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133-568: The Assam Movement (also Anti-Foreigners Agitation ) (1979–1985) was a popular uprising in Assam , India, that demanded the Government of India detect, disenfranchise and deport illegal aliens . Led by All Assam Students Union (AASU) and All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) the movement defined a six-year period of sustained civil disobedience campaigns, political instability and widespread ethnic violence. The movement ended in 1985 with

266-451: A Northeast Indian state, has been the fastest growing region in the Indian subcontinent for much of the 20th century with the population growing six-fold till the 1980s as against less than three-fold for India. Since the natural growth rate of Assam has been found to be less than the national rate, the difference can only be attributed to a net immigration. Immigration in the 19th century

399-437: A 1965 book that conceptualizes the inherent problem with an activity that has concentrated costs and diffuse benefits. In this case, the benefits of rebellion are seen as a public good , meaning one that is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Indeed, the political benefits are generally shared by all in society if a rebellion is successful, not just the individuals that have partaken in the rebellion itself. Olson thus challenges

532-594: A British administrator and several Pakistani statesmen. Its chief ministership was held by leading Bengali politicians. East Bengal was the most populous and cosmopolitan province in the dominion . It was a hub of political movements, including the Bengali language movement and pro-democracy groups. It was dissolved in 1955 and replaced by East Pakistan during the One Unit Scheme implemented by Prime Minister Mohammad Ali of Bogra . The provincial legislature

665-627: A bandh called by the All Assam Students Union , Anil Bora was beaten to death at Hojai by people who opposed the bandh as well as the Movement. This was a very critical and consequential period not only for the movement, but for the subsequent times as well. The Indira Gandhi-led government imposed assembly elections in the state as a challenge to the movement leading to widespread ethnic violence and breakdown of political order. The two-month old Keshab Gogoi government had fallen and

798-402: A call to stay away from their duties. The government was aware of the possibility of poll disruption and violation and staggered the polling over three days; and it brought in 8000 officers from other states, additional battalions from CRPF , Haryana , Rajasthan , Uttar Pradesh , BSF and Home Guards for a total of 150,000 armed personnel—one armed man for every 57 voters. The protests against

931-593: A delegation of 17 student leaders submitted a memorandum to the president Neelam Sanjiva Reddy to stall the election, and the Home Minister held a meeting two days later to discuss the issue with opposition leaders and the Assam Chief Minister, but there was no solution. On 27 November 1979 AASU-AAGSP escalated the protests and called for the closure of all educational institutes and picketing in state and central government offices. In December 1979,

1064-493: A ditch next to the highway at Bhabanipur . Talukdar was honoured by the Assam Movement as its first Martyr. The Hazarika government was dismissed and President's Rule was imposed on 12 December 1979. Elections were held in only two of the fourteen Lok Sabha Constituencies in the 1980 Indian general election : Karimganj and Silchar . On 7 October 1982, while leading a procession from Nagaon to Hojai in support of

1197-444: A government, authority figure, law, or policy. If a government does not recognize rebels as belligerents then they are insurgents and the revolt is an insurgency . In a larger conflict the rebels may be recognized as belligerents without their government being recognized by the established government, in which case the conflict becomes a civil war . Civil resistance movements have often aimed at, and brought about,

1330-609: A government. This government had to compete with the movement for legitimacy; this assembly was dismissed prematurely in 1985 as a precondition of the Assam Accord and in the 1985 Assam Legislative Assembly election that followed the movement leaders won a majority. (Emphasis in original, AASU and AAGSP 1980:6) The Assam Movement was led by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) with Prafulla Mahanta (president) and Bhrigu Kumar Phukan (general secretary) as

1463-514: A grassroots movement by nature because they do more than change the modalities of power, they aim to transform the fundamental social structure of society. As a corollary, this means that some "revolutions" may cosmetically change the organization of the monopoly over power without engineering any true change in the social fabric of society. Her analysis is limited to studying the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions. Skocpol identifies three stages of

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1596-593: A laborer, for example, will be to move to a tenant position, then smallholder , then landlord; where there is less variance and more income. Voluntarism is thus non-existent in such communities. Popkin singles out four variables that impact individual participation: Without any moral commitment to the community, this situation will engineer free riders. Popkin argues that selective incentives are necessary to overcome this problem. Political Scientist Christopher Blattman and World Bank economist Laura Ralston identify rebellious activity as an "occupational choice". They draw

1729-716: A large scale and that this was done at the demand of political parties—a claim repeated by a cabinet minister in the Rajya Sabha in November 1978. These reports were noticed in Assam—AASU included "expulsion of foreigners" in their sixteen-point charter of demands in July 1978; and after Shakdher's announcement in October 1978 it called for a three-day program of protest demanding "reservation of 80 percent jobs for locals". When

1862-592: A legal document. After the 1961 census, the Registrar General of India estimated, with inputs from intelligence reports, that there were about 220,000 "infiltrators" in Assam from East Pakistan. In 1962 the central government devolved its power to detect foreigners in Assam to district police and administrative heads and created Border Police units in some districts. In 1964 the Foreigners (Tribunal) Order

1995-446: A parallel between criminal activity and rebellion, arguing that the risks and potential payoffs an individual must calculate when making the decision to join such a movement remains similar between the two activities. In both cases, only a selected few reap important benefits, while most of the members of the group do not receive similar payoffs. The choice to rebel is inherently linked with its opportunity cost , namely what an individual

2128-431: A peasant, according to Popkin, will disregard the ideological dimension of a social movement and focus instead on whether or not it will bring any practical benefit to him. According to Popkin, peasant society is based on a precarious structure of economic instability. Social norms, he writes, are "malleable, renegotiated, and shifting in accord with considerations of power and strategic interaction among individuals" Indeed,

2261-493: A population of 19 million people in the year 1800 A.D, of which 10.716 million people were followers of Hinduism representing a majority of about 56.4% of the region's population, while 7.961 million adheres to the Muslim faith, constituting 41.9% of the region's population as 2nd largest community. The smaller number of 323,000 people followed Buddhism , Animism and Christianity , together presenting around 1.7% of

