On the southeast of this country [Assam] herds of wild elephants roam about in numbers, therefore in this district they use them principally for war. Going 1,200 or 1,300 li (about 20 miles) to the south we come to Samatata [present day Bangladesh].

Hiuen Tsang (Chinese traveler to medieval Assam in 643 AD) [1]

 

North East India has been witness to a range of ethnic insurgencies since India’s independence in 1947. Whether it has been the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN), [2] the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) [3] or the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), [4] ethnic components of the region have sought to wage “little wars” in order to assert their various identities. Indeed, even a cursory look at some of the insurgent charters will determine the genesis of most of these “little wars” to be ethnic assertion.

Pre-and post-independent India’s history has geo-located North East India as a region of immense significance in South Asia. Indeed, according to this author, the region can be considered the epicenter of South Asia, with not only a “strategic encirclement” [5] by other nations, but also by an ethnic and religious mix that has active cross-border linkages. As a matter of detail, the region’s bill of health is to a significant extent determined by the surrounding nations, with even the ethnic insurgencies owing their natal allegiance to trans-border affiliations. While the structures of Nagalim (Greater Nagaland) and Swadhin Asom (Independent Assam) were initially carved out in Mytkyina and thereabouts in present-day Myanmar, the fortunes of organizations like the ATTF and the NDFB rest on places such as Tarabon in Bangladesh and Sandrup Jongkhar in Bhutan. Indeed, “as the crow flies the region is closer to Hanoi than to New Delhi,” [6] and determinedly—despite the best efforts to reiterate and establish ancient commercial and emotional linkages with the Indian heartland—North East India continues to be defined by the “strategic encirclement” to which it is heir.

“Strategic encirclement” has provided North East India with not only a staging ground for the ethnic insurgencies that abound in the region but—as would be inevitable—characteristics that are unique to the areas in which the insurgencies first began to foment themselves. In particular, while the NSCN’s modes of operation have a distinct Kachin flavor to them, the Prachar Patras (publicity material) of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) [7] has—despite the inherent contradiction [8] —begun to address illegal immigrants from Bangladesh as “people of Assam of East Bengal origin” and have sought to justify the role of the migrants by stating that “all the laboring masses are our friends and the main motive force of our freedom struggle.” [9] While it seems that the grant of safe havens by Bangladesh to the leaders of the ULFA [10] has been an important factor in its turnaround, the demographic compulsion that presently grips Assam too has forced the ULFA to reconsider the proud aims by which it was sired. Indeed, this contradiction in ideology that is being witnessed in the ULFA (which is one of the strongest ethnic separatist movements in Independent India) is a signature of the primary phenomenon of abdication of ethnic ideologies that seems to be gaining ground in the region.

The eleventh day of September 2001 irrevocably altered the security scenario in North East India. The proponents of left-wing insurgency (which eggs on most of the ethnic-separatist assertions in the region) will have to either redefine their agendas in order to cross swords with the “eastward surge of the jihadi” [11] or, as has been seen to be the case with the Maoists of Nepal, break bread with constituents that sustain religious extremism. In India’s eastern seaboard—the areas that abut North East India—1971 was a turning point. The two-nation theory of the 1940s and the one that brought about the dismemberment of India was found to be fallacious; and it seemed that culture had over-ridden religious concerns which had governed the balkanization of united India and the grouping of East Bengal to Pakistan. However, fanatical elements in the newfound nation began a course of action that was less culturally zealous than the concerns that had led to the severance of Pakistan.

In today’s Bangladesh, the Bangladesh National Party of Khaleda Zia is in power with a four party alliance, together with the Jamaat-e-Islami, Islamic Oikyo Jote, and the Jatiyo Party (M). The political arithmetic has brought Bangladesh to what can be termed as a furtherance of the Islamic agenda. [12] Moreover, reports have also indicated the formation of a Freedom Party that has rajakars [13] as important constituents. The slogan Amra hobo Taliban, Bangla hobe Afghan (we will be the Taliban, Bangladesh will become Afghanistan) has been carried into rural Bangladesh. The growing Islamization of Bangladesh has direct consequences for the secular space of North East India that it strategically borders, and characterizes an atmosphere that is ripe for the growth of Islamic militant activities in the region. This growth has become more of a possibility as a result of the demographic changes that are occurring in the region as a result of the mass movement of people from Bangladesh. Recent reports have indicated the formation of “cells” inside Assam by the ISI, [14] wherein ten to twenty persons (owing affinity to the illegal migrants from Bangladesh) are grouped to form “modules” that are equipped with money, ideology, and arms. Intelligence reports state that such “modules” are designed to act as “sleepers” in order to be activated at some future moment for terrorist activity, or even religious riots. The enormity of the problem, moreover—and again according to intelligence reports—has given rise to new social formations such as the Sema-Miyas (progeny of the Sema Naga tribe of Nagaland who are wed to Bangladeshi migrants).

As an interesting aside, it is noteworthy to mention the checkered history of North East India that has known movements of people from a variety of regions. Whereas the rulers of medieval Assam—the Ahoms—came from across the Patkoi mountain range and the Irrawady River from the Shan states, the forebears of the present caste Hindus came from Kanauj in the Indian mainland. It will be of interest to note that Assam’s social mosaic has a mix which includes Muslims who had accompanied not only the invasions of the region by the Mughals, but also additional Muslims who were imported as painters, artisans and architects by the Ahom rulers. Indeed, the state has known two chief executives who were Muslims. [15] Socio-cultural affinities used to override religious considerations. The secular space of the present, however, has been compromised in light of the developments that are beginning to take place, and with the illegal migrants positioning themselves as a majority in four geo-strategic districts of Assam. Moreover, although the indigenous Muslims of Assam continue to remain loyal to the secular fabric of the region, the agent provocateurs among the illegal migrants from Bangladesh with active aid from the ISI and DGFI could engineer situations that could adversely affect communal harmony in the region.