Obliteration of Hinduism in Assam by Islam: A perspective from Sri Aurobindo

By Anirban Ganguly

Sri Aurobindo points out the dangers of Hindus becoming a minority in Assam and of how Pakistan will eventually decimate Hindus in the region.

In November 2007 Osama Bin-Laden in a recorded telecast in the Al-Jazeera network had mentioned Assam & Kashmir while calling upon Muslims to wake up & launch a fight for an Islamic state in India. This note was written then for circulation among a close group but its relevance seems to be growing by the day, especially after the recent blasts in Jaipur, which as per the declaration given by the perpetrators was made to strike at Hindu India. That past terrorists attacks on Hindi speaking migrant labourers in Assam & an attempt there to create a Kashmir like situation where Hindus will be compelled to vacate space are part of a concerted attempt to create a greater Islamic space along the eastern fringe of India & gradually obliterate Hinduism from the region—& where Hinduism ends India ceases to be. I found this newly disclosed letter of Sri Aurobindo—though written some 60 odd years ago—to be highly relevant to the situation in Assam today & to the future of Hinduism there.

Osama’s mention of Assam & Kashmir while calling upon Muslims to rise & launch a crusade to create an Islamic state clearly exposes the long understood, secretly accepted but publicly & politically denied fact that Assam is turning out to be the principle theatre for carrying out the operation for a second Partition of India. Hindus there are already at the receiving end; forces inimical to India & Hinduism are gradually dismantling Srimant Shankardev’s unique network that had a brought about a Hindu cultural & spiritual renaissance in Assam. It is interesting to observe how these forces first gnaw at the root & then begin hacking at it. The U.S. based Stratfor think-tank report in May last year on the Assam militancy clearly established the fact that the Pakistan - ISI has undertaken a major operation to fund, provide logistic support & then gradually Islamise the whole of the NE insurgency arena, this is the first step towards eventual & possibly violent severance of the region from the Indian Union. Osama’s exhortation confirms that a detailed action-plan exists & is being carried out to a logical conclusion & it is no more in the exclusive control of the Pakistani ruling dispensation. The report says: “Pakistan did not hesitate to jump in where the British left off in the post-partition period, and has since used its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to fund, train and arm these rebel groups in order to keep India’s hands tied. The largest and most powerful of the northeast secessionist movements is the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). Once a student movement with populist aims to redistribute the state’s oil wealth, ULFA has gradually changed into what appears to be a moneymaking machine with a strong willingness to do the ISI’s bidding. ULFA runs an impressive extortion racket in the northeast, where Assam’s tea plantation owners and corporate leaders are regularly targeted.

The group maintains that its armed campaign will not let up until the Indian government engages it in unconditional peace talks. Yet, when New Delhi makes such an offer, ULFA usually responds with a bombing, as was the case in the April 9 bomb attack near Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s motorcade in the Assamese capital of Guwahati. ULFA’s leadership understands that New Delhi is not about to reward the armed movement with political concessions, and does not wish to disturb the financial networks it has running throughout the region. Moreover, to preserve their militant proxy, the group’s handlers in both Pakistan’s and Bangladesh’s intelligence services have told ULFA not to hold peace talks with the Indian government.

Pakistan’s ISI, in cooperation with Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), appears to be investing a considerable amount of resources in solidifying India’s militant corridor. There are growing indications that these two agencies are working clandestinely in Bangladesh to bring all the northeast-based insurgent outfits and jihadist elements under one umbrella. The ISI has facilitated cooperation between ULFA and other northeastern terrorist outfits with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, Islamist militant groups in Kashmir, Islamist groups in Bangladesh and a growing number of al Qaeda-linked jihadist groups operating in the region.”

I would like to quote an extract from a letter that India’s modern sage, philosopher & nationalist leader Sri Aurobindo had written in Dec 1946 to late Surendra Mohan Ghose, Congress leader who had started his revolutionary life with the Jugantar group at Mymensingh then East Bengal. The letter speaks about the grouping that was to be effectuated by the Cabinet Mission Plan, Sri Aurobindo points out the dangers of Hindus becoming a minority in Assam & of how Pakistan will eventually decimate Hindus in the region. The last part of the letter is especially apt & unnervingly true when looked at from the present perspective, 60 years later:

“…As for Assam, will the Assamese consent to commit suicide? For that is what the grouping means if it is a majority vote that decides in the group. The Hindus of Bengal and Assam joining together in the section of the Assembly will not have a majority. This opens a prospect that the League (Muslim League) in this group may dictate a constitution which will mean the end of the Assamese people and of Hinduism in Assam. They may so arrange that the tribes of Assam are constituted into a separate element not participating in the Assam Provincial Assembly but parked off from it. The constituencies of the province could then be so arranged as to give the Mussalmans an automatic majority. Assam could then be flooded with Mahomedan colonies from Bengal and Assam could be made safe for Pakistan; after that the obliteration of Hinduism in the province could be carried out either by an immediate and violent or a gradual process once the separation of India into Pakistan and Hindusthan had been effected.

We hope your leaders are alive to the dangers of the situation…”

The situation today is chillingly real & dangers have been allowed to gradually blow out of proportion:

“Assam could then be flooded with Mahomedan colonies from Bengal” [referred to East Bengal then now Bangladesh]: the sustained, deliberate infiltration of Islamic population engineered from Bangladesh into Assam which is gradually changing the demography of the districts by making them Muslim dominated & reducing the clout & numbers of Hindus & thus gaining greater control of the whole electoral process.

“Assam could be made safe for Pakistan”: infiltration is being jointly carried out by the Pakistan & Bangladesh ruling clique so as to make the area safe for their anti-India designs. Pakistan has also begun to wield considerable clout with the Bangladeshi ruling class & fundamentalist political parties so that its operations in Assam are given support from across. Funding of the NE insurgent groups have been undertaken with urgency & the Islamisation of the whole movement is being carried out apace, note also the joint anti-India , anti-Hindu operation carried out by the ISI & DGFI in the recent past.

“After that the obliteration of Hinduism in the province”: that the targeted killings of Hindi speaking labourers, the bomb blasts etc are all attempts to obliterate Hindus & Hinduism in the province through a violent method is now quite evident. The deliberate, motivated, district-wise infiltration of islamic population from Bangaldesh is the implementation of a gradual process for the obliteration of Hinduism in the region, both are being executed with clinical accuracy.

The Sage had foreseen it all, but our present leaders deliberately look the other way & allow the dangers to unfold for the lure of power. We are thus left-sitting on a lethal powder-keg facing one of the deadliest situation as a country, a situation which questions & endangers our unity & sovereignty as a a nation & questions our identity & existence as Hindus.