"Immigration, Ethnic Conflict and Political Turmoil: Assam 1979-85," Asian Survey 26, 11...

Immigration, Ethnic Conflict, and Political Turmoil--Assam, 1979-1985Author(s): Sanjib BaruahSource: Asian Survey, Vol. 26, No. 11 (Nov., 1986), pp. 1184-1206Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2644315 .

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IMMIGRATION, ETHNIC CONFLICT, AND POLITICAL TURMOIL-ASSAM, 1979-1 985

Sanjib Baruah

The Assam accord signed on August 15, 1985, between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and leaders of the movement that demanded the expulsion and disenfranchisement of "foreigners" marked the end of six years of ethnic conflict and political instability in the state of Assam in northeastern India. The political turmoil began in the fall of 1979 when the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AGSP), an ad hoc coalition of a few regional political and cultural organizations, sponsored a campaign drawing attention to the problem of illegal immigration into the state, mostly from Bangladesh. Relying on census data and electoral rolls that showed significantly higher rates of growth of population and of voters in Assam compared to that in the rest of the country, the movement leaders demanded that the central government take steps to identify, disenfranchise, and deport illegal aliens. Several rounds of negotiations between the government of India and the movement leaders failed to reach agreement on modes of determining the legality of alleged illegal aliens and on retroactively legalizing the status of some of the aliens. The years since 1979 saw governmental instability, sustained civil disobedience campaigns, and some of the worst ethnic violence in the history of post-independence India, including the killing of 3,000 people during the February 1983 elections. The Assam accord in- corporated significant concessions by the Government of India to the movement's demands. Fresh elections were held to the State Assembly in December 1985 and a new regional party, the Asom Gana Parishad

Sanjib Baruah is Assistant Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. This article was written while he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

? 1986 by The Regents of the University of California

1184



SANJIB BARUAH 1185

(AGP), was elected to power, which marked the return to political nor- malcy in the state.'

This article will analyze this episode of political turmoil in which ethnic conflict was a central theme. The events in Assam once again underline the volatility of ethnic conflicts in the politics of South Asia. The course of events reflects the changing and oscillating nature of ethnicity and the central role of manipulation of cultural symbols by elites in the formation of ethnic identities, emphasized in recent scholarship on ethnicity.2 How- ever, while some of these recent theoretical perspectives are more useful than approaches that explain ethnic mobilization in terms of primordial givens or structural factors such as economic underdevelopment or split labor markets, the focus on identity formation even with an "instrumentalist" orientation cannot sufficiently explain certain aspects of the Assam events-for example, the variability of ethnic alignments and the changing political saliency of ethnicity in the short run. In the course of the Assam movement, the leaders constantly confronted the problem of political management of the coalition in support of their demands. The task was only partly a matter of reproduction of Assamese ethnic identity through manipulation of Assamese cultural and historical symbols. To a significant extent it also involved downplaying the ethnic Assamese identity in order to maintain a broad coalition. Apart from Assamese cultural and historical symbols, the movement leaders drew on legal and constitutional argu- ments and symbols as well. Despite the presence of ethnic themes in the process of political mobilization, constitutional values significantly struc- tured the demands of the movement.

In Assam, ethnic categories cannot be viewed as primordial givens that take determinate political forms. They are better thought of as political projects: attempts at organizing particular forms of ethnic solidarity. Such attempts, of course, are not always successful. Ethnic boundaries therefore are fluid. For instance, at certain times linguistically defined ethnic solidarity may be salient; at other times religiously defined solidarity

1. The use of the spelling "Asom" by the new party, which is closer to the Assamese pronunciation than the conventional Anglicized spelling "Assam," signifies the assertion of cultural pride that accompanied the Assam movement.

2. Paul Brass has developed an "instrumentalist" model of ethnic political mobilization, which he contrasts with the "primordialist" model. Brass's model emphasizes the role of manipulation of cultural symbols by elites in the creation of ethnic identities. See Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974). On the notion of ethnic oscillation according to situational requirements, see Judith Nagata, "What Is Malay? Situational Selection of Ethnic Identity in a Plural Society," American Ethnologist, 1:2 (May 1974), p. 346. On ethnic change, see Charles F. Keyes, ed., Ethnic Change (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981).



1186 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXVI, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 1986

may become salient; and at other times neither form of ethnic solidarity may be salient. Nor are the boundaries of particular forms of loyalty, say, of language loyalty, determinate. Since bilingualism is widespread, particular groups may express solidarity with speakers of one or the other language. Thus the scope of the ethnic category "Assamese" can be exclusive or inclusive. It is therefore significant that none of the political or cultural organizations that were behind the Assam movement, e.g., the All Assam Students Union, Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (The Assam Organiza- tion for Peoples' Struggle), Asom Sahitya Sabha (The Literature Society of Assam [not Assamese Literary Society]), and the new political party, the Asom Gana Parishad (The Peoples' Association of Assam), have the word "Assamese" or the autonym "Asamiya" attached to them. Instead they refer to the territory of Assam. This can be called an open-door approach to the self-definition of an ethnic group: an effort at an inclusive as opposed to an exclusive definition that adapts to the imperatives of cultural diversity and the logic of ethnic oscillation according to situational requirements and continual ethnic change. Thus an inclusive definition of the term Assamese would in effect be a coalition that would include all residents of Assam; an exclusive definition could include only those actually speaking the Assamese language or perhaps only those who are indigenous speakers of the language rather than recent immigrants. Other ethnic categories such as "Bengalis," "Bengali Hindus," "Bengali Muslims," "Assamese Hindus," "Assamese Muslims," "Hindus," "Muslims," "Bodos," and statutory categories such as "plain tribals" or "minorities," or a category like "tea garden workers" are all political projects that have more or less political saliency and differing incorporating capacities at different points of time. The same applies to some caste groupings as well. Politics constitutes and reconstitutes these categories. An ethnic group therefore is an ethnic coalition potentially divisible into many smaller ethnic subgroups. It follows that there are weak links in all ethnic projects, and even in subethnic projects. In the course of the Assam movement, strains on the Assamese ethnic coalition developed around some of these weak links. But before turning to the political turmoil of recent years, I will provide a background of Assam's demographic transformation and ethnic diversity.

