Shillong, Jul 12: Senior officers in the Assam Rifles attended a jointly-organised conference in Guwahati last month that peddled right-wing talking points by the RSS.
Jagdamba Mall, who has long been associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), made communal statements at the gathering at which sat none other than the Assam Rifles Director General, Lt Gen Vikas Lakhera. He was accompanied by the Inspector General of Assam Rifles (North), Maj Gen Harinder Singh Mavi.
According to The Reporters’ Collective (TRC), which published a report on the conference last week, Mall at one point seemed to suggest that there would be no insurgency in Nagaland had this state not become majority Christian. “What is behind the insurgency in Nagaland? Where there is religious shift, there occurs insurgency, where there is no religious shift, means no conversion, no insurgency,” TRC quoted him as saying.
Mall said this at a two-day conference jointly hosted by the RSS affiliate Seemanta Chetana Mancha Purvottar and Assam Rifles.
Assam Rifles, which likes to describe itself as ‘Friends of the Hill People’, is India’s counter-insurgency paramilitary force in the North East and has its headquarters in Laitkor near Shillong.
The theme of the conference was ‘Indo-Myanmar Frontier Issues and Way Forward’. This subject sounds like something along the lines of what the Assam Rifles’ is meant for but, by attending a programme co-organised by an RSS-linked group where communal statements were shared by speakers, the secular credentials of the Assam Rifles may now come into question.
Simply sitting through a conference where such statements are made does not necessarily mean that the Director General agreed with them. However, speaking on the DG’s behalf, Maj Gen Mavi appreciated the session, saying it provided “a platform where operational experience and academic rigour converge.” He added, “There could not have been a better setting to discuss such a regional, complex issue.”
TRC said that three regional universities – Dibrugarh University, Manipur University and Rajiv Gandhi University of Arunachal Pradesh – were also collaborators on the conference. Also in attendance were Lt Gen (retd) Rana Pratap Kalita of the Indian Army, along with other serving and retired army and intelligence officials from the region, journalists and a few academics. From the RSS was its national co-public relations chief Pradeep Joshi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Nagaland, Temjen Imna Along.
RSS-affiliated speakers also casually spoke about tribals in the North East having originally been Hindus and how Myanmar had once been part of India (it had been administered as part of India under British rule until 1937) but was now “weak” and a hub of “anti-India activities”.
According to Mall, the tribals “were all Hindus before” and were made “non-Hindus” by being taught English, particularly through missionaries, who also built churches, TRC reported.
Several papers on various issues connected to the Indo-Myanmar border were presented over the two days. These covered “illegal migration,” “security threats,” “drug and human trafficking”, “impact of instability in Myanmar,” “challenges of insurgency,” India-Myanmar economic initiatives, etc.
According to TRC, Maj Gen Mavi argued that Bangladesh’s political instability is letting militant groups reactivate bases. Added to this, he said, is information warfare, identity contestation, demographic anxiety and “secessionist” narratives online with “external interference” and “resource contestation” by China, which makes the threat too complex for a “purely military” response.
Lt Gen Lakhera did not attend the closing lecture, which led Maj Gen Mavi to speak for him. While most of what was said at the event was pretty standard for a security conference, how and why the Assam Rifles would be willing to share a stage with the RSS remains the biggest question.
