DHUBRI, July 26 - There is a conspiracy to defeat the cause of indigenous peoples of the State by frustrating their initiative to get the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC) updated correctly. Or else, there is no plausible reason as to why the indigenous peoples, who possess correct family tree data as per the 1951 NRC, are harassed as �D� voters and refused to be accommodated in the updated NRC, resent several Deshi Janagosthi people here.
Between six to seven per cent of these people, whose collective size is around 18 lakh, are now declared �D� voters and even some of their children are also declared �D� voters.
It needs mention here that for these people, the design of Maulana Bhasani to get undivided Goalpara district merged with Pakistan was frustrated. It was also because of them that the conspiracy to reduce Assamese into a minority language in the undivided Goalpara district was defeated in the 1960s.
But today, people of this community, who constitute the majority of the Muslims of the undivided Goalpara district, have been harassed in a manner that many of them have now been misled by the leaders of the migrant community to create a turmoil in the aftermath of the publication of the final draft of the NRC, which had declared in 1951 that these people are indigenous people of undivided Goalpara district, said these Deshi Janagosthi people here.
These people, who form the core of the Deshi Janagosthi intelligentsia here, are of the view that the conspiracy has a political character to provide a handle to the migrants, many of whom virtually lack the locus standi in the race to get their names enrolled in the updated NRC. It is so hatched that these migrants can use the Deshi Janagosthi people as their shield to fight the legal and political battles against the updated NRC by creating uproar.
The people who identify themselves as the Deshi Janagosthi people have been practising Islam since the early part of the 13th century AD. Their forefathers belong to the indigenous communities of the Kamatapur-Kamrup kingdom like the Meches, the Koches, the Hajongs, and the Kacharis, among others.
The indignity of the caste system made their leader Ali Mech, together with his followers, embrace Islam in AD 1206. Ali Mech was a feudal lord and he was humiliated by an upper caste king for his (Mech) belonging to a lower caste.
The latest developments are now such that the people of this beleaguered community have been misled by some vested interest circles, working on behalf of the migrants, to give up their traditions and imitate the migrants in matters of religious and cultural practices.
