[Tage Lapung]
It is now an established order of the democracy that any political contestation, particularly in electoral race for the parliamentary seat, must be appropriated through a well-framed ideological party, either nationally or regionally. While national parties have the ideological bearing on national perspective, regional parties are driven by well-drawn long-term regional interests in terms of fundamental resources rights, and its ethnic justice.
In such tightrope determinant democratic acceptations, where does it fit for Assam Gana Suraksha, a registered but unrecognised political party based in Bodo Territory Council? Unlike other strangely claimed all-India party, viz, AAP, AITMC, NPP, JDS, etc, for an on-time election presence only in Arunachal Pradesh.
As for Assam Ghana Suraksha, the history is not far hidden. The party sprung forth from the spawns of sweltering Bodo national movements under the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, with demand for a separate sovereign Bodoland as prime theme, and got transited to Bodo Territory Council on shared power delegation now.
The primus of the demand for Bodoland rests on its territorial claims on Bodo inhabitations which are contiguous to some parts of West Kameng, Pakke-Kessang, and Papum pare districts in Arunachal Pradesh. For some of us, still the rear-view image of the Assam Ghana Suraksha is the recasting of evidence of those traumatic incidents of kidnappings, extortions, and forced exodus of our people from Assam, and inhuman tortures during counter operation by Assam Rifles of Bodoland movements. Those torturous and inhuman faces meted from Bodos and Assam Rifles had quelled only after the decisive intervention of the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU), the All Nyishi Students’ Union, and the Nyishi Elite Society.
Particularly, the Nyishis living in border areas and Assam were the worse victims of those historic commotions. The assiduous nature of claim on territorial hegemony of Bodoland always remain in their chest, though it is a subjective matter whether the recent boundary MoU by both the Arunachal and Assam governments should hold any authoritative compliances for Bodos. Therefore, with such a vignette to the preface on the history of Assam Ghana Suraksha, it is contextual to raise some inconvenient but morally a tenable questions, whether people of Arunachal can repose any political faith for a candidate whose whipp will be dictated from Bodo Territory Council?
Consequent therefore, Toko Sheetal, a fiery popular activist face of Arunachal by dint of her assiduous Arunachal Against Corruption Movement, banking on the Assam Ghana Suraksha for parliamentary seats in Arunachal is misappropriation of her political acumen and misadventure of support weaved from Anti-Corruption Movement and pro-Pan Arunachal Joint Action Steering Committee on APPSCE fiasco. Share of political dividends from any popular movements importantly on local, and regional issues, will yield appeal only when it is embarked through morally tenable, and politically relevant outfits, not from the protégé of squeamish antecedence. Individual popularity, no matter how one may have had acquired public space, will remain a feeble competitor in the face of articulated political party with local and regional acceptability. For the honest civil society activists, it is time for them to pause and introspect, should those collective voice of the mass be allowed to fall trapped in the electoral quagmire with unprincipled and fallacious choice of party?
As for the 2024 parliamentary election, it is going to be a watershed battle between BJP vs the rest, and accordingly seats sharing of the parties will be aligned on principle. Whether the Assam Ghana Suraksha, a power allies/ruling partner of BJP in Assam and BTC will have an independent middle choice, or plant a stooge candidate to the advantage of BJP candidates in Arunachal would be a psepological subject of the time. (The writer is a former AAPSU president. The views expressed are his own.)