Immigration and Ethnic Diversity in a Frontier Region

The factor underlying the political turmoil is the demographic transformation of the frontier region, which includes the present state of Assam as well as other smaller states in northeastern India, through large-scale im-



SANJIB BARUAH 1187

migration from many parts of the subcontinent, but mostly from the land- scarce neighboring areas of East Bengal, over the past one hundred years. Table 1 compares population growth rates of the present territory of As- sam and the rest of the country.

TABLE 1 Population Growth Rate in Assam and India (percentage)

Years Assam India

1901-11 16.8 5.7 1911-21 20.2 -0.3 1921-31 20.1 11.0 1931-41 20.5 14.2 1941-51 20.1 13.3 1951-61 35.0 21.6 1961-71 35.2 24.8 1971-81(estimated) 36.3 24.7

SOURCE: Myron Weiner, "The Political Demography of Assam's Anti-Immigrant Movement," in Population and Development Review, 9:2 (June 1983), p. 283.

The census figures permit some rough estimates of the number of immigrants in Assam. Myron Weiner has noted that had Assam's population grown at the same rate as the rest of India between 1901 and 1971, the population in 1971 would have been 7.6 million rather than 15 million. It is likely that immigrants and their descendants account for the 7.4 million difference. However, since large-scale immigration started in the nine- teenth century, with the opening of tea plantations, Weiner also makes an estimate based on projection from the 1891 census. Immigrants and their descendants would then number 8.5 million and locals and their descendants 6.5 million-a minority.3

Even without immigration, Assam's indigenous population is extremely diverse in cultural, linguistic, and religious terms. The 1971 census classi- fies Assam's population into speakers of 76 languages and dialects and a residual category consisting of 48 other languages and dialects. Table 2 lists only those languages that were declared as mother tongue by more than 50,000 people.

3. Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soil. Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 81. For a comparable exercise, see Atul Goswami and Jayanta Gogoi, "Migration and Demographic Transformation of Assam, 1901-1971," in B. L. Abbi, ed., Northeast Region: Problems and Prospects of Development (Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, 1984), pp. 60-80.




TABLE 2 Major Language Groups in Assam, 1971

Number of Speakers Percentage of Total Language (as mother tongue) Population

1. Assamese 8,904,917 60.89 2. Bengali 2,882,039 19.71 3. Hindi 792,481 5.42 4. Bodo 533,713 3.65 5. Gorkhali/Nepali 349,116 2.39 6. Mikir 191,354 1.31 7. Miri/Mishing 177,226 1.21 8. Oriya 150,196 1.03 9. Manipuri/Meitei 87,167 0.60

10. Santali 86,086 0.59 11. Munda 76,894 0.53 12. Garo 76,004 0.52 13. Others 317,959 2.17

Total 14,625,152 100.02

SOURCE: Adapted from table in Census of India, 1971, Series 3: Assam, Part 1-A, General Report (Government of India, Controller of Publications, 1979), p. 90.

Of the languages that appear in Table 2, Assamese is an indigenous language. While speakers of Bengali are mostly immigrants in the districts of the Brahmaputra valley, Bengali is an indigenous language in Cachar district where, according to the 1971 census, 77.8% of the population spoke Bengali.4 Hindi, Gorkhali/Nepali, Oriya, Santhali, and Munda are languages spoken by immigrant groups. Bodo, Mikir, Miri/Mishing, and Garo are indigenous languages, the first three being spoken by groups that fall within the statutory category "plains tribals." As for religious beliefs, the 1971 census records 72.5% of Assam's population as Hindus, 24.6% as Muslims, 2.61% Christians, and smaller numbers of Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and residuals.

It should be remembered, however, that the census figures cannot be taken as indicators of a prepolitical and static objective reality about ethnic diversity. To a large extent they reflect a group's subjective ethnic identifi- cation, which is changeable over time. The category Assamese speakers, for instance, is not unambiguous. The total number of Assamese speakers

4. Of course indigenous and migrant are only relative terms. Many indigenous groups too were descendants of migrants. Here migrant groups refer to groups that were part of the modern migration since the mid-19th century.



SANJIB BARUAH 1189

in the census is likely to include substantial numbers of immigrants who may or may not actually speak Assamese. Large numbers of East Bengali Muslim peasant immigrants into the state identify themselves as Assa- mese-speaking, resulting in a rise of Assamese speakers in the area that constitutes Assam today from 36% in 1931 to 62% in 1951 to 61% in 1971.

The Number of "Foreigners" The leaders of the Assam movement argue that all immigrants from foreign countries, mostly from East Bengal-that is, the province of East Pakistan from 1947 to 1971 that became the sovereign state of Ban- gladesh-and from Nepal, except those who were legally granted citizenship status in India, are illegal aliens. How many "foreigners" are there in Assam? This question, at the crux of the political turmoil in Assam, un- fortunately is extremely difficult to answer. According to estimates made by organizations behind the Assam movement, the number is as high as 4.5 to 5 million, or 31% to 34% of the total population of the state in 197 1.5

The problem of estimation arises for a number of reasons. There are no official records of the entry of illegal aliens. The only source for making estimates is the census, but there are several problems with using the census data. The only set of relevant census data that are likely to provide a direct estimate is the data on birthplace, but it is unlikely that immigrants of dubious legal status would provide accurate information on this. The language data are not helpful because of the tendency of Bengali Muslim immigrants to declare Assamese as their mother tongue. Most census- based estimates therefore are based on calculating the difference between the assumed natural rate of population growth and the actual rate of growth. This approach, apart from the methodological problems of arriv- ing at an accurate natural rate of population growth of Assam, obviously does not allow for differentiation between immigrants from the rest of In- dia and from foreign countries. Furthermore, since there was no census in Assam in 1981 because of the political turmoil, even such crude estimates are not possible for the period 1971 to 1981 when, according to partisans of the Assam movement, large-scale immigration took place.

