Homage to a fighter extraordinary

The mid eighties were the time when Bengal cricket was eagerly tracking around to find out its representative for the national arena, mostly controlled then by the Bombay lobby. Though Kolkata was famous for its football passion, cricket was not much behind – the city possessed Eden Gardens, a magnificent cricket ground which was also the oldest and biggest in the country, numerous clubs were trying to raise aspirant Bradmans, Trumpers or Larwoods in the vast stretch of the lush green maidan area. Local ‘para’ clubs regularly organized tennis ball cricket tournaments. By and large, the local cricket buffs fulfilled their appetite by involving themselves with devotional affection in this typical ‘goly’ (lane) form of cricket. One day matches (ODIs) were still not so popular and therefore a five day Test match in Eden Gardens was something like a festival. The lucky ones who had managed to grab a day’s ticket packed their lunch early in the morning and floated in the festive wind towards Eden Gardens. The unlucky ones had to keep themselves satisfied with the vernacular newspaper stories which used to devote their entire first page to cover the match and by the passionate radio commentaries. When Doordarshan started telecast Test cricket directly, there were fewer households that had a television set. Those houses which owned one, was invariably swamped by community visitors from 9 o’clock morning to afternoon till the days telecast was over. Fans crowded in front of the majestic Grand Hotel, where the cricketers generally stayed during Test matches to have a glimpse of the celebrity players. While Kolkata had every setting for cricket phobia – all the enthusiasm were falling short because the local heroes were unable to make any visible mark in the national side. After Pankaj Roy, Bengal couldn't produce a cricketer who could wear the India cap for a lengthy spell.

Snehashish Ganguly was a talented cricketer in the mid eighties Kolkata. The elder son of an affluent father – a printer by profession but also a onetime state player and widely known as a cricket enthusiast. Snehashish was a fine left-hander batsman and an occasional right-hand off break bowler. Cricket watchers of Kolkata held high expectation about this local lad. In the 1989-90 seasons, Snehashish played six Ranji Trophy matches, scored 439 runs with two centuries and finished with an average of 73.16. Apart from his father, Snehashish also had an ardent follower in his family – his younger brother Sourav. When Sourav also started playing alongside him in the Bengal team, people used to identify Sourav as the younger brother of Snehashish.

From formation days Sourav was blamed for his arrogance. His teammates of St. Xavier’s School cricket team complained against him to their coach. He grew up in an opulent dwelling where his father had arranged an in-house multi-gym, a batting range and rare cricket videos to watch – a facility most of the budding cricketers seldom get. He was picked for the Bengal team in 1989-90 after his initial stint in the Under 15 tournament where he smashed a century against Orissa. In the next Ranji Trophy season Sourav scored 394 runs with an astonishing near eighty average. In a 1991 Duleep Trophy match against West Zone in Guahati, Sourav hit a tidy knock of unbeaten 124 runs and earned a place in the Indian team under Mohammad Azharuddin for the 1991-92 Australia tour. Quite naturally, his inclusion was ridiculed as a quota selection. Sourav was then 19 years old.

In Australia, Sourav was accused for behaving like a spoilt brat, like a ‘maharaja’ who refused to carry the drinks or baggage of his seniors. Those were the times when a junior member in the side felt obliged to do petty services for the senior members to gratify them. Sourav was definitely not a conventional junior member though there are absolutely no proofs at all that he was ever disrespectful about his seniors. An 'attitude problem' tag was stuck on him from the very beginning of his career. He played one ODI, scored only 3, and failed to impress the selectors for the next four years. Keeping in mind the past treatments delivered to other Bengal players of class – from Shyamsundar Mitra to Sambaran Bannerjee by an extremely politicized and parochial selection process, many considered that Sourav’s international career was finished. But Sourav didn’t think so. The bitter experience of this tour tempered him bit by bit into steel. He had also acquired some basic lessons that he will start implementing eight years later.

His inclusion to the Indian side touring England in 1992 was similarly credited to Jagmohan Dalmiya – the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) strongman from Bengal and the newly emerged Bengal lobby. After the departure of Navjot Singh Sidhu following an ugly spat with captain Azharuddin, Sourav was lucky enough to play his first Test at the Mecca of world cricket – The Lords. The Sourav myth that will rule the mind of millions for the next sixteen years was launched here with a classy 131 and the subsequent century in the next Trent Bridge Test. From 1992 onwards people referred to Snehashish as the elder brother of Sourav. Though Snehashish played 59 first class matches with a near forty average and made 6 centuries, he gradually faded away from the cricket scene.

There is nothing unknown to cricket followers about the controversial career graph of Sourav. The public opinions and emotions about him were always sharp and divided all through his career. But there is a general consensus about one aspect – that this young man had singlehandedly changed the way our national cricket team played its cricket. Only with the exception of the Tiger Pataudi era, the Indian cricket team was universally recognized for its meek and surrendering approach. Indian cricket was mostly observed to follow the achievements of individuals – not for the achievements of a team. Sourav transformed Indian team into a rock solid unit, with a combative and thorny approach which caused lots of uneasiness for many opponent super captains. What cricket journalist Harsha Bhogle observed as the basic persona of Sourav also became the identity of the team he led – not rude and disrespectful but defiant and increasingly confident. This changeover was achieved with a one point strategy that he had picked up from personal experiences of his first tour – nurture young talents, trust their ability and protect them from the parochial trends that have always influenced Indian team building. By doing so, Sourav turned the younger players into daring fighters who in return trusted him deeply. For the next five years after he was named the full-time captain, India played 49 Tests, lost 13 and won 21 which include the 11 wins abroad. Tiger Pataudi, considered by many as India’s finest captain, led in 40 Tests, lost 19 and won 9 including 3 wins abroad. Sunil Gavaskar led in 47 Tests, won 9 and Mohammad Azharuddin captained in 47 Tests and won 14 of them. As a captain, Sourav achieved a winning percentage of 42.86 in Tests and 51.70 in ODIs. In both form of the game Sourav surpassed the achievements of all previous Indian captains.

In his 16 years of international career, Sourav scored 7217 Test runs including 16 centuries with an average of 42.17 and took 32 wickets. He scored 11363 runs in the ODIs including 22 centuries with an average of 41.02 and took 100 wickets. Among those who have scored over 10000 runs in the one day matches, only Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting has a better average than him.

Even after these spectacular successes, Sourav always had to be ‘reselected’ as captain before every series. He was finally sacked in 2005 – first from captaincy and then as a member of the squad. Greg Chappell, the newly appointed coach of the Indian team gradually surfaced to be a manipulative and megalomaniac individual, pooled himself along with the animus administrators like Kiran More and Raj Singh Dungarpur (Dungarpur famously said at that time that, “Chappell is a genius; Sourav is much below him in stature”) and was successful in getting rid of Sourav. Chappell only wanted docile players to maneuver his crummy scheme and his Indian henchmen had to accomplish their personal aversion agenda. Thankfully, it did not take long to prove that Chappell is a total failure. After the disastrous 2007 World Cup performance of India, the scratchy Australian was duly removed from his job. Whereas Sourav, within less than a year after his removal astoundingly bounced back into the team in 2007. He returned with a 98 run ODI score against West Indies, became the top scorer with 534 runs and Man of the Series in the three-Test series against Pakistan. Surprisingly omitted from the ODI side, he scored nearly 2000 Test runs including a double century. He had to prove a point. And he did it in style.

If Sourav had ended his career as soon as he was sacked, he would have been still called a ‘hero’, but apparently a tragic one. History would have looked at him through the ‘great-good-error-downfall’ model of the Aristotelian ‘tragic hero’. But Sourav cannot tend to carry the ‘tragic’ tag along with him for the rest of his life. He has imprinted his own destiny through hard struggle, absolute determination, great courage and outstanding achievements. He has always seized the public imagination as the eternal symbol of the good combating the bad. Why should he like to see his feat as tragic? After the dignified manner in which he drew the final curtain, history will always recall Sourav not as a tragic but a true hero. He leaves behind the legacy of an extraordinary fighter and a wonderful leader who can proudly recall about his team that, “…I know, even when I get it wrong, that my team believes I was wrong in trying to be right.”

The tragedy called Assam

On October 30, Assam was trounced by another atrocious serial blast that has killed at least 77 innocent civilians. The media termed it as the ‘worst-ever’ terrorist strike. Once again the Prime Minister and Home Minister delivered their recorded cliché statement; bigwig leaders visited the affected area like tourists and merrily played politics. Minutes after the blasts, Hindu nationalist leader Lal Krishna Advani accused ‘illegal Bangladeshis’ for breeding terrorism and Bangladeshi jihadi groups for triggering the blasts – as if the attackers had taken him into confidence before pursuing the act. Local Hindutva communal groups called a statewide strike. Everything went on as expected. For decades, this ill fated state is passing through a chronic sequence of hatred, suspicion, violence and ethnic division. Today, this once prosperous land is one of the most economically backward and problem-ridden states of India. The gap between Assam and rest of the country in terms of per capita income has been widening continuously during the last fifty years after Independence. The state has a meager economic growth; many areas are still left untouched from development. Maltreatment of consecutive governments has retarded serious and sensitive issues unresolved for decades. This ill treatment has promoted many of the genuine grievances of the Assamese people and helped the continuing conflicts and misconceptions to thrive. As a consequence, people of this region have increasingly grown frustrated and became mentally alienated from the rest of the country.

