Anxiety, Violence and the Postcolonial State: Understanding the “Anti-Bangladeshi” Rage in Assam, India
Fear, insecurity and anxiety seem to be the enduring sources of genocidal impulses against the Bengali-speaking Muslim minorities of contemporary Assam, India. This paper explores how the tripartite matrix of the border, census and citizenship categories has become indispensable in inscribing fear and anxiety in contemporary Assam’s body politic. Using insights from postcolonial states’ practices, the paper shows how the state suffers from a persistent neurosis, characterised by an “incompleteness-anxiety”, and how attempts have been made to resolve this sense of crisis by mobilising the majority to align its Assamese identity in the direction of an imagined purified “national whole”. Further, the paper elaborates upon the implications of these anxieties with reference to Indo-Bangladeshi relations, in which Assam figures prominently both as a prime border state and as a place that is integral to the region’s riparian borderlands as a whole. Moving away from the official discourses of contemporary Indo-Bangladeshi relations, which are guided largely by postcolonial cartographic anxiety, the paper points towards the creative possibilities of exploring the “relational registers” within the region’s shared civilisational resources as an alternative, in which Assam can act as a bridge between India and Bangladesh
Keywords:
Cartographic anxiety, border, census, D-voter, Bengali-speaking Muslims, Assam Movement AASU.,
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- They are referred to as the Na Asomiya (New Assamese) who settled in the Brahmaptura valley during the colonial period and pioneered the jute plantation.
- See, Priyankar Upadhyaya, “Securitisation Matrix in South Asia: Bangladeshi Migrants as Enemy Alien”, Consortium of Non-Traditional Security Studies in India, at http://www.rsis- tsasia.org/resources/publications/research-papers/migration/Priyankar%20Upadhyaya.pdf [last visited 22 June 2013].
- For a detailed account of media representation of the issue, see Ksenia Glebova, “Most Fatal Malady: Media, Migration and Identity in Assam”, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group Publication, at http://www.mcrg.ac.in/rw%20files/RW38/2.Ksenia.pdf [last visited 12 March 2013].
- Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger, Durham, Duke University Press, 2006.
- Krishna uses the term “cartography” to encompass representational practices- not only a line on the map, but also all kinds of coercive and bloody practices that produce moments of suspension in postcolonial societies. See, Sankaran Krishna, “Cartographic Anxiety: Mapping the Body Politic in India”, in John Agnew (ed.), Political Geography: A Reader, New York, Arnold, 1997, pp. 81-92. See also Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
- Cited in Rizwana Shamshad, “Politics and Origin of the India-Bangladesh Border Fence”, paper presented at the 17th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Melbourne, 1-3 July 2008, p. 1, at http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mai/files/2012/07/ rizwanashamshad.pdf [last visited 4 May 2013].
- Government of Assam, Home and Political Department, White Paper on Foreigners’ Issue, 20 October 2012, pp. 29-31. 10 Ibid.
- Human Rights Watch, Trigger Happy: Excessive Use of Force by Indian Troops at the Bangladeshi Border, at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2010/12/09/trigger-happy [last visited 22 December 2013].
- Brad Adams, “India’s Shoot-to-Kill Policy at the Bangladesh Border”, Guardian, 23 January 2011.
- S.K. Sinha, “Report on Illegal Migration into Assam”, South Asia Portal for Terrorism, 8 November 1998, at http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/assam/documents/ papers/illegal_migration_in_assam.htm [last visited 11 November 2013].
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- Anil Saikia, Homeswar Goswami and Atul Goswami, Population Growth in Assam 1951- 1991 with a Focus on Migration, New Delhi, Akansha Publishing House, 2003.
- C.S. Mullan, Census of India, 1931: Assam, New Delhi, Manohor Publications, 1933, p. 51.
- Amalendu Guha, Plantes-Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam 1826- 1947, New Delhi, Indian Council of Historical Research, 1977.
- Monirul Hussain, The Assam Movement: Class, Ideology and Identity, New Delhi, Manak Publications Private Limited, 1994.
- Harsh Mander, “Nellie: India’s Forgotten Massacre”, The Hindu, at http://www.thehindu. com/thehindu/mag/2008/12/14/stories/2008121450100300.htm [last visited 30 March 2013].
- Cited in Upadhyaya, “Securitisation Matrix in South Asia.
- Anjuman Ara Begum, “Narratives of D-voters in Assam”, at http://twocircles.net/2011jan03/ narratives_dvoters_assam.html [last visited 10 March 2013].
- Government of Assam, Home and Political Department, White Paper on Foreigners’ Issue, 20 October 2012, p. 22.
- Bodos represent an ethnic and linguistic community in Assam that is spread over both valley and hill areas.
- H.S. Brahma, “How to Share Assam”, The Indian Express, 12 July 2012.
- Cited in Ratnadip Choudhury, “The Agony of Being Labelled a ‘Bangladeshi’ in Assam”, Tahelka, Vol. 10, Issue 42 (October 2013), p. 22.
- The new rule of enumeration under the sub-section 3 of section 4-A of the Citizenship Act requires a person to apply in a prescribed form for their name to be included in NRC and requires supporting documents.
- The fear on their part is that they will be discriminated in the new process due to their illiteracy.
- Yasmin Saikia, “In the Beginning Was a Loaded Word: How Can Human Being Called ‘Illegal’ How the Language of Dehumanisation is Fuelling the Assam Crisis”, The Outlook, September 2012.
- Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger, Durham, Duke University Press, 2006, pp. 58-59.
- “Manush Manusher Jonne”, The Daily Star, 11 November 2011.
- ISSN: 1300-8641
- Yayın Aralığı: Yılda 2 Sayı
- Başlangıç: 1996
- Yayıncı: T.C Dışişleri Bakanlığı
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