Perhaps the lowest estimate is that which could be deduced from the census data on birthplace. According to the estimates made on the basis of

5. This estimate is made by the North East Regional Students Union, an organization that attempted to focus on the issue of "foreigners" in all seven states of northeastern India. Cited by Debo Prasad Barooah, "Silent Civilian Invasion: India's Danger in the Northeast," in Abbi, p. 291.




these figures, there were 1.6 million foreign nationals with or without valid documents in Assam in 1971, amounting to 11 % of the 1971 population of Assam. Estimates of the difference between the projected population based on Assam's natural rate of population growth and the actual population puts the number of immigrants into Assam at 1.9 million, or 13% of the 1971 population.6 These estimates are significantly lower than the estimates cited by the organizations behind the Assam movement. While their estimates are likely to be exaggerations, it should be remembered that the present estimates are only valid for the number of immigrants in 1971. These figures are also lower than the Myron Weiner's estimates of Assam's immigrant population cited above. Weiner's estimate, which suggests that immigrants and their descendants constituted a majority of Assam's 1971 population, is based on the difference between Assam's actual 1971 population and the projected population based on Assam's 1891 and 1901 cen- suses. While one must carefully distinguish estimates of foreigners from estimates of immigrants and descendants, the latter are nonetheless significant for understanding Assam's ethnic politics.

From Ethnic Accommodation to Ethnic Conflict

The issue of immigration from East Bengal had caused political instability in the area prior to the independence and partition of India in 1947. How- ever, between independence and the Assam movement that began in 1979, it had not been a subject of major political controversy.7 Two factors that helped keep the immigration issue out of the political agenda were, first, the centrality of language issues in defining the contours of ethnic conflicts in the state and, second, the aggregation of interests within political parties, primarily the Congress, but in other parties as well, which in effect produced a tacit agreement among political leaders not to raise this explo- sive issue.

Since independence, the ethnic Assamese political leadership, in response to popular campaigns, pursued cultural policies that sought to de- fine the state as Assamese-for instance to have Assamese as the official language of the state and as the language of instruction in the state's edu- cational institutions. They also made claims to preferential policies in

6. These two estimates are from Goswami and Gogoi, pp. 66, 63. 7. For a discussion of the immigration issue in Assam politics in the preindependence

period, see Amalendu Guha, "East Bengal Immigrants and Bhasani in Assam Politics 1928-47," Indian History Congress, Proceedings of the Thirty-fifth Session, Jadavpur (Cal- cutta), 1974 (New Delhi: Indian History Congress, n.d.), pp. 348-365.



SANJIB BARUAH 1191

jobs.8 The creation of a linguistic state superimposed on Assam's ethnic diversity and demographic transformation had assuaged the fears of the ethnic Assamese and, despite the alienation of significant segments of As- sam's indigenous "tribal" population, it had managed to achieve ethnic accommodation in the residual state of Assam. The Bengali Muslim immigrants allied with the ethnic Assamese on cultural policy issues, while Bengali Hindus were among the most vociferous opponents of these policies.

The immigration issue, however, had occasionally burst into the open in the politics of the state since independence. In 1965 when relations with Pakistan were deteriorating, the state government under instructions from New Delhi began expelling Pakistani "infiltrators."9 But the process had to be stopped when eleven members of the state Legislative Assembly pro- tested that Indian Muslims were being harassed in the process, and threatened to resign. Major Muslim politicians from Assam such as Fakh- ruddin Ali Ahmed, who became the President of India, and Moinul Haque Chaudhuri, who was a member of the central cabinet in the early 1970s, were persuaded to relinquish their claims to the state's chief ministership and leave state politics because it was feared that such moves, which might suggest growing immigrant political power, might be politically destabi- lizing. 10

With the Assam movement that started in 1979 the issue of Assam's demographic transformation as a result of immigration returned to the state's political agenda with a vengeance. It ruptured carefully nurtured ethnic coalitions that were at the foundation of political stability in the state, setting the stage for a prolonged period of political turmoil.

The Assam movement began in 1979 after a bye-election to the Man- galdoi parliamentary constituency, which is located in an area with a heavy concentration of East Bengali immigrants, drew public attention to a rapid expansion of the number of voters since the previous election two

8. Myron Weiner, "Seeking Ethnic Equality in Assam," in Myron Weiner and Mary Fain- sod Katzenstein, India's Preferential Policies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 91-119.

9. Ironically, at that time the government of India's position on illegal immigration from East Pakistan was quite close to the position later taken up by the leaders of the Assam movement. See the pamphlet on that issue published by the Indian government: Influx. Infiltration From East Pakistan (Delhi: DAVP, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1963).

10. K. N. Deka, "Assam: The Challenge of Political Integration and Congress Leader- ship," in Iqbal Narain, ed., State Politics in India (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1976), pp. 34, 45.




years earlier. The event followed reports of fresh large-scale illegal immigration from Bangladesh into the state.

On June 8, 1979, the All Assam Students Union sponsored a 12-hour general strike bandd) in the state to demand the "detection, disenfranchisement and deportation" of foreigners. That event turned out to be only the first of a protracted series of protest actions. On August 26, 1979, the AGSP was formed as an ad hoc coalition to coordinate a sustained statewide movement. An unprecedented mass popular upsurge followed in the form of sit-ins, picketings in front of government offices, strikes, and symbolic disobedience of the law.

Between 1980 and 1982, there were 23 negotiating sessions between the movement leaders and the central government. Even though the Assam movement had immense popular support, there was considerable disagree- ment on the demands of the movement in Assam as well as in the rest of the country. For the government of India the political costs of agreeing to those demands would have been high.11 By the end of 1982, there was agreement that illegal aliens who came between 1951 and 1961 would be given Indian citizenship and that those who came after 1971 would be deported, but the status of those who came between 1961 and 1971 was unresolved. It was reported that in the negotiations of October 1980, the government's position was that these immigrants should stay and the government would pay for their rehabilitation. There were also disagreements on the procedures to be used for the detection of aliens-that is, on the kind of documents to be relied upon to prove when a person had actually immigrated. The Assam movement leaders combined negotiations with general strikes and civil disobedience campaigns designed to demonstrate their power capability.12

The Assam movement succeeded in significantly disrupting the func- tioning of the governmental institutions in Assam, including the 1980 par-

11. To treat Hindu immigrants from East Pakistan and what subsequently became Ban- gladesh as illegal, irrespective of what the citizenship laws state, would have alienated significant sections of Hindu opinion in the country. On the other hand, to explicitly distinguish between Hindu "refugees" and Muslim "illegal aliens" would have cut into the secular fabric of the state and would have alienated India's Muslim minority. To expel "foreigners" would also have political costs internationally in terms of India's relations with Bangladesh: the official Bangladeshi position is that there are no illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in India.

