Name: Bhupen Sarmah
Country: India

Year: 2016
Volume: Volume-1, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 74-86

With a relatively recent history of immigration encouraged by colonial administration, the Muslim peasantry with their distinct ethnic identity constitutes nearly one fourth of the total rural workforce of present Assam. The immigrants, overwhelmingly belonging to a broad class of oppressed peasantry providing a solid support base to the ruling congress during the post-colonial period had never been a major political issue in the state till the late 1970s. The identity movement of the indigenous Assamese (1979-85). Launched essentially on the issue of citizenship of the immigrants politically isolated the community from the indigenous peasantry on the one hand and ruined the prospects of left and democratic processes to articulate their class interests on the other. With a brief historical account of the process of immigration of the peasantry from the erstwhile east Bengal districts (present Bangladesh) to the Brahmaputra valley and substantial empirical insights, this paper attempts to analyse the issues of the immigrant peasants and rural workforce in the overall political context of Assam. The basic argument is in an overwhelmingly agrarian and multi ethnic society when the class boundaries are coterminous with ethnic boundaries and the ideological penetration of the left and democratic forces is poor, the peasantry of the dominant community tends to constitute a political constituency vulnerable to chauvinist identity political in order to articulate their interest. Consequently, the peasantry of the minority community, a victim of identity politics, lives in a precarious condition depending largely at the mercy of the ruling class.