To form a precise opinion on this terrorist strike, it seems essential to chronologically study the highly complex history of the state. It is also crucial to carefully peel through the many layers of facts and viewpoints to get near the core truth.

Prologue

The eight states of the North-East region of India comprise over 200 distinct ethnic groups. Assam alone is the home of about 20 large and small ethnic groups. Having ancestral relation with neighbour countries like China, Myanmar, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan and sharing 98 per cent of its border with them (see map), this land and its ethnic inhabitants has historically remained distanced from mainland India.

Human migration was an ongoing phenomenon in the Brahmaputra Valley for over the centuries. Various immigrant groups, most of them Mongoloids, had entered the region from neighbouring South-East Asian countries. The Ahoms, a Tai-Mongoloid group, immigrated to Assam during 13th century from China and consolidated their position to establish the Ahom Kingdom that ruled Assam for the next 600 years. In 1818, the Burmese invaded Assam and forced the Ahom king to leave the kingdom. Finally, in 1826 the British drove out the Burmese and Assam came under British domination. Although the power of Ahom Kingdom started to decline from the second half of the 18th century, the territory remained mostly unconquered from any exterior power (except for the brief periods between 1663 to 1667 by the Mughals and 1818 to 1826 by the Burmese invasion) till the British took over.

British rule and growth of ‘anti-Bengali’ syndrome

After their takeover, the British revived Assam to one of the wealthier states of their regime with industrial and infrastructural developments. The tea industry was built up; high productive oil fields were discovered. The British brought in English educated Bengali officials to Assam to run the tea plantations and the civil service of the British raj. Since 1826, educated Bengali middle class Hindus held important positions in the colonial administration and other important professions like teachers, doctors, lawyers and magistrates. They also managed to introduce and initiate Bengali as the executive language of Assam. In 1905, the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon divided Bengal Presidency (undivided Bengal) into East and West Bengal (see map). Assam was merged with the new Muslim majority province of East Bengal. However, in 1911 British Government annulled the Bengal Partition due to massive political unrest in West Bengal. Assam was restored to its earlier status as a Chief Commissioner’s Province. But this time the British did another damaging act by integrating Bengali speaking Cachar, Goalpara and Sylhet with Assam province.

The British design to merge Assam with East Bengal had hurt the ethnic pride of local Assamese people. The decision was perceived by them as an indication that the Britishers are adversely treating their homeland as an extension of Bengal. Despite the fact that the middle class Bengali Hindus has made enormous contributions to the development of Assam’s oil wealth, industry and administration, the authority and power exercised by them over the ethnic Assamese and treating them with arrogance and contempt had ensued grave discontentment and a fear of cultural subordination. Moreover, the continuing large-scale influx of lower class Bengali Muslims was perceived as a demographic conquest by Bengalis to overpower local Assamese – those who were either Hindus or animists. As a result, a deep ‘anti-Bengali’ syndrome developed in the psyche of the ethnic Assamese mass. Hostility, mistrust and socio-cultural conflicts aggravated between the two major linguistic groups and have set the fertile ground for a full scale future confrontation.

Muslim immigration and the linguistic conflict

During the British rule, a big mass of Muslims had emigrated from undivided Bengal to Assam. Local Assamese people were living mostly in Upper Assam and cultivating one crop per year. They were less interested about working in the tea gardens or increasing their agricultural productivity. Hence, to work in the tea gardens, the British tea planters started to import labourers from central India – mainly from Bihar. British entrepreneurs had also actively encouraged landless Bengali speaking Muslim peasants to migrate from the populous East Bengal into the lowlands of Assam to work and develop the vast virgin lands. These poor peasant labourers were hardworking in nature and ready to work with minimal wages. They toiled hard on the waste lands of Lower Assam and transformed it into fertile agricultural fields. The influx of peasant labourers increased with the 1941 Land Settlement Policy. A British government 1931 census report stated that only in Nagaon district, the number of Bengali settlers has gone up between 1921 and 1931 by two thirds, from 300,000 to 500,000. The report also observed that places like Nagaon, Barpeta, Darrang, Kamrup and North Lakimpur were ‘invaded’ by settlers coming from Mymensingh district of East Bengal. These peasant Bengali immigrants made Assam their home and made a significant contribution to the agricultural economy of the state.

In the critical months leading up to Partition, Assam was again in the verge of getting merged with East Pakistan. The Congress High Command and the Muslim League agreed on the Cabinet mission proposal for regrouping of Assam with the eastern part of Bengal, which was to go away with Pakistan. The move was fiercely opposed by Gopinath Borodoloi, the stalwart Congress leader of Assam with the backing of Mahatma Gandhi. Borodoloi successfully prevented the regrouping plan and saved Assam from becoming a part of Pakistan. Combined with the present day territories of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya, Assam sans the pre-dominantly Muslim district of Sylhet, Assam became a state of the Union of India. A July 29, 1947 editorial in Assam Tribune, noted that “…the Assamese people seem to feel relieved of a burden”.

The frustration of this failure to include Assam with East Pakistan left a permanent blotch within a prominent section of orthodox Muslim leadership and reactionary religious groups. This abiding resentment was preserved in their minds as the cherished Islamic design for a Greater Bangladesh which became the major source of future clashes.

Population influx of Bengali refugees, both Hindu and Muslims continued from East Bengal (now East Pakistan) in the post Partition period. It used to accelerate whenever natural calamities, economic or political instability affected East Pakistan. During this time, the ongoing linguistic conflict between the Bengalis and Assamese acquired momentum and turned into a fierce agitation with one side demanding official language status for Assamese and the other side defending the existing status of Bengali. The conflict had a definite political undertone and in 1960-61 burst into violent language riots causing several deaths from both sides. In 1961, Assamese language received the official language status by a legislation passed by the Government of Assam known as the ‘Official Language Act’. However, under pressure from the predominantly Bengali speaking districts of Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj in the Barak Valley of southern Assam, the official status of Bengali language was retained there.

After the Indo-China war in 1962, Arunachal Pradesh was separated out from Assam. The state was further Balkanized with the formation of Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland in the years of 1960-70s.

Formation of Bangladesh

With the active help and intervention of the Indian government and army, Bangladesh (former East Pakistan) was liberated from the grip of Pakistan and was established as a sovereign secular republic in 1971. It became a highly emotional event for the millions of Bengalis of India, who during the catastrophic Partition days were forcefully uprooted from their homeland in East Bengal and immigrate to India. The utterly traumatic events of Partition had left a profound effect on their lives. In his sensitive films, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak has brilliantly displayed this emotion, longing and trauma of the refugee Bengali Hindu families. Bengali Hindu refugees and immigrants who came to India before or during or after Partition has always related themselves with East Bengal and never with East Pakistan.

But liberation of Bangladesh also sharply increased a fresh influx of immigrants – thousands of Bangladesh nationals started pouring into the bordering states of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and West Bengal. The primary reason of this exodus was economic. Bangladesh was a highly populated country where 60 per cent of the population lived below the poverty line. Devastating natural calamities regularly displace millions. Land alienation, poverty, unemployment and lack of adequate social infrastructure prompted the poor Bangladeshi nationals to immigrate into India for a better livelihood. Between 1970 and 1974, the population of East Pakistan (Bangladesh after 1971) amazingly came down from 7.50 crores to 7.14 crores. Though, calculating by the annual population growth rate of 3.10 per cent, in 1974 it should actually increase to 7.70 crores. It is widely believed that the shortfall of 5.60 million has actually immigrated in India.

Twenty-four years have passed from 1947 to 1971 but the nostalgia and longing for desher bari (homeland) was still alive in the refugee hearts. Bangladesh’s liberation generated a wider hope for reinstating their broken linkage and therefore created an ecstatic feeling among them. Though chauvinist-reactionary groups were present in both the sides to spoil the jubilation, the enormity of the event temporarily demoralized and disbanded them. A general mood of elation and friendship was prevailing among the two countries. Triumphant after the victory over Pakistan and temporarily blinded by its own war success, the Indian government at that point failed to contemplate the consequence of this massive influx from Bangladesh.

However this friendship and goodwill gradually evaporated after the legendary leader and founder of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in 1975. Bangladesh eventually discarded secularism in 1988 and declared Islam as the state religion.

The rise of AASU

In the post-Bangladesh era, the Assamese-non Assamese conflict turned in a statewide turmoil with the rise of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU). AASU came to prominence in 1979 with their ‘peaceful’ agitation (popularly called as the ‘Assam Agitation’) to uncover all illegal immigrants in Assam, deletion of their names from the electoral rolls and their deportation. Calling their movement ‘the 18th war of independence’, an allusion to the 17 wars fought by Assam’s legendary King Lachit Borphukan, AASU claimed that “infiltration and illegal migration is a potential threat to the integrity and sovereignty of the country as well as a demographic danger to the indigenous communities of Assam”. The movement was actually triggered by the discovery of a sudden rise in registered voters on electoral rolls. In the 1970s, the number of registered voters in Assam jumped from 6.20 million to almost 9 million – the increase was mostly accounted for migrants from Bangladesh. Accusing the Congress party for protecting the migrants as a ‘captive vote bank’, AASU constituted a broader platform called All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) with representatives of various organizations to augment the agitation against ‘illegal immigrants’.