12. The notion of power capability is borrowed from Charles W. Andersen. In delineating the contours of the Latin American political system, where there are various contenders for power with different political resources, he noted: "As a strike may demonstrate the power capability of a labor union, or insurrection that of a military faction, so election tests and demonstrates the power capability of a political party." Politics and Economic Change in Latin America (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1967), p. 94.



SANJIB BARUAH 1193

liamentary elections and the Assembly elections in 1983. The leadership of the movement declared established political parties to be "irrelevant" to the problems of the state and successfully mobilized campaigns of nonrecognition of elected state governments, arguing that they were elected on the basis of invalid electoral rolls that included the names of large numbers of illegal aliens. President's Rule had to be imposed intermittently as elected governments lost their majorities in the State Assembly. Since negotiations appeared unlikely to produce a settlement, the Indian govern- nent sought to reassert the legitimacy of the governmental institutions and attempted to cut into the popular base of the Assam movement by seeking to wean away ethnic subgroups that constitute weak links in the Assamese ethnic coalition. These efforts, combined with the strains caused by the movement itself, repeatedly changed the ethnic alignments in the state. However, the movement remained quite strong. The political crisis was eventually resolved when the Indian government recognized the power capability of the movement and made important concessions to their demands. This once again altered the conditions of Assam's ethnic politics. It is useful to view the political developments in Assam of the past six years in terms of changes in the government's strategy and their impact on ethnic alignments. Five phases can be distinguished: (1) June 1979 to November 1980; (2) December 1980 to January 1983; (3) the election of February 1983; (4) March 1983 to May 1984; and (5) June 1984 to Decem- ber 1985.

Festival of Protest The first phase of the Assam movement started with demonstrations and rallies with widespread participation by ethnic Assamese in support of the demands. This phase began with a mood of optimism about a negotiated settlement and ended with considerable pessimism about the prospects of a solution and signs of increasing fissures in the Assamese ethnic coalition. The movement began in the last days of the Janata period. The Janata ministry headed by Golap Borbora collapsed in September 1979, and the ramshackle coalition ministry that came to power, headed by Jogen Hazarika and consisting of factions of the erstwhile Janata Party, fell within three months. President's Rule was imposed in December 1979 until the following December, when a Congress (I) government came to power. That inaugurated a new phase in the state's politics. The first phase began with festive and mostly peaceful protest actions, but with some reports of ethnic violence. Ethnic conflicts and signs of confrontation between the government and the movement began to show by the




middle of 1980. The next phase marked a significant accentuation of these trends.

A report of an investigation committee of the Delhi-based Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties gives a flavor of the early phase of the Assam movement. In a satyagraha (symbolic disobedience of the law) in Novem- ber 1979 nearly 700,000 people in the city of Gauhati and an estimated two million people in the state as a whole courted arrest. "The satyagraha," says the report, "is fairly simple. People walk to the High Court in Gauhati or some such office in other towns, court arrest and are released a few hours later." The entire government machinery, said the report, was party to the satyagraha. "The Government of Assam," a witness told the committee, "is running the movement and the AASU is running the government."13 In December 1979, the civil disobedience campaign was ex- tended to an economic blockade, and movement supporters stopped the flow of crude oil and plywood from Assam to the rest of the country. Sup- port for the movement by officials of the state government and the fact that such officials, most of whom were ethnic Assamese, were often in charge of dealing with protest actions, kept confrontation between the state and the movement to a minimum. Even when the government adopted a tough posture, usually as a result of proddings by the central government, confrontations between the protesters and the police were avoided.

With enthusiastic support for the demands of the movement by major sectors of Assamese intellectual and cultural life-for example, literary so- cieties, cultural associations, newspapers, magazines, and school and college teachers associations, apart from the leadership role of the All Assam Students Union-the Assam movement had extremely broad support among the ethnic Assamese. The campaign, in which hundreds of thousands participated with displays of distinctive Assamese cultural and historical symbols, acquired the appearance of a statewide cultural festival. Individuals and organizations with influence among segments of the "plains tribals," a group that had lost significant amounts of cultivable land to East Bengali immigrants over time, and of tea plantation workers also supported the movement. There were, however, some distinguished ethnic Assamese intellectuals and political figures, mostly of the political left, who were opposed to the movement. They complained of a suffocat- ing intellectual atmosphere where there was little room for dissent. There were reports of terrorist attacks on opponents of the movement.

The ethnic subgroups directly threatened by the demands of the movement were the East Bengali immigrants, both Hindu and Muslim. The

13. "Magnitude of Assam Disorder: Report of PUCL Team," Mainstream (New Delhi) 18:28 (March 8, 1980), pp. 18-21.



SANJIB BARUAH 1195

increasing tendency to lump all East Bengali immigrants as "Ban- gladeshis" irrespective of when they came, did little to assuage their fears. There were reports of increasing violence against East Bengali immigrants in the atmosphere created by the movement, even though the violence was condemned by the sponsors of the movement. Initially the attitude of most East Bengali immigrants was to lie low, and there were few efforts to present an organized opposition to the Assam movement by groups directly threatened by its demands.

Immigrants from other states of India also felt insecure. The leaders of the movement had to do some careful conflict management to assuage the fears of some of these groups. Despite the support for the movement by important organizations of tea workers, there were reports of clashes between tea workers and student picketers attempting to close down tea plantations. The AASU responded by excluding tea plantations from picketing, and the assistance of tea workers' unions was sought in order to explain to the workers that the agitation was not directed against them. 14

The leaders of the movement called for a boycott of the parliamentary elections of December 1979 unless the government agreed to remove the names of foreigners from the rolls. Potential candidates were asked not to contest elections until the electoral rolls were revised. Picketing of candidates by movement supporters led to confrontations with the police. Own- ers of printing presses in Assam refused to print the electoral rolls for the election. As a result of the boycott, the election that returned Indira Gan- dhi to power nationally could be held only in two constituencies in Assam, located in the predominantly Bengali-speaking Cachar district. Elections had to be canceled in twelve of Assam's fourteen parliamentary constituencies.