2394-473: A portion of a state. A rebellion is often caused by political, religious, or social grievances that originate from a perceived inequality or marginalization. The word "rebellion" comes from Latin "re" + "bellum," and, in Lockian philosophy, refers to the responsibility of the people to overthrow unjust government . An insurrection is an armed rebellion. A revolt is a rebellion with an aim to replace

2527-412: A position with higher income and less variance". Popkin stresses this "investor logic" that one may not expect in agrarian societies, usually seen as pre-capitalist communities where traditional social and power structures prevent the accumulation of capital. Yet, the selfish determinants of collective action are, according to Popkin, a direct product of the inherent instability of peasant life. The goal of

2660-496: A rational, profit maximizing logic. The authors conclude that the best way to fight rebellion is to increase its opportunity cost, both by more enforcement but also by minimizing the potential material gains of a rebellion. The decision to join a rebellion can be based on the prestige and social status associated with membership in the rebellious group. More than material incentives for the individual, rebellions offer their members club goods , public goods that are reserved only for

2793-634: A substantial rural buffer to support Chittagong , a major city and port; advocates for Pakistan forcefully argued to the Bengal Boundary Commission that the only approach was through Chittagong. As a result of these mandates, the Mountbatten Plan and Radcliffe Line established East Bengal as a province of the newly formed Dominion of Pakistan in August 1947. Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin , a former prime minister of Bengal ,

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2926-471: A system's value structure and its problems in order to conceptualize the revolutionary situation in any meaningful way". Skocpol introduces the concept of the social revolution, to be contrasted with a political revolution. While the latter aims to change the polity, the former is "rapid, basic transformations of a society's state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below". Social revolutions are

3059-408: A voice of anger that manifests itself against the established order. More precisely, individuals become angry when they feel what Gurr labels as relative deprivation , meaning the feeling of getting less than one is entitled to. He labels it formally as the "perceived discrepancy between value expectations and value capabilities". Gurr differentiates between three types of relative deprivation: Anger

3192-434: Is a normal and endogenous reaction to competition for power between different groups within society. "Collective violence", Tilly writes, "is the product of just normal processes of competition among groups in order to obtain the power and implicitly to fulfill their desires". He proposes two models to analyze political violence: Revolutions are included in this theory, although they remain for Tilly particularly extreme since

3325-415: Is at the intersection between the need for society to adapt to changes but at the same time firmly grounded in selective fundamental values. The legitimacy of political order, he posits, relies exclusively on its compliance with these societal values and in its capacity to integrate and adapt to any change. Rigidity is, in other words, inadmissible. Johnson writes "to make a revolution is to accept violence for

3458-416: Is heavily influenced by hyperlocal socio-economic factors, from the mundane traditional family rivalries to repressed grudges. Rebellion, or any sort of political violence, are not binary conflicts but must be understood as interactions between public and private identities and actions. The "convergence of local motives and supralocal imperatives" make studying and theorizing rebellion a very complex affair, at

3591-472: Is not always political in the sense that they cannot be reduced to a certain discourse, decisions, or ideologies from the "center" of collective action. Instead, the focus must be on "local cleavages and intracommunity dynamics". Furthermore, rebellion is not "a mere mechanism that opens up the floodgates to random and anarchical private violence". Rather, it is the result of a careful and precarious alliance between local motivations and collective vectors to help

3724-422: Is not taken into account seriously by the grievance model: individuals are fundamentally risk-averse. However, they allow that conflicts create grievances, which in turn can become risk factors. Contrary to established beliefs, they also find that a multiplicity of ethnic communities make society safer, since individuals will be automatically more cautious, at the opposite of the grievance model predictions. Finally,

3857-457: Is ready to give up in order to rebel. Thus, the available options beside rebellious or criminal activity matter just as much as the rebellion itself when the individual makes the decision. Blattman and Ralston, however, recognize that "a poor person's best strategy" might be both rebellion illicit and legitimate activities at the same time. Individuals, they argue, can often have a varied "portofolio" of activities, suggesting that they all operate on

3990-467: Is that violence is not an anarchic tactic or a manipulation by an ideology, but a conversation between the two. Rebellions are "concatenations of multiple and often disparate local cleavages, more or less loosely arranged around the master cleavage". Any pre-conceived explanation or theory of a conflict must not be placated on a situation, lest one will construct a reality that adapts itself to his pre-conceived idea. Kalyvas thus argues that political conflict

4123-510: Is thus comparative. One of his key insights is that "The potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivity". This means that different individuals within society will have different propensities to rebel based on the particular internalization of their situation. As such, Gurr differentiates between three types of political violence: In From Mobilization to Revolution , Charles Tilly argues that political violence

Assam Movement - Misplaced Pages Continue

4256-459: The Assam Accord . It was known since 1963 that foreign nationals had been improperly added to electoral rolls—and when the draft enrollments in Mangaldoi showed high number of non-citizens in 1979 AASU decided to campaign for thoroughly revised electoral rolls in the entire state of Assam by boycotting the 1980 Lok Sabha election . The Indira Gandhi government that followed could not accept

4389-536: The Barak Valley ; and the 1984 Indian general election elections were not conducted in the state at the same time as the rest of the country—they were conducted alongside the 1985 Assam Legislative Assembly election after the Assam Accord was signed. As a result Assam was largely unrepresented in the entire 7th Lok Sabha and part of the 8th Lok Sabha . During the entire duration of the Assam Movement,

4522-736: The CPI(M) and other left parties. This government fell in September 1979 as a result of the split in the Janata Party and Jogendra Nath Hazarika became the chief minister with the support of the Congress, Congress (I) and the CPI . The Hazarika government too fell, within ninety four days in December 1979, when the Congress withdrew support and President's Rule was imposed for the first time in

4655-596: The Guwahati airport , and the Government of Assam imposed censorship on two local newspapers that supported the movement. The issue for this election was to primarily hold the elections with the expectation that a moderate to high polling rate would weaken the movement; and the movement leaders boycotted the elections. A private citizen challenged the elections in the Gauhati High Court on the argument that

