The scorching rays of Assamese nationalism
The Hindu
The Darrang incident is not a lone wolf act but leads back to robust and embedded anti-Muslim sentiments
The Darrang killings, in Assam, wherein there were casualties in police firing during an eviction drive, have unmasked an evil social character of Assamese nationalism and its further descent into darkness. The event was so macabre and grotesque that I will still call it an act of political sadism. How else can one characterise the emotional matrix of a group of people who defile a body after a person is shot right before their eyes and even go on to celebrate that act of humiliation? Erich Fromm, social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, has reminded us that the only way to understand the spirit of culture and social character is to pay keen attention to the ‘emotional matrix’. Assamese nationalism should be evaluated and diagnosed, among others, for its emotional matrix and how it makes its followers turn to it, like flowers to the sun.
The minority in Assam has been visited by violence so often that it has become part of their everyday life, although it is the tribals who are the historical subjects of evictions. Among the various minorities in the State, it is the Muslim minorities who are victimised the most. Assamese society never opened its doors to them. Assamese nationalists are wont to say, ‘become us’ by speaking our language, but do keep your religion and culture private, or you may live like nobody. The language riots and the Nellie massacre (1983) drew definitive measurements of the horror and destiny of “Bangladeshi” bodies. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is not the last nail in their coffin either.