Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Notes from South Asia. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).
Today we will cover how the BJP is embedding legal bigotry towards Muslims and other minoritised people in North East India, Maldives’ diplomacy in China and spat with India (started by Indians), and the story of Asia Bibi who had to leave Pakistan due to state sanctioned bigotry among other stories.
The Union government and the Assam State government recently signed a peace agreement with the ULFA pro-talks faction. Rahul Karmakar of the Hindu explains how the deal reinforces institutionalised bigotry (including gerrymandering) towards Bengali Muslims and is a deal for BJP (not for the country).
Three days after the signing of the pact with the pro-talks ULFA group headed by Arabinda Rajkhowa, the Chief Minister thanked the EC for “preserving the rights of the indigenous people in the first phase” and the ULFA for solidifying the safeguards with its political demands in the “second phase”, indicating both toed the government’s line.
Mr. Sarma said while the delimitation ensured the representation of the indigenous communities in at least 106 seats — a minimum of 96 in the Assamese-dominated Brahmaputra Valley and eight in the Bengali-majority Barak Valley — of Assam’s 126 Assembly seats, the ULFA accord would make only the communities inhabiting Assam for 100, 200, or 300 years eligible for representation for at least 40 more years. Referring to the Assam Accord of 1985, which prescribes March 24, 1971, as the cut-off date for determining citizens, he said it was logical to move away from such dates and consider people living in Assam for at least a century as Assamese. “Let us not be narrow and consider all such communities as indigenous,” he said.
Assam’s political history has been marked by conflicts with Bengalis over culture and language. Barring Barak Valley, Bengali Hindus first came to Assam with the British in the mid-1800s primarily for clerical jobs and petty trades while the first set of Bengali Muslims settled for farming in the 1890s. But while the sizeable Bengali Hindus are considered the BJP’s major vote bank, the Bengali Muslims are not because of the perception that a majority of them crossed over during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 and thereafter for greener pastures. The Chief Minister’s formula for determining indigeneity was in keeping with the BJP’s blueprint for consolidating the votes of the non-Muslims and polarising the Bengali Muslims, seen as loyal to Congress and the All India United Democratic Front, further.
Among the other safeguards sought in the ULFA accord, the Chief Minister underlined the demarcation of protected belts and blocks for general people on the lines of the British-era tribal blocks and belts where land rights are reserved for certain indigenous communities. Many tribal blocks and belts were allegedly taken over by “doubtful citizens” decades ago. He further highlighted the clause for reserving land within a 5 km radius of temples, namghars (prayer halls), and satras (monasteries) for the Assamese. Alleged encroachment of lands belonging to these religious institutions by “Bangladeshis” has been a major issue of the BJP.
These are not Bangladeshis but Bengali Muslims settled there by the British to run tea plantations. They continue to be exploited by plantation owners. BJP has used Asomiya nationalism, which was against all Bengalis, and has channeled it to Bengali Muslims (and Muslims in general). Now, they have institutionalised the discrimination Bengali Muslims face through legal routes.
This is why I have been always against the essentialising of indigenous identities and investing them with a moral or ethical right to supremacy over any land or rights. It is often used against marginalised communities here.
But of course, you wouldn’t what in the world an ULFA is. So, here is more on them from the same reporter for the Hindu: ULFA | Autumn of the militants
A house of entertainment is the unlikeliest of places for an extremist organisation to be born. But then, the two-storey Rang Ghar — one of Asia’s oldest amphitheatres with a roof shaped like an inverted boat — has been more than a heritage structure designed as a high seat for members of the Ahom royalty to watch cultural programmes on an adjoining field. It has been a symbol of Assamese pride since King Pramatta Singha had it built in present-day Sivasagar in 1744. And of peace.
Peace was perhaps far from the minds of six young men who converged at the Rang Ghar on April 7, 1979, to form the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). Their goal: establish a “sovereign socialist Assam” through an armed struggle. The six were Bhimkanta Buragohain, Rajiv Rajkonwar, alias Arabinda Rajkhowa, Golap Baruah, alias Anup Chetia, Samiran Gogoi, alias, Pradip Gogoi, Bhadreshwar Gohain, and Paresh Baruah.
