To Understand AntiCAB Protests in Northeast, Look at Jharkhand

A big shot editor while explaining the CAB and situation in Assam and its neighbouring states, puts the majority of Tribes of Assam under the Hindu religion. And when taking about the Tripura he accepts that tribes over there have been pushed to minority by immigrant Hindu Bengalis who rule the place now. And he calls it a democracy, the logic of numbers! And he also go on saying that how people from northeast are now working in main land India which is good sign and it should happen both ways.

If a people from northeast go for job, they go for livelihood and not to replace the cultural ethos of that place with theirs or capture the power or to rule unlike the migrants do in their places.

Look at Jharkhand, only for the namesake it is a tribal state. Tribal constitute 26% of the state’s population. Post industrialization, most of it has become the interstate colonization by Bihar / Bengal. Tribal population in the most of cities / town is either negligible or has decreased drastically in last few decades. And until very recently none of the tribal languages were recognized by the state. Now they are under secondary languages along with Bhojpuri, Bengali, Maithli (seriously !!!) and other native languages of the state.

We owe it to the “Jharkhand Movement” that Jharkhand still has ‘Tribalness’ in it and is recognized by its Tribal culture. Otherwise it would have been completely a colony of the neighbouring states.

Our cultural and ethnic identity supersedes the religious identity. More often we confuse with the both as one. Assam clearly understands the how CAB is going harm their cultural fabric and affect them politically in future. They are opposing all the illegal immigrants irrespective of their religions. We should not look at it from the religious binary of Hindu or Muslim as we are told to but from the Indigenous psyche which likes to identity themselves by its linguistic and cultural ethos.