Down with attempts for a second partition of India!

By: V Sundaram
March 10, 2006
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The All Assam Student`s Union (AASU) started the Anti-Foreigners movement in 1979 to detect, delete and deport illegal migrants of Bangladesh from Assam. The six-year long anti-foreigners movement was unique in the sense that it was able to mobilise the active support of all genuine Indian citizens living in Assam and the North-East irrespective of their language, religion or community. All of them united in voicing their demand for the deletion of the names of all those illegal migrants from Bangladesh from the electoral rolls of Assam. When the AASU started this very legitimate and well-founded movement, all the political parties except the erstwhile Jan Sangh (later the BJP) decried the movement as anti-social and anti-national with fissiparous parochial and communal overtones. The reasons for this extraordinary stand are not far to see. The Congress party in Assam and the CPI (M) in Bengal have been the staunchest supporters of these illegal migrants, treating them as their potential Muslim vote-banks. The Communists have treated these outsiders from Bangladesh as friends and comrades. The Congress party has treated them as permanent members of their Seva Dal to be pitted against the communal and non-secular Hindus of Assam!

Apart from the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) also understood the real implications and the gravity of the issue. Right from 1980, it mobilised its cadres to make the Indian public aware of the truly patriotic nature of the AASU`s Anti-Foreigners movement. The dangers posed to national security by this unchecked and Congress/Communist-promoted illegal infiltration from Bangladesh were properly highlighted by the RSS not only in Assam but also in the rest of India.

The Congress party, with its own selfish political interests in view and its focus on the Muslim vote-bank, castigated the AASU Movement as Anti-Muslim and not as anti-foreigners. It is not surprising because the Congress party after Independence has treated all the Hindus of India as foreigners and all the Muslims of the world (excepting Pakistan and Pak-Occupied areas of Kashmir) as naturalised Indians to be given special protection under different enactments.

Keeping its own narrow political interests in view, the Congress party, which was then in power both at the Centre and in Assam, promulgated the `Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals Act` (IMDT) in 1983 to be effective and applicable only in the State of Assam. Like Article 370 of the Constitution, the Congress party viewed this Act as a bonanza to the Illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh. The Congress party hoped to create permanent Muslim vote-banks for Indira Gandhi and her family in India, more particularly in Assam, on a hereditary basis for all time to come.

Very unfortunately for Assam and the rest of the country, and very fortunately for the Congress party in Assam and the CPI (M) in Bengal, the IMDT Act has proved itself to be totally ineffective (as planned and intended by the Congress party at the Centre) in detecting and deporting illegal migrants. This Act was a planned fraud on the innocent people of Assam. Under the IMDT Act, the onus of proving a person as a foreigner rested on the complainant and not on the accused. The Act further required that the complainant must reside within a specific radius of the accused and his complaint must be supported by at least by two witnesses. In contrast, in the rest of the country, illegal migrants come under the Foreigners Act 1946, where the burden of proof of nationality rested with the accused or the foreigner. Hence as politically planned by the Congress party in New Delhi, the IMDT Act of 1983 became more of a deterrent in detecting the influx of foreigners into Assam as the legal process subjected the complainant to unnecessary trouble and harassment.

What has been the track record of the IMDT Act in Assam in fulfilling its declared objective? The government`s own statistics show that the IMDT Act of 1983 completely failed in its avowed purpose. The government itself has stated that ever since the IMDT Act came into force in December 1983, only 9599 illegal migrants were detected till 1 January 1999, over a 15-year period and the most cruel joke is that not even a single so-called illegal migrant was deported. According to the government of India`s own estimate, the flow of illegal migrants from Bangladesh during a twenty-year period from 1951-71 was 17.63 lakh, eight lakh during 1951-61 and 9.63 lakh during 1961-71. After all, are not these illegal Muslim migrants humane, compassionate and secular deserving the special protection and benediction of the Congress party under Indira Gandhi during 1983-84, Rajiv Gandhi during 1984-89, Narasimha Rao during 1991-96 and now Sonia Gandhi (herself a foreigner)?

No responsible citizen of India and more particularly the Hindus of India in the grip of a vicious minority group of 142 Congress MPs in New Delhi should ignore the fact that the IMDT Act by itself was discriminatory and applicable only to Assam. In the rest of the country, the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 were applied in the matter of detection and deportation of foreigners. The IMDT Act was a cold and calculated assault on fundamental human freedom. It was a shameful situation where the government of India functioned as the agent for the criminals from Bangladesh in order to legally put down honourable citizens who respect the rule of law, who demand the enforcement of the principle of equality before the law and who are solidly behind the quest for establishing the supremacy and majesty of law.

In 2000, Sarmanand Sonowal, now AGP MP from Dibrugarh, filed a petition in the Supreme Court praying for a repeal of the IMDT Act, 1983. On 12 July, 2005, the Supreme Court declared the IMDT Act, 1983 as null and void. The Supreme Court directed the State and Central governments to detect and deport illegal migrants in the country, more specifically in Assam and the North-East region, under the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946.

As usual, the Congress party, which depends on minority Muslim vote banks not only in Assam but also in the whole of India, is now trying to create an impression that the minority community in Assam would get affected by the decision of the Supreme Court. If the whole of India can have no problem with the Foreigners Act, 1946, I see no reason why only a section of the Congress-sponsored Muslims from Assam and the neighboring region, should be worried about the repeal of the IMDT Act, 1983. They can very well claim their rights and privileges under the Foreigners Act, 1946. The real truth is that this so-called aggrieved section represents the vested interests of the larger body of the illegal migrants who have settled here surreptitiously with the political patronage of the Congress party in the region and who have unscrupulously succeeded in getting their names enlisted in the `voters list` of Assam, which gives them a VIP clout in the Congress. Against this background, it is not surprising that the UPA government is considering a proposal for re-enacting the IMDT Act, 1983 with amendments, unmindful of the fact that in this dastardly game of minority vote-bank politics and lust for power, the nation's security and interests are getting threatened.

Is it not a tragedy that 58 years after independence from British rule, Assam finds itself overcome by another set of foreigners who have cleverly acquired the power to impose their will on its people by democratic means? The influx of illegal migrants into Assam masterminded by the Congress party during the last 25 years has to be viewed against the larger background of the global phenomenon of ever-rising and ever-expanding Islamic terrorism. The aim of all this transnational Islamic terrorist groups is to initiate a new process leading to new spheres of Muslim influence in different parts of India by changing the democratic pattern. Assam is a classic instance in point. If their plan succeeds in Assam, then there will be no difficulty in converting Assam into yet another mini-Pakistan, which will prove detrimental to the interests of India and Indians as a whole, excepting may be most members of the Congress party and more specifically Sonia and her chosen pseudo-secular clan in New Delhi.

The Congress party is trying to initiate the process of converting India into a pseudo-Islamic Republic by starting the game in Assam. What is happening in Assam is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is only the end of the beginning. All patriotic Indians irrespective of their caste, community, region, or religion or political affiliations should come together on a same platform and untidily expose and oppose all such forces that covertly or overtly threaten the unity and territorial integrity of India.

V Sundaram

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