India: Why Assamese Muslims are now asserting their ethnic identity alongside their religious identity

The Hindu

Strands of belonging

SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY

[Photo:] Malini Bhattacharjee and Nazrul Haque

In a research paper presented at Jamia Millia Islamia, academics Nazrul Haque and Malini Bhattacharjee highlight why Assamese Muslims are now asserting their ethnic identity alongside their religious identity

The ethnic violence in Bodo Territorial Council areas of Assam has been in the news for some years. Particularly bloody and recurring has been the conflict between the Bodos and the largely Bengali-speaking Muslims, leading to many from both the communities living in uncertainty and fear in camps for some time now. The accusations of the Bodos against the Muslims as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who occupied their fallow land — and therefore ‘outsiders’— have been at the core of the conflict.

Not just in the Bodo areas but across Assam, the fight against illegal immigration from Bangladesh has been long, and at times bloody. A porous international border, unfulfilled promises of the Assam Accord and both State and National parties perennially playing vote bank politics, have contributed to the protracted problem. The emergence of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) — on largely religious lines — has added to the complexities.

In this din, a critical voice seems to have gone unheard — that of the Assamese Muslims, locally called Goria, Moria or Desi. Many political and religious groups, time and again, have tried tying them to the Bengali-speaking Muslims highlighting their religious identity. However, lately, the community is seen to be asserting its ethnic identity as equally important as its religious identity, thus situating them in a peculiar position in the politically charged and religiously polarised milieu of the State.

The complexities of the topic got rare attention at a recent conference in New Delhi on the North East. Nazrul Haque and Malini Bhattacharjee, from Bangalore’s Azim Premji University, presented a paper — Identities in Quandary: The Complex Narrative of ‘Assamese Muslims’ — at “Reimagining the North East: Narratives, Networks and Negotiations”, hosted by Jamia Millia Islamia’s Centre for the North East. The research paper stood out for throwing light on an important slice of Assam history, often overlooked.

Haque and Bhattacharjee expounded on the advent of Islam in Assam through the invading Muslim armies since the 13th Century; their defeated soldiers taken captive by the Ahom kings creating, first, the Gorias, and later the Morias in the mid-16th Century. While Desis are people from the Koch and Nath communities converted to Islam, they highlight that many others became Muslims in Assam at the call of the Sufi saint Azan Fakir in mid-17th Century.

The Bengali-speaking Muslims, the paper points out, emigrated from erstwhile East Bengal to Assam during the British rule from 1826 to 1947. It “reached its peak during 1971 with the creation of Bangladesh”, leading the 1971 Census to record a 34.98 per cent increase in Assam’s population from the 1961 Census. However, Assamese language and local culture continued to be the binding force for the rest of the communities across religions.

In this interview, the duo states that language being the defining factor of the 1980s Assam Students’ Movement against illegal immigration, Assamese Muslims took part in it but “later became suspicious in an increasingly communal environment.”

Excerpts from the interview:

What attracted both of you to the topic? How long you have been researching on it?

Haque: We both are from Assam and have grown up witnessing the syncretic nature of our local culture (irrespective of religion and in spite of it) and also the changing narratives of that ethnic bonding. For the last few years, we could also sense a tension among indigenous Muslims of Assam and the various reasons for that — rise of global Islam, increasing religious intolerance in India, demand of democracy and politics, controversy surrounding the issue of ‘immigration’, etc. That made us interested in the topic as this case study speaks to a very important and global phenomenon. We did our first field interviews last November.

What is the size of their population?

Haque: There are no government figures, for obvious reasons. However, organisations like All Assam Goria, Moria, Desi Jatiya Parishad quote a number of around 30 lakhs. Some academics point out that in 1901, there were 2,48,842 Muslims in the Brahmaputra valley. The count, as per 1951 Census, was 19,81,859 (15 lakh were estimated to be of East Bengal origin).

In this identity war of ethnicity versus religion, how much are Assamese Muslims under pressure to side with religion? How much of it is political pressure?

Haque: The force of religion is quite powerful, as almost everyone we interviewed had admitted. There are changes in important social ceremonies, food habits, folk music, literature, the way people dress and conduct their daily life. There are political pressures too and more so because of the rise of the BJP and AIUDF in Assam politics, almost simultaneously.

How representative of the community are organisations like AAGMDJP?

Haque: It seems there are too many contradictions even within organisations ‘representing’ indigenous Muslims of Assam. Who are ‘indigenous’ and who are not? However, one fact is important — of all such bodies, AAGMDJP is the only one well accepted by all other ethnic organisations (Tai Ahom Students Union, Ahom Royal Society, Moran Students Union, Motok Students Union, Dimasa Students Union, Sonowal Kachari Parishad, All Bodo Students Union) and for some years, they are almost working together. That was evident in some public meetings we attended.

How much have Assamese Muslims suffered in the Bodo-Muslim violence? How strong is the tendency to club them with Bengali-speaking Muslims because of religion?

Bhattacharjee: There are many layers to this question and they are complex. One thing is distinct — the Bodoland violence was not (only) because of religion. Even now, the stands taken by various groups (including the BJP, the RSS or Hindu Yuva Chatra Parishad) are clear and publicly so — that one can’t club all Muslims in Assam under one religious umbrella. However, interests representing people from East Bengal origin (even Na Asomiyas) definitely try to make it a Hindu-Muslim issue and our sense is that so do intellectuals who don’t have first-hand knowledge of the region.

India: Assam government and the Centre to Bodo violence are mired in apathy (Suhas Chakma)

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=75277&boxid=19843&ed_date=2015-01-23&ed_code=820009&ed_page=8

Fifty shades of terror

The responses of the Assam government and the Centre to Bodo violence are mired in apathy

Suhas Chakma

It has been about a month since India witnessed the largest terror killings in 2014 in which a total of 81 innocent Adivasis were massacred in Kokrajhar and Sonitpur districts of Assam on December 23, 2013, by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) headed by Songbijit Ingti Kathar. It took place just one week after another equally heart-wrenching massacre of 145 people, including 132 schoolchildren by the Tehrik-i-Taliban (Pakistan) terrorists who attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16.