By May 1980 ethnic subgroups directly threatened by the demands of the movement began to form organizations to oppose these demands. In May 1980, a new organization, the All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU), which attempted to include both Muslim and Hindu East Ben- gali immigrant students, appeared on the scene to rival the AASU. While not disputing the seriousness of the problem of illegal immigration, the AAMSU demanded that all immigrants who came before 1971 be given citizenship status and that harassment against minorities be stopped. The AASU opposed the new organization, and in certain strong immigrant strongholds strike calls on days that AAMSU had called for protest demonstrations led to violent conflicts between AASU and AAMSU support-

14. U.M., "Assam: Set for Confrontation," Economic and Political Weekly, 14:49 (De- cember 8, 1979), pp. 1993-1994, and Udayon Misra, "Fresh Tensions in Tea Belt," Economic and Political Weekly, 15:31 (August 2, 1980), p. 1300.




ers. Apart from ethnic violence, a growing number of terrorist attacks on state officials and state property began to be reported in Assam.

By September 1980 the immigrant organizations had become a third force in the negotiations on the Assam movement's demands. The government invited AAMSU leaders to Delhi for consultation during the negotiations between the government and the movement leaders. The leader of the Assam Congress (I), Anwara Taimur, who was elected to the state Assembly from a heavily East Bengali immigrant constituency and was seen as a representative of immigrant interests, was also in Delhi during the negotiations.

As the negotiations appeared less and less likely to produce an agreement, the movement leaders intensified their protest actions. The government attempted to raise the costs of participation in the movement by using more and more coercion in dealing with protesters and by taking disciplinary actions against state government officials who participated in the movement. The Assamese press that was sympathetic to the demands of the movement came under censorship. In November 1980 the Indian army was used to break the eleven-month-old oil blockade.

Confrontation The inauguration of a Congress (I) government led by an Assamese Mus- lim, Anwara Taimur, in December 1980 marked a new phase in the Assam movement. The Taimur government, formed as a result of defections to the Congress (I) from other parties, survived for only six months. Presi- dent's Rule was then imposed once again in June 1981. In January 1982 a new Congress (I) government led by Keshab Gogoi came to power, but survived only two months. In March 1982 President's Rule was imposed once again and the State Assembly, elected in 1978 under very different political conditions, was dissolved. The dissolution of the State Assembly meant that the day of reckoning in Assam was approaching because the constitution did not allow for the extension of President's Rule beyond a year and elections would have had to take place unless the constitution itself was amended. Yet it was unlikely that an election could be held without an agreement between the movement leaders and the government.

The decision to end President's Rule and to form a state government in December 1980 had indicated New Delhi's decision to challenge the power capability of the movement and to back electoral institutions that reflected the demographic realities of the state. The movement's power capability lay on the streets, since it could mobilize the ethnic Assamese almost to a person, but the same power capability cannot be translated into electoral strength because of the state's ethnic diversity and transformed demo-



SANJIB BARUAH 1197

graphic reality. Not unexpectedly, the movement leaders greeted the state government with a call for a general strike. The government, whom the leaders of the movement refused to "recognize" as legitimate, had to rule with maximum police protection and minimal public visibility.

The Taimur government took action against ethnic Assamese government officials who were known sympathizers of the movement, including the arrest of one of the top-most police officials of the state. In order to use coercive measures against the movement, Taimur effectively had to trans- form the state bureaucracy. For instance, her personal secretariat, it was reported, had only Muslim gazetted officers or executives.15 These measures accentuated the legitimacy crisis in the state, for the process appeared to be one of de-Assamization of the state bureaucracy and it reinforced the fear of Assamese minoritization, the loss of Assamese hegemony to immigrants. The election of Taimur to the chief ministry of the state itself had ruptured the subtle rules on ethnic accommodation in Assam's politics.16

In the months following the inauguration of the Taimur ministry, there was an increase in the incidence of violence. In April 1981, one of the state's highest-ranking civil servants, who was identified with measures to tighten discipline among state government employees, was killed in a terrorist bomb attack. There were signs of tensions in the Assamese ethnic coalition. However, there was little evidence of any significant erosion of the movement's support base in the ethnic Assamese areas of the Brahma- putra valley. State coercion was a double-edged device. While it was expected to increase the costs of participation in the movement, it also reinforced a sense of justice of the cause, while the erosion of influence of ethnic Assamese officials reinforced the fears of Assamese minoritization. The choice of Gogoi as chief minister in January 1982 was an attempt to limit the damage. Gogoi, an ethnic Assamese, was Ahom by caste,17 which was another potential weak link in the Assamese ethnic coalition. While his government survived for only two months, the period was char- acterized by a somewhat reduced level of coercive actions and the release of the senior ethnic Assamese police official arrested by the Taimur government.

The President's Rule regime that was brought in after the collapse of the Gogoi government in March 1982 once again went about the task of

15. "Plains Tribals Save Assam's Ministry," Sunday, 8:32 (April 5, 1981), p. 34. 16. See Deka, "Assam," pp. 34, 45. 17. The Ahoms, whose forefathers immigrated from present-day Thailand into Assam and

ruled Assam for six centuries before the British, are now considered a separate ethnic Assa- mese caste. There had been a rise of Ahom awareness of separateness from the ethnic Assa- mese in the years prior to the Assam movement.




cleansing the administration of officials in sympathy with the movement. There was increasing use of coercion. By January 1983 it was reported that the capital city of Gauhati and the towns of the Brahmaputra Valley were "virtually armed camps." In view of the "presumed unreliability" of the state police forces, paramilitary forces were brought in from the center and from other states. On the streets of the capital city, according to an Economic and Political Weekly editorial, there was "a premium in not being an Assamese," because ethnic Assamese young men were likely to be arrested and beaten up. The Republic Day celebration of January 26, 1983, which was boycotted by movement supporters, turned into a "bla- tant display of military muscle against its citizens.""8

The twenty-third round of negotiations between the government and the movement leaders took place in December 1982 amid reports that the government was determined to hold elections in Assam by March 1983.

The Breakdown of Order The State Assembly election of February 1983 marked the breakdown of Assam's framework of ethnic accommodation and of political order. The election was a direct challenge of the central government to the Assam movement. The election was to be held on the basis of the electoral rolls prepared in 1979, which had precipitated the Assam movement. No attempt was made to revise the rolls to incorporate the points of agreement between the movement leaders and the government-that is, to remove the names of post-1971 immigrants from the rolls. Indeed, apart from sidestepping all the thorny questions of illegal aliens that had rocked the state for three years, the use of four-year-old electoral rolls was problem- atic since it did not include voters who had come of age during the preceding four years.

