Misconceptions fuel Assam tribal
violence By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Assam in India's Northeast,
which had been experiencing some semblance of
"normalcy" with the government initiating peace
talks with the United Liberation Front of Assam,
has again erupted in violence. Villages in the
state's Bodo areas are in flames.
Violent
clashes between Bodo tribal people and
Bengali-speaking Muslims have so far claimed the
lives of 51 people. Around 200,000 people of both
communities have fled to relief camps after their
homes and hamlets were razed to the ground.
While some have described the clashes as
riots between two communities, the hand of armed
groups in initiating the violence and stirring the
ethnic-communal cauldron is evident. Two former
leaders of Muslim student
organization were attacked on July 6 by
"unidentified gunmen", reportedly Boro Liberation
Tiger (BLT) militants. This triggered the lynching
to death of four former BLT members by an "angry
mob". The situation quickly escalated into all-out
violence.
The violence began in Kokrajhar
and then spread to Chirang, Dhubri, Bongaigaon and
Baksa in lower Assam. Some of these districts are
part of the Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts
(BTAD) administered by the Bodoland Territorial
Council (BTC) that was set up in 2003.
The
BTAD consists of mainly tribal people, mostly from
the Bodo, the Assam plains' largest tribal group.
Their struggle for recognition of a separate
identity dates back to the 1960s, when they
demanded that Bodo be an official language of
Assam. This was granted in 1976.
In 1985,
the federal government signed the Assam Accord
with the All Assam Students Union, which led to an
"anti-foreigner" agitation between 1979 and 1985.
Finding themselves excluded from this agreement,
the Bodos launched an armed struggle for
self-determination in the late 1980s under the
leadership of the All Bodo Students Union.
A Bodo Accord was signed in 1993 but it
collapsed soon after with Bodo Liberation Tigers
(BLT) rejecting it and reviving their armed
rebellion against the Indian state. Another accord
was signed in 2003, this time with the BLT. The
The National Democratic Front of Bodoland, formed
in 1986 with an independent Bodoland as its goal,
rejected that accord and continued to fight the
state. It has officially been part of a truce
since May 25, 2005.
Parallel to their
armed struggle against the state, Bodo groups have
targeted minorities like the Muslims and the
Santhals, a tribal community that was brought by
the British colonial rulers from the Indian
'mainland' to work on Assam's tea estates.
The Bodos first clashed with Muslims in
1952. But these clashes were only a part of a
larger post-Partition battle between Hindus and
Muslims. Several Muslims in Assam wanted parts of
the state, especially Goalpara district, to join
East Pakistan. The Bodo-Muslim clashes since the
1990s, however, have more to do with Bodo identity
and conflict over land.
Land is the main
issue underlying the repeated eruption of violence
in Bodo areas. The Bodos are the northeastern
plains' oldest tribe. According to Bodo leaders,
there has been large scale influx of "illegal
migrants" to the Bodo districts. The "local
population," they say, is now "at risk of turning
into a minority". Bodos, they say, are losing
"their land" and competition over land and other
resources has intensified.
Meanwhile,
Muslims and Santhals tribal living in the Bodo
areas believe that their targeting by Bodo groups
is part of an ethnic-cleansing campaign aimed at
driving non-Bodos out of the area.
Assam
has been a destination of migration for centuries.
Its sparse population and fertile plains drew
millions from the heavily populated Gangetic
basin. British colonial rulers encouraged
migration into Assam. But it was during the
Partition of the subcontinent in 1947 that
movements to northeastern states like Assam and
Tripura peaked. Its impact on local demographies
was dramatic. It altered the Assamese-Bengali, the
Hindu-Muslim as well as the tribal-non-tribal
balance in the region.
In the 1941 census,
tribals constituted 53.16% of Tripura's
population. Ten years later, tribals accounted for
just 37.23% of the population. The proportion of
Bengali speakers surged. As the political
situation in East Pakistan deteriorated
thereafter, the exodus of Hindu and Muslim East
Pakistanis into India continued, peaking again
during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war. The
exodus of people fleeing poverty in Bangladeshi
has not stopped since. Analysts have described its
impact on Assam's demography as "tectonic".
While there is little agreement on the
actual figures, the proportion of Assamese
speakers has dropped at the cost of Bengali
speakers. In a state where Assamese speakers were
once the overwhelming majority, they have become,
according to the 2011 census, just the largest
group.
The communal angle has made this
migration all the more contentious. The influx of
Muslims has grown. The district of Dhubri, which
borders Bangladesh, has become a Muslim-majority
district. These demographic changes have
implications for elections; Muslims have emerged
as a deciding factor in at least 40 of Assam's 126
state assembly constituencies.
Not
surprisingly, political parties have fished in
Assam's troubled waters and engaged in what is
described in India as "vote-bank politics". While
Muslims provide the Congress party with a solid
"vote-bank" in the state, the Hindu right-wing
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Asom Gona
Parishad, a party that grew out of the
"anti-foreigner agitation", attract support by
appealing to anti-immigrant and xenophobic
sentiments. All parties thrive by keeping Assam's
ethnic/communal cauldron bubbling. All have gained
from the immigration issue. For all its
anti-foreigner rhetoric, the AGP did nothing to
address the immigration issue in the years it
headed the government in Assam.
Immigration is a deeply sensitive issue in
Assam. It spurred the Assam agitation and
triggered the insurgency led by the United
Liberation Front of Assam. The leaders of the
Assam movement called for the detection and
deportation of all "illegal immigrants". However,
differentiating between a legal and illegal
immigrant is close to impossible given the fact
that many people in South Asia do not have
documents to prove their citizenship. It is a fact
too that many illegal immigrants to the northeast
are able to secure cards entitling them to food
rations and voting weeks after their arrival in
India.
When the issue of illegal
immigration into states like Assam or Tripura is
raised it is referring to migrants from
Bangladesh, who enter India in search of
employment and opportunities. When Bodos complain
of the influx of illegal migrants that is
threatening their identity and ownership of land,
they are pointing in the direction of
Bangladeshis. However, many of those people whom
Bodo leaders refer to as Bangladeshis are in fact
Indian Muslims who have come in from the Indian
state of West Bengal or who have lived in these
areas for several decades, many since before the
partition. They aren't breaking the law by living
in Bodo areas.
Bangladesh firmly denies
that its people are entering India illegally.
Indian population experts have pointed out that
the massive population growth in areas bordering
Bangladesh - the growth rate here is far higher
than the national average and cannot be explained
through natural population growth alone - is
evidence of Bangladeshi immigration. The fact that
there has been a sharp increase in
Bengali-speaking Muslims too indicates that the
people are from Bangladesh, contend Assamese and
Bodo nationalists and Hindu rightwing parties.
The violence in Bodo areas in recent weeks
has sparked a familiar war of words. BJP Member of
Parliament Vijay Goel, who flew into Assam as part
of a fact-finding mission, accused "illegal
Bangladeshi Muslim infiltrators armed with weapons
who have come from a neighbouring country" of
inciting the violence. Federal Home Secretary RK
Singh dismissed such allegations. "The
international border [with Bangladesh] is sealed,"
he said adding that it is "simply impossible for
any organised group to cross over to India to
carry out such attacks."
India has been
fencing its border with Bangladesh to keep out
migrants.
Civil society activists are
saying that the government must facilitate the
return of the displaced to their homes else those
who are seeking to cleanse the area of non-Bodos
will be able to take their ethnic cleansing
project forward. People displaced from earlier
rounds of ethnic clashes are still languishing in
relief camps. This does not bode well for the
minorities among the recently displaced.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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