While the Peshawar killings were televised and evoked global condemnation, the Adivasis in the hinterlands of Assam were not so lucky. Seven-year-old Talla Tudu, despite being sprayed seven bullets by the NDFB(S) did not make for a compelling news story in the TV studios in New Delhi. The killings that caused displacement of over 300,000 Adivasis, the single largest conflict-induced internal displacement in the world in 2014, did not see international media scurrying to appeal for humanitarian assistance. The North-East truly lived up to its reputation of falling off the map.

It is not only on the TV screens, but the Adivasi killings also fell off the maps of social media. On the Peshawar massacre, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “It is a senseless act of unspeakable brutality that has claimed lives of the most innocent of human beings — young children in their school… My heart goes out to everyone who lost their loved ones today. We share their pain & offer our deepest condolences.” The warmth of the PM’s sentiment on Peshawar victims could be felt, but on the killing of the Adivasis, it was just another anodyne tweet, “Killing of innocent people in Sonitpur and Kokrajhar is an act of cowardice. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the deceased.”

The largest terror killings in India since Modi took over as the PM was an occasion to convey the government’s seriousness on terror and the North-East. The PM’s visit to the survivors and relatives of the victims could have conveyed a message beyond photo-opportunities. Instead, in another anodyne tweet, Modi announced that home minister Rajnath Singh would visit Assam.

But the fact remains that the home ministry has been struggling very hard to paraphrase terror. Minister of state for home, Kiren Rijiju, while condemning the Adivasi killings stated, “This is not fighting for a cause. This is a disservice to the community they claim to represent.” Are we recognising that the NDFB(S) is fighting for the cause of the Bodo community? The Bodos actually loath Songbijit as he is ethnically a Karbi and not a Bodo. In fact, Songbijit and his younger brother, Prakash Ingti Kathar, the head of another armed group of Assam, ie, the Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Liberation Front, have turned insurgency, North-East’s cottage industry, into a family enterprise. Rijiju’s response was not a surprise, considering the strongest words used by home minister Rajnath Singh to describe the massacre of 14 CRPF jawans by the Maoists on December 1 in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh were that the killings are “terrorists’ acts”.

There are, of course, underlying causes of each conflict, but neither the NDFB(S) represents the Bodos, nor the Maoists represent the Adivasis. Further, both the NDFB(S) and the Maoists do not have any specific demand for respectively the Bodos and the Adivasis. Yet, surprisingly, the ministry of home affairs (MHA) appears to believe in the dictum: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”.

Politicians of all shades are infamous for their anodyne statements and the less said about Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, the better it is. However, it is the response of the Assam police to the NDFB(S) massacre which was the most disturbing. Even before the National Investigation Agency (NIA) was handed over the cases, Inspector General of Assam police (law and order) SN Singh gave a clean chit to Songbijit by declaring in a press conference that “it was the outfit’s deputy army chief Bidai, who had ordered the killings”.

It was nothing short of rubbing salt to the wounds caused by the NDFB bullets as the Assam Police and intelligence agencies had lost the specific actionable inputs, ie, conversation among the NDFB(S) cadres about the pending attacks on the Adivasis, in translation, and the security agencies consequently failed to prevent the massacre. The statement of IG SN Singh further reflects the typical response of the Assam Police to such massacres. In the last two decades of killings involving the insurgents, the Assam police had not filed a single chargesheet despite, according to official estimates, the death of at least 93 persons in the Bodo-Muslim conflict of 1993, 113 people in the Bodo Muslim conflict of 1994, over 200 in the Bodo-Adivasi conflict of 1996, 31 in the Bodo-Adivasi conflict of 1998, 60 in the Hmar-Dimasa conflict of 2003, 104 persons in the Karbi-Dimasa conflict of 2005, 57 the Bodo-Muslim riots in 2008, 73 in the Dimasa Naga conflict of 2009 and 10 people in the Garo-Rabha conflict of 2011. The first chargesheet was filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation which was handed over the case of the Muslim-Bodo conflicts of July 2012 in which 109 persons were killed.

The massacre of the Adivasis shows once again India’s typical responses to terror. There is the usual failure to prevent terror even when there are actionable inputs. Once killings start, security forces seldom respond on time to prevent further killings. The arrest of three top leaders of the NDFB(S) including Ajoi Basumatary from Kohima on January 14, 2015, in a joint operation by the NIA and the Nagaland police exposed a new element. The Nagaland police personnel allegedly, in exchange for huge amounts of money, allowed Ajoi Basumatary to talk to his family members after his arrest and this apparently allowed the NDFB(S) to remove many sophisticated weapons under his command.

It is not the anodyne statements and shades used to describe terror that only pose challenges. Ask the innocent Adivasis who have been repeatedly targeted in the last two decades. They will say that deployment of the security forces has been used by the Assam government to ensure that those displaced by these terror attacks could be sent home without any security and rehabilitation until the next attack.

The author is Director, Asian Centre for Human Rights

Published Date: Jan 23, 2015

India: Isn’t ‘illegal Bangladeshi’ Racist Shorthand for All Bengali Speaking Muslims in Assam? (Bonojit Hussain)

From Bonojit Hussain's Blog

Isn’t ‘illegal Bangladeshi’ Racist Shorthand for All Bengali Speaking Muslims in Assam?

by Bonojit Hussain

A shorter version of this article was published in Calcutta edition of The Telegraph on 15th May, 2014.


Poster in Kokrajhar district during 2012 riots. Photo: Bonojit Hussain

The fragile and unstable peace in Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) of Assam has once again been ruptured. The recent massacre of Muslims of East Bengali descent in Kokrajhar and Baksa districts of BTAD on 1st and 2nd May has already taken toll on 46 lives; with many people still missing, the dead count might go up.

This is not the first time that targeted ethnic violence has occurred in what is today BTAD. Through out the 1990’s armed Bodo groups have indulged in pogroms against Nepalis, Adivasis and Muslims and Hindus of East Bengali descent. But since the creation of BTAD in 2003, increasingly only Muslims of East Bengali descent are being targeted. Worst among all was the so-called ‘riots’ of 2012 where 108 people died. According to sources in Assam government, 79 were Muslims of East Bengali descent, 22 were Bodos and 4 were from other communities.

