Commentary/Ashok Mitra

Few cared to listen to the Bhagabatis -- they passed into oblivion, like a river that has run its course

What with the Centre spending 10 or 20 or 50 times more money each year under the head of maintenance of law and order than what it deployed on developing basic economic infrastructure in the remotest parts of the country, Bhagabati was full of sorrow.

New Delhi's insensibility was seemingly beyond redemption. Only a handful among the busybodies over there bothered to read up history; national integration, they assumed, was sine qua non with playing back recordings of Jawaharlal Nehru's mellifluous speeches on the grand theme of unity in diversity and ethnic charades at periodic intervals at Pragati mela.

All this was a horrendously poor response to the ground realities in the North-East. Men like Bhagabati, stuck in the middle, were condemned to don the role of tragic heroes. They were right all along in their judgement and their prognostications, but there was practically none, in quarters that mattered, to listen to their advice.

Bhagabati was, at the same time, constitutionally incapable of catapulting himself into the position of an opposition hero. When the Asom Gana Parishad arrived on the scene, it was a natural development. It was nearly purposeless, Bhagabati felt, to fight against the tide; every action is followed by an equal and opposite reaction, the turbulence of the local youth, all agog as much with just pride over ethnicity as with blind chauvinism, was only a response to the cynicism of the central authority.

Bhagabati did not have any stomach for the many unsavoury things that took place in the wake of the frenzy which exploded. Things have happened in Assam since, light has followed shade, shade has succeeded light, but there has been no escape from the still point of uncertainty. Notwithstanding the phenomena of the United Liberation Front of Assam and the surrendered United Liberation Front of Assam -- or perhaps on account of them -- it continues to be a savagely unclear landscape. And it is possible to generalise the statement for the entire North-East.

Because of the wrong reading of history on the part of the wise ones in the capital, the very geography of the North-East would conceivably undergo a transformation soon. No last minute broadcast of money is likely to be of help at this stage; the point of no return has been passed a while ago. In any case, occasional loosening of purse strings is not a unique new development. Because the conduits chosen by New Delhi were invariably of the wrong type, and such money never reached where it was supposed to.

The current goings on are therefore either a pistachio of predetermined role playing or gestures transmitted too late in the day. So much so that futility only gets added to futility, and even good intentions lead to further misunderstanding.

People like Bhagabati did not quite give up though. In their humble way, they fought and fought, explaining the rationale of Assam's ethnicity to the haughty imperial predators from New Delhi, and trying to persuade the impatient young boys and girls that they should give India yet another chance. Economic liberalisation, and the withdrawal of the state from economic planning, put paid to the last hopes of Assam and the North-East. Few cared to listen to the Bhagabatis -- they passed into oblivion, like a river that has run its course.

For an instant, there was a feeling of hurt when newspapers failed to show the minimum courtesy of carrying even a bland notice of his death. A great Assamese has departed, a great Assamese who was at the same time a great Indian. Perhaps it was a flawed synthesis, a patchwork destined not to last. That comment does not still render into irrelevance the memory of Bhagabati's nobility and compassion -- a compassion which he offered in equal measure to distraught Assamese youth and dispossessed Bengali refugees.

Bhagabati believed in Assam. He believed in India as well. And he believed in giving a fair deal to the working class who constituted the nation's majority. That made him a dated specimen. The particular specimen is now defunct.

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