Even if the contested migrants were
shunted out, the Bodos would still have many adversaries in Assam
ON 25 August, a
group of Muslim youths from the Amguri High School-turned-relief camp in
Chirang left for their home at Mongolian Bazaar village close to Bijni town in
Chirang. They were intercepted at Choudhurypara, apparently at gunpoint, chased
and hacked to death. Five were killed, one is missing and their two pick-up
tempos driven away and set on fire.
Choudharypara
is a Bodo village flanked by Muslim villages and surrounded by pockets of Koch
Rajbongshi settlements, one of the many tribes of Assam. The bodies of the five
men lay by the roadside, in paddy fields, suggesting the victims had run for
their lives. “This is not a hilly area and the road (quality) is not bad. A
speeding vehicle with a Muslim driver would not stop if a Bodo waves,” said a
senior CRPF officer at the spot. “We are sure armed rebels must have stopped
them at gunpoint.” The two pick-up tempos were found charred the next day.
“Some people
would have noticed their movement and timings,” said a source in the state
intelligence. Indeed, the victims had been recently moving between the relief
camp and their village daily, shifting household items and cattle, under
pressure from the administration. On the day the five youths were killed, they
had already made two trips back and forth; they set out at 4 pm on what was to
be their last.
The next
day, the Muslim settlers blocked the national highway and rail link, protesting
against the killings. Lower Assam was back to square one.
THE CRISIS
It has been six weeks since the present cycle of violence was triggered after
four former Bodo militants were lynched in Kokrajhar on 20 July. Tension had
been simmering, though, since 29 May when Bodos and Muslims fought over an
idgah maidan on forestland. That feud claimed its first victim, a Muslim, on 6
July. Next, two local Muslim student-leaders were grievously injured in a
gunfire. on 19 July. The killing of the Bodo youths the next day was the
proverbial last straw.
The spiral
of violence that followed has claimed nearly 90 lives so far and is still
continuing. As homeless Bodos and Muslims made their way to relief camps — said
to be India’s biggest internal exodus of around 5 lakh people — instigatory
SMSes, MMSes and blog videos, purportedly from Muslim groups, spread across the
country, triggering random attacks against people from the Northeast. Thousands
rushed home to safety from across India. But for the majority of the displaced,
in hundreds of relief camps at the epicenter of the tragedy, home is still a
dangerous word.
The current
spate of violence is but the latest episode in a two-decade-long conflict
between Bodos and other ethnic groups. From the call of the Plain Tribals
Council of Assam in 1967 for a separate Udayachal, to the All Bodo Students’
Union’s demand for “50-50 division” of Assam in 1987, Bodos have always sought
to protect their identity and land against non-Bodos.
The
bipartite Bodo Accord of 1993 collapsed within a year in the face of a brutal
spate of violence. In 1994, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB)
demanded a sovereign state. Two years on, the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) was
formed, many believe as a RAW-prop, to take on the NDFB.
The mass
surrender of BLT cadres in 2003 led to the formation of the Bodoland
Territorial Council (BTC) under an agreement between the BLT and the state and
central governments. The “reformed” BLT leadership launched a political outfit
that soon split into the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) and the Bodoland
Progressive People’s Front (BPPF).
Former BLT
chief Hagrama Mohilary is the head of the BPF, which has been in control of the
BTC since its inception, with Hagrama as its chief executive. The BTC runs the
show in Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri, the designated Bodoland
Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD). Meanwhile, the NDFB signed a ceasefire
with the Centre in 2005 and the group split between the pro-talk (NDFB-PTF) and
antitalk (NDFB-ATF) factions, the latter led by Ranjan Daimary, who is now in
jail.
In the last
decade, the Bodoland movement has largely been reduced to a brutal extortion
syndicate. A number of Muslim villagers in different relief camps testified
that each village paid Rs 2 lakh in tax to the NDFB every year. They have
little choice. The memory of the Bhimajuli massacre in 2009 when 14 Assamese
and Nepalis were gunned down in Sonitpur district for refusing to pay the NDFB
is still fresh in the state.
The
resulting mistrust, animosity and counter-violence have indeed made this
stretch of Assam, to quote Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, a volcano. But much of
this descent into chaos progressed under his deliberate watch.
• • •
Sifting
through claims and counter-claims, it can be concluded, with a degree of
certainty, that the lynching on 20 July of four ex-BLT youth was triggered by a
longstanding resentment against extortion by former Bodo militants. While the
killing of three Muslims earlier in July was the immediate provocation, a
number of factors aggravated the Muslim discontent in the BTAD in recent
months.
