Skip to main content

No asylum to Bangla Hindus persecuted post-2014, all immigrants in Assam must adopt Assamese language: PPFA

By NJ Thakuria
Expressing "concern" over "creating sentiments with unhealthy debates and aggressive attacks over the organizations", which reportedly supported the Centre’s initiative to amend the citizenship laws at the Joint Parliamentary Committee hearing in New Delhi recently, the Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA) has insisted on "rational debate" over the cotroversial issue.
A forum of influential individuals raising the banner of Assamese culture and tradition, in a statement PPFA has sharply criticised a "section" of Assamese intellectuals and civil society groups that has allegedly tried its best to "project the citizenship amendment bill 2016 in a biased perception, as if the whole initiative is Assam centric."
“Those biased individuals have made the hue and cry that once it turns into a law, millions of Bengali Hindu people from Bangladesh would be dumped into Assam and the process of their deportation would become impossible. So, whoever supports the initiative should be termed as jatidrohi (read anti-Assamese),” said the PPFA statement.
In PPFA's view, the asylum seekers are not merely Bengali Hindus, but also a mix of Rajbongshi, Hajong, Jayantiya, Bishnupriya, Chakma, Garo, Khasi, Adivasi etc. people. All these people, it claims, became the victims of Pakistan’s partition game plan and had to live in a foreign land, for the creation of which they were not at all responsible.
According to PPFA, the initiative is meant to allow citizenship for those Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian, Jain and Parsi community refugees, who were persecuted because of their religions practises in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and had already taken shelter in India prior to December 31, 2014, and there is no provision to bring more Bangladeshi (or Pakistani and Afghan national) after the said date.
At the same time, the PPFA says, the asylum seekers from the neighbouring countries must be distributed judiciously across the country. Moreover, those who prefer to stay legally in Assam should adopt the Assamese language as their medium of instruction, the forum adds.
“Adopting the Assamese language as the medium of official language by those settlers would help in promoting the Assamese culture and also contributing for a stronger and safer India. Their goodwill will also remove the linguistic threat perception hunting the indigenous populace of Assam,” the statement elaborates.
Reiterating its old stance to detect all illegal immigrants from the then East Pakistan (and later Bangladesh) with the cut-off year of 1951, as it is applicable to the entire nation. It argued that the spirit of Assam Movement (1979 to 1985) was to deport all foreigners since 1951, for which over 850 martyrs-Khargeswar Talukder being the first, sacrificed their lives.
At the same time time, the PPFA wants that the immigrants who entered India between 1951 and December 16, 1971, majority of them Muslims, should be treated as East Pakistani nationals, as Bangladesh emerged as a sovereign nation only after December 16 (not March 25, 1971 as often reported in the media) following the surrender of Pakistani forces under the leadership of AAK Niazi to the Muktijoddhas (forces of Bangladesh freedom struggle). Bangla father of the nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman only declared the independence of Bangladesh 25, 1971.
Most of these immigrants were forced to flee the then West Pakistani oppressive regime, which ruled its eastern wing as a colony.
Seeking to start the process of their deportation, PPFA say, if their exit becomes impossible, or difficult, because of serious "humanitarian and international crisis, the Union government should think about offering work permits", but "without voting rights."

Comments

TRENDING

Modi govt distancing from Adanis? MoEFCC 'defers' 1500 MW project in Western Ghats

By Rajiv Shah  Is the Narendra Modi government, in its third but  what would appear to be a weaker avatar, seeking to show that it would keep a distance, albeit temporarily, from its most favorite business house, the Adanis? It would seem so if the latest move of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) latest to "defer" the Adani Energy’s application for 1500 MW Warasgaon-Warangi Pump Storage Project is any indication.

US govt funding 'dubious PR firm' to discredit anti-GM, anti-pesticide activists

By Our Representative  The Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) has vocally condemned the financial support provided by the US Government to questionable public relations firms aimed at undermining the efforts of activists opposed to pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in India. 

Bayer's business model: 'Monopoly control over chemicals, seeds'

By Bharat Dogra*  The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has rendered a great public service by very recently publishing a report titled ‘Bayer’s Toxic Trails’ which reveals how the German agrochemical giant Bayer has been lobbying hard to promote glyphosate and GMOs, or trying to “capture public policy to pursue its private interests.” This report, written by Joao Camargo and Hans Van Scharen, follows Bayer’s toxic trail as “it maintains monopolistic control of the seed and pesticides markets, fights off regulatory challenges to its toxic products, tries to limit legal liability, and exercises political influence.” 

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview  story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded  reaction  in the form of a  link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

105,000 sign protest petition, allege Nestlé’s 'double standard' over added sugar in baby food

By Kritischer Konsum*    105,000 people have signed a petition calling on Nestlé to stop adding sugar to its baby food products marketed in lower-income countries. It was handed over today at the multinational’s headquarters in Vevey, where the NGOs Public Eye, IBFAN and EKO dumped the symbolic equivalent of 10 million sugar cubes, representing the added sugar consumed each day by babies fed with Cerelac cereals. In Switzerland, such products are sold with no added sugar. The leading baby food corporation must put an end to this harmful double standard.

Militants, with ten times number of arms compared to those in J&K, 'roaming freely' in Manipur

By Sandeep Pandey*  The violence which shows no sign of abating in the ongoing Meitei-Kuki conflict in Manipur is a matter of concern. The alienation of the two communities and hatred generated for each other is unprecedented. The Meiteis cannot leave Manipur by road because the next district North on the way to Kohima in Nagaland is Kangpokpi, a Kuki dominated area where the young Kuki men and women are guarding the district borders and would not let any Meitei pass through the national highway. 

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah*   The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual. 

UNEP report on how climate crisis is impacting displacement, global conflicts, declining health

By Shankar Sharma*  A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), titled "A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing," warrants urgent attention from our country’s developmental perspective. The findings, detailed in the report, should be a source of significant concern not only globally but especially for our nation, which has a vast population and limited natural resources.