unimaginable          even today.”

His popularity amongst all ethnic groups of Assam is a matter of some incredulity. At that time, the Aasu could penetrate some severely affected belts only because of Hazarika. “At a particular Bodo village near Gohpur in Golaghat district, where tensions between the Assamese and Bodos had reached a climax, we began our programme with a Bodo speaker. The whole crowd got agitated. ‘What do you think of us? No one will be allowed to speak until Bhupenda starts,’ they cried,” my father recollects. 

Generation after generation in Assam, West Bengal and Bangladesh grew up listening to his immortal classics. He was the wilful optimist who always dreamt of weaving together various ethnic aspirations to create a ‘Golden Assam’, integrated in harmony.

Linguistic jingoism and radical assertions of upper-caste Assamese Hindus had led to a fragmentation of undivided Assam in the 1960s. Hazarika was dead opposed to this. ‘The broad clouds of the wet Cherrapunji sky, cuddle our Brahmaputra in the shape of rains,’ he sang in the Assamese song He He Dhole Dogore, advocating the unity of Assamese in the plains and Khasis in the Meghalaya hills. And lyrical ballads such as Siangore Galong and Tirap Ximanto created such a unique bond between Arunachal Pradesh and Assam that the love is still intact.

In 1960-61, when the Bhasha Andolan in Assam took a violent turn, it was Hazarika’s magic that bridged the gap between the Assamese and Bengalis—‘No alphabetic letter for the language of love’, he sang. He used his music as a potent tool in bridging divides, but the same music also reflected a deep-rooted commitment to his Assamese roots, its people, language and culture. Assam had had a fraught political relationship with New Delhi since Independence. In this scenario, Hazarika appeared like a messiah of the Brahmaputra valley, representing their aspirations.

Academic Sanjib Baruah once wrote, ‘He is probably the most influential figure in postcolonial Assamese cultural life.’ Hazarika’s ballads chronicle the political history of Assam, the central metaphors revolving around the Brahmaputra river and Bohag Bihu, the spring festival of Assam.

Benedict Anderson’s popular work on nationalism, which describes it as ‘imagined into existence’, touches the spirit of Hazarika’s lyrical narrative somewhat. He always envisaged the creation of a great Assamese ‘nationality’, inclusive in its very essence. He constructs a landscape of ‘the beautiful mother Assam with untold virtues, the land of sunrise in the east of India’. The song Mahabahu Brahmaputraenvisions the mighty river as being the holy site of great synthesis down the ages. His became a powerful voice in the articulation of subnationalist Assamese aspiration, singing, ‘Bohag is not just a season; nor is it a month; it is the lifeline of the Assamese nation, and the verve of the masses.’

Even so, Hazarika could successfully direct subnationalist Assamese sentiments towards a pluralist arena of ‘Indianism’. Take, for instance, the six-year-long Assam Movement that started in 1979 with a demand to deport illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, which later evolved as a justified politico-economic struggle of the Assamese people seeking a legitimate space within the Indian political system. At that crucial historical moment, Hazarika, the undisputed champion of cultural politics, authoritatively showed Assam the way ahead. One of his iconic songs, written during this time, goes, ‘Today every Assamese is a good Indian, and every Indian who came to Assam from faraway corners, making her their motherland, is a new Assamese. And we would rather live like this.’

Such an affinity for pan-Indian cultural life can be traced to Hazarika’s early days with Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla and Bishnu Prasad Rabha, two patriarchs of modern Assamese culture. The volatile independence struggle of the 1930s and 1940s induced a socialist fervour in the young Hazarika, which helped him look out to the Gangas, Narmadas and Godavaris for wide-perspective inspiration.

Recollecting his stay at Banaras Hindu University in the 1940s, Hazarika once wrote in an autobiographical essay, ‘Proximity to towering intellectuals like Radhakrishnan, SP Mukherjee and Madan Mohan Malaviya and stories of friends from different parts of the country made me realise that we are all the same.’ He later sang: ‘Love for my mother doesn’t mean hatred for the other’s.’

Fusing this attitude with an unparalleled personal aura, he soon became a favourite in cultural hubs like Kolkata and Mumbai. But Hazarika, though he had a Dadasaheb Phalke Award by his side, chose to stay away from the hustle and bustle of commercial Bollywood cinema. Rather, he went on to give the nation songs like Dil Hoom Hoom Kare and O Ganga Boichho Kaino, the latter becoming an anthem of people’s struggle across the country.