4788-594: The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 the adversarial East Pakistan was replaced by Bangladesh , a friendly nation. In the wake of the violence in the 1983 elections, the Indian government, led by Indira Gandhi, enacted the IM(DT) Act. This act was applicable only in Assam, whereas the rest of the country followed The Foreigners Act, 1946 —the key difference was that whereas the onus of the proof of citizenship

4921-479: The National Register of Citizens for Assam (NRC) which was based on the 1951 census; no other Indian state had a similar document. At that time Assam constituted nearly the entire contiguous Northeast India and included the present-day Arunachal Pradesh , Nagaland , Mizoram and Meghalaya though it did not include Manipur and Tripura . There were a number of attempts by the government to change

5054-554: The Nellie massacre , a mob — primarily composed of indigenous Tiwas and semi-indigenous lower caste Hindus — killed thousands of suspected muslim immigrants, in 14 villages in Nagaon district. Popular uprising Rebellion is a violent uprising against one's government. A rebel is a person who engages in a rebellion. A rebel group is a consciously coordinated group that seeks to gain political control over an entire state or

5187-422: The general elections in 1980 she became the prime minister once again. The 1980 elections were strongly opposed by the Assam Movement leaders, violence erupted, and polls in only 3 of the 14 constituencies could be held. Significantly, Indira Gandhi tried to seek Muslim support in that election by citing the Assam Movement. Indira Gandhi then led the Government of India 's administrative and political response to

5320-598: The member of parliament from the Mangaldoi constituency died in March 1979 the Election Commission started the process for a by-election and in April 1979 published the draft electoral rolls and ordered a summary revision. Tribunals reviewed a list of about 47,000 doubtful names of which about 36,000 were processed—of these processed names 26,000 names (about 72 percent) were confirmed to be non-citizens. Though

5453-628: The 1979 electoral rolls were not available to the public, as required, but the government was able to avert legal intervention by advancing the election notification. Nagen Sarma and Nurul Hussain temporarily replaced the AASU leaders arrested on 6 January, and they along with the All Guwahati Students' Union and the All Kamrup District Students' Union organised the anti-election campaign. Besides Congress (I),

Assam Movement - Misplaced Pages Continue

5586-510: The AASU, demanding the "detection, disenfranchisement, and deportation" of foreigners could be considered as the beginning of the Assam Movement. This was followed by the formation of the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad, an ad hoc coalition of different political and cultural organizations, on 26 August 1979 At the initial stage the protests were peaceful and the movement enjoyed wide popular support especially among

5719-417: The Assam Movement and negotiated with its leaders. In October 1984 she was assassinated and her son Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister who, having won a landslide victory in the 1984 Indian general election , settled the Assam Movement and a few other conflicts in a flurry of accords. The Assam Movement successfully scuttled the 1980 Indian general election in Assam except for two constituencies in

5852-406: The Assam state government had been unstable. Even though the electoral backlash against Indira Gandhi in the 1977 general election was not felt in Assam, her party was defeated in the 1978 election and Golap Borbora , a Janata Party leader, became the first non-Congress Chief Minister of Assam; it was a minority government set up with the support of PTCA and independents and outside support of

5985-578: The Assamese people as the Satyagraha program from 12 to 17 November 1979 demonstrated when estimated 700,000 in Guwahati and 2 million in the entire state courted voluntary arrests; but by the end of November, the initial optimism of a negotiated settlement gave way to pessimism. The AASU leadership decided to oppose the 1980 general elections in Assam without a revision of the rolls. On 26 November

6118-561: The Congress (I) led central government did not allow non-Congress government formations in the state. At the end of the assembly term the 1983 Assam Legislative Assembly election was announced amidst expectation that there would be widespread violence and the situation was not conducive for election. The election was boycotted by the movement and a number of opposition political parties did not participate; and polling took place amidst extensive inter-ethnic violence. The Congress (I) won an overwhelming number of seats and Hiteshwar Saikia formed

6251-493: The Congress (I), Rajesh Pilot , stated that the government intended to hold elections to politically finish the movement leaders. Even as the AASU-AAGSP leadership was returning to Guwahati on 6 January 1983 from yet another failed talk at New Delhi, the government announced that elections will be held with staggered polling on 14, 17, and 20 February 1983. The election was to use the unchanged 1979 electoral rolls—which meant

6384-618: The Left Democratic Alliance ( Congress (S) , CPI(M), CPI, RCPI , SUCI and RSP ) and the PTCA decided to participate in the elections. The two Lok Dal factions, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Party, on the other hand, did not participate. The movement leaders decided to frame the elections as a do or die phase, calling the boycott "Assam's last struggle for survival", and used all means to stop

6517-558: The Movement, in its Clause 6, called for protection of the " Assamese people ". Indira Gandhi (Congress (I)), who came to power after the 1980 Indian general election , provided the governmental position. She was the first prime minister to meet with the Movement leaders which she did in Delhi on 2 February 1980. She did not accept the demand to use the NRC 1951 and the Census report of 1952 as

6650-810: The Punjab border between North India and Pakistan. Jinnah made his sole visit to East Bengal as governor general in 1948. During a speech to students in Dacca University , he resisted demands to make Bengali a federal language. His refusal sparked fierce protests among East Bengalis who comprised the majority of Pakistan's population. The proposal for Urdu as the sole national language met with strong opposition in East Bengal, where Urdu considered rather alien, especially in light in Bengali's rich literary heritage. When Jinnah died in 1948, Nazimuddin became

6783-464: The assembly dissolved on 19 March 1982, and under the then constitutional rules, a fresh election had to be held within a year. An amendment to the constitution to allow the maximum allowed period of President's Rule to two years, which required a two-third majority in Parliament to pass, was discussed but the effort was abandoned due to a lack of political alignment of the Congress (I), the left, and