The question in the election was not who would win, but whether there would be an election at all. The holding of the election became the focus of a contest between the Assam movement and the center. An election with a moderate to high turnout would have weakened the movement's claims about its representativeness and its power capability. The movement leaders, as expected, called for a boycott of the elections. They por- trayed the election as Assam's "last struggle for survival." The East Bengali immigrants, on the other hand, had few alternatives but to display their appreciation of the center's support for their cause by participating in the voting in large numbers. The breakdown of the framework of ethnic accommodation was complete.

18. "Fraud in Assam," Economic and Political Weekly, 18:3 (January 29, 1983).



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Voter participation mostly followed a pattern predictable from the ethnic settlement patterns. In constituencies where Bengalis were predomi- nant, the polling was high; in Assamese strongholds, it was low. The attitude to the election, however, did not vary only across the Assamese- Bengali divide. The developments of the preceding two years had led to fissures in the weak links of the Assamese ethnic coalition. Moreover, apart from the Congress (I), some opposition parties also contested the election. In areas where there were significant numbers of both pro-election and anti-election ethnic subgroups, violent confrontations took place. In a detailed investigative report, the Indian journalist Arun Shourie called the violence a "Hobbesian war of all against all":

They testified not so much to "communalism" as to the total breakdown of governance: in Nellie Lalung tribals killed Bengali Muslims, in Kokrajhar sub- division Boro Kacharis fought Bengali Hindus and Muslims; in Goreswar and Khairabari Sarani and Boro Kacharis fought Bengali Hindus; in Gohpur Boros fought Assamese Hindus; in Dhemaji and Jonai Mishing tribals fought Bengali Hindus and Muslims; in Samaguri Muslims killed Hindus; in Dhaila and Thekrabari again Muslims killed Hindus; in Chaowlkhowa Chapori Assamese Hindus and Muslims together killed Bengali Muslims. And each community that was a victim in one place was a predator in another.19

The pattern of violence reflected the total breakdown of order. If the violence did not follow neat ethnic cleavages, it is because of the oscillating and coalitional nature of ethnic projects in Assam. The violence took place along the weak links in ethnic coalitions. Most of the violence oc- curred as supporters of the election clashed with opponents. In so far as the attitude toward the election-which to many became Assam's "last struggle for survival"-defined the contours of ethnic conflict in Assam, the violence reflected the local variations in ethnic alignments.

The violence took place partly because of inadequate intervention by the police. Even though there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the election would be violent, the holding of an election amidst the prevailing ethnic and political polarization was no ordinary law and order problem. Arun Shourie's investigative report revealed that the government estimated that the election could be held safely in 30 of the 126 constituencies despite ethnic Assamese opposition. In 78 constituencies, polling was expected to be between 30% and 65% and in the rest between 1% to 30%.20 These estimates were probably based on calculations of settlement patterns of

19. Arun Shourie, "Assam Elections: Can Democracy Survive Them?," India Today, 8: 10 (May 31, 1983), p. 57.

20. Arun Shourie, "Assam Elections: Come What May," India Today, 8:9 (May 15, 1983), p. 56.




ethnic subgroups. A prior secret intelligence report had calculated that the ethnic Assamese were a minority in as many as 85 of the state's 126 constituencies.21

The government prepared for the anticipated disruption and poll violence by mobilizing large contingents of military and police forces from the rest of the country. The estimated need for security personnel was so high that the election was staggered over three days to allow for the movement of security personnel. Furthermore, all intelligence warnings about potential violent ethnic conflicts in areas other than the polling stations themselves had to be ignored in order to concentrate security personnel at the polling stations. One of these was from a local police official who warned that "one thousand Assamese villagers [are] getting ready to attack" East Bengali immigrant villages "with deadly weapons." That warning, which anticipated the massacre in Nellie that was reported widely in the international press, was filed three days before the massacre. According to official figures, 1,383 men, women, and children were killed in that massacre.22

The poll boycott was quite effective in the districts of the Brahmaputra Valley. Of Assam's 126 Assembly constituencies, only Congress (I) candidates contested and won unopposed in four constituencies. In 14 constituencies elections had to be canceled because of the "total breakdown of law and administration." In some strong ethnic Assamese constituencies, the polling was as low as 0.38% (269 voters), 0.40% (360 voters), and 0.68% (440 voters).23

Contest Between the State and the Movement The expectation of a moderately legitimate government was considerably undercut by the extent of the violence and the effectiveness of the boycott campaign. The election brought a new Congress (I) government headed by Hiteshwar Saikia, an ethnic Assamese who is Ahom by caste. The choice of an Ahom as chief minister for the second consecutive time is significant since there was a widespread perception that the Assam movement had its strongest support among ethnic Assamese "upper" castes.

The new government's strategy of dealing with the movement combined political maneuvering with the use of coercion. It sought to wean support away from the Assam movement by allocating governmental patronage to groups that constitute weak links in the Assamese ethnic coalition. The election violence had already strained the coalition. Ever since the election

21. "Suspended Agony," India Today, 7:22 (November 30, 1982), p. 26. 22. Shourie, "Assam Elections," pp. 65-66. 23. Jaswant Singh, "Assam's Crisis of Citizenship," Asian Survey, 24:10 (October 1984), p.

1067.