The BPF was
instrumental in forming the All Bodo Minority Students Union (ABMSU) which
backed the party in the initial years. But the educated Muslim youth soon
realised that the Bodos monopolised economic opportunities in the BTAD.
Resentment also grew among the politically ambitious minorities. In the
46-member BTC, six are government appointees, 30 seats are reserved for Bodos
and the remaining 10 divided equally between general and non-Bodo members.
Competing with other non-Bodos for this limited political opportunity, the
Muslim politiicians of the BTAD soon realised that they would never find a
voice against the overwhelming Bodo majority in the council.
The dissent
reached its boiling point a few months ago when rumour spread that the NDFB was
paving the way for a union territory of Bodoland. Already cornered in the BTC,
the non-Bodos feared for their future. All those fears came true when the NDFB
claimed that it had bargained with the Centre for a Bodo battalion and began to
train Bodo youth in the villages “for the army”.
Muslims in
the BTAD began to assert themselves through frequent mass rallies. Hostile wall
writings against the BTC became common in Muslim villages. But when they tried
to enforce a bandh in Kokrajhar, the Bodo seat of power, the balance was
tipped.
• • •
The
government, admit senior ministers in the Gogoi government, had no inkling that
the discontent was fast approaching its threshold. The state administration has
long been following an unstated doctrine of minimum interference in what it
perceives as a sustained political, rather than a law-and-order, problem in the
BTAD. After failing to pre-empt the showdown, Gogoi drew flak for failing to intervene in time.
As the toll
touched 73 on 6 August, he asked for a CBI probe. In an attempt at damage
control after LK Advani’s visit, the CM insisted that all people in relief
camps were Indians and dared the BJP to visit a camp and pluck out one illegal
migrant.
THE PLAYERS
Perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal’s political ambition drew him closer to the
Congress but Gogoi apparently snubbed his overtures. Ajmal launched his own
political outfit in 2005. On paper, the All India United Democratic Front’s
(AIUDF) objective was to defend the interest of the oppressed minority. In
public, it aspired to give Assam its first non-Assamese speaking chief
minister.
In 2006, the
AIUDF debuted in the state Assembly with 10 seats, five of those earlier held
by the Congress, and an 8 percent vote share. In the 2009 Lok Sabha election,
Ajmal won from Dhubri and his party secured the highest vote share in 25
Assembly segments. In last year’s Assembly poll, the AIUDF’s tally reached 18
and its vote share crossed 13 percent. The party emerged as the principal
Opposition.
Before the
2011 polls, when the Congress was uncertain about a clear majority, Ajmal had
offered to back the party in a possible post-poll alliance if Bhubaneswar
Kalita, the state Congress chief, and not Gogoi, were made the chief minister.
Gogoi survived the scare with a sweeping majority but next time he may not be
as lucky. “Eventually they (the Congress) will not be able to do without us, it
is a matter of time,” Aminul Islam, AIUDF General Secretary, told TEHELKA.
Any
victimhood, perceived or real, leads to further gravitation of Muslim votes
towards the AIUDF and Ajmal has not missed an opportunity to cash in on the
ongoing violence. A month into the clashes, the CM could not be seen as
complacent to Bodo offenders any more. So Brahma was picked up by the police.
• • •
Muslims were
not the only restive lot in the BTAD. In 2006, the Congress depended on the
BPF’s 11 MLAs (rather than the AIUDF’s 10) to form the government. In the
run-up to the 2011 polls, an unsure Congress stoked BPF aspirations to emerge a
bigger kingmaker. Though the BPF maximised its BTAD seats in 2011, the Congress
swept the polls. The BPF’s share in the Cabinet was reduced to one.
The BPF’s
political frustration was compounded by the emerging challenge from within the
community. Before last year’s election, the NDFB left the Bodo National
Conference, an umbrella organisation of Bodo outfits floated in 2010 to rein in
fratricidal killings, because the BPF refused to share the 12 BTAD seats with
the United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF), the political front of the NDFB.
The BPF
leadership, sources maintain, politiis also getting fidgety about being kept in
the dark on the peace talks between the Centre and the NDFB. When the peace
negotiations work out with the two NDFB factions, the BPF will have to share
power with them, ending their free run over BTAD politics.
The emerging
challengers might well break ground, given the discontent in BTAD districts
over widespread corruption in the BTC, lack of coordination with the state
bureaucracy and the excesses committed by former BLT cadres. A cornered Hagrama
had to revive the demand for statehood before the 2011 election to tide over
these misgivings.
On 2 August,
when an All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU) delegation visited the CM,
Gogoi was as usual all ears. “Gogoi assured us that everyone will be sent home
from the camps by 15 August. Then he went back on his word,” Abdul Aziz,
ex-president and adviser of AAMSU, told TEHELKA.