Taking advantage of the deep rooted sentiments and discontentment of Assamese people against the settlers, AASU and AAGSP successfully transmuted it into a widespread popular movement with the clamoured call of ‘Bideshi Khedao’ (kick the foreigners out). Various social-political groups, personalities and intelligentsia played clandestine or active role in this six year long reactionary agitation. The mood of the agitation was well accounted by journalist Chaitanya Kalbagh: “Aside from the anti-foreigner sentiment, the movement has developed other dangerous strains – anti-Bengali, anti-Left, anti-Muslim, anti-non Assamese, and slowly but discernibly, even anti-Indian.” (India Today, 1-15 May, 1980)

The Nellie massacre

AASU had strongly opposed the 1980 Parliament elections and later the 1983 State Assembly election on the ground that the polls be adjourned till electoral rolls were cleansed of illegal immigrants. Amid the ongoing agitation, the Congress government went ahead for the State Assembly polls in February 1983. During the polls the state witnessed large-scale arson, communal disturbances, group clashes and killings. The violence had no particular pattern – ethnic clashes between Assamese tribal and non-tribal; communal clashes between local Hindus and immigrant Muslims and linguistic clashes between Assamese and Bengalis occurred all over the state.

On February 18, a day after the polling has concluded, the village of Nellie in Nagaon district, 34 miles north-east of Guwahati was virtually turned into a killing field by a horrific and brutal massacre. According to official figures, on a single day, 2191 innocent and very poor Bengali Muslims, mostly women and children, were butchered in broad daylight by Assamese Hindus and Lalung tribals. Twenty-five years have passed but the Nellie massacre still remains an extremely mysterious case where no one claimed responsibility for the massacre, no judicial probe or independent enquiry was ever demanded by the Congress or the AASU, a Commission of Inquiry was instituted but the 600-page report was never made public and not a single person was convicted. The Congress and subsequent AGP government suppressed all information and deliberately tried to rub off the gruesome and shameful episode from the memory of Assam. (For an eyewitness account of the Nellie massacre see: Bedabrata Lahkar, Recounting a nightmare)

Enactment of IMDT Act

Despite the existence of the Foreigner’s Act 1946 which gave the Indian Government certain powers to execute in respect of the entry, presence and departure of foreigners inside the Indian Territory, the Indian parliament in 1983 enacted the Illegal Migrant Determination by Tribunal Act (IMDT). Unlike the existing Foreigner’s Act which was applicable to the whole of India, IMDT Act was solely applicable to the state of Assam and projected as an instrument to detect illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and expel them. There were fundamental differences between the two acts. According to the Foreigners Act, a suspected illegal immigrant has to establish his/her nationality on their own whereas under the IMDT Act, the responsibility of proving the citizenship of a suspected illegal immigrant lay on the complainant. The act was a focused political move initiated by Delhi – to spoil the growing influence of AASU and to protect genuine Indian citizens affected by the Assam Agitation, both religious and linguistic, from the undue harassment of been termed as illegal. Interestingly, the IMDT Act was passed by a Parliament, which had no members from Assam due to a boycott of elections on this issue.

The IMDT Act was challenged in courts by MP Sarbanand Sonowal of AGP. In 2005, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional and directed to set up fresh tribunals under the Foreigners Act, 1946 and Foreigners (Tribunal Order) 1964.

The Assam Accord

The violent ‘direct action’ agitation of AASU continued for six consecutive years till the signing of the Assam Accord in August 15, 1985. The Assam Accord was a tripartite agreement between AASU, the government of Assam and the government of India. After much debate and negotiations, AASU retracted from its earlier demand of deporting all migrants who came after 1951 as ‘illegal’ and agreed on to recognize March 25, 1971 (the day civil war in East Pakistan began) as the cut-off date to determine ‘foreign infiltrators’ in Assam.

Signing of the Assam Accord was celebrated as a political victory of AASU. The state Assembly was dissolved and Hiteswar Saikia headed Congress government which came to power after the infamous February elections was dismissed. Within three months, AASU was transformed into a regional political party called Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) on October 14, 1985. Fresh elections in December 1985 brought AGP in power. After coming to power the AGP government adapted half-hearted and shortsighted measures to deal with the immigration problem. All cases connected with the Nellie massacre were dropped.

Though the IMDT Act had depraved political intentions and has basic flaws from its inception, it is extremely interesting to recall that AASU or AGP did not raise any uproar about the shortcomings on identification, detection and deportation of illegal migrants in the act, which was enacted just two years before the Assam Accord. It was only after losing power in the 1991 assembly elections to Congress; AGP started a hue and cry about the defects of IMDT Act and demanded for its repeal.

The rise of armed insurgency

The volatile situation in Assam for decades had paved the way for various terrorist-insurgent groups of different scale and size to mushroom and commit scores of violent and mindless incidents like murders, triggering blasts, abductions for ransom, extortions and attacking of economic targets. The South Asia Terrorism Portal website has listed 36 such terrorist-insurgent groups in Assam. Prominent among them are the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), United Liberation Front of Barak Valley (ULFBV), Dima Halim Daogah (DHD), Kamtapur Liberation Organization (KLO), Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA), Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA), United People’s Democratic Solidarity (UPDS), Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Liberation Front (KLNLF), Black Widow, Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) and Barak Valley Youth Liberation Front (BVYLF). Many of the smaller groups are actually the offshoots of major groups. The objective of most of the groups is secession from the Indian State. However, except ULFA, most of the secessionist insurgent outfits that had appeared during the turbulent days of 1979-1983 did not survive after the Assam Accord.

By going through the list, one will be startled to find that with the exception of ULFA most of the groups have a specific ethnic-religious representation. It is seemingly obvious that the root cause of armed insurgency in Assam is the widespread and deep rooted ethnic cultural conflict prevailing in the region that is fueled by the failure of subsequent governments and mainstream political parties to understand the local people’s mind. The rise of ethnicity based insurgency and the separatist demand for sovereignty were the direct result of a general feeling of alienation, dispossession and fury among the ethnic community which considered that armed insurgency is the only way to make their voices heard. The presence of about 20 large and small ethnic groups with differing belief systems and way of life and the unique geographical location has facilitated the rapid development of terrorist-insurgent activities in Assam.

There are also roughly 14 Islamist terrorist outfits operating in Assam, those who attempts to mobilize the Muslim youths in Assam to fight for the ‘cause of Muslims’. Pakistan and Bangladesh based foreign terrorist groups like Harkat-Ul-Mujaheedin, Harkat-Ul-Jihad, Jamat-Ul-Mujaheedin and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJI) are also reportedly having active presence in Assam. Another militant outfit named Islamic United Revolution Protect of India (IURPI) has been formed recently covering the Muslim dominated districts of Assam.

The menace called ULFA

United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) is a well organized, highly influential, widely connected, enormously funded terrorist group active in Assam. During the height of anti-foreigner agitation, a hard line section parted from AASU to form ULFA. Born on the lawns of the historic Rang Ghar of Sibsagar on 7th April 1979, ULFA leaders Rajiv Rajkonwar alias Arabinda Rajkhowa (chairman), Samiran Gogoi alias Pradip Gogoi (vice-chairman), Paresh Barua (chief of staff) and Golap Baruah alias Anup Chetia (general secretary) declared their aim of “liberating Assam from the illegal occupation of India” and to establish a ‘sovereign socialist Assam’. By describing itself as a ‘revolutionary political organization’, ULFA gave a militant manifestation to the anti-foreigner movement but initially remained concealed by acting along with AASU.

There is a fundamental difference between the ideologies of AASU and ULFA. AASU’s agitation was pointed against ‘illegal immigrants’ whereas ULFA’s struggle is solely against the Indian State: “to overthrow Indian colonial occupation from Assam”. The ULFA does not consider itself a separatist or secessionist organization, as it claims that Assam was never a part of India. Arbinda Rajkhowa, chairman of ULFA once said that, “India has been occupying Assam illegally like Kashmir, which was never an integral part of India”. ULFA claims that among the various problems that people of Assam are confronting, the problem of national identity is the basic, and therefore represents “not only the Assamese nation but also the entire independent minded struggling peoples, irrespective of different race-tribe-caste-religion and nationality of Assam”. It must be mentioned here that ULFA has always refused to admit their involved in any ethnic or communal violence but always admitted their role if the attack was against the Indian security forces or any target symbolic to the Indian State like the state-owned oil pipelines. It is principally a secular outfit and fiercely against Hindu nationalist groups and the BJP, calling it ‘out and out a Hindu fundamentalist party’. After the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, ULFA was credited for stopping Hindu-Muslim riots ‘by displaying arms openly’ in the Hojai region of Nagaon district.

ULFA’s initial cadre recruits were from AASU. But later they started recruiting cadres directly, particularly from the rural belts. Even after the outfit was banned and Indian Army operations resumed in September 2006, the continuing presence of ULFA suggests that the organization has somehow maintained their rural influences and the pattern of cadre recruits. The outfit has a mixed cadre base comprising Assamese and ethnic tribals – even Bengali peasants. ULFA is believed to have a trained cadre-strength of around 5,000 and possesses a huge cache of weapons for its insurgent activities.

Around the mid-80s ULFA started showing its true face with low-intensity military conflicts, political homicides and economic subversion and was soon recognized as a potent terror organization. By dividing insurgency activities between its political and military wing ULFA started raising huge funds through extortions and threatening rich businessmen and tea estate owners and also looted banks. The outfit’s major operational area was the Dibrugarh-Tinsukia sector, the wealthiest tea-growing and oil producing region of Assam. Almost every tea plantation paid an annual ransom to them. In 1986, ULFA leaders established contacts with National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) of Myanmar to procure arms and arrange for training of its cadres. The Kachins taught them the essentials of terrorist-insurgent tactics. One of its daring attacks was in May 1990 when ULFA cadres killed Surendra Paul, one of the leading tea planters in Assam and brother of famous UK-based businessman Lord Swaraj Paul. The incident caused many tea estate managers to flee Assam. Soon the government sprung into action. The entire state of Assam was declared a ‘disturbed area’ and ULFA was banned on November 1990 as a terrorist group. Since 1990, the Indian security forces are engaged in Assam to stall ULFA activities.

