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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Wielding the bamboo: The media in Assam is marching for the cause of Assamese hyper-nationalism -Debarshi Das

Wielding the bamboo: The media in Assam is marching for the cause of Assamese hyper-nationalism -Debarshi Das

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published Published on Nov 15, 2018   modified Modified on Nov 15, 2018
-Scroll.in

News channels in Assam often distort, defame, suppress and sensationalise, all to advance the perceived of the Axomiya jati.

A crowd of two-wheelers rushes forward. In the melee, a young man beats the motorcyclists with a thick bamboo stick. The video ends as one of the two-wheelers loses control, as its rider tries to avoid the bamboo stick, and collides with the person recording the video.

Cheery captions appear: “Bholuka bnaah [bholuka bamboo] in the news!”, “Have a bnaah, have a life!” and “In the news, in one strike!” A funny voiceover accompanies the video.

Viewers realise that the bamboo the man is beating the motorcyclists with is called bholuka. But what is funny about beating up strangers?

After Tinsukia

This was a prime time news item that aired on News 18 Assam NE on Sunday. The channel has since taken down the video from its Facebook page, though the promo for it is still available. Three days before the video was aired, unidentified gunmen had shot dead five unarmed Hindu Bengali men in Assam’s eastern district of Tinsukia. The police said that they were operatives of the United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent). But the group, commonly referred to as the anti-talks faction of the United Liberation Front of Asom, has denied involvement in the killings.

The dead men were working-class people. It has been speculated that the murders were an attritional tactic against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. Introduced in Parliament by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the bill seeks to grant Indian citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The killings sent out a signal: withdraw the bill, or those who stand to benefit from it will be murdered.

The Tinsukia incident was widely condemned in Assam. But that solidarity in sorrow did not last long. Last Saturday, a Bengali organisation called for a bandh to protest the killings. The video clip was from that bandh. The motorcyclists were bandh supporters. Beating people up with bamboo sticks is acceptable, even to be celebrated, if it furthers the cause of the Axomiya jati (the Assamese people), the video seems to suggest. The funny voiceover mentions that the wielder of the bamboo stick is a brave young Assamese man.

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Scroll.in, 12 November, 2018, https://scroll.in/article/901290/wielding-the-bamboo-is-the-media-in-assam-made-to-serve-the-cause-of-assamese-hyper-nationalism?fbclid=IwAR0gvSGTHjOpAeC8Dsn5uhCvs9MsxjxT


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