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6916-449: The assumption that simple interests in common are all that is necessary for collective action . In fact, he argues the " free rider " possibility, a term that means to reap the benefits without paying the price, will deter rational individuals from collective action. That is, unless there is a clear benefit, a rebellion will not happen en masse. Thus, Olson shows that "selective incentives", only made accessible to individuals participating in

7049-409: The assumptions of an older moral economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions by profiteering upon the necessities of the people". In 1991, twenty years after his original publication, Thompson said that his, "object of analysis was the mentalité , or, as [he] would prefer, the political culture, the expectations, traditions, and indeed, superstitions of

7182-546: The authors also note that the grievances expressed by members of the diaspora of a community in turmoil has an important on the continuation of violence. Both greed and grievance thus need to be included in the reflection. Spearheaded by political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott in his book The Moral Economy of the Peasant , the moral economy school considers moral variables such as social norms, moral values, interpretation of justice, and conception of duty to

7315-500: The basis for identifying foreigners and suggested 24 March 1971 as the cut-off date instead since she wanted to factor in the Liaquat–Nehru Pact of 8 April 1950 and her own agreement with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1972. The cut-off date became the major stumbling block during the negotiations. The duration of the Assam Movement could be divided into five phases. The general strike (a 12-hour bandh ) on 8 June 1979, sponsored by

7448-420: The basis of a natural growth rate, it was estimated that the immigrants numbered 221,000 between 1951 and 1961. In 1971, the surplus over the natural growth was 424,000 and the estimated illegal immigrants from 1971 to 1981 was 1.8 million. Immigration of Muslims from East Pakistan continued—though they declared India as the birth country and Assamese as their language, they recorded their religion correctly. As

7581-453: The basis of population statistics and constitutional rights and presented a set of demands that were secular and constitutionally legitimate. They clearly defined who they considered to be foreigners and tried to project the problem as not local but constitutional. Despite these formal positions and the demands structured around constitutional values, movement leaders did use ethnic themes for political mobilization. The Assam Accord that concluded

7714-447: The bourgeoisie. In Marx's theory, revolutions are the "locomotives of history" because revolution ultimately leads to the overthrow of a parasitic ruling class and its antiquated mode of production. Later, rebellion attempts to replace it with a new system of political economy, one that is better suited to the new ruling class, thus enabling societal progress. The cycle of revolution, thus, replaces one mode of production with another through

7847-507: The business of surviving and producing enough to subsist. Therefore, any extractive regime needs to respect this careful equilibrium. He labels this phenomenon the "subsistence ethic". A landowner operating in such communities is seen to have the moral duty to prioritize the peasant's subsistence over his constant benefit. According to Scott, the powerful colonial state accompanied by market capitalism did not respect this fundamental hidden law in peasant societies. Rebellious movements occurred as

7980-415: The cause. Club goods serve not so much to coax individuals into joining but to prevent defection. World Bank economists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler compare two dimensions of incentives: Vollier and Hoeffler find that the model based on grievance variables systematically fails to predict past conflicts, while the model based on greed performs well. The authors posit that the high cost of risk to society

8113-409: The challenger(s) aim for nothing less than full control over power. The "revolutionary moment occurs when the population needs to choose to obey either the government or an alternative body who is engaged with the government in a zero-sum game. This is what Tilly calls "multiple sovereignty". The success of a revolutionary movement hinges on "the formation of coalitions between members of the polity and

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8246-451: The civil disobedience was extended with an economic blockade of crude oil and plywood. Nevertheless, neither the civil disobedience nor the economic blockade created any major confrontation between the agitators and the state since the movement had wide support among the state government officials. On 2 December 1979 Shakdar, the CEC, decided to go ahead with polling in Assam with the claim that

8379-621: The collective effort, can solve the free rider problem. Samuel L. Popkin builds on Olson's argument in The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam. His theory is based on the figure of a hyper rational peasant that bases his decision to join (or not) a rebellion uniquely on a cost-benefit analysis. This formalist view of the collective action problem stresses the importance of individual economic rationality and self-interest:

8512-427: The collective imaginary. For example, the development of the bourgeoisie class went from an oppressed merchant class to urban independence, eventually gaining enough power to represent the state as a whole. Social movements, thus, are determined by an exogenous set of circumstances. The proletariat must also, according to Marx, go through the same process of self-determination which can only be achieved by friction against

8645-647: The colonial period the tea garden labourers as well as the Muslim Bengalis supported them. Ever mindful of being the neighbour of the populous and culturally dominant Bengali people, the Assamese were alarmed that immigration not only had continued illegally in the post-independence period but that illegal immigrants were being included in electoral rolls. Immigration from East Bengal to Assam became cross-border in character following Partition of India —the 1951 census records 274,000 refugees between 1947 and 1951, most of who are estimated to be Hindu Bengalis. On

8778-422: The community as the prime influencers of the decision to rebel. This perspective still adheres to Olson's framework, but it considers different variables to enter the cost/benefit analysis: the individual is still believed to be rational, albeit not on material but moral grounds. British historian E.P. Thompson is often cited as being the first to use the term "moral economy", he said in his 1991 publication that

8911-691: The confidence of a majority in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan . The governor general later dissolved the constituent assembly itself. In the case of Federation of Pakistan v. Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan , the speaker of the dissolved constituent assembly challenged the governor general's decision in the Sindh High Court. The case proceeded to the apex court- the Federal Court of Pakistan- where Justice M. Munir ruled in favour of

9044-442: The constant class friction. In his book Why Men Rebel , Ted Gurr looks at the roots of political violence itself applied to a rebellion framework. He defines political violence as: "all collective attacks within a political community against the political regime , its actors [...] or its policies. The concept represents a set of events, a common property of which is the actual or threatened use of violence". Gurr sees in violence

9177-473: The constant insecurity and inherent risk to the peasant condition, due to the peculiar nature of the patron-client relationship that binds the peasant to his landowner, forces the peasant to look inwards when he has a choice to make. Popkin argues that peasants rely on their "private, family investment for their long run security and that they will be interested in short term gain vis-à-vis the village. They will attempt to improve their long-run security by moving to