A lot has been written about the underlying causes of these recurring targeted killings and we need not dwell upon that here. (for an overview see Sanjib Barua, “Assam: The Politics of Electoral Violence”, Outlook Magazine, May 09, 2014). What should bother us all is how quickly discourse over the recurring massacres in BTAD is transformed into a debate on the question of illegal immigration from Bangladesh, wherein the victims are immediately labeled as ‘illegal Bangladeshis’. Even if the victims were ‘illegal Bangladeshis’, the barbaric act of killing 46 people in a span of 36 hours is a crime against humanity.

Like in 2012, immediately large section of Assamese society, a section of the national media and the BJP leadership raised the bogey of ‘illegal Bangladeshi’ to justify the killings and divert attention from the real causes of the massacre. Some even went to the extent of likening victims of the massacre with locust. Verbal attacks and abuses are also being launched on social media against anyone who dares question the hypocrisies of Assamese society. Recently an Assamese research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University was subjected to threats and abuses by Assamese xenophobes, she was also asked to re-locate to Bangladesh owing to her sympathies for these ‘locusts’.

If one poses the question as to how these xenophobes know that Assam is being swarmed by ‘illegal Bangladeshis’, the answer is always about increasing visibility and numbers of Miyas (slur used to denote Muslim Bangladeshis) in urban clusters, new settlements in peripheries of forest land and settlements near river embankments. I argue this is a racist way of telling.

It is a difficult question to answer how many undocumented Bangladeshis are there in BTAD area let alone in all of Assam. However, it is impossible to refute that from 1901 to 1941, encouraged by the colonial administration, over 10 lakhs migrated and settled in Assam from East Bengal. The geographical area of present day BTAD would fall under what were Goalpara and Kamrup districts during the colonial era. So, it is worth mentioning that East Bengali Muslim peasants first settled in undivided Goalpara district, before they spanned out to other parts of western and centralAssam. The decadal growth of population in Goalpara district had shot up by 30 % as early as 1901-1911 compared to 1.4 % and 2 % in the preceding decades respectively. In 1921-1931, the decadal growth of population of Goalpara dropped to 15.8 % because most of the suitable wasteland in the district had already been occupied by immigrants who poured into the district in 1901-1921, and that the immigrants had found a larger scope for settling in Kamrup and Nagaon districts. During 1921 to 1931 Barpeta subdivision of Kamrup district saw an enormous 69 % increase in population. Between 1901 and 1931, 4.98 lakhs East Bengali Muslim peasants are recorded in Goalpara district alone. Here, then, the question arises – Where are the descendants of the lakhs of Muslim peasants of East Bengali descent who settled in the region before partition? (for a detailed discussion see, Banajit Hussain, “The Bodoland Violence and Politics of Explanation”; Seminar Magazine, No: 640, December, 2012)

Considering the abysmal level of socio-economic development among Muslims of East Bengali descent in Assam, the reason for increasing numbers and visibility of the so-called Miyas in urban clusters, in the peripheries of forest land and near river embankments could very well be migration from rural areas to urban centres ofAssam in search of livelihood. But more importantly it could be because of internal displacement from Char areas of Assam.

Chars are the extremely braided mid-channel bar of Brahmaputra and its tributaries. These Chars were populated by Muslims of East Bengali descent for cultivation in the later decades of the Colonial era. Due to subsequent neglect and apathy of the Government the socio-economic indicators among Char dwellers have remained extremely depressing. Assam Government’s socio-economic survey in 1992-93 and 2002-03 revealed that Char dwellers constituted 9.35 % of the total population of Assam; the population density in the Char area was 690 persons per sq. km (Assam’s overall density in 2001 was 340 person per sq. km); between 1992-93 to 2002-03 literacy rate in Char area increased marginally from 15.45 % to 19.31 % (Assam’s overall literacy rate in 2001 was 63.25 %); in 2002-03 67.90 % of Char dwellers lived below the poverty line, an increase of 19% from 1992-93 (34 % of Assam’s population was below poverty line in 2001).

By their very nature of being integral part of the fluvial process of the riverBrahmaputra and its tributaries, Chars are pre-disposed to erosion and Char dwellers pre-disposed to become internally displaced persons. Though hard data on displacement from char areas is hard to come by, some micro-level studies provide adequate insight into flood, erosion and displacement. One such study conducted by Dr. Gorky Chakraborty in the chars of Barpeta district reveals that “during the period (1989-98) when there was no high intensity flood in Assam, 45% of the total households were affected and 51% of the total land was lost by the surveyed char households. Similar study over a period of 25 years (1980-2004) in the Beki River, a tributary of Brahmaputra in Barpeta district reveals that 77% of the surveyed households suffered due to land erosion and 94% of their land was lost.” (Gorky Chakraborty, “Assam’s Hinterland: Society and Economy in the Char Areas”; Akansha Publishers, Delhi, 2009) With such abysmal socio-economic conditions and such high degree of erosion and displacement, lakhs of Char dwellers are left with no option but to migrate to the mainland.

With such complexities involved in differentiating between an undocumented Bangladeshi migrant and a Muslim citizen of East Bengali descent; how do Assamese xenophobes and leaders of BJP conclusively declare that the villagers of Balapara, Narasinghbari and Narayanguri (3 villages where the massacre occurred) were ‘illegal Bangladeshis’?

What are the ways of telling the difference? It is most certainly not difference but similarities between an undocumented Bangladeshi migrant and a Muslim citizen of East Bengali descent. It is physical and cultural markers; in this case it is beard, lungi, religion and language. Doesn’t this make ‘illegal Bangladeshi’ racist shorthand for any Muslim of East Bengali descent in Assam?

Here it is worth looking at the cliché that are too often deployed – “illegal Bangladeshis are behind Rhino poaching, they loot innocent tribal villagers, they breed faster than dogs, rape and murder women in villages of Assam”. These clichés are becoming a part of a new discursive formation under consolidation which represents Muslims of East Bengali descent in Assam as “lesser human” or in its extreme form as “locust”. It hardly needs to be asserted that the construction of the “lesser human” other that is sexually virulent and is naturally prone to criminality has been the hallmark of racist worldview for more than half a century now.

