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The Wire
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Wire
'Assam Tribune' Rejects Column Critical of CM Himanta and BJP
The newspaper instructed Patricia Mukhim to 'focus only on Meghalaya.' Within hours of sending in her bimonthly column to The Assam Tribune on the violation of human rights and 'dehumanisation' of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, veteran journalist Patricia Mukhim was told by the paper on August 6 that the management had decided not to carry the piece. She was also instructed to concentrate only on Meghalaya. Patricia, who has been the editor of The Shillong Times for almost two decades now, started contributing to the Assam Tribune, one of the largest-selling English dailies in the northeast, around 2014. On Wednesday, she sent in her piece to the Tribune which was to be published the next day, August 7. Soon after being informed about the rejection, the Padma Shri-winning journalist decided to cut off her ties with The Assam Tribune and not contribute to the paper henceforth. This, she announced in a Facebook post. Expressing her disappointment at the development, the Meghalaya-based journalist wrote on the social media platform, 'To be told what to write on and how to write are the marks of an authoritarian regime. It's better to be a free spirit than be tied in knots and have your thoughts imprisoned.' 'Concentrate Only on Meghalaya' On August 6, an Assam Tribune staffer sent a text message to Patricia, saying 'Management has gone through your article — 'Needed a political catharsis' — and instructed me not to carry it. From now on, therefore, you are humbly requested to focus only on Meghalaya.' They also said they were 'simply conveying' to the journalist 'what the management said' — that she should 'concentrate only on Meghalaya'. 'For any query in this regard, you may talk to the executive editor,' the text message added. Patricia said when she started contributing to the paper around 2014, she was not given any such instruction on what she should or should not write on. 'I travel the region and am a keen observer of its socio-political and geo-strategic twists and turns.' 'Then I realised that the inevitable had happened.. Anything that runs contrary to the current regime will not be entertained by the mainstream media barring a few brave ones that continue to stand their ground and have refused to become lapdogs of the ruling regime,' she says in her Facebook post. 'Relentless drive to dehumanise Bengali-speaking Muslims' The 'rejected' opinion piece, published two days later by Scroll, draws attention to how 'the relentless drive to dehumanise Bengali-speaking Muslims, thousands of whom are now homeless and without a country, has crossed out 'human rights' from the political discourse' in Assam. Referring to former US President Ronald Reagan's inaugural address in 1981 in which he had famously remarked, 'In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem,' Patricia writes that Assam today has a 'a one-man government'. 'We don't hear voices that will calm the chaos. It's as if the chief minister alone has taken upon himself the sole right of addressing the media. Assam society today is completely divided between Bengali Muslims and Bengali Hindus,' she adds. It is relevant to add here that under chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, communal polarisation in Assam has reached an unprecedented peak with incidents of hate and violence against Bengali-speaking Muslims rising exponentially. In July, Sarma justified the 'fight' against minorities even if they are not 'foreigners', when he wrote in an X post, 'Just do not stop us from fighting for what is ours. For us this is our last battle of survival.' Earlier in May, the Himanta-led Cabinet brought in a scheme to give gun licenses to 'indigenous people' living in Muslim-majority areas. Justifying the move, Sarma has said, 'A gun is essential. Without a gun, how will you live in places like South Salmara and Mankachar? You will understand when you go there…' About 95% of the population in Salmara-Mankachar district are Muslims. In other words, Sarma, the constitution head of the state, made no bones about the fact that he felt guns were needed by Hindus to defend themselves against Muslims. It is interesting to note that on August 11, the Assam chief minister's office shared an Assam Tribune report on X which quotes Sarma justifying the gun policy by saying that gun is essential in vulnerable areas. The report says, 'The Chief Minister stated the new policy is strictly limited to areas where national security concerns are pronounced, particularly along Assam's international border with Bangladesh. Among the immediate areas being considered for arms licence issuance are Dhubri, South Salmara, Barpeta, Morigaon, and Nagaon.' Fact is, neither Barpeta, not Morigaon, nor Nagaon shares international border with Bangladesh. However, all three are Muslim-majority districts. The report in The Assan Tribune chooses to ignore that. In her article, Patricia does note how the media has joined the BJP government in Assam in polarising the society. 