Akhil Gogoi’s Contemporary Relevance in Assam

A voice of the masses, Akhil Gogoi expresses the language of the people while critiquing the state machinary, writes SAMHITA BAROOAH

———

I remember seeing Akhil Gogoi in Cotton College campaigning for General Secretary elections way back in 1995 when we had just started our college life. He was an iconic character and easily engaged with students and people. Few people in Assam would actually go and spend time with rural communities to understand the critical impact of the ecosystem and of the inequity in the lives of people like he did.

I met Akhil Gogoi about ten years later when he led the Doyang Tengani Xongram Xomiti. He was advocating the cause of displaced people in the Doyang Tengani area who were experiencing ecological transitions due to the "development agendas" of so-called developed Assam.

He mobilised people using rallies, public meetings, social audits, and community resource mapping. He also invested in building leaders at the grassroots level,  institutions, and networks to address the most marginalised sections of society.

Akhil Gogoi continues to be a critical conscience for the people on the streets, pavements, farms, forests, riverine areas, urban slums and any geographically and socio-economically marginalised sections of society. His powerful speeches and media interactions helped connect communities across diverse intersections of society.

He used constitutional measures to build consensus and addressed issues that mattered to the common people.

Development has to be based on equity, justice, ecological sustainability and people's needs. Development in today's times feeds the ambition, agendas and abilities of the most powerful, ethically unconscious and consumeristic cultures of the world.

Akhil Gogoi's relevance became pivotal in the post-colonial Assam movement, language movement and subaltern cultural movements in the region to address the core concerns of farmers, workers, students, women, and the environment at large.

In 2006-07, I remember conducting a training session on the importance of the Right to Information Act 2005 along with various social activists from Assam in Golaghat where Akhil Gogoi mobilised a huge group of community workers and farmers from across the districts of Golaghat and Nagaon.

He was genuinely concerned about people's issues that remain unanswered in the social dynamics of Assamese life.

He used the RTI Act as a tool to empower people and communities to ask relevant questions to public authorities which also led to the functioning of the state mechanism.

Unaccounted state authorities and non-disclosure of public information and unjust confinement of whistleblowers has become a norm in current times.

Akhil Gogoi was a voice of the voiceless and muted culture of silence that emerged in the social, economic, cultural, and intellectual psyche of Assamese society.

I remember confronting Akhil Gogoi in diverse public forums too about his disruptive language of accusing state functionaries and policy analysts whom he questioned strongly in open forums. He often remarked: "You'll do projects and write reports. I will continue to raise issues of public concern and make a noise about it."

Till the Baghjan mishap happened nobody questioned the oil and gas explorations of the state of Assam.

Till the disastrous impact of dams showed up, nobody thought why sustainable use of energy and resources is so critical for the entire ecosystem.

Till animals in the Kaziranga sanctuary died in floods and road accidents, nobody realised the importance of the role of local communities in wildlife management and forest conservation.

Akhil Gogoi raised issues about ecosystem losses, displacement of landed ethnic population, communities of farmers, workers, students, women, tribes, diverse caste groups and their dignity, wage parity, and rights over resources.

Akhil Gogoi's sharp critique of existing authorities was the language of the people as they expressed. He made no distinction between what people expressed in their apathy, disgust and disempowered selves and what he demanded on their behalf to both state and national authorities.

His engagement with the real concerns of people and non-use of any filtration in the articulation of such concerns has led to his confinement bereft of any relevant evidence.

If real community issues in different contexts of rural, urban, semi-urban, rural, tribal, inclusive gender, religious plurality, are not raised through people's conscious engagement, how can any progressive society include unheard voices?

The development comes through community participation and regenerative ecology. If both are silenced in the name of development then the long-term impact will result in collective doom.

Akhil Gogoi's voice and perspectives have emerged from the collective consciousness of people across diverse intersections in our multi-varied Assamese society.

His presence in the people's movements was capitalised by many people in today's powerful Assam whose political, communal, intellectual, and religious agendas are quite evident in recent times.

Is it not an irony that media persons, industrialists, godmen, drug pedlars, liquor barons, political leaders accused of rape and corruption can remain free. But, social, community, and ecological activists like Akhil Gogoi have to remain confined to state authority strictures even during the pandemic.

Leaders like Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia are transformational leaders in ecologically fragile states like Delhi. Why is it that we are static and frozen in time listening to a monochromatic version of a people's leader?

Akhil Gogoi's leadership is self-critical, transformational, and socio-culturally rooted in the subalterns and ecologically grounded societies of Assam across language, caste, class, disability, ethnicity, religion and gender.

Why can't society collectively work to enable his unconditional release? The Assamese people, communities and leadership are on the verge of being swept away into the national ambition of conquest and extraction. It is time for a new narrative that will lead to substantial change. The beginning of this can be made with the creation of democratic space to contest fair elections in the near future.

(Dr. Samhita Barooah is based in Assam and works in the areas of research and education. The views are personal.)