9310-483: The contenders advancing exclusive alternative claims to control over Government.". For Chalmers Johnson, rebellions are not so much the product of political violence or collective action but in "the analysis of viable, functioning societies". In a quasi-biological manner, Johnson sees revolutions as symptoms of pathologies within the societal fabric. A healthy society, meaning a "value-coordinated social system" does not experience political violence. Johnson's equilibrium

9443-423: The contrary, such riots involved a coordinated peasant action, from the pillaging of food convoys to the seizure of grain shops. A scholar such as Popkin has argued that peasants were trying to gain material benefits, such as more food. Thompson sees a legitimization factor, meaning "a belief that [the peasants] were defending traditional rights and customs". Thompson goes on to write: "[the riots were] legitimized by

9576-627: The decision to enroll in such high stakes organization can be rationalized. Berman and Laitin show that religious organizations supplant the state when it fails to provide an acceptable quality of public goods such a public safety, basic infrastructure, access to utilities, or schooling. Suicide operations "can be explained as a costly signal of "commitment" to the community". They further note "Groups less adept at extracting signals of commitment (sacrifices) may not be able to consistently enforce incentive compatibility." Thus, rebellious groups can organize themselves to ask of members proof of commitment to

9709-544: The demands of the movement leaders since it came at considerable political costs and the movement escalated to economic blockades, oppression, violent pogroms and lasting ethnic conflict. The political nature of this movement was heavily debated among scholars in the journal Economic and Political Weekly . The accord became possible under the Rajiv Gandhi ministry when the emphasis was on negotiation and compromise which both sides made, and particularly because Rajiv Gandhi

9842-564: The election were widespread and included road blockages, bridge burning, kidnapping, attacks on election candidates their relatives, political workers, and poll officers. The political party leaders made inflammatory speeches during the campaign—the railway minister Ghani Khan Choudhury from Congress appealed to the Bengali Muslim immigrants to retaliate in kind to violence, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee warned of dire consequences if elections were held. On 10 February, Indira Gandhi warned

9975-401: The elections. They had the support not only of the extremist student activists, but also the majority of the local Assamese citizens. The movement leaders were thus able to revive the movement which had stagnated from 1981 to 1982. The boycott program during the nomination period included blocking access to nominating centers by the general public, and local administration officers too agreed to

10108-640: The electoral rolls announced a change his position in September 1979 and pushed the revision to after the 1980 general election polls. The Assam Movement began at a time of transition in New Delhi during the Morarji Desai government , the first non-Congress central government in India. Morarji Desai had come to power in 1977 following Indira Gandhi 's Emergency after a historic election in which Gandhi lost her membership in parliament. But Indira Gandhi

10241-468: The electoral rolls were corrected neither on the basis of 1951 which the movement leaders wanted nor on the basis of 1971 which the government was ready to accept; and it did not incorporate the names of those who had come of age to vote after 1979; though the Supreme Court of India ruled in 1984 that the 1979 electoral rolls were legally valid. The AASU-AAGSP leaders were arrested when they landed at

10374-540: The electoral rolls were two. In 1965, during the run up to the Indo-Pakistani war , the Government of India directed the Assam Government to expel Pakistani (later Bangladesh) infiltrators but the implementation had to be given up when a number of Assam legislators threatened to resign. These tribunals were finally shut foen in 1972 on the claim of most infiltrators being caught; and also because after

10507-680: The element in some of these movements of acting to defend the rule of law and constitutionalism. The following theories broadly build on the Marxist interpretation of rebellion. Rebellion is studied, in Theda Skocpol 's words, by analyzing "objective relationships and conflicts among variously situated groups and nations, rather than the interests, outlooks, or ideologies of particular actors in revolutions". Karl Marx 's analysis of revolutions sees such expression of political violence not as anomic, episodic outbursts of discontents but rather

10640-407: The fall of a government or head of state, and in these cases could be considered a form of rebellion . In many of these cases, the opposition movement saw itself not only as nonviolent, but also as upholding their country's constitutional system against a government that was unlawful, for example, if it had refused to acknowledge its defeat in an election. Thus the term rebel does not always capture

10773-520: The federal government's responsibilities limited to only foreign affairs and defense. King Saud of Saudi Arabia sent a plane to bring Huq to a meeting with the monarch. The New York Times published an article claiming Huq wanted independence for East Bengal. While visiting Calcutta and New Delhi, Huq was received by Indian leaders. Barely a few months into office, Huq was dismissed by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad due to allegations against of Huq of inciting secession. After Governor General's rule

10906-488: The first flights between Karachi and Dacca . The airline later evolved into Pakistan International Airlines . The Chittagong Tea Auction was established in 1949. As a result of the Bengali language movement, East Bengal was a center of Bengali cultural activities. The University of Dacca was a hotspot of political thought. The East Bengal Regiment was formed on 15 February 1948 following Pakistan's independence and transition from post British rule. The infantry of

11039-648: The first time that foreigners were being enlisted in Indian voters list by politically interested parties. Baruah (1986) remarks that ironically the position of the report is remarkably similar to the position taken by the Assam movement leaders at the end of the next decade. In August 1975, the Home Ministry had instructed the state governments to use criminal investigation departments to identify illegal aliens in electoral rolls. In October 1978 S. L. Shakdhar (the then Chief Election Commissioner ) declared foreigners' names were being included in electoral rolls in

11172-456: The former rely on local conflicts to recruit and motivate supporters and obtain local control, resources, and information- even when their ideological agenda is opposed to localism". Individuals will thus aim to use the rebellion in order to gain some sort of local advantage, while the collective actors will aim to gain power. Violence is a mean as opposed to a goal, according to Kalyvas. The greater takeaway from this central/local analytical lens

11305-423: The globe and Islam is the official state religion of Bangladesh by Article (2A). The population of Bangladesh is 165.2 million as per 2022 census report, of which majority of 150.49 million people (91.1 percent of Bangladeshis ) follow Islam , Hinduism is followed by 13.05 million people (7.9 percent of population) as second-largest religion, Buddhism being third-most followed religion and