Looking back, one is certain to be puzzled by varied streams of his musical evolution. Despite maintaining strong subnationalist leanings, he displayed a mellow Indianism through innumerable songs for larger causes. Deep intellectual formations during his eventful sojourn at the prestigious Columbia University, and his profound friendship with singer and activist Paul Robeson in New York, encouraged him to devote a life of music to the service of humanity, transcending boundaries. Robeson taught him, “The strum of a guitar can alter the way a society thinks.” Till his last concert, Hazarika kept enthralling audiences with Robeson’s epic song, We are in the same boat, brother.

The Beatles sang, ‘Everybody’s talkin’ bout this-ism, that-ism, all we are saying is give peace a chance.’ Despite varying ideological bends, Hazarika too was a world citizen seeking true peace, singing the anthem of humanity from Tokyo to New York, Mississippi to Danube:Manuhe Manuhor Babe ( If man is indifferent to man, who else will think of man?). Equally a legend in the endless green plains of Bangladesh, he sang, Ganga aamar ma, Padma aamar Ma. Jai Jai Nabojat Bangladesh (Hail newborn Bangladesh), which he composed and sang in 1972 at the Berlin Music Festival, celebrating the liberation of the new country, became the unofficial anthem of Bangladesh after Amar Shonar Bangla.

Indeed, the self-confessed ‘roving nomad’ belongs to all, cutting across caste, creed and religion, crossing borders of states. With his demise, South Asia has lost one of its most influential cultural communicators. But his songs and spirit endure. For he sings, ‘Though for so long have I swum in the confluence of oceans, I’m yet not tired; coz’ the tides in the Pacific of my mind continue to be restless.’

[Photo courtsey- Himjyoti Talukdar, Enajori.com]

Talking to ULFA: Assam's Peace Myths and Reality

                                                                                                                    by Tanmoy Sharma

First  published  in  Kafila.org  on  February 28, 2011

Last week, when an eight member delegation of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) returned to Guwahati after the first round of peace-talks with the central government in New Delhi, the response in Assam is a mixed bag of emotions. Arabinda Rajkhowa, the ULFA chairman who led the delegation, while addressing the press, said that they had been assured of an honourable solution  to the three decade long Assam conflict by the Prime Minister.  Earlier, on 10^th February the ULFA made history by coming to the talks table in New Delhi for the first time with no firm pre set conditions on its agenda.  It is understood as of now, that no substantial talks would begin before the Assam assembly elections  which are expected to be held in April-May this year.  However  this ‘familiarisation exercise’ of the centre with one of India’s most influential and violent separatist outfits at such a crucial time is a hugely significant move in the contemporary history of  the insurgency-hit election bound Assam.

Separatist insurgency, fuelled by ULFA during the last three decades in pursuit of an independent homeland, had become a part of life in the politics of Assam a long way back. However things seem to have been gradually progressing with dramatic changes happening in the last one and a half year which all began with Arabinda Rajkhowa’s arrest by the Bangladesh government in the last week of November, 2009. With the new formed Sheikh Hasina government’s backing to India on counter insuregency measures, the months of November and December, 2009 saw a severe blow  to the already weakened ULFA when one after another top leader was being arrested by the security forces. Barring Paresh Baruah, the elusive Commander in Chief of the outfit, the catch of the entire top brass of ULFA was seen as a big leap in the much talked about long awaited peace process in Assam.

Even as these leaders were brought back to India, a new attempt was taken up by prominent public intellectual Dr. Hiren Gohain to restore the already stalled peace process between the insurgents and the government. Since the previous efforts by noted author Indira Goswami and People’s Consultative Group to build an environment for dialogue failed to great disappointment in 2006, the people in Assam by and large started hoping for a positive result with the initiative of Dr. Gohain led state level convention (SJA) . Apparently it seems that the new effort has finally borne some fruit as from the month of May, 2010 to this January, all the arrested ULFA leaders were being released on bail and they include-vice-chairman Pradip Gogoi, publicity chief Mithinga Daimary, deputy c-in-c Raju Baruah  and political ideologue  Bhimkanta Buragohain apart from chairman Rajkhowa. Sensing the strong public opinion yearning for permanent peace in Assam, this is seen as a very calculated move by the government.