India: Bodos and Adivasis of Assam are being pushed into greater penury and mutual distrust by rogue armed militants

Fractured reality
HARSH MANDER

The Bodos and Adivasis of Assam are being pushed into greater penury and mutual distrust by rogue armed militants.

As the sun was about to set on the forested low hills and paddy fields of Assam on December 23, 2014, armed Bodo militants in army fatigues with their faces covered walked into small remote hamlets of Adivasi cultivators, and, in a chilling coordinated attack at five locations in Kokrajhar and Sonitpur districts, opened fire on the hapless residents with automatic weapons killing more than 70 people, including at least 18 children and 21 women. They also burned down and ransacked several of their mud hutments, before retreating into the jungles. Later at least five Bodos were murdered by mobs in retaliatory attacks, and three protesting Adivasis were killed by police firing.

Adivasis, comprising almost a fifth of Assam’s mosaic of diverse ethnic groups, are descendants of indentured tea garden workers. They were imported from the Chotanagpur plateau since the middle of the 19th century to labour in extremely exploitative conditions in tea gardens. They survive with many of the poorest human development indicators among the many communities in the state.

The misfortunes of this oppressed and deprived people were compounded following the creation of the Bodoland Autonomous Council in 1993. In this Bodo homeland, indigenous tribal Bodos, the Bengali Muslims and the tea-tribes each constituted roughly 30 per cent of the population. Armed Bodo militants unleashed successive waves of violence targeting Bengali Muslims and Adivasis to drive them out of the Bodo homeland. The most brutal attacks on Adivasis were mounted in 1996 and 1997, at the peak of which 300,000 Adivasis escaped to relief camps. Some of these camps have not been disbanded even nearly two decades later, as the state government has not helped the Adivasis return to their original homes.

I joined a fact-finding team of the Delhi Forum, also comprising senior journalists Seema Mustafa and Sukumar Muralidharan, to visit the villages ravaged by this latest round of killings. We found the defenceless populations still deeply traumatised and profoundly insecure.

The armed attackers chose deeply forested hamlets close to borders of Bhutan and Arunachal. To reach the hamlet in Biswanath Chariali, Sonitpur, in which the largest number of killings occurred, we had to walk around five kilometres further into the forests after the last road ended. We found residents camping under thin plastic sheets just in front of a camp of paramilitary soldiers who had been rushed to extend them protection.

The villages we visited, we were told, were settled some 15 to 20 years earlier, where their elders had laboured hard to fashion paddy fields after clearing the thick forest cover. Some settlers came because there was no work for them in the tea gardens of the area; others reported fleeing their earlier villages in Kokrajhar because they were fed up of the extortion by armed Bodo militants. Sonitpur district falls outside the boundaries of the Bodoland Autonomous Council; therefore they hoped they would be safer here.

Many Bodo families also settled in the same forests around the same time. They had cordial ties with their Bodo neighbours prior to the attack, and both invited each other for weddings and funerals. However, in recent years, some local Bodo militants had begun to extort informal ‘taxes’ from them, even for every head-load or bicycle-load of firewood gathered from the forests. But there was no violence; this was the first attack on them, which is why it has left them even more shaken and frightened. Adivasis in Kokrajhar, by contrast, have endured periodic waves of attacks in the last quarter century.

In all the villages, the accounts of the recent raids were similar. Armed young men, their faces covered revealing only their eyes, arrived and first asked for water to drink. After they were served, they opened fire suddenly and without any warning, killing whoever they saw — children, women and men. They chased the victims down as they fled in terror. The survivors hid behind trees, and watched as many of their homes were set on fire and their few belongings vandalised. Eye-witnesses reported that they danced in celebration as they left after the slaughter, unhurried and unafraid that the police would catch up with them.

Their student union leaders came in after nightfall, offering solace, calling in the police, helping with the last rites, and shifting them to safer locations. The local administration later established makeshift camps, as thousands of Adivasi settlers, and often their Bodo neighbours, fled separately in panic to the security of camps. At the peak, there were 300,000 people in makeshift camps, battling trauma, fear and the cold. They felt safe only when trucks packed with large deployments of paramilitary soldiers drove into these forest interiors. In some places, student leaders and volunteers marched with the villagers to the local police outposts, shouting anguished slogans and parading the corpses. Police personnel in some outposts panicked and fired at the peacefully protesting crowds. It is officially learnt that three Adivasi protestors were killed during police firings.

In Sonitpur, student leaders and village elders also took care to reassure their Bodo neighbours that they had nothing to fear from them. There were no retaliatory attacks on the Bodos in this district. But in Kokrajhar, although similar precautions were taken by Adivasi student leaders and elders, at least three Bodos were killed in revenge. Bodo student leaders joined the protests against the firing, and tried to assist with relief for the affected Adivasi people.

The bewildered displaced villagers we spoke to said repeatedly, “We have had no problem, no confrontation’ we don’t know why they just came and attacked us.” There were no threats or warning although the local police chief said that they had intelligence information of the attack but not the precise location.

In these villages, we met an extremely impoverished people. The team notes: “The forest hamlets belong in a different age. Very little is perceptible in terms of what could be called the markers of ‘development’ … There are no schools, no roads, no health centres, just utter, unrelieved penury… and there is no sign of governance.” The Adivasis owned almost nothing, and had no titles to the small paddy plots that they had cleared and cultivated. Among the families we spoke to, we met a young teenaged girl who had been sent to Gurgaon near Delhi to work as a domestic help. We met many migrants who worked in factories and construction sites in places as distant as Gujarat and Chennai.