'Today, politics is driven purely by divisiveness and hatred. Day after day, TV channels and YouTubers carry out a vicious campaign against Muslims as if they do not deserve to live. Thousands of them are reduced to a life that hangs by a thread in what is the most inhuman treatment meted out to them.' It is crudely ironic that in the piece itself, Patricia repeatedly refers to the shrinking space for questioning the powers that be. 'Today we have reached a point in this country when asking hard questions from the ruling establishment turns you into a Pakistan sympathiser or an 'anti-national'. Never in the past, not even during the Emergency, did we feel this sense of repression that we feel today.' Things have come to such a passe, Patricia notes, that the Assam chief minister 'is hell-bent on bringing to its knees the University of Technology and Management', an institute located not in his state but in Meghalaya, 'simply because its chancellor and founder is a Muslim'. 'I sense a caste bias here': Patricia Mukhim Speaking to Alt News, the senior journalist who is considered one of the most representative voices from the northeast, said that around 2014, it was 'a personal approach' by the then executive editor, PJ Baruah, which started her association with The Assam Tribune. 'He asked me to give a name to my column. I called it Rough & Tumble. He allowed me complete freedom and we never once had any complaints.' About the manner in which the present editorial team treated her, Patricia said she could sense a caste bias at play here. 'After having contributed to The Assam Tribune for over a decade the communication for not carrying my article was being conveyed by a junior staff of the newspaper. I can sense a caste bias here since I am a tribal and therefore am not supposed to comment or write on issues pertaining to the Assamese people, who until 1971 ruled over Meghalaya and other northeastern states before we were considered politically mature to manage our own affairs.' Patricia referred to the historical reluctance of the Assamese gentry to grant autonomy to the tribes while explaining why she thought that the way the paper treated her was as problematic as the response itself. 'The debates in the Constitution-making body when the tribes of Meghalaya demanded the Sixth Schedule as a protective cover for tribal customary practices and governance must be re-read to understand the views of the Assamese gentry at the time. They were against granting the Sixth Schedule to the tribes lest it lead to secessionism. It is against these backgrounds that the relations between the Assamese and the tribals continues till date. The equations have always been unequal.' Senior journalists express anger Reacting to the development, veteran journalist and author Paranjoy Guha Thakurta said he was 'angry and deeply saddened' by the decision of The Assam Tribune to not carry Patricia Mukhim's opinion article on the religious polarisation in Assam, Meghalaya and other parts of the northeast. 'If the owner of the publication is responsible for 'killing' Patricia's story, it cannot be justified under any circumstances. And if the concerned person has acted at the behest of the chief minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, it indicates how subservient a large section of the media has become in Assam and elsewhere. The chief minister seems to be following the playbook of his mentors in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. More strength to Patricia!' he added. Columnist, author and former editor of The Times of India Bachi Karkaria, who has known Patricia closely, told Alt News, 'It must have been a difficult decision to let go of a platform with such huge reach in the north east. But she would have betrayed all that she has stood for if she had continued.' Bachi called Assam Tribune's response 'pitiable'. 'I am sure Assam Tribune gave her the column in 2014 as much for her strong voice as for her deep understanding of the people, culture and politics of the northeast. For them to stop just because it went against the ruling party at the Centre and the state was pitiable. To do it with such lack of grace makes it doubly so.' 'I have come to know, admire and respect Pat from our common membership of South Asian Women in Media (SAWM). She has always led from the front to defend the freedom of journalists. When her own rights were muzzled, to have quietly continued with Assam Tribune would have been hypocritical. Pat is neither hypocritical nor quiet,' Bachi noted. Alt News has written to The Assam Tribune seeking a response to Patricia Mukhim's remarks. This story will be updated if the paper gets back to us. This article is republished from Alt News. Read the original article. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