They had a reason to be agitated. A storm had been brewing in Assam since 1978 over reports that “illegal immigrants” were being enlisted on the State’s electoral rolls. It crossed the tipping point in April 1979 when the Election Commission published the draft electoral rolls for a byelection to the Mangaldoi Lok Sabha constituency. The perceived large-scale enrolment of non-citizens led to an agitation that began in June 1979 and ended with the signing of the Assam Accord in August 1985.
While organisations such as the All Assam Students’ Union spearheaded the six-year agitation for the “detection, disenfranchisement, and deportation” of foreigners, ULFA quietly recruited people with a revolutionary zeal to train them for the fight to rid Assam of “Indian occupational forces”. The outfit divided its members into the political and military wings with Rajkhowa heading the former as its chairman and Paresh Baruah becoming the ‘commander-in-chief’ of the latter. Pradip Gogoi became the vice-chairman and Chetia the general secretary.
Paresh Baruah leads the faction that is still focused on insurgency (ULFA-I for independent) and is now based in Myanmar. Rajkhowa is the chief of faction that signed the agreement.
More on ULFA from Sudipta Datta for the Hindu.
The ULFA’s ascent to power, says Hazarika, coincided with the years of the Asom Gana Parishad regime. But by 1990, widespread extortion campaigns, attacks and killings were attributed to the ULFA cadres and the outfit was declared a terrorist and secessionist organisation and banned. There’s a detailed account of the first ULFA camp that was struck by the Army at Lakhipathar, in the heart of a forest near Digboi and Dibrugarh, the oil and tea capital of the State.
“ULFA’s power was not drawn solely from money and arms, though both were crucial factors,” he writes. “It lay in its understanding of the Assamese who were fed up with annual floods, failure of political promises, growing unemployment, unease that the anti-alien [those who migrated from Bangladesh] movement had not won them tangible gains despite the AGP’s presence and the knowledge that New Delhi was still trying to bulldoze its diktat through.” For peace to prevail, this perception will have to change.
They had bases in Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar. However, Bhutan forced them out in early 2000s and elections in Bangladesh forced them out as Sheikh Hasina came to power (PM Khaleda Zia supported them). They also lost Assamese public support after a school bombing. So even if ULFA-I is there, they may not be a powerful force in Assam (this is not from Datta’s article).
Back to Datta’s article: some books on Assam.
For his new book, The Mirage of Dawn, Rajeev Bhattacharyya travelled the ULFA trail which took him to remote places in Assam — to rebel camps in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and New Delhi. He writes about the outfit’s “conflicting accounts of its history, the internecine squabbles within and the wide range of clandestine activities in neighbouring countries, not all of which were known to all of its own leadership.” He puts a greater focus on the ULFA’s foreign bases and operations — after all, the changing situation in the outfit’s foreign bases had a decisive impact on the trajectory of the separatist campaign in Assam.
Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty’s two books, Assam: the Accord, the Discord and The Assamese: A Portrait of a Community, also go into the backdrop of why such a movement like the ULFA could hold sway in Assam, looking into issues of identity, language, religion and other social and economic factors.
Continuing on, we have the Indian government is asking the bigoted state government of Manipur to explore delisting the tribal Kuki-Zo community in Manipur from Scheduled Tribe status. This would be catastrophic for them since it is not just about their access to government jobs but also their possession of their land. Abhinay Lakshman reports for the Hindu.
The Manipur government has been asked by the Centre to examine a representation seeking deletion of the “Nomadic Chin-Kuki” from the list of Scheduled Tribes in Manipur. The Union Tribal Affairs Ministry said that a representation seeking delisting was made by Maheshwar Thounaojam, National Secretary of the Republican Party of India (Athawale), who is based in Imphal.
Throughout 2023 several Meitei groups in Manipur made representations seeking inclusion in the ST list. There was one appeal from an association of Meitei Pangals (Meitei Muslims). This is the first time a case is being made that Meiteis get ST status by excluding Kuki and Zomi tribes from the list. The reasoning is that they are not indigenous to the land.
In a letter dated December 26, 2023, the Union government said the process of inclusion or exclusion from ST list requires the proposal to originate from the concerned State government and hence it was sending the representation to the State government for its recommendation.
Manipur as you might know has been seeing an ethnic conflict between the majority Meiteis many of whom identify as Hindus and the minority Kuki-Zo groups. The Meitei claim is that Kuki-Zo are not original inhabitants of the land.