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of Anwara Taimur as chief minister there had been some signs that sections of ethnic Assamese Muslims might have had second thoughts about their participation in the movement. The large number of Muslim victims in the election violence and the national and international press coverage of it as a case of Muslims being killed strained the Assamese Muslim attitude toward the movement.24

By May 1983 there was indication of a split in the AASU. At a secret conclave, several Muslim members of the AASU leadership issued an ulti- matum to the AASU leadership demanding correction of a "pro-Hindu communal tilt." Their memorandum demanded a "firm definition" of a foreigner. The press gave some credit for the growing Hindu-Muslim rift in the ethnic Assamese coalition to the Saikia government.25

Rifts began to show in other weak links of the Assamese ethnic coalition as well. The election violence included some instances of conflict between ethnic Assamese opponents of the election and plains tribal supporters. In the following months important conferences of plains tribals made demands that emphasized their distinctiveness from the ethnic Assamese, demands that smacked of a rebellion from the Assamese coalition. These demands included recognition of Bodo as an associate official language, the adoption of the Roman script instead of the Assamese script for writing certain other tribal languages, and creation of autonomous districts and regions for plains tribals. The Saikia government probably played a significant role in these rifts: for instance, the government actively patronized the Bodo Sahitya Sabha and promoted it as a rival of the Assam Sahitya Sabha in plains tribal areas. The annual session of the organization was attended by most members of the Saikia cabinet. By contrast, the declin- ing share of government resources and patronage forced the Assam Sahi- tya Sabha to reconsider its involvement in the Assam movement.26

The leadership of the movement had to guard against the growing divi- sions in the movement. The election violence forced the leadership to sus- pend the movement and concentrate attention on healing the rifts in the Assamese coalition. In January 1984 the AASU held a National Conven- tion, which was attended by a number of prominent Assamese intellectuals as well as movement activists, in order to search for ways and means for

24. The political impact of the international coverage can be gauged by the fact that Indira Gandhi sent an emissary-an Assamese Muslim politician-to the Gulf countries to explain the situation in Assam. See "The Communal Divide," India Today, 8:9 (May 15, 1983), p. 31.

25. Ibid. p. 31. 26. Udayon Misra, "Assam Sahitya Sabha: Retreat from Populist Politics," Economic and

Political Weekly, 19:15 (April 14, 1984), p. 620-622.




"regeneration of the Assamese nationality and to provide a united socio- cultural as well as political platform." The emphasis on unity was a recognition of the impact of the rifts. At the second AASU convention in De- cember 1984, the need to adapt to the ethnic diversity of the state dominated the discussions. The convention formed a committee to complete the "process of political unification of the various ethnic groups of the Assamese people." There was discussion that stressed the need to include tea garden workers, Indian Nepalis, the tribal communities, and "already assimilated religious minorities" and "like-minded Indians" in future protest actions.27

The Saikia government tried to compete for legitimacy with the Assam movement by emphasizing that the government, led by an ethnic Assa- mese, was serious about stopping future immigration and about removing the names of post-1971 illegal aliens from the electoral rolls, on which there was agreement between the movement leaders and the central government. Other measures aimed at redefining the policy agenda in order to wean support away from the movement included the carving out of new administrative districts and subdivisions, and symbolic concessions to As- samese ethnic pride such as changing the English spelling of the Assamese city from the Anglicized Gauhati to the more Assamese Guwahati. The government secured popular support for some of these measures. For instance, the response to the calls for strikes by the movement leaders to greet the inauguration of the headquarters of the new districts was weak even in the movement's strongholds. "We should have ignored the move," said a AASU leader after the failure of their strike calls. "How do you expect people to protest against a step that upgraded their small towns to district headquarters?"28 Even though political maneuvering to break the Assamese coalition was a major part of the new government's strategy in dealing with the Assam movement, coercion also continued to play a major role. Journalists working for Assamese newspapers and magazines were the special targets of the new coercive measures. Many were arrested and beaten up in police lock-ups.29

The measures, however, failed to cut into the movement's popular base. During its 33-month rule, members of the Saikia cabinet were greeted by

27. Cited by Udayon Misra, "AASU's Search for a Alternative Platform," Economic and Political Weekly, 19:50 (December 15, 1984), p. 2115. The quotations are attributed to AASU leaders.

28. "Assam: Bracing For Showdown," India Today, 8:15 (August 15, 1983), p. 33. 29. For a description of an incident in which the police shot and killed seven ethnic Assa-

mese villagers, see Udayon Misra, "Remembering a Police Killing," Economic and Political Weekly, 19:17 (April 28, 1984). See also Udayon Misra, "Assam: Assertion of Regional Identity," Economic and Political Weekly, 21:1 (January 4, 1986), pp. 13-14.



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strikes and boycotts during their visits to ethnic Assamese areas. The sponsors of the movement refused to extend "recognition" to the Saikia government. The nonrecognition was effective enough that when the central government decided to return to the negotiating table in the spring of 1984, it carefully left out the Saikia government since its participation would have led the movement leaders to leave the talks. The agreement to dissolve the state Assembly when the Assam accord was signed was a con- cession to the movement's continued power capability.

Accommodation After 18 months, negotiations between the government of India and the movement leaders were initiated once again in April 1984. An accord was signed between prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and leaders of the Assam movement on August 15, 1985, India's Independence Day. According to the accord, illegal aliens who entered the state between January 1966 and March 1971 will be disenfranchised for ten years and those who came after March 1971 will be deported. The state Assembly elected in 1983 was dissolved and fresh elections based on revised electoral roles took place in December 1985. An amendment to India's citizenship law that was en- acted by the parliament in November 1985 stipulated that noncitizens who are found to have entered Assam between 1961 and 1971 will enjoy all rights of citizens except the right to vote for ten years.

The accommodation phase had begun in the middle of 1984. Several factors brought back an atmosphere of optimism about the prospects for a negotiated settlement. First, the central government recognized the movement's power capability by keeping the state government away from the negotiations. Second, administrative measures for revising electoral rolls, based on earlier points of agreement such as the disenfranchisement of post-1971 aliens, helped win the trust of the movement leadership. Third, even though the ice had been broken before the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the change of leadership in Delhi in late 1984 was a factor in the renewed goodwill between the center and the leaders of the movement.

Election officials were increasingly taking the AASU into their confi- dence in the process of revising the rolls. By the end of 1984 there was a break between the AASU, which supported the administrative process of revising the electoral rolls, and one of the regional political parties behind the movement which believed that the measures were unlikely to be effective. The AASU began to consider the formation of a new regional political party. Its second National Convention in December 1984 emphasized the need to bring together different ethnic subgroups in the Assamese ethnic coalition under a common political platform.




