Editorial

Dhing is the reality

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that people belonging to the indigenous communities who are minorities in their own respective areas of the state are living under the shadow of fear of being attacked.

Sentinel Digital Desk

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that people belonging to the indigenous communities who are minorities in their own respective areas of the state are living under the shadow of fear of being attacked. As reported in the media, the chief minister has said that after the Lok Sabha election, a section of people has been encouraged to commit crimes, particularly against the indigenous communities, with women being chosen as the prime target. That indigenous people have been living under the shadow of fear in certain pockets in Assam, however, is not a new thing. This situation has been systematically created by the immigrants having roots in erstwhile East Bengal, erstwhile East Pakistan, and present-day Bangladesh. Looking back to the period of the Assam movement of 1979–85, one would find several incidents where these immigrants had attacked villages of indigenous communities, setting houses on fire, looting granaries, snatching away animals and poultry, and raping and kidnapping women and girls. The two most glaring examples were Chamaria in south Kamrup and Mangaldoi in Darrang. As far as Dhing is concerned, the story of the Kobaikata Satra, a Vaishnavite monastery not very far away from Batadrava, the birthplace of Sankaradeva, is the most glaring example of how systematically the immigrants have been expanding their influence. According to media reports, the immigrants, over a period of about twenty years, chased off the local people from around Kobaikata Satra by indulging in acts of thefts, burglaries, kidnappings, rapes, and threats, leaving only about two or three kathas of land on which the naamghar of the Satra stands. Dhing, the birthplace of an Assamese literary giant like Ratnakanta Borkakati, and an area that was once inhabited by the close followers of Sankaradeva, is today an area where the immigrants hold sway. The recent incident can also be considered part of the ongoing design to scare away the handful of indigenous people who are still there so that Batadrava, the birthplace of Sankaradeva too, can be wiped out demographically. The Dhing story is also part of the demographic invasion that India’s Northeast has been experiencing in the past twelve decades, beginning with the first flush of “land-hungry” Muslim peasants from erstwhile East Bengal after Assam was clubbed with that newly-created Bengal province in 1905 by Lord Curzon. It must also be remembered that while the indigenous people of Assam had, under the leadership of the Ahoms, successfully thwarted a series of attempts by the Mughals to occupy this land, and while Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi had successfully resisted the Muslim League attempt to include Assam in East Pakistan in 1947, the conspiracy continues to be at work, and Dhing is just one small example.