In the representation marked to Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda on December 11, 2023, Mr. Thounaojam cites a Supreme Court judgement from January, 2011 to suggest that “all Scheduled Tribes (Adivasis) shall be original inhabitants of India”. He then goes on to argue that in light of this judgement “the Kukis including Zomis of Manipur do not qualify as Scheduled Tribes of Manipur on the ground that they are not original inhabitants of Manipur”.
This claim is contested by the Kuki-Zo community but all I will say that there are many Scheduled Tribes (STs) across India who have migrated here from East Asia in the past few hundred years. It is their social marginalisation and not their indigeneity that had caused the government to list them as STs making them eligible for affirmative action. To ascribe affirmative action policies based on indigeneity rather than on marginalisation would make affirmative action a supremacist and majoritarian endeavor.
Another piece of evidence for the whole indigeneity argument I made above (and have been making elsewhere). My ideas on the indigenous is derived from having seen for the past decades how Hindu Supremacists use it against Muslims and how it drives ethnonationalism in states like Assam.
Maldives
Maldivian Diplomacy
Maldives’ president is in China. Meera Srinivasan reports for the Hindu.
Noting that the “strategic significance” of China-Maldives relations has become more prominent, the two countries committed to greater strategic cooperation this week, while China said it “firmly opposes” external interference in the internal affairs of the Maldives, according to a joint press communiqué.
“The two sides agree to elevate China-Maldives relations to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, better leverage the political guidance of high-level engagement, expand practical cooperation between the two countries in various fields, strengthen collaboration on international and multilateral affairs, enhance the well-being of the two peoples, and work toward a China-Maldives community with a shared future,” said the communiqué, issued on January 11, on the penultimate day of Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s five-day state visit to China.
The move is among many initiatives the two countries announced, including Maldives’s participation in the Global Security Initiative (GSI), following Sri Lanka’s affirmation in October 2023. The two governments agreed to draw up an “action plan” for building a “China-Maldives Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership from 2024 to 2028.
The decisions assume greater significance, a month after the Muizzu government decided to skip the India-led Colombo Security Conclave’s NSA-level meet, held in Mauritius in December, while signalling clear shift in Malé, from the predecessor Solih government’s strategic policy of close defence and security cooperation with India and the US.
More on that visit from an earlier article from the same reporter.
Even as several social media users in India continued amplifying the “#boycottMaldives” campaign online, amid recent tensions between the neighbours, President Mohamed Muizzu, currently on a five-day state visit to China, urged the Asian giant to reclaim its top spot in tourist arrivals to the island nation.
Addressing the ‘Invest Maldives’ Forum held in China’s Fujian Province, President Muizzu spoke of his government’s plans to diversify the country’s popular tourism sector and “offer new experiences” “China was our number one market pre-COVID, and it is my request that we intensify efforts for China to regain this position,” he said, according to a statement issued by the President’s office Tuesday morning.
Sun Online reports on the diplomatic fracas from Maldives perspective.
A row erupted on social media last week, after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted a video of him in a beach in Lakshadweep.
Several pro-Indian government accounts began sharing the video, which they said would promote tourism in Lakshadweep, and become a setback for Maldives – which has an award-winning tourism industry.
Several top government officials also got involved in the row.
Sun has learned the identities of the officials who were suspended over the posts as three deputy ministers from the Youth Ministry; Malsha Shareef, Mariyam Shiuna and Abdulla Mahzoom Majid.
Their suspension comes at a time many, on social media, have called for the dismissal over derogatory remarks against India and Modi.
In a statement regarding the matter on Sunday afternoon, Maldivian Foreign Ministry said the officials’ remarks were their personal opinions and did not represent the view of the Maldivian government.
The remarks by some Maldivians regarding India have been condemned by Indian nationals including top Bollywood stars.
Suhasini Haidar writes about how letting social media dictate policy adversely affects diplomacy: Outrage, outrage into the dying of the light.
This should have gone in the India section, but well, it is regarding Maldives too.
