Jahnu Barua, a celebrated and critically acclaimed Assamese film-maker, in a recent interview on being asked about the killing of fourteen civilians in Nagaland by the Army said, “I am not very politically aware of the things happening there, but as a citizen, I must say that such things are very unfortunate. It will not be wise on my part to comment on the political aspect but as a humanist, any kind of killing is very painful. We need to seek an amicable solution through talks. It should not be through violence. I don’t approve of any kind of killings.”

This is somewhat paradoxical for Barua has been vocal about his opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) during the protests in Assam. And in another interview in 2020, he highlighted how his opposition is firmly based on the protection of Assamese identity for “the Assamese community could be in minority in the next year itself if this Act is implemented in the state.”

It is important to highlight this marked difference in the stated political views in the above two situations. I argue that this kind of politics is rooted in the positionality of the person. In this case therefore it is Barua’s majoritarian ideology speaking– a heteronormative, urban, upper-caste, Assamese male who supports chauvinist, narrow Assamese nationalism. Such politics could be critiqued as ‘convenience politics’. However, it is also true that many ‘subjectively’ would believe in contradictory ideas ‘honestly’. And it is the task of social sciences to make sense of how subjectivities are constructed and upheld.

Interestingly Barua is an Ahom and Ahoms are largely understood as being outside the caste-Hindu hierarchy (in fact, Yasmin Saikia writes how the caste-Hindus saw the Ahoms as polluted and wanted to cleanse them by bringing them into the Hindu fold. Upper-caste Hindu dominated institutions like ‘Assamese Language Improvement Society’, ‘Assam Literary Society’, etc. laboured to produce the Assamese as a ‘civilized’, ‘cultured’ Hindu group which met with opposition from the Ahoms). This also indicates the complex ways in which identities are constructed and change in specific contexts. We see such instances in different geographies.

Barua’s individual socio-cultural and economic positionality and importance however put him at par with the upper-caste Hindus in Assam. His political opinions do make that clear as well. Besides, many others would argue how Ahoms due to their historical ruling political status have instead oppressed other tribes such as Chutiyas, Koch-Rajbongshis, etc. Keeping in mind this context along with Barua’s socio-cultural capital, his views are at par with upper-caste Assamese Hindus and will be mentioned in that order.

In the context of Assam, I believe it is important to deconstruct Barua’s political commentaries for he represents a section among the Assamese elite whose political contradictions are most often glossed over. It has deep roots and a long history making exclusionary nationalism a natural taken for granted phenomenon.

Barua in the same interview in Wire while revisiting Ahom kings and history boasted how in Assam, surnames reveal the diversity and religious unity – “Look at our surnames. A Phukan or a Baruah could be a Brahmin, Kalita, Ahom, or even a Muslim. What does it signify? That, we are not religion-centric.” I am a little taken aback at this for it was Barua who in his films like ‘Halodhiya Choraye Bao Dhan Khai’ brought out not just the class oppression among Assamese peasants but also caste dominance – the helpless peasant (a Bora) versus the greedy land-owner (a Sharma). It confuses me why a man’s cinema that could capture the caste intricacies in Assam, would years later refuse to accept the very religious nature of Assamese society and politics?

But I guess, it is the paradoxical nature of dominant commonsense that the contradictions do not seem self-evident even to an extraordinarily sensitive and accomplished filmmaker. So if we were to draw from Gramsci’s understanding of common sense we see that he emphasises the chaotic and contradictory nature of ‘common sense’, describing it as “a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything one likes” (Gramsci 1971:422). It is “an ambiguous, contradictory and multiform concept”. Nonetheless, it is “crudely neophobe and conservative” (Gramsci 1971:423).

This glossing over internal hierarchies in celebrating ‘religious unity’ is typical of most nationalist rhetoric but is most pronounced in overtly hegemonic nationalism that sees any kind of diversity and inequalities as a threat.  In its self-presentation therefore one’s own society/community/ nation is seen as blemish-free. Caste is such a model or ethnic or religious diversity for that matter can be, and importantly for the proponents of such beliefs, ought to be invisibilized for the perceived ‘greater good’.