As trains
kept bringing people to Guwahati, the wave of emotions threatened to affect the
non-Muslim vote that ensured a thumping Congress victory last year. Before
arresting Brahma, Gogoi had to concede that his government would not
rehabilitate Muslims from any camp without ascertaining their Indian identity.
The
so-called Bodo cause against illegal migrants has strengthened the unity of
disparate forces in Assam since. “Brothers have no fight among themselves. We
all are together against illegal migrants,” says AASU ideologue and the North
East Students’ Organisation (NESO) chief Samujjwal Bhattacharya. His claims
belie the long history of violence among different ethnic groups of Assam as
also attacks on Indians from other states.
Anjali
Daimari, sister of jailed NDFB leader Ranjan Daimari, accepts that even if the
illegal migrants are deported overnight, Bodos will still have too many
indigenous adversaries in the state. Then she quickly returns to the illegal
migrant issue: “Riots and floods are festivals for them when they use the camps
to settle in. In 2008, around 12,000 Muslims in relief camps did not have
either voter’s card or land patta. We opposed their rehabilitation but all of
them slipped out and occupied land wherever possible.”
This time,
though, it may not be easy. While the Congress government is trying to go by
the 2011 voter’s list to identify and rehabilitate people to their villages,
there is pressure to ascertain individual identity as per the Assam Accord.
While the AASU has finally agreed to accept people who entered Assam before
1971, others such as the NDFB stick to the demand of 1951 as the cut-off year.
THE PLOT
What unfolded in the week after 20 July, was orchestrated violence from both
sides till the Muslims ran out of steam. After a brief lull, the miscreants are
now launching targeted attacks and also trying to spread the tension beyond the
BTAD areas. “The purpose of these typically low-casualty, high-impact attacks
seems to be to keep the scare alive so that people do not leave relief camps.
To that end, the attacks are also suitably timed a few days apart,” explains a
source in the security forces.
The gruesome
killing of five men from the Chirang relief camp on 25 August followed two days
of peace. On 22 August, two young Muslim petty fishermen were shot dead and one
sustained bullet injuries near Chapar on the Kokrajhar–Dhubri border. This
attack too came after two incident-free days that created a false sense of
security.
Ashok
Mushahary, 21, has the same complain at a Bodo relief camp in Titaguri: “My
house in Malgaon is gutted. It was the last Bodo village before the Muslim
settlement starts. My brothers have gone there. Nobody has assessed the damage,
there is no police or Army.”
Assam Police
DGP Jayanto Narayan Choudhury claims there is a security picket for every 3-5
villages. Driving to Malgaon, about 35 km from Kokrajhar town, TEHELKA did not
find a single picket in a cluster of 13 villages. Ashok’s brother Swapan, 26,
stood guarding a charred structure that was their home for four generations.
“Everything
was broken, all valuables have been looted and cattle taken away. I don’t think
we can start life all over again,” Swapan broke down. The girl he loved and was
about to marry is in a relief camp with her family. He is not sure if she will
return and even if she does, what he has to offer.
Before
flying to New Delhi, BTC chief Mohilary appeared unusually poised at Kokrajhar
this weekend: “We are not against the Muslims. But we want only those people
with proper land patta and citizenship certificates to be rehabilitated. We
want a mandatory citizenship and land record check of every refugee in every
camp. Our genuine Muslim brothers will definitely get their land rights if they
have patta, but we cannot allow encroachment of our forestland.”
Muslim
leaders have also upped the ante, apparently preparing for a long haul. Leaders
from the AIUDF and the AAMSU have asked the displaced not to leave relief camps
till the security situation improves.
While the
Centre has rescued Gogoi by asking the Army to launch a counter-insurgency
operation against the armed Bodo rebels, the CM is yet to crack down on the
organised propaganda that is provoking Muslims in the camps and elsewhere.
TEHELKA has copies of morphed inflammatory videos being circulated in almost
all Muslim relief camps. In one such video, the killing of a Bangladeshi
intruder by BSF personnel is portrayed as the killing of a Muslim youth on the
bank of the Gaurang River in Kokrajhar by Bodo rebels.
THE CONSTANT
Illegal migration is very much a reality in Assam. But the AIUDF and the AAMSU
leaders are livid that the numbers are “absurdly inflated to create a fear
psychosis”. The steady flow of a large number of new settlers in towns and
districts, they say, is due to internal migration. Over four lakh hectare has
been lost to floods and erosion since 1951 in Assam.