Although there is little doubt over the willingness of the centre to resolve the brutal Assam conflict which has taken a toll of 30000 lives till date  in the crossfire, the behaviour is puzzling. To those of us who have been curiously and constantly watching the changing political dynamics of Assam for a long period of time, the government is sure to have understood two basic things. The first is that  this supposedly moderate faction of ULFA sans Paresh Baruah have been separatist only in rhetoric but autonomist in aspirations and they now secretly aspire to join mainstream politics; which is why it would be possible to start the dialogue without placing sovereignty on table. Secondly and most importantly, for the UPA at New Delhi and the Congress government in Assam, there cannot be a better time than this with polls just round the corner to accelerate the peace process realizing fully the fact that the ULFA leaders ,just out of prison, have no other option than to drop the sovereignty demand from their agenda,  which makes their bargaining power much lesser than that of the NSCN(IM) in Nagaland.

Now, one doesn’t need to be a political scientist to understand that the whole story of ULFA’s general council’s recent approval to facilitate peace talks without any pre conditions is largely a state engineered process on one hand and the helpless submission of the political leadership of an extremist organization which vowed to fight till death solely to attain Assam’s sovereignty way back in 1979, on the other. However in the middle of this high pitch political drama; the people of Assam have strangely become a confused lot. In the temptation of making the whole thing a super strong political campaign, the most crucial factor that has been ignored by the government is the main military man of ULFA, who has always called the shots-Paresh Baruah. Just before the talks began in New Delhi, C-in C Paresh Baruah for the first time in the last thirty years had sent a video footage to the local Assamese media from an unknown location in Burma showing his still intact military strength, clearly warning the peace lobby. The arrogant military head of the outfit has been reiterating that no dialogue can be held without sovereignty on its agenda.

With ULFA now being a divided house with its political leadership going ahead with unconditional peace talks and a large chunk of armed cadres still in jungle under the authority of Baruah, people of Assam are seriously dubious about the extent of peace these talks would bring. There is no doubt that after the 2003 crackdown of ULFA in Bhutan and consequent operations of the Bangladeshi security forces to eliminate them, the ULFA is finding it increasingly difficult to sustain itself. Apart from that, the mass support it enjoyed in the 80’s and 90’s is also waning heavily. However Paresh Baruah, a known to be stubborn leader and the few men he has are still sufficient to wreak havoc in Assam irrespective of public opinion. And if Paresh Baruah’s men once again decide to wage an active war, it is the people of Assam who will become the worst sufferer in the futile battle of guns.

The question is where the solution lies. It is, at this very juncture, important to distinguish the Assamese separatist movement from the Kashmir, Nagaland and Manipur issue. Unlike the socio-historical origin of the secessionist sentiments in the other cases, separatist Assamese extremism began much later after India’s independence. As a matter of fact, the ULFA issue in Assam, India’s tea and oil heartland, came forth on economic premises much more than any historical or ethno-nationalist ground. Notwithstanding the fact that ULFA gradually turned into a terrorist organization taking to brutal killing of hundreds of innocent civilians, everyone in Assam agrees that the beginning of this insurgency was a result of the ‘long term accumulated frustration of the people of Assam’. The feeling of alienation from New Delhi and the exploitation of state’s resources by outside parties both centre and foreign industries without due share to the locals had resulted in tumultuous democratic movements in the past which yielded nothing more than pompous promises.

That’s why when a new generation of educated young men and women took up guns out of absolute anger, a huge amount of sympathy emanated from a large number of Assamese people. People of Assam who had happily assimilated to the idea of the Indian nation state more than one and a half century back, still do not want an independent Assam carved out of India.  Although ULFA had been able to draw a significant amount of sympathy from every Assamese household, they however failed to inculcate the crying necessity of a sovereign Assam in people’s minds. Yet, the brutal ant-insurgency measures adopted by the state killing almost everyone in the name of suspects helped grow the sympathy. That is why, in most of Assam’s rural areas, ULFA men are still romanticized as national heroes.

Hence, if the government of India wants to end the story with this incomplete development, considering it to be a great diplomatic win of the state, the ramifications can be disastrous. Assam, already being home to more than twenty insurgent groups with different demands, cannot expect to see real peace until Paresh Baruah, the de facto chief of the biggest insurgent outfit of the land comes to discussion table. It should be best left to the people of Assam to decide whether sovereignty, as per Baruah’s demand, should be put on the discussion table or not. However people of Assam firmly believe that the solution to permanent peace in this very land although doesn’t lie in its territorial separation from India, but to a great extent lies in greater autonomy of Assam and the freedom from the plunder of state’s resources. For that matter, the world’s largest democracy has nothing to lose in thinking of some substantial constitutional amendments.