In these forested villages, indigenous tribal Bodos live side by side with Adivasis, Bengali Muslims and people of many other communities. Each brutal attack by armed militants opens fresh wounds in the deeply fractured social fabric of the region. The tragedy of each of these peoples is that they are desperately impoverished, denied even elementary state support for education, livelihoods and health care. But rogue armed militants from these communities only push them into greater penury, fear and mutual distrust with each attack. A hapless cynical state is unable or unwilling to effectively disarm the militants, bring the communities together in peace, and find ways to address the legitimate anxieties of each of these communities for the most elementary assurances of peace, security and development.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/fractured-reality/article6868337.ece

December 2014 Mass killings and displacement of tribals in Assam - Facting find Report by Wing Assam and AAWAA

http://www.sacw.net/article10411.html

India - Assam terror attack of Dec 2014: With Hindutva knocking at his door, Tarun Gogoi has to act

http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/folk-theorem/assam-terror-attack-with-hindutva-knocking-at-his-door-tarun-gogoi-has-to-act/


Assam terror attack: With Hindutva knocking at his door, Tarun Gogoi has to act
December 26, 2014, 5:30 am IST Abheek Barman in Folk Theorem | India | ET


Jayanta Hazarika died, age 34. He composed and sang some of the greatest Assamese music, incorporating rhythms from rock and jazz. My favourite is ‘Mor Mon Chatokhor Kontho’ (My mind is a parched cuckoo-throat).

The chatak (or Jacobin) cuckoo is supposed to be the harbinger of rains after a dry summer in Bengal and Assam. Hazarika uses the bird illustrate the thirst for syncretism. Luckily, he died in 1977, before the horrors that followed.

The latest is the pre-Christmas killing of ‘adivasis’ by Bodo militants in Sonitpur and Kokrajhar, about 100 and 200 km away from where Jayanta was born. This is not the first round of killings – from 2012 there’s been an orgy of violence in four districts that make up the Bodo autonomous territory, and areas surrounding this.

There is no state in India that is more ‘diverse’, politely, than Assam. Assam is supposed to be a Hindu majority state, but that can be contested. The autochthonous people of the region were tribes like the Bodos, Mishings, Miris and so on, all animists of some sort.

In 1228, an exiled noble from Yunnan in China called Su-Ka-Pha, completed a 13 year trek to reach the Brahmaputra valley, where he established the first Ahom kingdom. This was to rule, armed with the technology of wet-rice cultivation and rigid governance, for nearly 600 years.

Hinduism, in the form of Sankardeva, came around the early 1500s, and then through the next 300 years, crept up through the Valley. But by the 1840s, when the British discovered tea and started importing indentured Santhal workers to replace the ‘indisciplined’ locals, the stage was set for conflict.

Since 1500, Ahoms – and to the west, the Koch kings – imported Muslims as metallurgists, brass and gunmakers; Partition and the Bangladesh war made things impossible for border states like Assam and Bengal, when refugees streamed in from East Pakistan or Bangladesh.

So, who is Assamese? Is it the Ahom, who intermarried frequently among the locals, the original tribals like Bodos, who split into proto-Hindu and Christian clans, the Bengalispeaking Muslim who migrated in the 20th century, or the Assamese speaking Muslim whose ancestors were there from the 16th?

The ‘adivasis’ who are the victims of the massacre now, originally came from the Santhal parganas of Bengal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Today, they speak Assamese, have grown up on the tea plantations of Upper Assam, and practice many faiths, including old animist cults, Christianity and even Satsangi Hinduism.

In colonial times, these were the most put-down people and became Congress supporters before and after Independence: one of the first laws enacted in India was the Plantation Labour Act of 1951, offering them rights, dignities and support that were denied in a colonial administration.

Today, if an armed, Christian faction of Bodos is gunning down Santhals, communal politics is raising its ugly head. The Hinduised Bodos have risen before: they gunned down hundreds of Muslims, to grab land in 2012. Then, the Congress regime did little to save lakhs of Muslims killed or in refugee camps.

In 2014, Muslims vented their frustration by voting for ‘their’ party, Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF, tripling its tally to three Lok Sabha seats and defeating the Congress in two more. In Upper Assam, thousands of ‘bagani’ or ‘adivasi’ workers voted BJP, to uproot Congress from its most secure seats.

As the BJP makes inroads into Assam, expect its shrill Hindutva, being preached everywhere, to kick off reactions. Hinduised Bodos killed Muslims yesterday; Christian Bodos have killed Hinduised Santhals today. Where will it end?

Political opportunism can only go that far: chief minister Tarun Gogoi, an Ahom, has struck deals with factions of Bodos and the militant Ulfa to stay in power. But with Hindutva knocking at his door and the bewildering ethnic and religious composition of the state, he has to act, or go.

Bhupen, Jayanta Hazarika’s elder brother, outlived him by 34 years. His talent was balanced by opportunism. He sided with Assamese ‘nationalists’ represented by parties like the AGP against ‘foreigners’ like Bengalis. Yet, his biggest music sales were in Bengal, where he curled up with the Left. Later, he migrated to the BJP and fought polls, unsuccessfully, on its behalf.

Jayanta died early, in his search for enlightenment like the parched cuckoo looking for rain. In the cynical and violent politics of Assam there are more Bhupens than Jayantas today


DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.
Author

Abheek Barman is Consulting Editor, ET Now

Assam violence: What led to Bodoland blood bath.... (Ratnadip Choudhury, in Tehelka)

Tehelka, 24 December 2014

Assam violence: What led to Bodoland blood bath....

Once again Assam remained witness to mindless violence and killing. In the past 24 hours, no less than 75 people are dead. Was this a mere militant attack to retaliate counter insurgency operation of security forces or is it the beginning of a larger political game where innocents are pawns?

Ratnadip Choudhury | @ratnadipc

full text at: http://www.tehelka.com/assam-violence-what-led-to-bodoland-blood-bath/?singlepage=1

India: Press Release by Citizens Groups on Violent Attacks Against Adivasis in Assam

Press Release

New Delhi, 24 December, 2014: Sanmilito Janagosthiyo Oikya Mancha, Assam (An United Platform of 23 Organisations) strongly condemns the brutal Killings of innocent Adivashi People BTAD and its adjacent areas of Assam. On 23rd December, 2014 by Bodo Terrorist Group NDFB(S) attacked upon most oppressed Population of Assam Adivashi Santhals in two separate District of the State. The indiscriminte attack took place at Shantipur, Lungshung - Ballamguri, Ultapani under Kokrajhar District of BTAD, Assam where atleast 26 Bodies were found till yesterday evening. In Sonitpur District which is adjacent to BTAD witnessed two separate attacks in Batashipur and Fulpur (Under Pavoi Reserve Forest) where atleast 36 innocent people specially women , children were Killed. It is important to mention that all the areas where attacks took Place falls under the proposed Bodoland area where Bodos are Microscopic Minorities.

