Rodo Joho
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-03-24Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
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With soaring unemployment in the USA and Reag an's policies grinding living standards ever lower, the need for the unions to build a political party that champions the needs and demands of the working class and oppresged in the USA — a Labour Party -is greater than ever.
Odorcich shows that such a fight will need to combat the union bureaucrats -just as the fight for mass action and socialist policies in today's British Labour Party demands a fight against the bureaucratic leadesa of the TUC.
The British colonialists welcomed the migration. It increased the labour supply in this isolated province and Bengali peasants were acquainted with more advanced agricultural techniques than the indigenous Assamese.
Divide and rule
But immediately there were cultural conflicts. The Assamese Hindus viewed the mainly Muslim Bengalis as foreign invaders from another country, and feared the loss of their religious and linguistic identity.
The British had almost perfected the art of divide and rule since they began to Assam Samrakshini Sabha (Association for the Conservation of Assam). C.S. Mullan, an English colonial official, systematically aggrevated the already delicate situation by stirring up fears of immigration, launching a Muslim-scare campaign amongst Hindus and referring to a Muslim invasion' that would leave the Assamese with only the Sibsagar district.
Thus, the same colonialists who maintained constant Bengali immigration for their own economic interests consciously exploited Assamese backwardness by inflaming communal prejudice.
The Assamese press launched a campaign for the clo(RCPI).
Today's Stalinists have continued to flirt with Assamese nationalism, and by doing so have played into the hands of the extreme But it has been the more consistent chauvinists of the right who have made the greatest impact.
It was against a reactionary cultural offensive that the currect agitation matured. It only took a careless remark in 1979 by the then chief election commissioner S.L. Sakhder, and the 'discovery' of 45,000 illegally registered Bangladeshis on movement. Bimonthly 'News from Militant Japanese Work ers' in English. Copies avañable, 30p plus posı age, from Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8.
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125, March 1983, Page
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Ássam's electoral rolls, to start the mass 'anti foreigner'