46 SOCIAL SCIENTIS F of outside Indians, even indigenous tribals were not spared. Two Boro tribal peasants, Habiram Boro and Bihuram Boro, were shot dead by the police in league with the AASU elements in Uttar Phullong Chapari under Kamalpur circle in North Kamrup. Problem of Cut-Off Year: For the detection of foreign nationals, 1948 has been demanded by the agitators as the cut-off year. In this regard the argument of the PLP chief, Nibaran Borah, is worth quoting: "If the issue of "stateless persons could be raised by Sri Lanka as late as 1965, in respect of migrants from India who had moved out a century earlier and if the Government of India could undertake to get these persons repatriated and rehabilitated in India, which the Government of India has done, we do not consider a post-1955 issue as either being belated or closed/51 It seems that Nibaran Borah takes Assam on a par with the independent soverign state of Sri Lanka. Clearly, the spirit of Borah's arguments is that, if the Government of India could get back the people of Indian origin from Sri Lanka and rehabilitate them in India, nothing stands in the way of it doing the same in the case of the people of Indian origin in Assam. Our conclusion would certainly have been different had Borah referred to Bangladesh and Nepal in place of the Government of India in his argument. Of late, a responsible and veteran Congress leader (now an Indira Congress member) has been demanding that all foreigners must be deported from Assam without taking into account the years of their residence in the state. If this is accepted, then a family living in Assam for the last hundred years or so may easily be dubbed as foreigners and be forced to leave the state. The man propounding this theory is none other than Mahendra Mohan Chowdhury, who was the Chief Minister of Assam after the death of Bimala Prasad Ghaliha. He even adorned the Governorship of Punjab. Some enthusiastic activists of the movement want to push back the cut-off year to 1826, the year of the British occupation of Assam. According to a recent estimate2, the population of Assam is 1,46,25,000, and it is alleged that out of every three, one is a foreigner, that is, at present there are five million foreigners in Assam In the midst of a movement, it is not possible to make an assessment of the same with any mathematical accuracy. But in the light of the demands put forth by the agitators for the deportation of foreign nationals without taking into account the period of their habitation in Assam, it will not be improper to make an attempt