Controlling the ULFA menace became a dilemma for the AGP government as the leaders of AASU-AGP and ULFA were the same lot of people, born from the same arena. “The cynical characterization of the same set of people as ASSU in the morning, Government (AGP) at midday and ULFA at night cannot be just laughed away” (M. Kar, Muslims in Assam Politics - 1946-1991, page 421; quoted in R. Upadhyay, ULFA – A Deviated Movement? ) Taking this advantage, ULFA almost ran a parallel government in Assam, conducting trials of people and black mailing them for extorting money. The AGP government had also encouraged ULFA activities to some extent to keep alive their confrontational politics and pressure over the Central Government. “The reasoning behind the unwillingness on the part of the AGP regime to confront the ULFA lies in its eagerness to keep the terrorists actively alive to retain its anti-centre leverage” (Ibid. page 425). On the other hand, ULFA’s popularity and influence gained a spectacular rise from the rising disillusionment among the Assamese people against the AGP regime.

Contrary to its original ideological position of a revolutionary political organization and dumping its ‘social-reform’ activities, the ULFA leadership has done a complete volte-face when they transformed the outfit into a purely terrorist outfit. Later on, ULFA established contacts with Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, Defense Forces Intelligence (DFI) of Bangladesh, the Afghan Mujahedeen and other terrorist-insurgent groups of North-East and committed a series of atrocious crimes to create terror in the State. Since 1989, ULFA Chief of Staff Paresh Barua, however, has denied the alleged link of ULFA with ISI as a ‘heinous conspiracy of New Delhi’.

ULFA had put up a number of camps in Bangladesh and also owned several ‘income generating projects’ like media consultancy firms, soft drink manufacturing units, transport companies, schools, three hotels, a private clinic, two motor driving schools, a tannery, a chain of departmental stores, garment factories, travel agencies, shrimp trawlers and investment companies there. ULFA also runs profitable narcotics business in Myanmar and Thailand. Paresh Barua was allegedly involved in smuggling heroin from Myanmar into Assam. ULFA leaders and cadres had reportedly received specialized training on counter intelligence, disinformation, use of sophisticated weapons and explosives from ISI. Two Muslim terror outfits of Assam – the MULTA and the MULFA are their regular arms suppliers through Bangladesh. Routed through Nepal, it has also developed channels for the transfer of funds and arms from Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia.

ULFA continues to be active but has lost its credibility to a great extent due to its involvement in the mindless violence, killing of ordinary people and lumpenization of its cadres. On January 2007, suspected ULFA extremists killed at least 62 Hindi-speaking Bihari daily labourers, workers of brick kiln, petty-traders and roadside vendors in Dibrugarh, Tinsukia and Sibsagar districts of Upper Assam. Its popular support has reduced but not fully erased. There is still an underlying sympathy about ULFA in the greater Assamese society, especially among the underprivileged, middle-class and intelligentsia. “A section of the intelligentsia, however, uses the insurgent influence as a shortcut to secure personal objectives and fame. It is not a rare exception in Assam to find a respected intellectual advocating the insurgent cause, of course from a safe distance and carefully balancing constitutional restrictions and revolutionary babble. Many among the more sober intellectuals in Assam prefer to maintain a deliberate silence on the issue.” (Sunil Nath, Assam: The Secessionist Insurgency and the Freedom of Minds) This sympathy among its home-population is ULFA’s key strength.

Journalist and North-East expert Sanjoy Hazarika has summed up the present status of ULFA and other terrorist-insurgent groups of North-East:

“…it should be clarified that the conflicts in the Northeast, in terms of armed revolts, ethnic struggles or fights against the Indian State, no longer draw on the romanticism and idealism that sustained fighting groups and communities for decades. Dreams have degenerated into nightmares; the fighters have turned on each other and on the people in whose name they claim to speak. The entire network of cadres, recruits, informers and political leaders is based on extortion and extraction: extortion from business houses and petty traders, from professionals, contractors and politicians. Few are spared. The extraction process even involves government officials…”

The HuJI and RSS-BJP factor

Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami or HuJI is a fanatic terrorist outfit formed at Pakistan in 1984. It initially operated in Afghanistan, then at Jammu-Kashmir and later was extended to Bangladesh in 1992. Banned in Bangladesh since October 2005, the objective of HuJI is apparent from their one-time slogan: Amra Sobai Hobo Taliban, Bangla Hobe Afghanistan (We will all become Taliban; we will turn Bangladesh into Afghanistan). It is a deadly terror outfit operating from the coastal area of Chittagong south through Cox’s Bazaar to the Myanmar border. In recent years, this Bangladesh chapter of HuJI has been found to be responsible for a number of terrorist strikes in India with the active assistance from ISI.

Since 1998, unconfirmed reports were emerging about HuJI-ULFA links. The connection was proved in 2003 from the confessions of some arrested jihadi militants and reconfirmed recently when members of HuJI were spotted in the Silchar district of Assam along with a few ULFA members. HuJI is reported to have assured co-operation and logistical support to ULFA and help them to find shelters in Bangladesh. Reports has also indicated that HuJI is giving a three months military training to youths and helping them to infiltrate into Indian locations like West Bengal, Assam and other North-East states.

The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) - BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) combine has built up a wide network in the districts of Udalguri and Darrang in recent years. This combine has influenced a section of the Bodos along with a small section of Assamese, Bengalis and Nepalese to mobilize against the Muslims in many places of the state. In the name of detection of the suspected ‘Bangladeshis’, numerous harassments and atrocities are imposed on those Muslims who had actually settled in Assam long back and became a part of the broad Assamese society. The recent clashes and rampant violence between Bodos and Muslims that has swept across many areas in Udalguri and Darrang districts from October 3, 2008 is the result of this evil design of RSS-BJP. “...the rifts and conflicts engendered by the communal violence among the Bodo and Muslim communities will be sought to be utilized by the divisive, communal and fundamentalist forces to their advantage and thus further endangering the peace and unity among the people.” (Uddhab Barman, Behind the Recent Communal Violence in Assam, People’s Democracy, 19 October 2008) Accordingly, after the October 30 serial blasts, BJP leader L.K. Advani took no time to blame illegal Bangladeshis (read Muslims) as the main reason for breeding terrorism in Assam.

Consistent violent campaign against Muslims with the growth of the RSS-BJP combine in Assam has created enough ground for the growth of communal and fundamentalist forces among the Muslim community (Muslims constitute nearly 30 per cent of Assam’s population). Taking advantage of this chaotic situation, HuJI and other fundamentalist Muslim outfits are gradually penetrating deep into a section of the Muslim inhabitants and brain-washing them towards Islamic fanaticism. ULFA leaders, being pushed to the wall by the mounting emphatic operations of Indian security forces have been coerced to enslave them in the hands of the ISI for survival. Today, ISI has sheltered all the top leaders of ULFA in Bangladesh. The outfit has abdicated its core ideology and acting now as their local agent in Assam and the North-East.

Conclusion

You are walking along the street one day,

chewing cinnamon gum,

and the world is full of cinnamon

when there’s a fireball--

and a blast of gushing air and noise

like the Earth is cracking

and time has exploded. ...

Then ... silence. ...

You think you’re okay, but you look down and your forearm

lies in the street like a dead snake and you collapse.

You are twenty two and you have/had a good job--

you were earnestly trying to help.

But now you think there was no point to your life,

and you remember your mother and father

whose voices are in the sirens.

– Gary Corseri, A Bombing in Assam

Ten days after the recent blasts, the Indian Home Ministry claimed that they have found “…enough evidence that the banned ULFA had carried out the October 30 serial blasts with the help of dominant Bodo militant group NDFB.” NDFB is currently under ceasefire with the security forces and is engaged in peace negotiations with the government. The government sources has expressed their worry about a nexus between local outfits with outsiders in the blasts the fact that ‘northeast militants has started using a deadly mixture of RDX, ammonium nitrate and plasticised explosives’ and neither ULFA nor NDFB has the expertise to carry out such dead explosions. Bangladesh-based HuJI has provided the expertise to ULFA and NDFB. (Indian Express, 11 Nov 2008)

For several decades, Assam is passing through too much of tears and blood. This stunningly beautiful state and its people are struggling hard to come out from the curse of their own history.

Secessionism, insurgency and terrorism are like the mythical Phoenix bird – self destructive but able to resurrect from its own ashes. Assamese people did clutch them all – like a drowning person clutches a piece of straw.

Dealing the problem from a fascistic perspective, the widely spread jingoistic approach of the RSS-BJP combine will be a catastrophe. The problem cannot be dealt as well with a feeble, compromising and brush under the carpet approach – as implemented by the Congress party. The people of Assam are bearing the brunt of this breed of politics for long. It also cannot be dealt with reactionary parochialism – like the provincial politics of ASSU-AGP. The people of Assam have long been disillusioned by them. The distressing reality for Assamese people is, that they do not have any other alternative to choose.

