Hindutva agenda and Dhola-Sadiya will not bridge the distance between Assam and Arunachal
From the "biggest" river festival to the "longest" river bridge in India, Assam seems to have received its fair share of national spotlight in the past couple of months. Amidst the clatter of these record-breaking stunts, what benefits do these nationally-led endeavours hold for the local people of the region?
Did the pompous "Namami Brahmaputra" truly celebrate the eclectic essence of the river Brahmaputra, its flows though different regions, its identities as different rivers? What about the "Dhola-Sadiya" bridge — would its 9.15km stretch and concretised strength be enough to break the colonial myth of the "savage" frontier in Sadiya?
In March 2017, when the Assam government-sponsored "Namami Brahmaputra" river festival, attempted to market the sociologically and geographically diverse rivers of Northeast India within an overtly caste Hindu cultural complex, there were a few voices in local newspapers as well as online platforms that protested the alienating foundations of the event.
For instance, the term "namami", which in Sanskrit means "I worship thee", was seen as a direct "cut and paste" from the "Namami Ganga" project to clean Ganges.
To forcefully link the nomenclature of the festival celebrating river Brahmaputra to another revered river in North India is an outright political act, because it speaks of a North India-centric, Hindutva dominance over the local aspirations of the region.
There is, however, a sense of banality to this dominance which successfully hides its magnanimity and makes any protest fruitless. Hinduisation of the river as "Brahmaputra" — the son of the Hindu deity Brahma, after all, is not a new phenomenon and has occurred throughout the course of the 20th century, aided mostly by the caste Hindu population of Assam. What had never happened yet, was the advertising of this legend on a national scale, complete with anthems, posters and speeches.
This, along with the naming glory from the Ganges, turned the river Brahmaputra into an epitome of mainland India’s imagination. Obscuring further, the variegated local existence of the river body, especially across the Assam-Arunachal border, as Dihang, Dibang and Lohit — all rivers of the Brahmaputra, and all not.
Alienation of the local riverine spaces in the ideological construction of the Brahmaputra has stripped many local communities of their cultural voices, more so for the tribal communities living in the borderlands of Upper Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
For instance, in the grandiose meta-narratives of the "Brahmaputra", there is little space for the cultural universe of the Adi tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, who lovingly refer to the river as "Aane", meaning mother. Similarly, the Mishings of Upper Assam, whose close proximity to the river historically made them an ingenious fishing community, find no representation in the "Namami Brahmaputra" festival.
Such local socio-economic impulses, in fact were explicitly pitted against the alien-ness of the festival, when rumours circulated about the government’s decision to ban non-vegetarian cuisines within the festival premises. Even though the government voices dismissed the rumours and the festival eventually did serve fish and meat dishes, there nevertheless existed an age-old castiest narrative of purity and pollution within its physical spaces.
This was evident when the majority tribal people owned, meat selling stalls were relegated to the peripheries of the festival venue, away from the sacred vegetarian core. Physical peripheries, notwithstanding, it was the mental periphery that such spatial organisations created, which was particularly divisive. It added to the already schizophrenic existence of Assam — one where its "caste Hindu Assamese" identity found itself at odds with its "tribal" counterparts.
In such a mental universe, can the longest bridge of India extending, from the village of Dhola in Assam to Sadiya — a region still immersed in the colonial memories of the "savage", "fierce" tribes, dwelling beyond it — ever truly reduce the distance between Assam and its once "frontier" tracts, that is Arunachal Pradesh?
If the question is merely about overcoming physical geographies, then yes the bridge, now named Bhupen Hazarika Setu, does make the reaching of Arunachal Pradesh from Assam quicker by 165km.
Erected over the Lohit river, its three-lane carriage way, assures not just civilian traffic, but also a relentless movement of heavy military artillery, through Sadiya into Arunachal.
There is an immense sense of national accomplishment vested on this infrastructure, as its ability to transport troops and armaments to north-eastern borderlands, demonstrates India’s resolve to retain the China-disputed territories in Arunachal. "Immensely strategic", as the bridge has been called, I wish it was also a little empathetic, towards the peoples and regions it swears to connect. For both Sadiya and Arunachal, have a history of their own, away from the mega-political agendas of India and China.
Sadiya, a small tehsil in Assam that suddenly appears connected with Arunachal through the might of modern infrastructure, has been a noted gateway to the mountainous tribe-dominated territories of Arunachal since colonial and pre-colonial times.
The famous seasonal markets of Sadiya, in fact, functioned as a socio-cultural melting pot, where many tribes like the Abors, Dafflas and Akas (known today as Adis, Nyishis and Hrussos, respectively) came down from their hill countries, to trade with the other local communities of the region, like the Assamese, Bengalis and the Marwaris. After the colonisation of Assam, however, the essence of such symbiotic interactions became clouded with a more violent, colonial narrative of tribal "raids" and "savagery", inscribed on the minds of the Assamese people through British policies and measures.
In the colonial discourse of civilisation and savagery, the Assamese seemed to have found their own versions of the "uncouth" and "uncivilised" in their tribal neighbours.
In the post-colonial era such ideological schisms continue, and they threaten to deepen further in the present-day Hindutva politics of the Assam government, which effectively disengages the state from its tribal sensibilities.
Today, it would require more than a concrete bridge to access Arunachal from Assam, for the distance between these regions is not merely physical, but also mental — involving a world of prejudices and stereotypes that gained strength in these regions through the historical processes of colonialism and nationalism.
Lurking in the shadows of the glittering stories of festivals and bridges, this is a world that silently predicts an outbreak of catastrophic violence. Another alienating festival on the river Brahmaputra, a few more army cantonments over the Lohit river, and Sadiya as we know it today would not take long to live up to its grim Assamese name, "Xo diya", meaning "burial of corpse".