NDBF denies role in Bodoland clashes (The Telegraph, 6 October 2008)
Assam Violence leads to exodus (The Hindu, 6 October 2008)
Deadly Clashes Breakout in Assam (BBC News, October 6, 2008)
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Hindustan Times
It’s all about land
by Digambar Patowary, Hindustan Times
Tiyajhar, October 05, 2008
It all started over a goat.
A Bodo youth was caught on Thursday night trying to steal a goat from the immigrant Muslim dominated village of Mohanpur in Udalguri district, 100 km north of Guwahati. When he returned to his village badly thrashed, his compatriots decided they had to retaliate.
By Friday afternoon, a Muslim was found murdered close to the deputy commissioner’s office in Udalguri town. Thereafter for both communities there was no looking back, as violence engulfed the neighbouring districts of Darrang and Baska as well.
Thousands, specially women and children fled to Mangaldoi, the headquarters of Darrang district, where relief camps have been set up on the outskirts.
“Four people were killed before my eyes,” said Basanti Boro, 30, who has sought shelter at a relief camp set up at Mudoibari High School. “They were not even Bodos, but Garo tribals.” She collapsed into tears. “We have become homeless in our own land.”
“The immigrants want to grab our land,” said Sukaran Boro of Tiyajhar village. He has sent his family to a relief camp but stayed back to guard his property.
Land is indeed the key to the conflict that has persisted for several decades. The first Muslim immigrants — from East Bengal — began arriving in this region – as in most of Assam – in the late 19th century, encouraged by the British, who wanted to increase the volume of cultivation in the area. They cultivated inferior lands other peasants would not touch and made them bloom.
But they continued to pour in even after East Pakistan – later called Bangladesh – became a separate country, and it was no longer legal to do so. They still haven’t stopped. With no more land available, they have used a variety of means to entrench themselves, even infiltrating into the tribal belts and blocks – created by the government to prevent tribal land alienation.
Not surprisingly during the agitation for a separate Bodo state within the Indian union in the 1980s and 1990s, there were repeated clashes between the Bodos and the immigrants, the former resenting their very presence.
The present round of tension began in August this year when Assamese students led by the All Assam Students Union began a drive in the area to identify and remove illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Events took a nasty turn when 12 immigrant Muslim labourers went missing. Ten bodies were later recovered.
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Hindustan Times
Assam burns as Bodos, Muslims clash
by Digambar Patowary , Hindustan Times
Tiyajhar, October 05, 2008
The death toll in the clashes between Bodo tribals and Muslim settlers rose to 33 on Sunday, with 18 more people killed, and violence spreading to fresh areas, including a third Assam district, Baska.
Despite the army having been called in on Saturday and curfew clamped across the entire region, armed mobs of both communities continued to roam the village roads of Udalgiri, Darrang and Baska, located along the north bank of the Brahmaputra, 100 km from Guwahati, wreaking death and destruction.
Around 35 villages have been affected and 65,000 people rendered homeless. Local sources said while in Darrang it was mainly Muslim mobs — many of them Bangladeshi settlers — that attacked tribal villages, in Udalgiri it was the other way round. Police and paramilitary forces opened fire in four places to control mobs, killing 12 people.
In Dispur, CM Tarun Gogoi suggested a underground militant group could be responsible for provoking the clashes. “A militant group which is currently under ceasefire may be involved,” he said. Sources said the group could be the National Democratic Front of Bodoland.
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Fears over Assam vigilante violence (BBC News, Sep 8, 2008)
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