The Indian State should first and foremost study the people and learn how to create a condition that will itself refuse to extend any popular sympathy or support towards the secessionists, insurgents and terrorists. It has to realize that a convincing democratic mechanism that compassionately tries to comprehend the genuine grievances of its own people and works effectively for a tangible solution will definitely win back their support. The same support which is partly enjoyed today by the secessionists, insurgents and terrorists. An unbiased approach towards the political problem of secessionism and a firm determination to strike against terrorism is the correct approach to deal the Assam crisis.

The BJP and the ‘Hindu Terrorist’

It is not surprising to see the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in dispute with the term ‘Hindu Terrorist’. The term has been introduced by the Indian media after the recent arrest of five activists of the Hindu Jagaran Manch (HJM), an Indore-based Hindu extremist group and Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, a former national executive member of BJP’s students wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). The arrested persons were allegedly part of the September 29 bomb blasts in the Muslim localities of Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat. In an obvious attempt to mislead the investigation, the perpetrators in Malegaon had placed bombs in a motorcycle and parked it below the now-defunct first floor office of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) while the motorcycle used in Modasa had Islamic stickers on its seat. The terror attack is still under investigation by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS).

The arrest of the Sadhvi has particularly embarrassed the parent body Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political wing BJP. Photos and video clips of the Sadhvi, seen with prominent BJP leaders including party president Rajnath Singh are widely circulated in the media. As a damage control measure, the RSS and BJP have started to blame the arrests as an ‘ultra-secularists’ ploy, voraciously defending the ‘malicious’ attempt to ‘assail the majority community’ with the terrorist tag. At the same time they have neatly washed off there hands by denying any link with the Sadhvi. However, expelled BJP heavyweight leader Uma Bharati has sprung to the Sadhvi’s defense saying she was shocked to see the BJP disown the Sadhvi and quipped: “they had no problems in using her when they wanted to”.

*****

One of the most virulent forms of terrorism in our times seeks the cover of Islam. It calls its murderous campaign ‘jihad’, thereby trying to justify itself in the eyes of pious God-fearing Muslims. – L. K. Advani, My Country, My Life

The biggest threat the country is facing today is ‘jihadi terrorism’ – Rajnath Singh

It is our adversaries, and not us, who are misrepresenting that the fight against terrorism is fight against Islam and the Muslim community. – L. K. Advani

I want to assure the people that if they vote the BJP led NDA to power at the centre then we will bring a strong law against terrorism to crush the morale of the terrorists who seek to operate in India. – Rajnath Singh

*****

Relating to the choice of words, the BJP has started blaming the media for ‘double standard’. However, along with ‘Hindu Terrorist’ the media is also frequently using the term ‘Islamic Terrorist’ and ‘Islamic Terrorism’. The internet space is flooded with this term, prominently in the pro-Hindutva websites and blogs, even in the ‘reader’s forum’ pages of RSS mouthpiece Organiser. The conscience of the BJP leaders never felt the obligation to openly register a protest against it and was more than happy to relish this media service as it was creating a negative public opinion concerning the Muslim community. How come the media is blamed now for ‘double standard’? Is it not in fact the BJP’s ‘double standard’ tactic to remain mute about ‘Islamic Terrorist’ and proactively oppose the term ‘Hindu Terrorist’?

Why are the BJP so upset by the development?

The first reason is purely ideological. As per their core RSS teaching, the BJP believes that the word ‘Hindu’ is synonymous with the nation. Therefore, the use of the term ‘Hindu Terrorist’ is a direct ‘insult and abuse’ to the Indian Nation and therefore anti-national. This view is best reflected when the BJP spokespersons say that no Hindu can ever be an extremist.

Secondly, the BJP predicts that the development might hinder their meticulously crafted grassroot propaganda (with the muscle of RSS machinery) that all Muslims are potential terrorists – the party blueprint to incite Hindu sentiments on the eve of the next Lok Sabha polls. They are worried that their political opponents now have got a potent weapon against them. Also, in the minds of a vast majority of India’s plural society, the development has reconfirmed their assertion that one of the major cause of terror attacks which has sprung up in different parts of the country is the reaction to a malicious brand of politics practiced in India in the name of ‘nationalism’– the politics of hate.

BJP leaders are therefore proactive to voice their pristine view on terrorism and terrorists. According to them, irrespective of his/her religion or cast, a terrorist is simply a terrorist. Then why link terror with a particular religion? As always, the BJP is emulating their characteristic rhetoric of a calculated ambiguity. They are intensely opposing the ‘Hindu’ tag but not explicitly opposing the words ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ tagged with terrorism. Not a single statement issued by the party has specifically said that they are also against the term ‘Muslim Terrorist’.

BJP’s five point defense strategy is simple:

1. Not to use the term ‘Muslim Terrorism’ directly from public platforms. Instead, use ‘Jihadi Terrorism’ or ‘Islamic Jihadi’.

2. To proclaim with determination that no Hindu can ever be an extremist.

3. To intensely counter the term ‘Hindu Terrorist’ from all forums with the pretext that BJP have always believed that terror has no religion.

4. To be clamorous about homegrown jihadi cells; ‘terrorist factories’ of Azamgarh and SIMI. Link all terror attacks with Pakistan (which the Parivar considers to be a terrorist state) and Bangladesh, and constantly harp on about Bangladeshi infiltration. Talk about bringing a robust law (even stronger than POTA) against terrorism to crush the morale of the terrorists if BJP led NDA is voted back in power.

5. Diminish all secular voices by calling them ‘pseudo secular’ or ‘ultra-secular’. In response to all political adversaries, constantly go on saying that they are all ‘appeasing’ the minority community just to gain the minority votes.

The BJP leadership has strategized that persisting on these five points will facilitate a duel purpose. In one way it will help the party to craft a pan-Indian image, comfortable to various political partners and the section of the Hindu public who are not yet prepared to sanction a militant Hindu programme. Simultaneously it will also keep its cadres assured that the core Hindutva schema – building the Hindu Rashtra, is preserved as a hidden agenda which will be exposed in proper time.

This moderation to channelize its core Hindu nationalist and anti-Muslim position through a more agreeable ‘patriotic’ and ‘anti-foreign enemy’ (Pakistan, Bangladesh and jihadi terrorism) approach is largely due to the BJP’s coalition building compulsion. In his detailed study 'The BJP at the Centre', the French scholar Christophe Jaffrelot has noted that, “The moderation of BJP does not follow a linear trend but represents merely a phase reflecting its capacity to alternate moderation and extremism”. (Emphasis added) Party strategists think it to be a more pragmatic approach by which the party will build an acceptable mask in front of the public at the eve of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. As famously disclosed by the former BJP theoretician K.N. Govindacharya that Atal Bihari Vajpayee was presented as a mukota (mask), today, the whole party is in the finishing stage of a process to conceal behind a mask covering its Hindutva face.

One thing is for sure – this strategy is not to persuade the Muslims of India. It is actually intended for a different audience – the millions of (pseudo!) secular minded Hindus of India who still condemn the hateful ideology and agenda of the BJP. To bring them into their fold through its coalition allies, the BJP with the approval of RSS had already dropped contentious issues like Ram temple construction, abolition of Article 370 and imposition of a uniform civil code from its ‘national agenda’. This is why the 1999 election manifesto of BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) promised a ‘moratorium on contentious issues’. While justifying this new discourse and change of their political line, the top leaders of BJP had brought into play big words like ‘commitment to good governance’, ‘responsible party, alive to the interests of all section or society’ and ‘no place for an ideological party in India today’. A steady supply of skillfully practiced ambiguous words and more words has become a definite characteristic of the party.

The BJP leaders and spokespersons have mastered the art of twisting political jargon according to the demand of the situation and blending them in an ambiguous manner into their rhetoric. The one word ‘pseudo’ is a most endearing word in the Sangh lexicon and the users have almost turned the word into a cliché. It is been freely used against any person who disagrees to the ideology or opinion. The hydra-headed Parivar affiliates are even using the word within the brotherhood to tweak each other. The great Atal Bihari Vajpayee was also not spared and called a ‘pseudo Hindu’ by Acharya Giriraj Kishor, the senior vice-president of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) the religious and proselytization wing of RSS, when the Vajpayee led NDA government did not give priority to facilitate building the Ram temple in Ayodhya. BJP’s cerebral makeup has been perfectly exposed by the lawyer and constitutional expert A.G. Noorani: “Deceit and deception are integral to the RSS-BJP strategy”.

The leadership of BJP considers the Indian public as fools.

This blogger in a previous post has argued that terrorism primarily emerges from socio-economic reasons that create a feeling of frustration and grievances within a section of the society. This frustration and grievances lead towards aggression and is modified into a political tactic when the section starts believing that no other means will affect the kind of change they desire. Its method and strategy generally follows a similar line of committing acts of violence but with variable causes and targets that depends on whose point of view is being represented.

Terrorism is a deeply complex subject and cannot be connected with religion alone. The BJP is deceitful while propagating the same thing today. It remains as a fact that equating Muslims with terrorism is totally a RSS-BJP making – an integral part of their wider Hindutva agenda.