The Wire
10-06-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
What A Murder Tells Us About India's Hypocritical Treatment of Its Northeast
An illustration showing, from left, Sonam Raghuvanshi being brought into a Ghazipur hospital; relatives and friends of Sonam Raghuvanshi in a protest against the Meghalaya government, in Indore, Saturday, June 7, 2025; and the Meghalaya map. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute Now In Meghalaya, the last few days have been nothing short of a crime drama written consciously against the backdrop of the pristine, 'aesthetically pleasing' hills. A newlywed couple from Indore who arrived in the state for their honeymoon mysteriously went missing. The husband was soon found dead in a crevice in the hills, and a frantic search for the wife continued while calls for a CBI probe were heard. As CCTV footage, witness accounts and social media takes surfaced, one could almost hear suspenseful music in the background. Then the wife, along with three others, was arrested in Uttar Pradesh. She is now the prime accused in the case. While the possible explanations for the case still remain myriad, what is most appalling is that between the initial disappearance, and the woman's arrest, the case managed to put an entire state – in fact, an entirety of a notably marginalised region of India – on a public and media trial. The clarity facilitated by the woman's arrest has sparked a notable outrage against this unwarranted defamation that is likely to damage the state's tourism industry. This presumptuous hypocrisy of not just the Indian mainlander but also of a major national news portal was called out even during the initial stages of the case by the likes of Meghalaya journalist and Padma Shri awardee Patricia Mukhim, who criticised a Times of India article that had irresponsibly labelled the hills 'crime-prone.' TOI appears to have now edited the online version of the article. Edward Said, through his theory of Orientalism (1978), suggests that one of the modes of upkeep of a lopsided power dynamic between an oppressor and the oppressed is the synthesis of a romanticised and 'exoticised' image of the oppressed through a process which he calls 'orientalism'. The chief characteristic of orientalism is that it establishes prejudices about and against the oppressed via their cultural representations which are synthesised and presented by the oppressor themselves. This representation determines the power dynamic between the two classes as they engage. While Said's own work revolves around the specific dichotomy of the West and the East, this theory can no doubt be transplanted into this mainland-periphery relationship within India, and its historically lopsided unfolding. Until his wife's arrest, the public discourse around the Indore man's murder predictably saw the demonisation of Meghalaya, and the Northeast as a whole, as 'non-tourism-friendly', 'unsafe for outsiders', 'crime-prone', ' jungalee ' and 'brainwashed by Christian missionaries'. These accusations were ironically and arrogantly prefaced by the claim that the region is heavily tourism dependent. The Northeast has historically been treated as an exotic amalgam of the mystical, the natural and of 'simple-minded and backward' tribes by the mainland. Of course, there has not been any true engagement with the people of these lands – be it from podcasters accusing women from Mayong of turning men into goats, or Bollywood, where films show 'NE' written on the registration plates of vehicles in a film about, and set vaguely, in the Northeast. It is this exoticisation – now optimised through the powers of social media – that has triggered the idea that the Northeast is, or if not, that it must become a 'tourist destination'. Having lived in Meghalaya for a significant portion of my own life as an 'outsider', I find this idea nothing more than a clandestine attempt towards breaking the spirit of the Meghalayan people and their right to self-determination on economic and political terms. It also quite clearly contradicts the tangible realities of the state. As prominent literature about the region, such as Sanjoy Hazarika's Strangers of the Mist (2000) suggests, having been significantly starved of the ointment of social, political and economic attention unlike the country's mainland, the Northeast is recovering from the pangs of British imperialist plunder at a much slower pace than the former. This is one of the catalysts of dissent amongst various peoples of the Northeast against the Indian state itself. Also read: An Open Letter: 'I Have Small