This week’s India-Maldives tussle is a great example of a diplomatic crisis created and dealt with on social media. The trigger: egregious social media posts by Maldivian Ministers about Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular and Indians in general. The Ministers, who have since been suspended by their government, appeared to be responding to a social media campaign in India that promoted Mr. Modi’s visit to Lakshadweep not just as a pitch for Indian tourism, but as a “masterstroke” to “checkmate” the Maldives, whose newly elected government has taken a number of decisions that have upset New Delhi. Eventually, the outrage by Indians on social media forced the MEA to act. It issued a tough statement and summoned the Maldives Ambassador to South Block. An online #BoycottMaldives campaign, promoted by Indian travel companies and celebrities, even targetted journalists who travelled to Male to cover the story. The outcome overshadowed the diplomatic narrative however, and probably did more damage to the bilateral relationship than the MEA may have bargained for.
It seems to me Indian (right wing) users triggered the incident not Maldives ministers though I agree that officials should be more restrained in their social media use (for their own security). But as Suhasini Haidar writes, this is affecting Indian diplomacy.
The Maldives incident was unusual as the offensive tweets were put out by Ministers themselves. But nowadays, the MEA reacts to statements by non-officials as well. Most recently, a video by an Indian student in Europe showed posters outside a United Nations building criticising Mr. Modi and the government. The Indian student was upset and video went viral as activists on social media demanded that the MEA take up the “insult” firmly. Within hours, the Ambassador of the European country was “summoned” to the Foreign Office, and a press note was issued on social media. It is puzzling to imagine what the MEA thought the European country could actually do about posters outside the UN office, where protests against dozens of countries are recorded every day. Diplomats were even more perplexed when the MEA decided to respond directly to social media posts by a famous popstar and by a teenage environmental activist who criticised the government for action against farmers protesting three farm bills on the outskirts of Delhi. The MEA termed the interest of international celebrities in the protests as “vested” and “agenda-driven”. It was unclear why the Ministry was responding to them at all.
The famous pop star is Rihanna and the teenage environmentalist is Greta Thunberg (who was a teen then). The Delhi Police even registered a case against Thunberg.
As journalists, we are often shown the power that social media has on policy. Questions we ask at briefings receive less response than a viral post does. We find ourselves covering made-on-the-Internet stories rather than real developments. The answer may not be, paraphrasing the poet Dylan Thomas, to “Outrage, outrage against the dying of the light”, but instead to separate the issues that affect India’s foreign policy from the non-issues that don’t, and to address them without allowing an Internet storm-in-a-teacup to overtake normal diplomatic discourse.
My apologies for that detour into Indian non-foreign policy but it did not fit in above in the India section and I did want to share the criticism towards Indian FP.
Maldives is also seeing a mayoral election in Male this week. Former President Solih said he hopes his party, MDP would win the elections if they don’t repeat past mistakes.
MDP’s leader, former president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, on Thursday night, expressed confidence in the party winning the Male’ mayoral by-election while urging to refrain from mistakes made during the last presidential elections this time around.
Solih made the remark while speaking at a mass rally held on Thursday night to officially conclude MDP’s Male’ mayoral candidate Adam Azim’s campaign.
It marked his first podium appearance since the loss in September’s presidential election.
Solih said the party, must obtain a lesson from the loss in the presidential election, and work to win the Male’ mayoral seat.
“As I believe, this is an election in our hands,” he added.
Pakistan
Terrorist Attacks
The Dawn editorial on the spate of terrorist attacks that Pakistan has been subjected to. There were two this week.
A SPATE of deadly recent terrorist attacks illustrates the grim fact that unless the state takes comprehensive counterterrorism measures, the militancy-related bloodshed witnessed in 2023 is likely to continue in the new year.
Many of the attacks have targeted police personnel, particularly those tasked with guarding polio teams. The week began on a sombre note when at least seven policemen guarding vaccinators were martyred in Bajaur on Monday in an IED blast targeting their vehicle. On Tuesday, two police officers lost their lives in a reported gunfight with militants in Bannu. These personnel were also escorting polio teams.
Wednesday also witnessed significant bloodshed, as three law enforcers were martyred when a police post was attacked in Kohat, while two army men lost their lives in Lakki Marwat. On the same day an election candidate was gunned down in North Waziristan, while another hopeful survived an attack in Turbat.
In the aforementioned attacks, terrorists have struck both ‘hard’ targets, in the form of security personnel, as well as ‘soft’ ones, such as election hopefuls. They show just how vulnerable police personnel are, particularly those serving in areas of KP and Balochistan experiencing a renewed wave of terrorist violence.