http://www.sacw.net/article10252.html

Assam: The Politics Of Electoral Violence | Sanjib Baruah

outlook magazine

Assam: The Politics Of Electoral Violence
This is not the first time that “Bodo militants” are implicated in ethnically targeted violence in this part of Assam. The 2003 accord provides some pointers.

by Sanjib Baruah


The Assam Police and central home ministry officials have accused the Ingti Kathar Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB-IKS) of being behind last week’s ethnically targeted killings in the Kokrajhar district of Assam. The attacks on Muslims of East Bengali descent were, according to them, reprisals for the way they voted. Allegedly, they are supporting independent candidate, Naba Sarania, who is challenging the Bodoland People’s Congress candidate, Assam cabinet minister Chandan Brahma. The fear is that Sarania might win the prestigious Kokrajhar seat with the support of mostly non-Bodos, who are feeling more and more insecure under the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Council [BTAC] dispensation. That could adversely affect the future of the ethnic Bodo cause, on which moderate and extremist ethnic Bodo organizations broadly agree.

This is not the first time that “Bodo militants” are implicated in ethnically targeted violence in this part of Assam. In the summer of 2012, militants were implicated in the violence targeted at the same community. People displaced from their homes and living in relief camps told reporters about being attacked by “Bodo militants.” There were accounts of being woken up from sleep by the sound of gunshots, and of “militants” surrounding villages, shooting at unarmed people and burning houses.

It cannot be conclusively proved that the NDFB-IKS was involved in last week’s violence, as alleged. The organization has denied responsibility. But irrespective of the question of this particular armed group’s involvement in last week’s violence, there is an identifiable pattern to the politics of militarised ethnicity in Assam that has developed over the past two decades. This is not limited to the Bodos, it applies to groups like the Dimasas and the Karbis as well.

Ethnicity Militarised

While organizations with ethnic platforms are not new in Assam, till recently there were only those that could lay claim to the label ‘civil society’: students’ organizations, women’s organizations, literary associations etc. However, since the 1990s, Assam has seen the emergence of armed political organizations committed to more radical versions of ethnic agendas pursued by their more moderate co-ethnics.

The Bodo movement has been plagued by uncertainties over a number of foundational questions. How many Bodos live in the area that activists consider the traditional Bodo homeland? How many villages have a Bodo majority? Who apart from the Bodos might have claims to Scheduled Tribe status? How many undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh live in that area? In the face of such uncertainties, militarisation seems to have become a way of creating what social theorist Arjun Appadurai calls “a macabre form of certainty . . . a brutal technique (or folk discovery-procedure) about 'them' and, therefore, about 'us'.”

The armed ethnic political organizations that have emerged have usually broken up into factions. This has followed a pattern of ethnic outbidding— something akin to an auction with new factions trying to be more radical than older ones, in terms of political rhetoric as well as methods of violence. The spiralling effect has destabilised agreements arrived at with more moderate factions. But given the government’s demonstrated willingness to negotiate deals with any armed organization, there are perverse incentives for adopting extreme methods at one time and declare a change of heart later when it becomes convenient.

Peace accords signed under these conditions are not accompanied by comprehensive demobilization and the political concessions made at one time have inevitably contained signs of future trouble. For instance, the current structure of the BTAC is based on the 2003 agreement between the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), the central government and the state government of Assam. The three parties agreed to the creation of an autonomous self-governing body with the constitutional protection of the Sixth Schedule. But the BTC was not the only Bodo armed political organization on the scene. In fact the government’s decision to negotiate with the BLT was an effort to sideline BLT’s rival— the NDFB. Following the accord, the BLT became an over-ground political party: the Bodoland People's Front (BPF). It became the ruling party of the BTAC, and later a coalition partner of the Congress party-led government of the state. But despite the signing of this accord, large weapons caches were left in the hands of “Bodo militants” of various hues. Those weapons have been used in successive waves of violence since then.

The use of the word “territorial” in BTAC’s name was an important concession that the BTC had won. It addressed a serious shortcoming of the 1993 accord signed by the government with the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) and Bodo People’s Action Committee (BPAC) that had created the Bodoland Autonomous Council (BAC): the lack of a precise territorial jurisdiction for the Council. But that shortcoming was the result of fundamental uncertainties about the numbers of Bodos etc. that I have alluded to. The government in 2003, in effect, agreed to constitute a de facto ethnic homeland for Bodos despite significant uncertainties about the demography of a heterogeneous and highly contested territory. From the perspective of non-Bodos living in the area, the 46-member BTAC Council with 30 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes gave Bodos political power disproportionate to their actual numerical strength, and significantly disenfranchised the non-Bodo population.

Hybrid Political Regimes

Large data sets on armed conflicts make quite clear that a significant number of armed conflicts in the world have not ended in victory or defeat or peace, but in a draw. Many armed conflicts have ambiguous political outcomes. Could it be that the Bodo accord of 2003 is an example of a flawed peace agreement that is a testament to an ambiguous outcome?

Through a flawed accord, an armed group and representatives of a state can implicitly agree to share control over the means of violence. When erstwhile militants become partners in the exercise of state power, their demonstrated military prowess can become part of local political equations. Such arrangements are best seen as hybrid political regimes where the state and a non-state armed entity form an informal partnership. As in the case with a state’s coercive capacity, the authority of such hybrid political regimes does not depend on the actual use of violence; an armed organization’s reputation regarding its the capacity for violence may be enough. But the authority of such power balances can be contested.

The Bodo establishment clearly viewed the alleged decision of the Muslims of East Bengali descent to support a candidate opposed to the Bodo leadership as a challenge to the power balance embodied in the 2003 settlement. This created the conditions for last week’s violence.

The particular choice of a consensus candidate by the non-Bodos of Kokrajhar is rather significant. Independent candidate Naba [alias Hira] Sarania is a former ULFA commander. Until recently, the local press had routinely described him as “the dreaded ULFA militant.” That the non-Bodos of Kokrajhar found a candidate whose reputed military prowess equals that of the current Bodo leadership— consisting of former BLT militants — speaks of a dangerous crisis of state capacity in Assam today.