Crisis of Capitalism

America is the anchor of global economy in the era of globalization. The American financial collapse has therefore spread like a thermonuclear chain reaction throughout the globe with far-reaching implications. Government experts of the effected countries are sitting together and scratching their worthy heads to bail out the crisis. To calm down the turmoil, the United States Federal Reserve and Treasury Department has declared to pump as much as $1.3 trillion into the system which is nothing but just a tactical response; a desperate effort to shore up confidence in the system. While the investment bankers and their executives have made massive profits out of their speculative operations over the past few years, when they have suffered losses, governments are feeling obliged to bail out these companies using taxpayer’s money. The greatest irony is, after vociferously advocating for a deregulated, liberalized financial system and encouraging removal of government constrains on use and flow of capital, the same advocates of the international economic order are asking for government intervention with regulatory measures today. Some of them like David Macke, the economist for J.P. Morgan Chase has even gone one step ahead to say that “At the end of the day, if you socialize enough of the financial system, it has to work.” Counterparts in India is also toeing the similar line and advocating for ‘national policies’ to survive the crisis but with a caution – don’t allow the Left forces, the commies, to take advantage of the situation.

Credit expansion and the subsequent credit crunch is the prime reason behind the current turmoil in financial markets. By creating new and additional money, the American banking system started lending out at artificially low interest rates to borrowers whose ability to repay the loans were in doubt. This process has distorted the spending pattern of the society as a whole and in turn led to a large scale waste of capital. To understand the current financial crisis we have to go to America – the paradise of capitalism, from where the crisis originated.

After the stock market crash and the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 1999-2000, American economy ran into a recession and caused a global slowdown in the following year. In June 2003, in an effort to stimulate the present economy and to avoid deflationary consequences of the previous poor years of economic performance, the United States Federal Reserve cut interest rates to a 45 year low, all the way down to slight more than 1 per cent. Taking advantage of the low interest rate, American banks started to borrow billions of dollars from the Federal Reserve and then spread the funds in the credit system, primarily in the mortgages market, providing easy housing loans. Banking business became simple: borrow at a lower rate from the Federal Reserve and lend at a higher rate to creditors. The effect of this additional money flow with minimal interest rates helped the American economy to recover momentarily but at the same time was silently encouraging another bubble – this time in the housing sector.

After been aggressively provoked by banks and financial institutions with attractive credit terms, millions of middle class Americans, who in a normal state of affair could not afford or even think of borrowing, started to take out huge amount of credit money to realize their ‘American dream’. The estimate of United States Federal Reserve shows that, in 2005 homeowners extracted $750 billion from equity of their homes (up from $106 billion in 1996), spending two thirds of it on personal consumption, home improvements, and credit card debt. Through housing loans (mortgages), a solid flow of large scale capital investment poured into the housing market. As a consequence of this loose money policy, the housing sector boomed.

Purchase of housing property by massive borrowing was not necessarily done to live in but as an investment venture to cash-in from the rising real estate market. Expectations was that the purchased property could be re-sold with higher profits in future. A largely fabricated demand based on speculation of greater profits created a euphoria among common people. The increased money flow had also temporarily helped the stock markets to stabilize and grow. Its rising index boosted the financial wealth of many upper and middle class households, made them feel richer. In addition, consumer loans (credit cards) provided them the necessary fodder to fly into rampant consumerism with easy available credit money and drove them into the labyrinth of greater borrowing and spending.

Home prices were rising and most people seemed to prosper as long as the new and additional money kept pouring into the housing market at an accelerating rate. But the ecstasy didn’t last longer. From 2004 to the first half of 2006, to prevent the inflationary consequences of its policy, the Federal Reserve began to gradually normalize interest rates. Borrowing became costlier now and as a result the additional money flow in housing market started to decelerate. The housing boom was not founded on a real demand for housing and the drastic price rise of property was far beyond its real value. Growing unemployment and slow down of the economic growth rate of American economy exacerbated the situation towards a crisis.

The demand for houses started to drop fast. Suddenly there were only sellers and no buyers left in the housing market. As a consequence, the real estate value started to fall – up to 30 per cent in some areas effecting 12 million households. Owners were left with a mortgage debt higher than the value of the property. Many creditors turned into credit defaulters as they cannot afford to pay back the amount higher than what they borrowed. At this instant, the police on behalf of the multi-billion-dollar banks and mortgage industries, started to carry out mortgage foreclosure eviction, throwing out millions of American families, landlord and tenant both, from their homes.

Banks and financial institutes lost billions of dollars due to vast amount of outstanding mortgage debt. Over $5 trillion in total market capitalization has been evaporated into air. With empty coffers, banks cannot lend anymore now. They no longer could borrow cheap money from the Federal Reserve for their survival and started declaring bankruptcy. A reduction in the supply of loanable funds and an increase in the demand for more loans created a unique situation that is described as ‘credit crunch’. Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve boss has called the crisis that happens once in a century. In August 2007 the United States treasury department announced the housing bubble as "the most significant risk to our economy.”

This ‘most significant risk’ is derived from a basic contradiction of the capitalist economic system. With its fantastic productive capacity, capitalism generates overproduction that exceeds the population's consuming capacity. Long before, Karl Marx had defined capital as “dead labor”, which is “vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” Capitalism is basically built on wage exploitation where the wage earners can never earn adequate money to buy back their own produce. Uneven distribution of wealth leads to social inequalities and limits the purchasing power of common people.

The effect of the present turmoil is similar to all periodic boom-bust cycles of capitalist economy where credit expansion in the financial market creates an expanded but fabricated demand for a particular sector and most of the additional capital funds created by the credit expansion are also invested in the same sector. It temporarily raise wages and the prices of raw materials. Buying and selling sharply increases paralleling with the rise in asset prices. But at the same time money gets cheaper, loses its buying power and leads the economy towards inflation. Once the system slows down, stock markets decline due to a reduction in the money flow and assets available to fund business activities.

Business houses badly needs available fund to repay their debts. But now they can neither borrow from banks anymore as a consequence of the credit crunch. Nor can they raise funds by liquidating the securities they hold as share prices have fallen. They try to accumulate funds from their last option – the option of reducing expenditures or cost-cutting. Pink slips are handed over to workers and staff members; cost-cutting in production and sales activity reduces revenues. It subsequently diminish profits and their ability to repay their debts reduces further. Of course no one expects them to spend from the enormous surplus accumulated in their private vaults to stimulate the crisis. Thus, when the value and quantity of money reduces, it results in more bankruptcies.

For the moment, India has remained partly immune to the high magnitude global financial crises because the Indian financial sector has remained somewhat regulated and less liberalized compared to most capitalist economies. But there is nothing to rejoice as the worst is yet to come. We can be assured that if situation ‘demands’, the Government of India will also not hesitate to use taxpayer’s hard earned money to bail out business houses. In a capitalist economic system this merry-go-round of the unending ups and downs of boom and bust cannot be permanently eroded. Though capitalism is held up as the best model to emulate but far from being efficient, it has only promoted reckless speculation and greed. Time and again it has not only been proved to be a dangerous system to depend upon, the validity of the entire system is in danger today.

Over the past few years global economy has mainly been following and driven by the American neoliberal economic model. Developing countries like India is no exception as its political and apolitical bosses are trying hard to fit in with the international financial markets by emulating this model which they continue to believe as the best. Their apologists are bravely hoping that “in a few months capitalism will revive itself with some corrections because whatever its flaws, it remains the best way for countries and people to become rich and prosperous.” (Emphasis added) This is the true essence of capitalism – to become rich and prosperous, to become greedy. Capitalism is a vulgar system that teaches every individual that avarice, envy, gluttony and heartlessness are the essential attitudes to achieve self-progression.

The Indian upper and middle class have tasted blood. Who cares to look into the 2008 Global Hunger Index report which has exposed that 12 Indian states are suffering from ‘alarming’ levels of hunger? Who cares to know that more than 10 million children in India are malnourished and over 200 million people are insecure about their daily bread. They have learned to pretend that they ‘just doesn’t see’ and have devoted all their energy to be rich and prosperous. 33 to 50 per cent of the country's wealth is possessed by the top 10 per cent of India's population whereas an estimated 800 million of India's billion-plus people live on 50 US cents a day. Who cares to eradicate social inequalities and uneven wealth distribution? After all, what is the fun to be rich and prosperous if there are no poor around?

Indian Muslims and terrorism: a short discourse

The majority section of Indian society, the ‘concerned’ Hindu citizens are demanding that the Indian Muslims must immediately start to speak out and take counteractive steps against the terrorist attacks instigated by fundamentalist and anti-national Muslim groups. They are outright critical about the attitude of common Muslims and Muslim organizations of the country for not doing enough to voice their protest and instead preferring to remain mere spectators of the spiteful events. They have raised a ‘valid’ question: is this not the ideal time for Indian Muslims to prove their loyalty to the Indian state? If they are honestly against these felonious acts of homegrown terrorists, if they genuinely feel that terrorists are demeaning the entire Muslim population and in the name of Islam destabilizing the Indian society, then why are they not coming out in flocks to express their concern? A lot of voices have been built up in favor of the above view. Therefore, it is worth probing the elements of this complicated topic in detail.

During the Partition of India in 1947, a substantial number of Muslim families decided to live in secular India instead of migrating to Islamic Pakistan. It was a difficult but cognizant decision, based largely on the official stand of the new Indian Government which wanted to be recognized as a secular state. The important part played by a significant section of their Hindu neighbors and friends must also be mentioned, those Hindus who did provide the required confidence and solace to their Muslim brothers and sisters to reside beside them. At that time it was not an easy decision for the compassionate Hindus either in front of large-scale killing and violence. Communal elements were present in both communities, feeding each other on an agenda of hatred and intolerance. The Partition dusts settled down in time but left a deep scar on the face of the newborn nation. Today’s younger generation of Muslims were born and brought up in a secular-democratic India and has little or no mental connection with the Partition period’s assault of communal violence on their ancestors. They live and share the democratic milieu of this country equally with their Hindu counterparts.