But in the
context of the BTAD, the rise in Muslim population in the bordering Dhubri
district is more of a threat perception than an immediate cause for alarm. In
fact, the steady fall in the population of Kokrajhar district is an obvious
sign of non-Bodos — Muslims and others — leaving the BTAD heartland in
substantial numbers.
In 2010, a
pilot project to upgrade the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was put on
hold after four AAMSU supporters died in police firing while opposing the move
as a witch-hunt against genuine Assamese minorities. “The bogey of illegal
migrant tag has haunted us for so long now that we also want the identity issue
settled for good,” says AAMSU’s Aziz. “But the government does not have the
full NRC records of 1951 or the complete voting list of 1971. Moreover,
everybody says that identity proofs are fake. So how will one prove one’s citizenship?”
With even
Muslim organisations not opposed to the idea, it is intriguing who benefits
from delaying a ground-truthing that can settle the issue. “Nobody, including
the AASU, wants to settle the illegal migrant issue. This is the political plank
for all parties in Assam and without it we will all feel lost,” says AIUDF
General Secretary Aminul Islam.
But what
will befall those, irrespective of numbers, identified as illegal immigrants in
any enumeration agreeable to all sides? There is little chance that Bangladesh
will accept them back. While Bhattacharya says the illegal immigrants can be
given limited (“second class”) citizenship, Daimari suggests they can be
“distributed among other states so that the burden is divided”.
• • •
When the BLT
surrendered, its cadres gave up around 1,000 guns, mostly countrymade. A large
number of sophisticated automatic weapons remain with the former militants of
BLT and NDFB. Besides, Bodos have not been the only militant group in the
region. With almost every ethnic group having its own militant outfit, weapons
are plenty in supply.
Sources in
the security forces maintain that most sophisticated weapons in circulation in
Assam are made in China and enter through Nagaland, peddled by the NSCN. While
Chittagong has been a prime hub of arms smuggling, a few caches of weapon cross
the Bangladesh border.
With so many
weapons in the hands of the Bodo rebels, it is no surprise that many dead among
Muslims were victims of gunshots. The Bodo leadership does not like to be
quizzed about the use of automatic weapons. “Assam had a history of insurgency
and it is natural that illegal weapons might remain with some people. It is the
duty of the state government to seize them,” says Mohilary.
AIUDF’s
Islam dismisses the intelligence claim that Islamic terrorist outfits are
flourishing along the Assam-Bangladesh border and backing the Muslim resistance
in BTAD. “We don’t know what the ISI is up to. But if the poor farmers had
guns, would they be at the mercy of Bodo gunmen?” he asks.
THE DANGER
After the Bodo rebels went on a killing spree in 1993, the refugees stayed in
relief camps till 1995 when the government took them to their native villages,
providing temporary shelters and security. But in 2000, the government decided
to withdraw security and Bodo rebels again chased them out. Refugee camps in
Bongaigaon filled up again.
“There are
10,000 people, all Muslims, petty farmers, driven out in the similar fashion by
the Bodos. The same is happening again. If the government could not rehabilite
10,000 people in two decades, how can it send back lakhs?” asks Habiluddin
Ahmed who describes himself as “a permanent refugee in his own country”.
The
methodical attacks of the past few days to sustain the fear seem to justify
Ahmed’s skepticism. Unclaimed attacks by non-Bodo groups — Kamtapur Liberation
organisation (KLO) hand is already suspected in some attacks — may further
muddy the waters. Even the ULFA has threatened to hit “Indians in Assam”.
The
insistence on identity checks before rehabilitation will also prolong the
misery setand deepen the anger of the displaced. The 2008 bloodshed was
triggered by an aggressive AASU campaign to determine the identity of Muslims
in the state, which angered Muslim student organisations and, in turn, led to a
violent Bodo retaliation. If illegal migrants are threatened again, a more
organised and aggrieved Muslim community may retaliate.
“More than
anything, these events have deeply polarised a secular state and we will
realise the damage in the next election. For now, it may take much more than
the usual couple of months to reach a temporary truce. This time the Muslims
are unlikely to concede ground because they know the nation is watching,”
explains a senior intelligence officer.
That grim
forecast rings true, especially given the sense of victimhood on both sides.
“Everybody here is anti-Bodo. We have been exploited and denied our rights for
too long. Today, we are blamed even if someone gets a skin rash. Today, we are
pitted against illegal migrants. Yesterday, it was the Adivasi. Tomorrow, it
will be somebody else. There will be no lasting peace unless there is a change
in this anti- Bodo psyche,” says Anjali Daimari.
Will that
history of persecution ensure the Bodos treat others as equals in the BTAD or
will they continue to live by the gun? “Of course, every community is equal,”
she cuts in. “But that land is ours.”
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