Eyes, Mr Prime Minister' Even without accounting for armed secessionist movements, and within the constitutional fold itself, there are indications that the region craves a more equitable protection of cultural and linguistic rights in face of continuing threats of their erasure, along with demographic changes. In Meghalaya, these include demands for an Inner Line Permit (ILP) system that makes the tracking of entry and egress of non-residents of the state a more transparent (and perhaps complicated) process. There is also a longstanding organised dissent against the Union government's railway extension plans into the state, led by major political organisations such as the Khasi Student's Union (KSU). Moreover, much of the state's and region's public memory retains the historically proven idea that the reaction of the Indian state to these concerns has generally been that of violence. In recent times, this has been coupled with a significant insecurity regarding the mainland-centric Hindutva agenda of reimagining 'tribality' as an offshoot of Hindutva, to make political inroads into the peripheral state. Speaking of Meghalaya as a 'tourist hotspot' is in the same ballpark as Donald Trump's declaration about 'wanting to turn Gaza into a luxurious tourist spot', and the frequent mentions of 'tourism' in post-Article 370 Kashmir. One senses a re-packaged imposition of the mainland's interests over the right of the Northeastern people to make their own political and economic, and therefore cultural, decisions. In fact, the almost neo-colonial characteristic of travel-influencing in the Northeast is palpable in people's phone screens now, as reach-hungry vloggers 'discover the undiscovered' with every other video, no differently from how Columbus 'discovered' America. 'Hidden gems' and 'secret spots' are unveiled and 'tourist spots' are manufactured in the aphotic parts of the region. This is, of course, also facilitated by private tour operators presenting sanitised clips of 'must visit' spots in the region as 'alternatives to international destinations'. Unintended consequences of this are microcosmic shifts from agrarian or natural resource-based economies in these places, to the more unpredictable and 'tourist-dependent' models of income. And of course, there is the mushrooming of 'concrete' structures in and around such spots and the ecological threat they bring. In a clear attempt to render it toothless, even the Northeasterner's anger becomes exoticised as a product of what the mainland portrays as their 'simplemindedness'. This idea legitimises mainland India's racially prejudiced 'we know what is better for them' attitude. Consequently, the image of the Northeastern people as 'mindlessly violent' and 'wild' tribals has been intricately embedded in the mainland's consciousness. Thus, when any tangible violence against the mainlander unfolds within the northeastern region, such as the case of the Indore man's murder, the quickest assumption is that it was inflicted by the local. And it must be noted that this is despite the fact that there are no real statistics to back up claims of any patterns of hostilities towards tourists in the state. In fact, as tourism gradually increases in the Northeast, instances of tourists not respecting the land have grown. For instance, in December, 2024, Akash Sagar, a social media influencer with 1.5 million followers on Instagram, uploaded videos of himself provocatively chanting 'Jai Shri Ram', and singing Hindu hymns inside the Church of Epiphany located in Meghalaya's famously 'cleanest Asian village', Mawlynnong. This led to criticism and an FIR. Similarly, in another incident in June, 2025, a local man was physically attacked by a group of intoxicated tourists from Uttar Pradesh. And yet, in these cases, national – and local –reports have had the decency to not speculate such incidents as indicators of stereotypical characteristics of tourists visiting the state. Meghalaya need not be at the beck and call of its tourism industry for its prosperity. There is no precondition to its existence that compels its people to turn every inch of their homeland into an amusement park for tourists from other states. Whether or not it is, and will be a tourist destination —and to what extent it will—depends significantly on the consent and mandate of its people, and not only on government policy and state highhandedness. It is of the utmost importance that the discourse, and the industry itself, de-centres the mainlander and makes it about the people of the state and their interests. Ayaan Halder is a poet, author and doctoral research scholar at the Department of Law, Gauhati University, Assam (India). He spent his childhood and teenage years in Meghalaya, and is still closely associated with residents of the state. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
