How connotations change! Not-so-many years back the term ISI, to Indians, meant integrity, quality. Now to Indians in general and those who belong to the Northeast, particularly Assam, the very term is something to beware of. It is more than just an innocuous appellation - it is anathema. It is an organisation that threatens to destroy the political fabric of the region. Matters, as they are, are bad enough. Ethnic equations are always difficult to understand. But Pakistan's disruptionist agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) understands it well. Well enough to chalk out a plan to blow the wavering demographic equilibrium beyond redemption. Throw life so much out of gear that peace will never return to the region.

Abetting militancy or providing logistic and strategic support to militants hell-bent blasting public property (and with it, the public too, of course) to smithereens is one thing. That is something, though difficult, that can be tackled mechanically. The ISI's gameplan of creating a sovereign Islamic state, which had come to light about a decade back, is now in the limelight with the arrest of its personnel in Assam recently. It is no more a cry of the proverbial wolf. It is a reality that has to be nipped here right now. It is not a concern of the stepmotherly Indian government alone - it is something that the people living here would have to grapple with. The deadline is today, tomorrow will be too late.

The starting point is not difficult to gauge. The present demographic equation in Assam is too well-known to be elaborated. Not only were illegal migrants from Bangladesh not detected and thrown back after the Assam Accord of 1985, the influx has not abated either. Bangladeshis and their now legally-franchised voter-descendants are in a majority in quite a few Lower Assam districts. These are no more melting pots of varied ethnic groups - these are mere extensions of the frontiers of an ever-burgeoning Bangladesh. Illegal migrants till the soil and have made it their home in other states too. These aliens are multiplying at such an alarming rate that, unless checked right away, they will outnumber all over the Northeast the very people who belong to the land. Northeasterners will become aliens in their own home land.

The waters are troubled enough for the opportunistic ISI to go fishing. The waters have been muddied and rendered turbulent mainly by Congress governments, in Assam and elsewhere. The catch for the ISI's asking is too big. On one hand, the overwhelmingly Bangladeshi Muslim population provides it with the perfect demographic launching pad for a militant, pan-Islamic uprising. Islamic fundamentalism had found a veritable breeding ground in Assam particularly after the demolition of the Babri Masjid by the marauding Hindu fundamentalist combine of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal. Bangladeshi Muslims, till then peacefully eating into the Assamese societal fabric, now made easy meat for ISI to create a pivot of Islamic militancy.

While mobilising people had to be done silently and surreptitiously, a diversion had to be created. The gullible leadership of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) provided the ideal foil. In trying to find a powerful friend to take on the powerful Indian militia, its leaders played into the hands of a waiting ISI. Matters have reached such a head that the ULFA's subversive activities are practically remote-controlled by ISI. All those sweet dreams of a sovereign Asom have faded away. Now it is, sadly enough, unconsciously working towards realising the goal of ISI, not its own Asom. The wish of shortsighted logistical expediency have yielded to longterm political objectives. If the ULFA thinks it can make use of ISI today, and tackle it tomorrow, it is mistaken. It would rather take a crash course in history.

Taking the ISI bull by its horns is not going to be easy. For one, there are the Indian politicians who will prove to be the first spoilsports. Those like the Congress and Left parties, obsessed with their minority (read, Bangladeshi Muslim) votebank have always raised a hue and cry over the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, and have sought to obstruct its abrogation at all costs. Without these voters they would be done for. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), replete with the firebrand youths of yesterday who had vowed to throw back the illegal migrants, have been the biggest traitors to the Axomiya cause. In always passing the buck to successive Union governments and tying up with the Left parties and the Janata Dal, has sought to placate and appease the same people they had wanted to be out of Assam.

The party to be watched out for in this tricky situation is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Not because it is so much against infiltrators, but because it is out to fish in troubled waters as well. The vanguard of the anti-alien movement of the Eighties have toyed with popular sentiment and ended up as miserable failures in evicting the aliens. The BJP wants to fill in that gap. The same troubled waters can provide a big catch to the BJP too. Disgruntled with the AGP, the mainstream Axomiya society can only hope to get succour from the BJP. Here lies a small catch. The BJP is not technically against foreigners. It only wants the Muslim Bangladeshis to go back; the Hindus can stay back. What double standards!

These Hindu foreigners too are foreigners, but they love the BJP. The Hindu Bangladeshis upset the Congress applecart in the Barak Valley in 1998. They can do the same elsewhere too. But then, the Hindu Bangladeshis are not the only foreigners rallying behind the BJP. Another chunk of foreigners is steadily increasing in the Northeast - Nepalis. The migrant labour from Nepal have already changed the ethnic equilibrium in Sikkim, and are now a substantial lot in Meghalaya. They love the BJP too. The results of the last Assembly elections there proved it beyond doubt.

Caught in this vortex are the people of the Northeast. They have very few people to voice their concerns. Many do not realise how grave the situation is. And those who do have no one else but the students' organisations to fall back on. The All-Assam Students' Union (AASU) lost out on a lot of goodwill and firepower because of many of its leaders of the Eighties heydays forming the AGP and then frittering the mandate of the people. Students' organisations elsewhere too have been crying wolf for a long time, but they are too insignificant a political-mechanical force to evict Bangladeshis.

The student community being ephemeral and transient, has little chance of making an impact. And with student leaders quite often ending up joining this party or that, the situation remains dismal. Yet it is the students and youths, led by the intelligentsia, which can actually bring about an upheaval. Myopic, and now banal, political tools like bandhs and dharnas do not work anymore.

The signs, all said and done, are ominous. The course of history is today being charted out not by the people of the Northeast, but a venomous, Janus-faced entity called Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). If the Northeast has to maintain any harmony, integrity and socio-cultural ethnic equilibrium, the name ISI must be wiped off the map of the region by no one, but the people themselves.