The Indian Express
Friday, November 21, 2003
The Biharis who never saw Bihar until last night
Railway jobs, what railway jobs? Victims ask as they hide in Tinsukia
SAMUDRA GUPTA KASHYAP
TINSUKIA, NOVEMBER 20: Twenty eight-year-old Mukti Yadav has never been to Bihar. He has only seen its outline on a map of India. And that was very long ago: he was a child then, studying in an Assamese-medium school. Home has always been Assam for Mukti, a Bihari.
But today he sits huddled in a corner of the Debipukhuri Hindi High School, one of the 300 Biharis on the run after mobs torched their homes, saying the Biharis were gobbling Assamese jobs.
There are many like Mukti who have no idea what this ruckus over railway jobs is all about. Nor do they have any place to go to: the school where they have sought shelter is a temporary relief camp, organised by some locals because the administration is yet to make up its mind whether these people should be provided relief material.
''Those who attacked our homes were not from our village. My friends from neighbouring villages came in the morning to help us,'' says Biswanath Yadav, another inmate at the camp. He's from Guinjan, close to Boroguri which has always been Mukti's home.
Tinsukia is Upper Assam's busiest town and has the largest concentration of Biharis in the region. Most work here as labour hands. Today, with curfew in place, this bustling town has a ghost-like appearance.
Trouble began on Tuesday after nearly 100 Biharis who, fearing for their lives after stray incidents of assault, collected in a temple. But they ended up clashing with the locals there.
Advocate Bhaskar Dutta blames the slack administration: ''Had they played a proactive role, this situation would have never arisen. The authorities failed to gauge the mood.'' Once violence broke out, police opened fire. And then rumour-mongers took over, fanning passions across Tinsukia and Dibrugarh.
Tinsukia was the nerve centre of plywood factories until 1996 when the Supreme Court ban on tree-felling came into effect. The last junction in the east on the railway map, its entire workforce came from Bihar.
''There must be some 50,000 Biharis here. If you were to include Dibrugarh, it would probably be 80,000,'' says Shew Sambhu Ojha. He should know. He has been the local MLA twice and a minister in the Congress government of Hiteswar Saikia from 1996-2001. Now a BJP leader, Ojha says most Biharis are ''local'' people.
''The second generation was born in Assam. They have forgotten their Bihar links. Many will not be able to trace their ancestral village in Bihar,'' says Ojha.
Sixty-year-old Budhiya Devi echoes Ojha. She says she has nowhere else to go. ''Ihe janam-maran ke rishta ho gail ba (we can identify ourselves only with this state).'' She was born in Sadiya, a town that slipped into the Brahmaputra during the great earthquake of 1950.
Curfew has helped bring the situation under control. Barring stray incidents last night, it's been peaceful. But the damage has been done: a generations-old bond is once again suspect.
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