Sanjib Baruah is Professor of Political Studies, Bard College, New York

Pogroms in Assam: the Modi effect India squeaking | Mustafa Khan

Pogroms in Assam: the Modi effect

India squeaking

Mustafa Khan

Stephen Cohen speaking at the Brookings Institution said of India: “India has not squeaked at all and squeaking wheels get the grease and India’s got to be squeaking loud. It’s got to be doing things, some risky, some dangerous, some positive.” Narendra Modi’s foreign policy will of course be of concern. The visa ban on Modi was the result of the genocide of Muslims in 2002 from which despite the clean chits issued to Modi the legal battle is still going on.

Among the three things risky and dangerous have been there before the 2014 polls started, through the polls and even post poll. The pogroms in Assam are the most portentous ones after the Muzaffarnagar’s share of the preplanned events. All on account of what phenomenon Narendra Modi has created. It is bound to have tectonic changes if Modi is to assume office as prime minister of India. India has been squeaking without the foreigners taking serious note of it except the US Commission on Religious Freedom. It did and recommended visa ban. Cohen says that once Modi is in office India may squeak “with a vengeance with the advent of a Modi foreign policy.” [1]This is undeniable because Muslims were massacred in 2002, 2013 Muzaffanagar and Assam in 2012 and the same repeated in May 2014. The last was on account of the poll which has churned out the Modi phenomenon as a presidential type of electioneering tsunami. It sucked up the highest amount of money so far spent on election by a single party. The human rights violation by the police and the militia in Gujarat and Assam and also the upsurge of the Hindutva militia be it in Muzaffarnagar or Gujarat 2002 have marred the image of India as a multiracial society. Its repercussion is there to see: the US ambassador Nancy Powell has resigned for opposing visa to Modi. Cohen has had this in mind among other things when he observed: “Modi has close relations with China, Japan, and South Korea, and bad relations with the US.” It is not Modi who had bad relation. Cohen is ironic. It the human rights violation and concern over religious freedom that is at the heart of the matter.

On Sunday May 4, 2014 the death toll in massacre of Bengali speaking Muslims in Assam rose to 34 when two more bodies were found. The atrocities on Muslims had begun in the night of May 1. They had not voted for the Bodos was the blame upon them. This was poll revenge exacted upon them under the inspiration of and by the kind of hatred Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had been pouring against the Muslims in disguise of innuendos and sarcasm and outright chicanery. They had worked up the audience into a frenzy of lusty cheering during their declamation in every rally. One such was in the night of May 4 where Modi dared the unthinkable: rubbing salt into the wounds still bleeding. Accusing the state government of Mamta Banerjee of West Bengal Modi remarked: “You are concerned about infiltrators and not your own people ... they must go back, they are robbing the youths of India of their livelihood.” [2]West Bengal has always had Bengali speaking Muslims who had lived there even before the partition of Bengal. The Bengali speaking people also had lived in Assam, too, before 1947. But owing to the agitation against immigrants in Assam the Indian Muslims of Bengali origin became aliens in the land of their birth and also choice, they were indigenous Assamese. Many had been surviving only on what they can get at the end of the day to buy food in the evening. Such penurious ones had gone to market to buy food or for work at 3.30 pm when the killers entered the hamlets and assaulted the children and women left in their huts. The recriminating campaigning of Narendra Modi against the Muslim minority everywhere including West Bengal and Assam is responsible for the plight of the Muslims.

The river had given them life but man ended their life using river as the boundary. The riverine islands grew up when the river piled up the silt at one place and then continued amassing until it rose above the water level of the river. Having been sufficiently dried up for the seeds to fertilize and the sprouts to show up and then slowly grow into bushes and the grounds to harden enough to bear the weight of man and goods is how inhabitation of the humans opened the way for community life. Man moved in such newly formed land sufficient for vegetation and for man to live, the islands slowly acquired the appearance of a human settlement where there was no need for any passport, visa or identity. Nature’s plenty was enough to supply food and fuel. The poorest had god’s kingdom come to them.

The marauders secured the banks first. The men of the Muslim settlement had left for distant places to buy provision or attend work leaving their children and women at home. The attackers took out their AK series assault rifles and sprayed death. The victims in traumatic commotion took to their heels and ran to the opposite direction for the river bank without knowing that more attackers were hiding there in bushes to finish them. In the meantime some children hid behind bushes and trees too petrified to run any more. They were chosen by fate to see what the marauders did to their mothers, sisters and brothers and the elderly. That is the story of Narayanguri.

The doorway to the splendours of nature in North East of India had become the corridor of death, murder and mayhem.

Ten of the attackers were forest rangers and five were former Bodo guerilla terrorists. They were coordinating the attack for they knew the terrain well and were in service, at least the forest guards. They were tainted with the bias against the Muslims being “the other” taking their land and jobs and making their future bleak. Modi’s ideology worked in them as rebellious against the official line that Assam included the victims as citizens as it did the Bodo tribals. Pramilla Rani Brahma was the MLA from East Kokrajhar and formerly a minister in the Tarun Gogoi government in charge of the forest land. The forest guards and the forest minister had common share in the claim that the [to use the words of Robert Frost] ‘land was theirs before they were of the land.’ Those who came later were the spoilers of the virgin forest. The obvious choice of ways to remove the outsiders was violence and terror.

Brahma was involved in the bomb blasts in the Paltan Bazar in 1992 in which 20 people lost their lives. She was arrested. But later she was released because the case was withdrawn as political expediency overruled terrorism. It was she who had said in her speech of April 30, 2014 that Muslims had not voted for Bodo People’s Front candidate Chandan Brahma and therefore there was no chance for Bodo candidate to win. Modi had already been threatening and Amit Shah was also talking of revenge for honour.

Another accused in the bomb blast of 1992 was the president of Bodoland Peoples Front Hagrama Mohilary who is also chief executive member of the Bodoland Territorial Council. It is this council that runs the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts comprising of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa, and Udaiguri. Former boss of the Bodoland Liberation Tigers which also included Thibeta of which Mohilary was the chief.

Brahma had accused that the Muslims had voted Naba Kumar Sarania who enjoys the support of ULFA which is against separate territorial rights given to Bodos.

