Commentary/Ashok Mitra
Few cared to listen to the Bhagabatis -- they passed
into oblivion, like a river that has run its course
What with the Centre spending 10 or 20 or 50 times
more money each year under the head of maintenance
of law and order than what it deployed on developing basic economic
infrastructure in the remotest parts of the country, Bhagabati
was full of sorrow.
New Delhi's insensibility was seemingly beyond
redemption. Only a handful among the busybodies over there bothered
to read up history; national integration, they assumed, was sine
qua non with playing back recordings of Jawaharlal Nehru's
mellifluous speeches on the grand theme of unity in diversity
and ethnic charades at periodic intervals at Pragati mela.
All this was a horrendously poor response to the ground realities
in the North-East. Men like Bhagabati, stuck in the middle, were
condemned to don the role of tragic heroes. They were right all
along in their judgement and their prognostications, but there
was practically none, in quarters that mattered, to listen to
their advice.
Bhagabati was, at the same time, constitutionally
incapable of catapulting himself into the position of an opposition
hero. When the Asom Gana Parishad arrived on the scene, it was
a natural development. It was nearly purposeless, Bhagabati felt,
to fight against the tide; every action is followed by an equal
and opposite reaction, the turbulence of the local youth, all
agog as much with just pride over ethnicity as with blind chauvinism,
was only a response to the cynicism of the central authority.
Bhagabati did not have any stomach for the many unsavoury
things that took place in the wake of the frenzy which exploded.
Things have happened in Assam since, light has followed shade,
shade has succeeded light, but there has been no escape from the
still point of uncertainty. Notwithstanding the phenomena of the
United Liberation Front of Assam and the surrendered United Liberation
Front of Assam -- or perhaps on account of them -- it continues
to be a savagely unclear landscape. And it is possible to generalise
the statement for the entire North-East.
Because of the wrong reading of history on the part
of the wise ones in the capital, the very geography of
the North-East would conceivably undergo a transformation soon.
No last minute broadcast of money is likely to be of help at this
stage; the point of no return has been passed a while ago. In
any case, occasional loosening of purse strings is not a unique
new development. Because the conduits chosen by New Delhi were
invariably of the wrong type, and such money never reached where it was supposed to.
The current goings on are therefore either a pistachio of
predetermined role playing or gestures transmitted too late in
the day. So much so that futility only gets added to futility,
and even good intentions lead to further misunderstanding.
People like Bhagabati did not quite give up though.
In their humble way, they fought and fought, explaining
the rationale of Assam's ethnicity to the haughty imperial predators
from New Delhi, and trying to persuade the impatient
young boys and girls that they should give India yet another chance.
Economic liberalisation, and the withdrawal of the state from
economic planning, put paid to the last hopes of Assam and the
North-East. Few cared to listen to the Bhagabatis -- they passed
into oblivion, like a river that has run its course.
For an instant, there was a feeling of hurt when
newspapers failed to show the minimum courtesy of carrying even
a bland notice of his death. A great Assamese has departed, a great
Assamese who was at the same time a great Indian. Perhaps it was
a flawed synthesis, a patchwork destined not to last. That comment
does not still render into irrelevance the memory of Bhagabati's
nobility and compassion -- a compassion which he offered in equal
measure to distraught Assamese youth and dispossessed Bengali refugees.
Bhagabati believed in Assam. He believed in India
as well. And he believed in giving a fair deal to the working
class who constituted the nation's majority. That made him a dated
specimen. The particular specimen is now defunct.
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