11438-487: The goddess of small pox, Oladevi , goddess of cholera, Manasa , goddess of snakes and are recognised by Hindus and Muslims of Bangladesh both alike. Religion in Bangladesh ( 2022 census ) As of 21st century, the present region of East Bengal exists in form of sovereign Bangladesh today and is now an Islamic country both demographically and constitutionally as the country holds fourth-largest Muslim population in

11571-401: The governor general of Pakistan. The conservative Muslim League leader Nurul Amin succeeded Nazimuddin as chief minister. According to some sources, Amin had strained relations with the federal government, including Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and Governor General Khawaja Nazimuddin. Historians have noted that Amin's government was not strong enough to administer the provincial state; it

11704-593: The governor general. Justice A. R. Cornelius expressed dissent and supported Speaker Khan. The dismissal of the prime minister and assembly was one of the first major blows to democracy and the rule of law in the Pakistani Union. Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah called for Pakistan's constituent assembly to convene in Dacca as East Bengal was home to the majority of Pakistan's population. Orient Airways , owned by an East Bengal-based industrialist, launched

11837-452: The hearings were conducted by a single person, usually a magistrate , an officer who then had both executive and judicial powers. Many of the suspected infiltrators were the illiterate poor and the big landowners, who benefited from the cheap labour they provided, gave them legal aid to defend themselves at the tribunals. Among the many criteria determining the citizenship of the accused, oral affidavits by locally known citizens and inclusion in

11970-821: The immigrant Muslim community in the then Nagaon district that if they did not vote for Congress they would have to leave the state. The pro- vs anti- election violence eventually led to complete breakdown of ethnic amity beyond mere Assamese-Bengali or Hindu-Muslim divide where every group clashed against every other group: at Nellie (Tiwas against immigrant Muslims); Kokrajhar ( Boro Kacharis against Bengali Hindus and Muslims); Goreswar and Khoirabari ( Sarania and Boro against Bengali Hindus); Gohpur (Boro against Assamese Hindus); Dhemaji and Jonai ( Mising tribals against Bengali Hindus and Muslims); Samaguri (Muslims against Hindus); Dhaila and Thekrabari (Muslims against Hindus); Chaowlkhowa Chapori (Assamese Hindus and Muslims against Bengali Muslims). On 18 February 1983, during

12103-590: The immigration issue was growing the immigrant Muslims from Bengal supported the Assamese language movement—by accepting the Assamese language, supporting the official language act in contrast to the Bengali Hindus who opposed it, and casting their votes for the Congress . The Assam Movement involved a tussle over the determination of immigrants, refugees and citizens as defined in their legal contexts. At

12236-442: The individual cause. Rebel governance is the development of institutions, rules and norms by rebel groups with an intent to regulate civilians' social, economic and political life, usually in areas under the territorial control of the rebel groups. Rebel governance may include systems of taxation, regulations on social conduct, judicial systems, and public goods provision. One third of rebel leaders who sign peace agreements with

12369-516: The intersection between the political and the private, the collective and the individual. Kalyvas argues that we often try to group political conflicts according to two structural paradigms: Kalyvas' key insight is that the central vs periphery dynamic is fundamental in political conflicts. Any individual actor, Kalyvas posits, enters into a calculated alliance with the collective. Rebellions thus cannot be analyzed in molar categories, nor should we assume that individuals are automatically in line with

12502-658: The involvement of the police and the executive (and not judicial) officers, and the Chief Election Commissioner, Shakdhar, halted the activity of the tribunals—the final electoral list of Mangaldoi was never released. The Charan Singh government fell on 20 August 1979, the Lok Sabha was dissolved on 22 August 1979 and since fresh elections were announced the Mangaldoi by-election was cancelled. Shakdhar, who had earlier warned against foreigners' names in

12635-496: The issue of illegal aliens in electoral rolls had been simmering for some years at the national official level, the large numbers at Mangaldoi brought it into sharp public focus and provided the immediate trigger for the Assam Movement—AASU launched its first protest program on 8 June 1979 demanding the "detection, disenfranchisement and deportation" of foreigners. The review process was opposed by political parties, especially

12768-899: The legislative assembly. In the 1954, the United Front coalition resoundingly defeated the Muslim League with a landslide majority. The coalition included the Awami League, the Krishak Praja Party , the Democracy Party and Nizam-e-Islam . The esteemed lawyer A. K. Fazlul Huq , popularly known as the Sher-e-Bangla (Lion of Bengal), became chief minister. Huq established the Bangla Academy and called for greater provincial autonomy. He wanted

12901-518: The legitimacy of this government and refused to recognize it. In June 1981 the Anwara Taimur government fell in the state assembly and President's Rule was again imposed. There was another attempt to form a Congress (I) government in January 1982 under Keshab Chandra Gogoi , but it too fell and President's Rule was again imposed in March 1982. After each of the two Congress (I) governments fell,

13034-521: The mechanism once again the same year, which too was declared unconstitutional the next year. The NRC was revised under the supervision of the Supreme Court of India and the final draft created in 2019. In 2019 the BJP government enacted the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 which created pathways to citizenship for immigrants of all religions except Islam, and since have refused to accept the draft NRC as

13167-598: The mechanisms of detecting foreigners or the meaning of Indian citizenship. In 1983 the Congress (I) government enacted the Illegal Migrants (Determnation by Tribunal) Act that modified the mechanism of determining foreigners in Assam, while keeping the old mechanism intact in the rest of the country. After the Supreme Court of India declared the Act unconstitutional in 2005, the government attempted to change

13300-441: The members inside that group. Economist Eli Berman and Political Scientist David D. Laitin's study of radical religious groups show that the appeal of club goods can help explain individual membership. Berman and Laitin discuss suicide operations, meaning acts that have the highest cost for an individual. They find that in such a framework, the real danger to an organization is not volunteering but preventing defection. Furthermore,

