US sounded alarm on influx 39 years back

KALYAN BAROOAH

NEW DELHI, April 11 � The successive Congress Governments may have been in the denial mode over the illegal migration from Bangladesh, but US had sounded alarm 39 years ago, predicting that Assam was on its way to become a Muslim majority State. According to the declassified documents of US State Department and published by WikiLeaks, the then Consul General Daniel Patrick Moynihan had traveled to Assam in March 1974 on a week-long official tour and reported back his impression of the State. The more significant perhaps is continuing immigration of Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh. Assam is now at least one-quarter Muslim and the differential reproduction rates plus immigration could result in a Muslim-majority Assam within 12-15 years. �These are Bengali-speaking Muslims in a State, which is attached to the rest of India by only a narrow segment of West Bengal. The overriding problem in Assam perhaps is the rising population pressure. The State has the highest demographic growth rate in India�3.7 percent�reflecting rapid natural growth and continuing immigration from Bangladesh and Nepal. This has caused grave economic and ethic and political problems, which can be expected to worsen. In a later report filed in 2005 and leaked by WikiLeaks, on insurgency situation of North-east, US Embassy noted that it was interesting that ULFA had spared the illegal Bangladeshi population, when it attacked the non-Assamese living in the State. It concluded that the militant outfit had taken the stand to protect its leaders living in Bangladesh. �Significantly, although the ULFA has attacked �outsiders�, it has not targeted Bangladeshi migrants in Assam in recent times. Analysts interpret this as the result of a tacit understanding between the outfit and the Bangladesh authorities that shelter its leaders,� the Kolkata based Consul General reported. The same report also revealed that ULFA had sought the intervention of US to restore peace in Assam. It appealed for US intervention. From its inception in 1985, ULFA failed to make any real impact since the Assam Movement against �foreigners�, specifically Bengali settlers, was led by the All Assam Students� Union (AASU) and dominated the State�s political scene. The visit by the US delegation was the first official tour to Assam since Burleigh�s trip in October 1972. It was the first time an American Consul General had been in Assam in over three years. �A remarkable feature was that we were permitted to go north of the Brahmaputra to Tezpur, within 30 miles of the deepest Chinese thrust in 1962, and along the north bank by road, to Gauhati and to trouble-prone Cachar. According to our records, American officials have not been seen since before the 1962 China war. There are a handful of American Baptist missionaries in Assam but most are on their way out. We located, I believe, just about all of the Americans in the North-east, 10 or 12 Baptist medical missionaries and families. �They are confined to Assam and Meghalaya and not allowed into hill States where baptism has most appeal, i.e., Nagaland, Mizoram, and Manipur. They are being gradually squeezed out, no foreign replacements allowed, the US delegation noted. The Consul General was accompanied by US officials and one Ranjit Chaudhuri. The team had travelled to central Assam, along the Brahmaputra River, made a brief foray into Meghalaya to meet the Governor, who was then based in Shillong. Only the Chief Minister of Assam remained aloof. The Consul General reported that the overall trend in Assam was clearly toward increased unemployment in all classes. Given this situation, the ethnic mosaic of Assam has now become an explosive political problem.