Modi's Northeast Gamble

On February 9, addressing a gathering of nearly 200,000 people in Changsari near Guwahati, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lamented the fact that iconic singer and musician Bhupen Hazarika, who in January had been awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously by the Union government, had not received the honour in his lifetime.

- Kaushik Deka

He blamed this “neglect” on the Congress government, before pivoting to a justification of his government’s commitment to passing the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016.

The bill has caused widespread fury in all the seven states of the Northeast, including Assam, with people spilling onto the street to protest the peril they believe the bill poses to their culture and language. Two days after Modi’s speech, Hazarika’s son Tez, who lives in the United States, described the award as a “display of short-lived cheap thrills”. He said, essentially, the award counted for nothing when the Modi government was so determined to pass a bill that flew in the face of his father’s heartfelt beliefs and that rode roughshod over the wishes of the majority of people in the Northeast. It seems, he wrote on social media, “an underhanded way of pushing a law against the will and benefit of the majority in a manner that also seems to be grossly unconstitutional, undemocratic and un-Indian”.