13433-593: The new Pakistan Army was made up exclusively of men from the western part of the country. It was consequently necessary to raise a regiment in the east. A total of eight battalions were raised. Paramilitary forces like the East Pakistan Rifles and East Pakistan Ansars were established, Ansars were deployed to the border areas in 1948 during the Indo-Pakistani war of 1947–1948 to prevent crimes and smuggling. Religions in East Bengal (1800 AD before partition) East Bengal (present-day-Bangladesh) had

13566-631: The now illegitimate political order will have to use coercion to maintain its position. A simplified example would be the French Revolution when the Parisian Bourgeoisie did not recognize the core values and outlook of the King as synchronized with its own orientations. More than the King itself, what really sparked the violence was the uncompromising intransigence of the ruling class. Johnson emphasizes "the necessity of investigating

13699-545: The older Ahom system , made Bengali the official language ( Assamese was restored in 1874), and placed Hindu Bengalis in colonial administrative positions. By 1891 one-fourth the population of Assam was of migrant origin. Assamese nationalism, which grew by the beginning of the 20th century, began to look at both the Hindu Bengalis as well as the British as alien rulers. The emerging Assamese literate class aspired to

13832-406: The opposition parties. By December 1982 there had been twenty-three rounds of talks between the government and the movement leaders to resolve the issue of identifying foreigners' names in electoral rolls; but the two parties found the biggest point of contention was the cut-off date to identify them. In a conversation with journalist Shekhar Gupta in December 1982 the electoral campaign manager of

13965-571: The owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers". The conflict that arises from producers being dispossessed of the means of production, and therefore subject to the possessors who may appropriate their products, is at the origin of the revolution. The inner imbalance within these modes of production is derived from the conflicting modes of organization, such as capitalism emerging within feudalism, or more contemporarily socialism arising within capitalism. The dynamics engineered by these class frictions help class consciousness root itself in

14098-709: The province. In May 1946, Rohingya Muslim leaders met with Muhammad Ali Jinnah , and asked for a formal annexation of the Mayu region . Two months later, the North Arakan Muslim League also asked Jinnah to annex the region. Jinnah refused, saying he could not interfere with Burma's internal matters. Proposals were also made to the Burmese government but they were rejected. The District of Sylhet in Assam Province also voted to reunite with

14231-435: The public faces of it. The movement leadership was augmented by an organisation called All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) that was constituted in August 1979 by representatives from civic and regional political parties. Even though the relationship of the Assam Movement to the earlier Assamese Language Movement was clear the leadership were careful to kept the issue of language out—instead they staked their claims purely on

14364-435: The purpose of causing the system to change; more exactly, it is the purposive implementation of a strategy of violence in order to effect a change in social structure". The aim of a revolution is to re-align a political order on new societal values introduced by an externality that the system itself has not been able to process. Rebellions automatically must face a certain amount of coercion because by becoming "de-synchronized",

14497-470: The reaction to an emotional grief, a moral outrage. Blattman and Ralston recognize the importance of immaterial selective incentives, such as anger, outrage, and injustice ("grievance") in the roots of rebellions. These variables, they argue, are far from being irrational, as they are sometimes presented. They identify three main types of grievance arguments: Stathis N. Kalyvas, a political science professor at Yale University, argues that political violence

14630-585: The reforms and reorganization policies of Prime Minister of Pakistan Mohammad Ali of Bogra , East Bengal was renamed as East Pakistan on 14 October 1955. East Bengal existed when Pakistan did not have a written constitution. Instead, the Pakistani courts relied on English common law and the Objectives Resolution . In 1953, Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin's government was dismissed by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad, in spite of enjoying

14763-588: The region's population. Bangladesh's capital Dhaka city name is said to have been derived from Dhakeshwari the patron goddess of the city, whose shrine is located in Ramna of Dhaka city. In Bangladesh, there's exist a blending culture of Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, folk religion, deities and practices. Worship exchanges takes place at temples and mosques and religious folk music gatherings (especially at Vaishnavite gatherings and among Muslim Sufis). Folk deities recognized by both Hindus and Muslim have included Shitala ,

14896-541: The rest of East Bengal, and the Muslim League's campaign played a great role in facilitating this. A plebiscite was held which resulted in joining Pakistan. However, a large part of Sylhet's Karimganj subdivision was barred due to Abdul Matlib Mazumdar 's delegation. The Chittagong Hill Tracts , which had a 97% non-Muslim population (mostly Buddhist ), was awarded to Pakistan , by the Boundary Commission, due to it being inaccessible to India and to provide

15029-407: The rest of the actors simply by virtue of ideological, religious, ethnic, or class cleavage. The agency is located both within the collective and in the individual, in the universal and the local. Kalyvas writes: "Alliance entails a transaction between supralocal and local actors, whereby the former supply the later with external muscle, thus allowing them to win decisive local advantage, in exchange

15162-496: The revolution in these cases (which she believes can be extrapolated and generalized), each accordingly accompanied by specific structural factors which in turn influence the social results of the political action: Here is a summary of the causes and consequences of social revolutions in these three countries, according to Skocpol: The following theories are all based on Mancur Olson 's work in The Logic of Collective Action ,

15295-461: The rolls for 110 of the 126 Assembly constituencies were ready and those for the rest will be ready the next day. Mass picketing was arranged in front of all polling offices where candidate filed their nominations, in the first week of December 1979. No candidates were allowed to file nomination papers in the Brahmaputra valley . On 10 December, the last date for submitting the nomination papers,

15428-451: The same positions as those enjoyed by the Bengali Hindus, mostly from Sylhet . The Bengali Muslims , who came in mainly from Mymensingh, were cultivators who occupied flood plains and cleared forests. They were not in conflict with the Assamese and did not align with the Bengali Hindus. In fact the Assamese elite encouraged their settlement. In the post-partition period as Assamese nationalists tried to dismantle Bengali Hindu dominance from

15561-579: The state experience exile, imprisonment, or unnatural death while two thirds go into regular politics or pursue further rebellion. East Bengal The Partition of India , which divided Bengal along religious lines, established the borders of the Muslim-majority area of East Bengal. The province existed during the reign of two monarchs, George VI and Elizabeth II ; and three governors-general , Muhammad Ali Jinnah , Khawaja Nazimuddin and Ghulam Muhammad . Its provincial governors included