Is it then beyond question that by having an equal stake in the system with their Hindu counterparts, the present day Indian Muslims should have no basis to be apathetic to the country’s democratic values? To find an answer to that we should look into the actual conditions wherein majority of the Indian Muslims live.

As per 2001 census estimates, India has roughly 150 million Muslims, constituting 13.43 per cent of the Indian population. They represent the second largest Muslim population in the world, behind Indonesia (190 million) and just ahead of Pakistan (about 140 million). The Indian Muslim community is larger than the entire population of Arab Muslims (about 140 million). Despite such a huge presence, Indian Muslims by and large are living in appalling socio-economic conditions. All post-independence commissions set up by the Indian government in an effort to find out the social, economic and educational status of Muslims – from the 1983 Dr Gopal Singh Commission to the 2006 Rajinder Sachar Commission have shown a dismaying portrayal of the community. The latest report by Rajinder Sachar Commission has established the following disturbing statistics:

1. 48 per cent of Muslims older than 46 years age can't read or write. In the age group of 6 to 14 years, 25 per cent of Muslim children are either dropouts or have never attended school. As far as enrolment ratio in schools are concerned, the share of Muslim children is lower compared to the schedule caste and schedule tribes.

2. Primary, secondary and higher secondary – at every level the dropout ratio is the highest among Muslims. Only 3 per cent of Muslim children attend the madrasa. Out of the total Muslim population of around 14 crore, only about 4 crore Muslims have received some education — 192 lakh are educated till primary level, 105 lakh till secondary, 73 lakh till higher secondary and 24 lakh till graduate level. A large section among the Muslims is Urdu speaking, but the infrastructure to teach Urdu is miserable.

3. 52 per cent of Muslim men and 91 per cent Muslim women are unemployed. Representation of Muslims in government jobs is far below their proportion in total population. They hold only 7.2 per cent of government jobs and only 3.2 per cent of the jobs in the country's security agencies (namely, CRPF, CISF, BSF, SSB etc). In some states like Delhi, Tamilnadu, Bengal, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, the percentage is even lower.

4. In towns that range in population between 50 thousand and 2 lakhs, Muslim per capita expenditure is less than that of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.

5. Although they make up only 13.43 per cent of the total population, 40 per cent of the prison populations in India are Muslim.

Except if one utterly believes the Hindutva apologist’s propaganda that the Sachar Commission report is ‘full of prejudices’ and ‘politically motivated’, there should be little doubt from the above data, that the condition of common Muslims in India is not at all promising and needs a drastic change. Muslims in India have fallen behind the rest of the population, especially in employment opportunities and education. Large section of this Muslim populace is living under extreme poverty. In urban areas most of them are raised in ghettos near to posh neighborhoods, lacking the basic infrastructural facilities like clean water supply, sewage or sanitation system, banks and schools. In almost every three Muslim dominated villages, one does not have a school. Nearly 40 per cent of the Muslim dominated villages do not have proper roads, drinking water and health facility. A large section of ordinary Muslims are low status or downtrodden. A sizable section among them is former dalits, converted to Islam. Their conversion over the centuries has not helped them to realize any noticeable socio-economic uplift.

The Hindutva apologists obviously have very strong disagreement to this report as it has bluntly shatter their circulated myth about Muslim ‘appeasement’ by the ‘pseudo secular’ political class of this country. On the other hand, the report has also exposed that since independence, the main political parties have mostly ignored elevating the community in socio-economic terms. Time and again these political parties and leaders shed crocodile tears and in the excuse of ‘helping’ Muslims, compromise with the most reactionary elements among them. Time and again it was observed that these leaders and political parties erase out the community from their mind without actually carrying out any enduring benefit to them once their political goals are achieved.

From the education perspective, the situation of Muslims in India is rather depressing. From a very young age, Muslims who attend the madrasas (although only 3 per cent as per the Sachar report) receive orthodox religious teachings and throughout their lives earnestly follow it. The normal teaching trend in the madrasas is to minimize the intellectual and rational sciences and stress on purely religious orthodox disciplines, the dos and don’ts of Shariati laws and so on. The conditions of the dropouts or those who have never attended school (25 per cent as per the Sachar report) are even pathetic. They are the most wretched and deprived in the community, their outlook and values of life develop straight from their downcast and conventional social upbringing. The psyche of a larger section of young Muslims are shaped by these conventional and orthodox lessons of Islam, most of the time interpreted by the ulemas in such a way that learners are bound to incline towards a dogmatic approach in life, always suspicious to modern liberal values. The religious beliefs and practices form a blind faith on religion and thus it becomes easy for conservative minded religious Muslim leadership to draw the community's agenda in strictly religious terms, neglecting the importance of socio-economic empowerment of the community. Modern rationalistic approach towards life is absent in this rigid religious atmosphere. As a result, it becomes obligatory for the inhabitants to learn Urdu, the women to adopt veil, children to receive Islamic orthodox teachings and to grow up with all sorts of conservative values.

The role of Islamic organizations in India is also not beyond criticism. These organizations are less concerned about social and educational reforms but instead spend most of their energy and resources to organize the community in religious lines. By stressing on an identity related threat, they try to segregate the minds of common Muslims from secular lenience to religious fanaticism.

The increasing communal polarization of the Muslims has aggravated after the speedy growth of Hindutva ideology in Indian society following the Babri Masjid demolition on 6 December, 1992. This event and the subsequent communal propaganda set off by the hydra headed Sangh Parivar was responsible for strengthening the anti minority bias in all sections of Indian society and was successful to manage a parliamentary victory in the national elections for its political wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Upbeat after the electoral victory, the Parivar and its offshoots started to systemically unleash sporadic attacks on the minorities in many parts of the country and forced them to gradually segregate from the mainstream. While under direct or indirect communal attacks, the socially alienated ordinary Muslims cling more towards religion for comfort and support. Communal elements among the Muslim community have also added fuel to the fire. These elements equally contributed the increasing communal polarization and have stirred up a widely shared perception among the community that their identity is being undermined by the systemic propaganda and actions of Hindu communal forces. The degraded conditions of the ordinary Muslims were bit by bit gathering all the right ingredients for extremist Islamic ideology to spread its root among them.

Just when the Gujarat riots happened.

Immediately after the terrible incidence of Godhra train burning on 27 February 2002, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi called it “a one-sided collective terrorist attack by one community”. The following day, his speech was broadcasted on Ahmedabad Doordarshan where he remarked, “…we will set an example that nobody, not even in his dreams, thinks of committing a heinous crime like this.” From 28 February onwards, in the pretext of the ‘terrorist’ label, Hindutva communal fanatics with the active support of the state police unleashed an unprecedented collective violence upon the entire Muslims in the state. The pogrom was like a moral compulsion to the perpetrators that their robust action was the right reaction to Godhra train burning and was essential to cleanse the Indian society from the evils of radical Islam – to ‘defend the Hindu religion’. Numerous Muslim houses, shops along with people were gutted; mosques and shrines were damaged or destroyed and in the place makeshift Hindu temples were built. The largescale violence did not spare women and children; wealth and status could not shield the victims. The chief minister, instead of controlling the situation justified the pogrom by saying “it was a spontaneous reaction of the people against the terrible events of Godhra”. According to official estimate, 1044 people were killed in the violence – 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus (including 58 victims of the Godhra train fire). 1,50,000 were left homeless.

Who were beside the victimized Muslims when Gujarat was burning? It was some Muslim voluntary groups and few social activists. On ground, not a single political party dared to confront the killers or has protected the traumatized Muslims. Literary critic and activist Ganesh Devy at that time had bitterly remarked, “There is no political or ideological divide in Gujarat on the Muslim question; even the Congress hates Muslims.” The government looked the other way when its healing touch was required the most. Under brutal attack perpetrated by the religious majority, the hapless Muslims cocooned into grungy relief camps for years and were fixed more ardently to their faith. This is a perfect time for fanatic ideas to creep in. There is always an immense possibility that extremist radical thought could infiltrate and influence the victims and their kith and kin, mostly youths, when they find their whole surroundings including the civil society, government agencies and the hate factories of vernacular media are totally against them only because they belong to a particular religion. A compassionate social attitude and a concerned government could have arrested this risk but it was an absurd expectation from a society completely polarized on religious line, where a mere 9.1 per cent are Muslims. Gujarat riots of 2002 were a slap in the face of a country which proclaims to be the biggest secular-democratic state of the world.

Gujarati Hindus are arrogantly proud for what they have done in the post Godhra days. ‘Gujarati Asmita' (Gujarati pride) was finally been legalized when the first part of justice G T Nanavati Commission report was made public recently. The report supported the chief minister’s claim that Godhra was a ‘terrorist conspiracy’. It also hinted to give a clean chit to the Gujarat government when it says that there was no evidence of any lapse on the state government’s part, “in providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots or in complying with the directions given by the National Human Rights Commission.” The Nanavati Commission exclusively adopted the version of the Gujarat government’s investigating officer Noel Parmar’s report in the Godhra train burning case. Interestingly, Parmar’s same report was earlier not accepted by the Supreme Court which on March, 2008 has ordered a fresh investigation of the post-Godhra violence. Earlier, two riot cases were transferred outside Gujarat to Maharashtra by the Supreme Court because the court understood that it is impossible for Muslim riot victims to get justice from the judiciary of Narendra Modi’s Gujarat.

