A ripe ground for terror operations has been prepared.
The National Register of Citizens exercise has been resurrecting many fissures in Assam. Some of the fissures are old, half-forgotten. The troubled years of the early 1980s had almost become the stuff of nostalgia – but not anymore. Those times of suspicion, distrust and insecurity are back.
People are once again divided along community lines. Mass violence has made a comeback, albeit in a different avatar. Instead of mobs hacking helpless people, people are internalising the violence wrought by the state and are killing themselves. The number of suicides related to the NRC crossed 17 among Hindu Bengalis alone. Even this has not been enough. A ripe ground for terror operations has been prepared. On the night of November 1, about five to six unidentified armed men killed five unarmed men in Tinsukia district of eastern Assam. While initial reports said the attack was carried out by ULFA (Independent), the organisation has since denied its involvement. The gunmen ordered the young men to go with them to a secluded spot by the river, told them to sit and then opened fire upon them. Most likely, the fault of the massacred was their Bengali Hindu identity. But why target Hindu Bengalis? We need to contextualise the politics that is being played out in recent years to understand this.
Shiladitya Dev, BJP MLA from Hojai assembly constituency, is a prominent character in this play. The powers that be, for reasons best known to them, would not reveal the district-wise rejection data. Unconfirmed media reports suggest the NRC rejections figures in Hojai district are quite high. Being the MLA from a place with a large Bengali-speaking population is not an easy job in this NRC season. Especially when the president of your own party, Amit Shah, has called your loyal voters who have been left out of the NRC list Bangladeshi ghuspetiye (infiltrators). Shah went on to compare the infiltrators to termites, out to destroy Hindustan. One can almost empathise with Dev.
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