A Historic Betrayal: How Successive Governments and Centralized Political Forces Are Exploiting Assam's Land Policy, Displacing Indigenous People, and Creating a Need for Regional Resistance Rooted in Grassroots Movements

The renowned Assamese patriot and steadfast advocate for the rights of indigenous Assamese people, Assam Kesari Ambikagiri Raichoudhury, authored an essay titled 'Who is a True Assamese?' for the fourth issue of the inaugural year of Deka Asom. In that essay, Ambikagiri outlined the adversaries of the Assamese nation. It is crucial to recognize these adversaries at a time when plots are constantly being developed to displace the native population of Assam from their own land and offer a red carpet to outsiders and exploiters. Therefore, it is important to remember his impactful remarks.

In the aforementioned essay, Ambikagiri writes:

"Likewise, those who, despite being born in Assamese soil to Assamese parents, growing up in the air, water, and social influence of Assam, refuse to make even the slightest sacrifice or endure any hardship for the cause of Assamese national development -- whether through thought, action, or wealth -- and feel torn apart even at the smallest personal loss for the greater good, cannot be called Assamese. Such people are the enemies within the Assamese nation. From such people arises the greatest threat to the national life of the Assamese, for they exploit Assamese national interests in the most unnatural ways while pretending to be Assamese. They are the greatest burden upon Assamese society. Such people can be easily bought and sold like fish or vegetables in the market by anyone seeking to plunder Assamese national interests. It is because of the abundance of such people in our society today that others have managed to rob us of our national interests. Therefore, the sacred duty of 'Deka Asom' is to eliminate, by any means necessary, the influence of such people from our society." (Source: Deka Asom, First Year; Editor-Compiler: Paramananda Majumdar, Ashok Publication, Guwahati, p.19)

For decades, successive governments in Assam have failed to deliver on their promises to provide land titles to the people. Today, instead of fulfilling that long-standing pledge, the Assam government is evicting farmers and laborers from the land they have cultivated and lived on for generations -- only to hand that land over to large corporations.

The people of Assam must now recognize and identify the individuals and political parties who represent such exploitative interests. As Ambikagiri warned, there are already countless examples of such people being sold cheaply in the political marketplace, betraying the collective interests of the Assamese.

Therefore, the time has come for the indigenous people of Assam to form a regional political resistance against those who, for the sake of external capitalist interests, are determined to destroy the very roots of Assamese society by handing its land over to outsiders.

There is no doubt that only a land-based movement has the potential to socially and politically unite people across Assam and create a strong political resistance. Today, millions of landless people -- regardless of caste, creed, religion, or language -- have taken to the streets to demand their rightful land.

Hence, instead of merging into pan-Indian political parties, it is time for the people of Assam to build a regional political resistance through this land movement. Only a regional political force born out of this movement, rooted in federalism, can safeguard the existence of the Assamese people and resist highly centralized parties like the BJP.

Under the slogans of 'Developed Assam' and 'Transformation,' the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in Assam in 2016. Before the Assembly elections, the party released its 'Assam Vision Document 2016-2025,' which contained several promises regarding land reforms, such as: Implementing the Assam Accord in letter and spirit; Evicting illegal encroachers from forest land, religious institutions, wetlands, and tribal belts and blocks; Providing adequate land and permanent settlement to landless tea garden workers; Preparing a proper land use map using modern technology; Preserving all grazing lands in the state; and Protecting the land of religious and cultural institutions by constructing boundary walls.

However, after coming to power, the Sonowal government, under the ideological guidance of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), deliberately focused only on one aspect: freeing the land of religious institutions from encroachment. They ignored all other promises related to land reforms, seemingly believing that preserving religious properties would be sufficient to keep public support.

Consequently, then-Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma vigorously promoted eviction drives rather than granting land rights to the landless or addressing the Assam Accord. The office memorandum issued during the Sonowal regime reflected the historic failure and self-contradictory nature of Assam's land policy.

Two points became clear through this eviction policy:

Let us now turn to the contradictions within this official memorandum. Clause 3 of the memorandum refers to the 1989 Land Policy, which mentioned the eviction of encroachers from Professional Grazing Reserves (PGR) and Village Grazing Reserves (VGR). But what is significant is that the 1989 policy's core spirit -- its promises and objectives -- have been deliberately ignored, and only the eviction clause has been selectively retained.

The 1989 Land Policy had acknowledged the issues of population growth, industrial expansion, and land scarcity in Assam. It acknowledged the failures of the 1958, 1968, and 1972 land policies, all of which promised to distribute land among the landless but were poorly implemented.

Therefore, the 1989 policy made several important proposals, such as:

The tragedy for the indigenous Assamese people is that the majority of these post-independence promises were not fulfilled. The Assam government is currently preparing to give unrestricted access to massive swaths of land to large corporations. Large-scale land purchases and eviction campaigns are therefore in progress, accompanied by the spreading of a poisonous wave of intercommunal hatred.

For instance, in the name of corporate interests, thousands of families have been displaced as land has been cleared: 5,000 bighas in Borduwar (Rabha Hasong); 18,000 bighas and 12,000 bighas respectively in Karbi Anglong for solar and biogas projects; and 9,000 bighas in Dima Hasao for a cement factory.

Similarly, numerous families have already been evicted from various areas, including 1,200 families in Silasaku, 100 families in Mikir Bamuni, 1,200 families in Chapor, 45 families near Kaziranga, 2,047 families in Gorukhuti, 668 families in Hachila Beel, and 1,000 families in Paikan.

These are just a few examples. In the future, countless native people of the state will lose their homes and lands under the pretext of corporate profit from palm cultivation and mineral extraction. At such a critical juncture, if the people of Assam fail to defend their ancestral lands, they will soon lose all social, political, cultural, and economic rights in their own homeland.

With the present rulers attempting to eliminate federal principles and establish an ultra-centralized regime, the most pressing question today is: How can the people of Assam and the Northeast unite against such a force? We firmly believe that the ongoing land movements across Assam and the Northeast have provided the masses with a historic opportunity to unite and resist together.