Once the accord was signed the revision of electoral rolls was taken up even more earnestly. The procedures followed were controversial. Critics claimed that a large number of names of legal citizens were removed from the electoral rolls.30 The final electoral roll on the basis of which the De- cember election was contested had 9,806,285 voters-689,715 fewer than on the updated electoral roll of October 1984, which listed 10,496,000 voters.31

After the signing of the accord, two new parties emerged: the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), formed by the student leaders of the Assam movement, and the United Minorities Front (UMF), formed by major East Ben- gali Hindu and Muslim politicians who had been members of the Congress (I). If the implementation of the Assam accord was the main issue for the AGP, the UMF demanded that the accord be scrapped. In the election the AGP won 64 seats and 35.17% of the popular vote, followed by the Congress (I) with 25 seats and 23.43% of the popular vote and the UMF with 17 seats and 11.09% of the votes.

The election results allow some preliminary formulations on the pattern of ethnic voting. While the UMF hoped to bring all "minorities"-for example, immigrant Muslims, Bengali Hindus, Assamese Muslims, Nepalis, and tribals-within its framework, it did not do well except for some major concentrations of East Bengali Muslims.32 The UMF faired poorly in Hindu Bengali areas where most voters seemed to have supported the Congress (I). The AGP itself came much closer to grasping the imperatives of Assam's transformed demographic reality as it entered the electoral fray and used "Minorities are not Foreigners, AGP for all, all for AGP" as a major campaign slogan.

The AGP came to power on a wave of popular support that was remark- ably inclusive: its appeal was not only to the ethnic Assamese, but to many other ethnic subgroups. The AGP won in major "plains tribal" constituences in Kokrajhar district, the autonomous district of Karbi An- glong, and the plains-tribal inhabited constituencies in the districts of Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, and Darrang. The AGP also won in constituencies that have major concentrations of tea plantation workers-mostly immigrants from Bihar, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh-and were traditional

30. For a critique of the procedures followed in the revision, see Sujit Choudhuri, "Elec- tion Commission and the Assam Accord," Economic and Political Weekly, 20:49 (December 7, 1985), pp. 2146-2147.

31. The 1984 figure is from "The Faces of Assam," Sunday, 12:50 (November 17-23, 1985). The figure of the final electorate is from Sentinel (Guwahati), December 30, 1985.

32. A pre-poll report had also concluded that the UMF's support was evident primarily among East Bengali Muslims, "Caste, Religion Crucial in Assam," Times of India, Novem- ber 15, 1985.



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strongholds of the Congress (I). The significant number of Muslims on the AGP's list of candidates suggests that the support for the Assam movement and the AGP among Assamese Muslims despite reversals during certain phases of the movement remained quite high. Certain sections of Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims too appear to have voted for the AGP. The AGP victory in the immigrant Bengali-Muslim dominated Barpeta Assembly and Parliamentary constituences and the Nowgong Par- liamentary constituency supports this hypothesis.33 This is not surprising when one considers the likely effect of the accord on reconstituting the basis for political alignments on the part of East Bengali immigrants. Apart from the disenfranchisement of significant numbers of aliens, the accord also legitimized the citizenship status of a large number of immigrants: those who came before 1966 and those who came between 1966 and 1971, who were to be legitimized in phases. The past tendency of East Bengali immigrant Muslims to vote as a bloc for the ruling party, which in that context was consistent with support for the ethnic Assamese project, was partly due to the insecurity that went with the legal ambiguity of their status, despite the inclusion of their names on the electoral rolls. To some extent the basis for that insecurity and bloc voting for the ruling party was gone. An Indian reporter surmised that some immigrants, "especially those surrounded by Assamese-speaking inhabitants voted for the AGP as a safe course."34 The support for the AGP among some sections of Ben- gali Muslims is also consistent with their support for ethnic Assamese causes in earlier controversies over cultural policy issues.

Conclusion The election results reflect ethnic polarization as well as new beginnings of ethnic accommodation. At one level the emergence of two new regional political parties-one based primarily on the ethnic Assamese and the other on those threatened by the demands of the Assam movement-indicates significant ethnic polarization. However, the inclusive nature of the AGP's support, in particular its ability to secure some support among Ben- gali Muslim immigrants, and the somewhat limited nature of the UMF's support indicate that the forces of polarization were mediated by the forces of accommodation.

One of the most significant effects of the Assam movement is that the immigration issue has been put firmly on the public agenda. Earlier

33. Some parts of this preliminary analysis parallels that of Udayon Misra, "Assam: As- sertion of Regional Identity," pp. 13-14.

34. "The Assam Showdown," Sunday, December 29, 1985-January 4, 1986, p. 47.




frameworks of ethnic accommodation attempted to obscure the immigration question. The AGP ministry has a new portfolio of Accord Imple- mentation under the chief minister. It indicates the importance attached to the issue by supporters of the Assam movement and of the AGP. Now that the issue has left the backrooms of political horse-trading, there is space for new innovations in dealing with the question. It is likely that electoral realities will bring about an approach to the problem that focuses more on stopping the future influx than on deporting those who are already there. New modes of incorporating illegal aliens-for example, the status of "guest workers" or of "permanent residents"-may be considered as options by a government that enjoys the trust of the ethnic Assamese on this question. However, the Assamese are unlikely to accept non-deportation of the post-1971 illegal aliens. Yet deportation will be no easy task. The official position of the Bangladeshi government is that none of their citizens have illegally crossed the border into India. It is unlikely that the Indian government will risk deterioration of its relations with Bangladesh and exacerbation of tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India by seeking to force the issue by the deportation of illegal aliens. There are already indications of opposition in Assam to efforts at soft pedalling the implementation of the accord.35 Nonetheless, since all ethnic subgroups in Assam do take the issue seriously, there is room for a political resolution. The AGP leadership has shown signs of flexibility by acquiescing to a constitutional amendment introduced during the election campaign that al- lows disenfranchised non-citizens to continue enjoying all other rights of citizens. Some mix of resettlement of illegal aliens in the rest of the country and phased enfranchisement in return for measures that will stop any future influx may be an acceptable compromise.

The ability to evolve a new framework of ethnic accommodation will remain the key to political stability in Assam. In the course of the Assam movement, the leadership learned that the road to cultural survival of the Assamese lies as much in an inclusive definition of Assameseness as in restricting numbers. If ethnic diversity has the potential to cause political turmoil in Assam, it also holds the possibility for political stability. Even though the old framework of ethnic accommodation broke down, the logic of electoral politics and the imperatives of ethnic diversity will continue to force contestants to search for ethnic accommodation.

35. "The Endangered Accord," India Today, 11:5 (March 15, 1986), pp. 30-33.



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