No one in Gujarat now talks about or recalls the 2002 riots as if nothing of that sort has ever happened there. The events are supposed to be too ‘sensitive’ to talk about. The collective Gujarati mind has been shaped so perfectly by the Sangh Parivar’s systemic propaganda that even a mention about the riots is confronted with stiff resistance from the common people of Gujarat today. Even the most effected Muslims have adjusted with the situation and try hard to ‘forget’ about the carnage they faced. Instead, their keen effort now is to motivate themselves by the vibrant Gujarat dream.

Apart from the Muslims, India also comprises other minority groups like Christians, Sikhs and Zoroastrians (Parsis). In 1999, a missionary Graham Steins were burnt to death by Bajrang Dal goons along with his two minor sons in Orissa. The Christians were also targeted in Gujarat where similar incidents of church burning and brutal killing took place precisely like what is happening today in Orissa, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. And why not? Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Guru M. S. Golwalkar had marked out Muslims and Christians as ‘internal enemy No. 1 and 2’. Are they not ‘foreign invaders’ aimed to annihilate Hindus? The charge against Christians is for forcibly converting people. In the contrary, the census figures show that the number of Christians in India has dropped from 2.5 to 2.3 per cent. Guru Golwalkar had put in plain words that:

"The foreign races in Hindusthan must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation, and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or [they] may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen's rights." (M. S. Golwalkar: We, Our Nationhood Defined, 1939)

Today Guru Golwalkar’s loyal disciples, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal are just complying with this treatise. Minorities can live in India but only at the mercy of the Hindus. If they speak out about their grievances, their concerns and aspirations, they will be dubbed as ‘anti-national’ or humiliated as being ‘appeased’ too much. When Professor Mushirul Hasan, the Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia University offers legal aid on behalf of the University to the students accused for terror acts, he is harshly blamed for ‘supporting’ terrorists. At that point the accusers completely close their eyes to the fact that it is a constitutional right of the accused students as citizens of India to be entitled for legal help until their crime is proved in a court. When the same Professor Hasan was targeted by Muslim fundamentalists when he took a stand against banning Salman Rushdie's controversial book Satanic Verses – the same people has hailed him for taking a courageous position.

Who is a terrorist? Those who meticulously plan and blast bombs in crowded public places, attack temples with automatic weapons and brutally kill innocent lives in the name of Islamic jihad or those who butcher innocent lives, violently evict the victims from their homes and turn them into refugees, rape the women, destroy mosques and burn churches in the name of Hindu nationalism? Both are dangerous, both are malicious. Both are foreign funded, both have their own versions to justify their acts. Both are terrorists.

The utter hypocrisy with a section of our so called ‘concerned’ and ‘patriotic’ middle class is that they consider all secular voices as pseudo secular and thinks that condemning both Islamic and Hindutva fanatics is like ‘falling in a trap’. They are severely critical against jihadi homegrown Muslims but covertly supportive to the fanaticism of the vicious Hindutva forces. After independence almost seven decades has passed but still they never miss a chance of Muslim bashing by relating them with the 61 years old Partition day mayhem of 1947. However, these very same people carefully ignore the 16 year old Babri Masjid demolition of 1992 and purposely forget the only 6 year old Gujarat pogrom days of 2002. It has also become their obligation to glorify the headship of Narendra Modi as the potential savior of India. Their perception of democracy is selective. Muslim terror in the name of Allah is loathsome, Hindu terror in the name of Ram is explicable.

Ordinary Muslims should realize that only a fresh liberal outlook acquired from modern education can elevate them from their misery and disorientation. The reasons behind their socio-economic backwardness in large parts of this country are primarily due to this social stagnation and educational marginalization. The Muslim youths today who have been motivated as jihadi and opts the terrorist path are truly misguided. The solution to homegrown terrorism mostly depends on how the state and society as a whole, efforts to do something about the grievances of common Muslims and thus prevent their youths to be misguided by lethal influences. The state and society should also realize that until provocation is barred and the rule of law is evenly established, the problem will persist and keep India susceptible to more serious damages in future.

An elegy for Singur

After Mr. Ratan Tata's pullout of the Nano project from Singur was announced, the industry minister of Bengal expressed in a glum voice that he doesn’t feel like living in Bengal anymore. The chief minister is in acute pain and distress, has turned mute and preferred to stay aloof from the rest of the world. The industry bigwigs have said that the decision is the most regrettable incidence which has dampened the festive spirit of Sharodotsav, the biggest festival of Bengalis. A sizeable section of the well wishers of Bengal are deeply sad. Particularly hopeless are the ‘willing’ farmers of Singur who has given their land, received the compensation and invested the money in small business projects largely depending on the Nano factory. With heavy hearted sadness from a devastated dream, an overall bleak mood looms large over this ill-fated state. For years to come, Bengal will have very little left to pride about itself before the world.

According to soil experts, the land inside the abandon Nano site will no longer be suitable for agriculture. Even if land is returned to the unwilling farmers (which is a distant possibility), the most optimistic and diligent among them will not be able to grow crops there in near future. No one will anymore be interested to purchase this infertile land from them even for purposes other than farming as after the exit of Tata, Singur will certainly have no significant land value. The land price will drop rapidly. The large number of 10852 farmers/landowners who have accepted compensation will also not be able to repurchase their once sold land as the money they received from compensation must have been already invested or used for setting up small trades. Where will they get the extra money to repurchase? Even the prospect of a new trade will diminish. Therefore, it is amply clear that the entire economy of Singur will be ruined. The collapse of hope among the inhabitants will generate a grave socio-economic problem even more than today’s. From a land of ecstasy it will now turn into a land of despair. Also as a section of the media predicts, Singur now appears headed toward a full-scale conflict between those who had given up their land for a dream of a better tomorrow with those who believed and followed Mamata Banerjee and her friends in the hope of squeezing out more compensation from the government.

The August 2006 Planning Commission report (Report of working group on Automotive Industry, Eleventh five year plan 2007-2012) says that the automobile industry today is providing direct and indirect employment to 1.31 crore people in India. Currently the industry employs 200,000 persons in vehicle manufacturing, 250,000 in component companies and 10 million at different levels of value chain – both through backward and forward linkages. The expected growth in the investments and output of India’s automotive sector during the next 5 years will create further employment opportunities in the country. Additional 15 million jobs are likely to be created by way of both direct and indirect employment in automotive companies and in other parts of the vehicle value chain such as servicing, repairs, sales and distribution chains. The employment opportunities would be in production for both skilled and unskilled laborers.

There are around 80 lakhs registered jobless youths in Bengal today. Sixty five per cent of them are educated and a large number of them are coming from villages. What will be the number of jobless youths in 2012? If no new jobs are created in the state, the number will reach near to a crore, as the numbers of registered jobless are growing by 4 to 4.5 lakhs per year in the state. Where will these educated jobless youths earn their living from? Obviously, they will be forced to move out mostly to industrially advanced states like Gujarat, Tamilnadu, Maharashtra and Delhi. Will the economy of Bengal be able to survive only by farming and fishing? The alarming reality of uncertain job prospect for the rapidly growing number of unemployed was the basis why the Bengal government earnestly thought to give so much importance to the Nano project. The government, the chief minister, the industry minister worked overtime to obtain this project because they knew that it will open the floodgate of employment opportunities for its younger generation. Now after the exit of Tata, it is for sure, no one will even imagine putting up an automobile plant in the state. It is extremely doubtful that something like the Nano project is going to be repeated there in the near future. Investments in other projects will also get hampered as investors will not want to take the risk of investing in a state where any project could be stalled by the whims of an irresponsible opposition.

The quarrel between agriculture and industry was not the actual reason behind the Singur crisis. Neither was it about ‘forceful’ land acquisition for industry. All the ideological and ethical rhetoric instigated by professed sociologists and academics on this topic, all the crocodile tears for agriculture was simply bogus. Total land acquired for the Singur plant was 0.007 per cent of Bengal’s total agricultural land. This paltry amount of land cannot make a devastating impact on the agricultural future of Bengal. The propagators of this opinion are either idiots or deceitful. The crisis was structured by malevolent political minds, by stimulating a rotten greed to seize more money from selling farmland. There would have been no agitation or protests, no Mamata Banerjee factor, no guest appearances by Medha Patkar or Amar Singh, no revolutionary aggression staged by Anuradha Talwar or the Maoists if Tata Motors had directly bought land from the farmers. All ‘unwilling’ farmers would have at once turned ‘willing’ the moment their pockets were filled adequately. The romanticism of farming would have vanished in the blue. Post land reform Bengal, the farmers are not so stupid as many of us think they are.

Mr. Ratan Tata has said in his press conference that, “Two years ago, I said if somebody puts a gun to my head, you would either have to remove the gun or pull the trigger. I would not move my head. I think Ms Banerjee pulled the trigger.”

Mr. Tata is right. The triggered bullet has brutally killed a pulsating hope. The hope for a prosperous future of Bengal. A hope to create employment prospects for its younger generation and be proud to accommodate a unique automobile project of international importance. By pulling the trigger, Mamata Banerjee and friends has callously killed the Bengal dream for a better tomorrow.

Time has come now to firmly confront the killers. Time has come to nail each of them one by one who have destroyed the dream for a resurgence of Bengal. It could be someone within or outside Bengal. It could be a dubious central government representative temporarily stationed in Bengal. It could also be the invisible sponsor/sponsors of the agitation in Singur “from where the funds and logistic support came from''.

Whoever they may be, the time has come now for all who are still concerned for the state to look straight into their eyes and roar - enough is enough.