As mentioned, 2023 was not a good year where terror-related casualties are concerned. According to figures compiled by a think tank, there were over 1,500 violence-linked fatalities last year from nearly 800 terror attacks.
No paywall.
Baloch March
Ahsan J Pirzada writes for Dawn about the Baloch March: March—for Justice Not Sympathy
In the wee hours of December 21, 2023, a convoy of almost 300 men, women and children approached the capital. All of the participants were from Balochistan; each had lost a loved one to — in Justice Athar Minallah’s words — the “most heinous crime” of enforced disappearance.
As they approached the capital, a long, emotionally draining journey, riddled with logistical challenges and unnatural obstacles, that started from Turbat some 1,600 kilometres from Islamabad, was nearing its end. Unbeknown to the marchers, who must have been anticipating a well-deserved rest, a large contingent of Islamabad Police personnel lay in wait, ready to intercept and stop them from advancing towards the National Press Club.
What ensued, thereafter, was both appalling and shocking — visuals of women being dragged by police personnel, water cannons being used against the participants, including children, in freezing temperatures, elderly men and women being physically manhandled, the use of indiscriminate tear gas and the detention of nearly all the participants, flashed on TV screens across the country. Following the videos of the incident going viral on social media platforms, for a brief moment, it seemed that the federal government would be compelled to release all those who had earlier been detained.
However, the ordeal was not yet over for our Baloch visitors, with the police subsequently attempting to forcefully load the marchers onto buses, parked outside the G-7 Women Police Station, and force them all to go back to Balochistan.
Note that the agitation is ongoing. No paywall. Please read the rest.
Asia Bibi in Canada
You may know her story. She is a Pakistani Christian who was condemned to death for blasphemy. Ailia Zehra has a story on her in the New Lines Magazine.
After spending more than eight years on death row over false blasphemy allegations in Pakistan, Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, managed to escape to Canada in 2019 following her acquittal by Pakistan’s supreme court. On social media, right-wing propagandists then claimed that a life of luxury awaited her abroad and that she was being backed by “anti-Pakistan” and “anti-Islam” powers. Nothing could be further from the truth. In exile, Bibi has been living a life of poverty, abandoned by both the state of Pakistan that wronged her and the human rights groups that once avidly advocated for her release.
Over the past two years, her health has deteriorated as she suffers from a joint ailment.
“I think I only have a few years left to live,” the 52-year-old Bibi told New Lines in her first public interview since 2020. Like many Pakistani dissidents and victims of extremism who are hounded out of the country, Bibi’s plight continues even in exile. She works a menial job, sometimes for over 14 hours a day, to cover her rent and her family’s expenses. The modest financial support the family initially received from the Canadian government was discontinued a year later. The authorities help refugees only for a year after their arrival, after which they are expected to fend for themselves.
In 2010, Bibi, a farm laborer who hails from a village near the Nankana Sahib district of Pakistan’s Punjab province, became the first woman to be sentenced to death under the country’s controversial blasphemy laws for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with Muslim neighbors over sharing a cup of water. She was arrested and imprisoned, then sentenced to be executed by the local court, a judgment that was upheld by the Lahore High Court.
When Salman Taseer, who was then the governor of Punjab province, visited Bibi in prison and vowed to persuade then-President Asif Ali Zardari to issue a presidential pardon for the woman on humanitarian grounds, a hateful campaign against Taseer ensued. He was himself accused of blasphemy by extremist clerics who declared him an apostate for supporting a “blasphemer.” Still, Taseer remained steadfast in his opposition to the blasphemy law. In 2011, one of his own bodyguards, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, shot him 27 times with an AK-47 assault rifle near his home in Islamabad, killing him.
Pakistan’s blashphemy laws are terrible and misused against minoritised people. No paywall. Please read the rest. Also note that Pakistanis condemning their own politics is not the same as white Westerners engaging in anti-Muslim statements (many of you know this, but in case you didn’t; esp given that Daily Kos has now become a hostile place (more than usual) for many from the community—though I am sure this is unacknowledged).
Until next Friday, everyone. Stay safe. Be well. Take care.
May we all have the ability to listen to sides that challenge us, especially from the perspectives of those without power (that is, not white supremacists or any ethno/majoritarian/discriminatory perspective).