15694-530: The state of Assam. Since the President's Rule could not be extended beyond a year Congress (I), originally with only 8 members, was able to attract defections from other parties, obtain the support of the CPI, and form a government in December 1980 under the leadership of Anwara Taimur , the only woman or Muslim to have been a chief minister in post- Indian Independence Assam's history. The movement leaders challenged

15827-550: The symptomatic expression of a particular set of objective but fundamentally contradicting class-based relations of power. The central tenet of Marxist philosophy, as expressed in Das Kapital , is the analysis of society's mode of production (societal organization of technology and labor) and the relationships between people and their material conditions. Marx writes about "the hidden structure of society" that must be elucidated through an examination of "the direct relationship of

15960-595: The term had been in use since the 18th century. In his 1971 Past & Present journal article, Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century , he discussed English bread riots, and other localized form of rebellion by English peasants throughout the 18th century. He said that these events have been routinely dismissed as "riotous", with the connotation of being disorganized, spontaneous, undirected, and undisciplined. He wrote that, on

16093-519: The time of the Partition of India in 1947 when British India was divided into India and Pakistan the legal instrument prevalent that determined foreigners was the colonial-era The Foreigners Act, 1946 . The law that determined Indian citizenship, The Citizenship Act 1955, was enacted a few years later in the context of the Constitution of India . In addition to these instruments, Assam had

16226-477: The word Muslim, fashioned itself as secular and courted votes from East Bengal's large non-Muslim minorities. The language movement reached a climax in 1952. During the unrest, the police shot dead four student activists. This raised more opposition in the region to the Muslim League. Leading politicians in West and East Pakistan called for Amin's resignation. In subsequent provincial elections, Amin lost his seat in

16359-661: The working population most frequently involved in actions in the market". The opposition between a traditional, paternalist, and the communitarian set of values clashing with the inverse liberal, capitalist, and market-derived ethics is central to explain rebellion. In his 1976 book The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia , James C. Scott looks at the impact of exogenous economic and political shocks on peasant communities in Southeast Asia. Scott finds that peasants are mostly in

16492-678: Was able to come back to power very soon—in 1978 she split the Congress party to better defend herself and regained membership of the Lok Sabha via a by-election in Chikmagalur , a seat vacated by a party-man ; in July 1979 she was able to bring down the Desai government by promising support to Charan Singh , a breakaway leader; a month later she withdrew support to the Charan Singh government necessitating early general elections; and after

16625-486: Was completely under the control of the central government of Nazimuddin. His government did not enjoy enough power and lacked vision, imagination, and initiatives. In 1949, Maulana Bhashani led left-wing elements in the Muslim League to break away and form the Awami Muslim League . The new party was joined by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy , a former prime minister of British Bengal. The new party later dropped

16758-405: Was declared as a statewide bandh . The government proclaimed a curfew at different parts of the state, including the major city of Guwahati . At Barpeta , then IGP K.P.S. Gill led the police force in escorting Begam Abida Ahmed to file nomination papers; they attacked protestors. Khargeswar Talukdar, the 22-year-old general secretary of Barpeta AASU Unit, was beaten to death and thrown into

16891-707: Was driven by British colonialism —tribal and low castes were brought in from central India to labour in tea gardens and educated Hindu Bengalis from Bengal to fill administrative and professional positions. The largest group, Muslims peasants from Mymensingh , immigrated after about 1901—and they settled in Goalpara in the first decade and further up the Brahmaputra valley in the next two decades. These major groups were joined by other smaller groups that settled as traders, merchants, bankers, moneylenders, and small industrialists. Yet another community who had settled in Assam were Nepali dairy farmers. The British dismantled

17024-435: Was enacted that created a mechanism to verify the citizenship of suspected infiltrators; and though tribunals could be created anywhere in the country, they were used primarily in Assam. At first four tribunals were created—in the undivided districts of Goalpara , Kamrup , Darrang and Nawgong where most infiltrants from East Pakistan were expected to have settled—but by 1968 the number had gone up to nine. In these tribunals

17157-528: Was less concerned with Congress (I) 's electoral fortunes. The Assam Accord did not solve the problem of foreigners' names in electoral rolls, primarily due to the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983 passed by the Indira Gandhi government soon after the disastrous 1983 elections that made it practically impossible to prove anyone in Assam was an illegal alien. Assam ,

17290-798: Was the East Bengal Legislative Assembly . Between 1905 and 1911, a province called Eastern Bengal and Assam existed in the region as part of the British Indian Empire . The All India Muslim League was founded in the British province in 1906. The All India Muslim League adopted the Lahore Resolution in 1940, which envisaged the creation of sovereign states in the Muslim-majority areas of eastern and northwestern British India. The League won elections in Bengal in 1946, receiving its largest mandate in

17423-468: Was the first chief minister of East Bengal after partition. Nazimuddin was a senior leader of the Muslim League and a close confidante of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah . Sir Frederick Chalmers Bourne was the first governor of East Bengal. Partition resulted in making many Hindus to leave East Bengal while Muslims from different parts of the Indian subcontinent migrated to East Bengal. The East–West Bengal border did not see as much violence as seen in

17556-516: Was with the accused, the IMDT Act put the onus of proof on the accuser. The Supreme Court of India repealed it in July 2005 as unconstitutional based on a public interest litigation filled by Sarbananda Sonowal , a former AASU student leader. In response, the Government of India passed the Foreigners (Tribunals for Assam) Order, 2005. This too was set aside by the Supreme Court in 2006. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs in 1963 reported for

17689-699: Was withdrawn in 1954, Abu Hussain Sarkar briefly served as chief minister, before Governor General's rule was again imposed. He started the construction of Central Shaheed Minar . Governor General's rule was withdrawn in June 1955. Ataur Rahman Khan of the Krishak Sramik Party was the last chief minister. His government declared 21 February, the anniversary of the language movement, a public holiday. He later resigned on 30 August 1956 over inflation of food grains and subsequent food shortages. As part of

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