For the dominant upper-caste Assamese society like the dominant group in any society, it may be a shock to be termed as either hegemonic or exclusionary. The constructed ‘felt’ sense is one of being in the siege and threatened by the ‘outsider’. If one were to accuse them of being Islamophobic, it would be strongly refuted.  Yet the ‘anti-immigrant’ Assam Movement of the 1980s saw such become public, violent and very, very overt. The Nellie Genocide, The Chawolkhua Chapori Massacre which saw the day-light killings of the vast number of Bengali speaking Assamese Muslims are unfortunate cases in point.

The resulting National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a direct result of such a history and Barua supporting the NRC is a support of that history. The Assam Movement that was led by upper-caste, upper/middle class, Assamese Hindu men (and women) have always been silent about such history and it does not surprise me that for Barua, an upper-caste, upper-class Assamese man that history gets invisibilized.

I see in his refusal to comment on the killings in Nagaland a mark of cognitive invisibility. A stronger criticism would be that it marks his ‘convenience politics’, just like many others. The upper-caste Assamese Hindu elite has always been negligent and dismissive of the tribal population. The consequent demands of many present North-east states to separate from then Assam stemmed partly as a result of such chauvinist dominance. The little to no participation of Bodos in the Assam Movement and ultimately, their demanding an autonomous region is a case in point.

Several indigenous tribals continue to demand separation in varied capacities from Assam which has been politically, socio-culturally and economically dominated by the upper-caste Assamese Hindu heteronormative men. It is thus ironic that Barua (just like many other upper-caste Assamese Hindu elites) rope in Tripura and the fear of ‘indigenous tribals’ becoming a minority in their lands to back their anti-immigrant sentiments!

Barua in both instances seeks to present his position on grounds of being a humanist. And, yet it is odd to me that he tries separating the political from humanism – “not politically aware”, not comment on the “political aspect”. I am remembering Hannah Arendt who understood that humanism is a radical political belief. She believed that human freedom and dignity depended on the imperativeness of political engagement and engagement as a whole. For Arendt, political engagement in parts is a different version of political alienation, and political alienation for her is the biggest threat to human freedom and dignity. The killings in Nagaland by the Indian Army and the imposition of the CAA in Assam have branched out parts of the same Indian state’s absolutism that refuses to engage with the public via dialogue, it mocks it.

So why does Barua engage in one making a mighty video appeal and overt political statements while in the other thinks it unwise to comment on the “political aspect” and brushes it off with a general take on ‘killings’? Because in one, the state threatens or mocks the dominance of those in his positionality – the upper-caste, urban, Assamese heteronormative men while in the other, it does not. And it is this selective political engagement which Arendt terms ‘political alienation’, that I call, ‘convenience politics’. A politics that is derived from the caste Hindu urban Assamese men’s position of dominance and that politics, as Arendt rightly says, is a threat to human freedom and dignity. And can never be truly humanist.  

I cannot escape but evaluate Barua’s current project – a biopic on Lachit Barphukan, the military General of the Ahoms who defeated the Mughals and was often used as a symbol of Assamese nationalism (and now Hindutva forces) in the context of this ‘convenience politics’. Particularly at a time, when propagandist films like Kashmir Files, could easily evoke public outcries of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ inside and outside cinema halls. I am wondering how the political contradictions marking the ‘convenience politics’ of upper-caste, urban Assamese Hindu male film-makers like Barua would be translated on-screen and how they are received. I fear, though, that it will only go on to strengthen the dominance of those whose positionalities and life-worlds someone like Barua much inhabit and celebrate.

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Bhargabi Das is a PhD Research Scholar at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is working on fluid ecologies and the state in Assam. Her research is funded by the Irish Research Council, Govt. of Ireland.