Why Dhubri Urgently Needs an Army Camp?

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had recently announced that the Government is planning to set up a permanent Army camp in Western Assam’s Dhubri district bordering Bangladesh. The announcement came on the heels of the Hon’ble Chief Minister himself reviewing the latest developments in the town following the beef row, particularly focusing on the maintenance of law and order.

As of now, normalcy has been restored in Dhubri, with efforts still ongoing to preserve peace and stability. It is in this regard that the Chief Minister mentioned that discussions are underway with the Central Government for the setting up of a permanent camp of the Indian Army near Dhubri, an overwhelmingly Muslim-majority district. It may be mentioned here that there was an Army camp at the historic Gauripur town of Dhubri on around 700 bighas of land. But, this camp was vacated by the forces two-three years back.

Time and again, the Chief Minister has drawn attention to the fact that several jihadi organisations and their sleeper cells are active in Assam, especially in the border districts of Dhubri and Barpeta. According to the 2011 Census, a steep rise in the immigrant population was recorded in the nine border districts of the state. In some cases, the population even exceeded 80 per cent. Out of all the districts, Dhubri recorded the highest population.

Being situated along the borders of Eastern Bengal and having had to face in the past innumerable Islamic invasions coupled with the consequences of the Partition of Bengal in 1905 when Assam was tagged with East Bengal, Dhubri, once a flourishing river port and a part of the glorious Koch-Rajbongshi Kingdom of present-day Cooch Behar, also has the distinction of having the largest Muslim population of 80 per cent. The native-migrant gaps are expanding, creating a sense of insecurity and loss on the part of the native population. In Dhubri, Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants have already swamped the native Assamese, leading to a drastic change in the district’s demographic composition.

The Prime Ministers of the country in the post-Independence era and those who became Chief Ministers of Assam since 1985, never considered the issue seriously, let alone the question of detecting and deporting illegal immigrants. As a result, places like Dhubri are under siege today, confronting a fundamentalist network, with Jihadis calling the shots of late. To recall, a large number of Muslims who had been driven away from adjoining Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, and Chirang districts during the Bodo-Muslim clashes of the early 1990s had settled down in Dhubri.

As locals say, they often clashed with the Hindus of Dhubri and drove many of them away to the neighbouring regions of West Bengal such as Siliguri and Cooch Behar. Innumerable anti-Hindu crimes in Dhubri, including harassment against Hindu women, have gone unreported in the media. Several villages and areas that were once Hindu-majority have become Muslim-majority at present. Because what perhaps can no longer be achieved by conventional wars, as it happened in the past during the times of Khilji and Aurangzeb, they aim to do it today through infiltration, demographic change, and internal subversion. The fact that Al-Qaeda, a Sunni Islamic terrorist organisation founded by Osama bin Laden, had hatched a conspiracy to occupy Assam through its border districts was sounded long back in 2002 itself by renowned American journalist Alex Perry. Al-Qaeda’s former chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had even mentioned relevant information in this regard through one of his YouTube videos. 

Islamic terrorist organisations such as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) have been active in Assam, especially after the Bodo-Muslim riots of 2012 in Kokrajhar. Initially, the JMB had set up its camps in areas inhabited primarily by its co-religionists, i.e. Bangladeshi immigrant Muslims. Gradually, it began spreading its tentacles to other areas, particularly Dhubri and Barpeta. It took maximum advantage of the illiterate section among the immigrant Muslim community and indoctrinated them into Islamic religious fanaticism.

The organisation also began trading activities, including purchasing land in several villages, with the help of these recruits who are often known to marry local Hindu girls. They do this with the objective of cultivating a close relationship with villagers of immigrant stock. In this way, they gradually indoctrinate a number of local youths for getting them actively involved in Jihadi activites and foment communal tensions and riots and finally capture political power. 

It is already known that many Islamic fundamentalist outfits often indulge in anti-national activities in the guise of religious and voluntary organisations. Reportedly, these NGOs set up in the name of Islam several educational institutions where uneducated youths are being motivated and lured into joining terrorist outfits. In many border areas of Dhubri, mosques and madrassas with a heavy bias for Arabic tradition have served as a breeding ground for Islamic militancy. They are used for imparting training to uneducated, poor young recruits whose religious sentiments are exploited by brainwashing them about the concepts of life and the afterlife. In this way, they are attracted to the dangerous fundamentalist networks. These recruits are subsequently trained in the handling of arms and explosives as well as subversive activities against India. 

But, the administration and our law-enforcement agencies woke up very late to the Jihadi problem engulfing Assam, only after the exposure of the involvement of mosques and madrassas in the Bardhaman bomb blasts of 2014. This was followed by a thorough investigation, unearthing an expansive international Jihadi network in Assam and confirming the operation of various terror modules in the state far beyond any doubt.

At present, the proliferation of Islamic activities in Assam, including the emergence of outfits such as Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and groups like Tablighi Jamaat and Harkat-ul-Jihad trying to establish permanent bases in Dhubri and other places of Assam as they have alarmingly done in West Bengal, is a serious cause of concern for the state’s distinct identity and as well as for our national security. Jihadi activities in Bangladesh have proliferated with the active assistance and training imparted by pro-Pakistani elements in their Government, besides political parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEM). 

Presently, many areas in Bangladesh along the borders of Assam and West Bengal have become the breeding grounds of Islamic fundamentalism as well as safe havens for smugglers and racketeers. Dhubri is the hotbed of the cow smuggling network in the state, besides crimes such as drugs and human trafficking, sex trade, smuggling of counterfeit currency, etc. If Islamic terrorists are allowed to continue their operations in Bangladesh as they are doing now, it could spell a nightmare for Dhubri and, in fact, the entire Assam. It is a matter of concern for our national security, and therefore, the Government of Assam mulling to establish a permanent Army camp in Dhubri is certainly praiseworthy. It needs to be implemented at the earliest.