Civil disobedience movement in assam
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Answer: in one history's ironic twists, residents of the troubled northeastern Indian state of Assam are turning the tactics that won India its independence from Britain against their own government.
In the largest mass movement since the civil disobedience and "Quit India" drives led by Mahatma Gandhi, Assamese are picketing, stopping work, and courting arrest by the thousands.
The aim of their largely nonviolent protest, now in its 10th month, is to force the government to deal with the waves of foreign immigrants that have upset the ethnic, cultural, economic, and political balance throughout the state and much of the turbulent northeastern region.
Assam's student-led protest against "foreigners" -- mostly Bengali immigrants from Bangladesh -- is costing India $5 million a day in oil bills and bedeviling Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government with its gravest domestic challenge. Assam normally produces one-third of India's domestic oil output, but protesters' blockades have halted the oil flow to the Indian heartland.
Most threatening are its reverberations throughout the strategically located northeastern region, wedged between Burma, Bangladesh, and China and connected to heartland India by only a narrow neck of land.
The Assam movement has kindled northeastern resentments against "foreigners" seen to be swamping native cultures, land rights, and job opportunities. It has touched off violent retaliations against outsiders: In Tripura 1st month 1,000 Bengali settlers were massacred by displaced tribesman.
Small but outright secessionist rebellions are being fought by armed bands in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. Although the separatist sentiment is not widespread, New Delhi