More details of deeper political conspiracy behind the killings in Assam show that it was well in line with the policy of Modi and Shah. Both played communal card alternating with caste card to divide the society wherever it suited their need. If Modi played the caste card in UP it was aimed at BSP of Mayawati. In Assam it was a carefully thought plan to enhance the enmity between the Bodos and indigenous Assamese Muslims who speak Bengali. It came handy to the right wing Hindutva party BJP to blame them as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Their circumstances in life are so indigent that they hardly have their three meals a day let alone utensils or having identification documents. Their condition is that of existential level of the lowest strata of society. It is thus easier to play Hindutva politics of framing the Muslims as immigrants and disenfranchising them. This was done earlier in the case of the pogroms in Muzaffarnager where BJP MLA Hukum Singh said that the Muslim refugees had lost their power to vote because they had become squatters. He threatened that he would not let them vote. Another aspect of the same is “The canard of illegal "Bangladeshi" immigrants has been used primarily by the Hindu nationalist BJP as a red herring in order to leverage ethnic rivalry between Bodos and Muslims and gain political mileage.”[3]

In the same way the Bodos enjoying state patronage in share of jobs also joined in the preplanned and targeted massacre. As a victim recalls: “I guess we are attacked because of the way people voted in theLok Sabha polls this time…a majority of the non-Bodos, especially the Muslim community, has voted for non-Bodos. The attackers were fromer Bodland Liberation Tigers (BLT) rebel who had jobs in Forest Department.”[4] This is a long simmering problem and cannot be wished away. It would be incorrect to say as does Cohen that “Pogroms against Muslims in India -- I don’t think that’s going to be his [Modi’s] policy. He correctly argues in his defense that whatever we did in 2002, look what the Congress (party) did in 1984 against the Sikhs.”There is a clear difference 1984 was one momentous event albeit a pogrom against the Sikhs but not a result of any entrenched hate ideology against the Sikhs. In the case of the Muslims the hate ideology is very deep rooted and the Hindutva forces could use Sikhs against the Muslims but not vice versa.

If the west represented by US and UK speak out against the human rights violation as in Gujarat, Muzaffarnagar and Assam it would not amount to what Cohen thinks damning Hinduism for the pogroms. It would be for equity and justice. Therefore Cohen is less convincing when he says the danger to Modi: “Will be from his right and the belief, the theory that America and the United Kingdom are in a conspiracy against India trying to undercut India by being anti-Hindu.”

Much of the violence in Assam is on account of the polls. There have been more such deadly scenes. Even in the peak of the deadly attacks on Hindus by the militant Sikhs in 1984 there were daily massacres. The Akali Dal party wanted greater share in power. The editor of The Times of India, Girilal Jain wrote on March 27, 1984, a day after the Akalis withdrew their agitation: “I sincerely believe the agitation [of Akalis] is misconceived because Sikhs cannot, in my opinion, possibly have any genuine grievances.”[5] Their grievance included that they had only one member in the parliament. A fortnight ago RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras had asked the government to accept the religious demands of the Akalis. In contrast RSS and its conglomerate do not want to accept any demands of the Muslims who have of course not demanded anything in this regard. The grievance of RSS and Modi and Thackerays and the Hindu right is what the government appointed Sachar Commission has recommended and the government has agreed to implement for job reservations for all minorities and not just Muslims. Those killed in Narayanguri were the poorest of the poor.

Such penurious and also unpredictable is their life that Syeda Hameed and Gunjan Veda draw a frightening scnenario:

“Some three million people or twelve percent of the state’s [Assam’s] population live over 2, 500 islands of the Brahamaputra. Most of these are poor migrants or tribals. At last count, there were 2, 300 villages floating on the river (many chars, and, hence the villages on them, are semi-permanent). Country boats are the only means of connectivity, and these are usually dugouts pulled by oars. During the flood, people’s lives are shattered. Every year, lakhs of women, children and men become homeless and take shelter in temporary relief camps. Here they huddle together for weeks, waiting for the water levels to recede.” [6]

Given this low level of indigence the most disempowered Indians on the islands of the river/s were hapless and at the mercy of the dominant majority tribe of Bodos. The forest minister, MLA, the forest guards and others mentioned earlier were not only former surrendered rebels and terrorists accused of bomb blasts they were also empowered with jobs and resources of all kinds. The former rebels used AK assault rifles but the guards used their service guns. The slain had the bullets as silent witness to the pogroms. Yes, they were pogroms.

A high court judge hearing the pogroms case and fake encounters of 2002 and after years has gone on record saying that pogroms, holocaust and genocides are foreign terms not applicable to India. His pretension of ignorance is quite understandable because he does not cite as he should the previous such instances. As a judge he should refer. It is his duty. Holocaust deniers are not only in the west but in the south east also. To give one instance. There were the pogroms of 1979 in Jamshedpur in which 108 Muslims were killed. No Hindu was even injured. This was the finding of an official commission whose report was published in The Times of India and Indian Express on September 14, 1981. The commission was appointed by the Janta party government when there was no split in the Janta government or the party. Among other findings, nine Muslims were burnt alive in their house. In one horrible instance an ambulance carrying injured children and women was firebombed killing everyone in it. If this is not pogrom what else is this? The learned judge’s myopic vision is revelatory of how rank communalism works in the Indian polity. Cohen also must know that pogroms have always taken place and it is the RSS in particular with its affiliates has been in the forefront. Five days before the pogroms of 1979 RSS boss Balasaheb Deoras had visited Jamshedpur and had aroused the raw passion of the Hindus against the Muslims. Deoras,Modi, Pramila Rani Brahma, Hagrama Mahilary, Pravin Togadia, etc along with their lieutenants like Maya Kodnani have insistently urged Hindus to attack, kill and rape and burn Muslims. Even government officers like the deputy commissioner of Chotanagpur was involved in the pogroms of 1979, as the commission of inquiry found it. The most recent pogroms have made India squeak.

Modi cannot stop it even if he becomes PM or leader of the opposition in Parliament because it is not he but his ideological group RSS that will make India squeak. Even the Jamshedpur educational institutes were rife with the RSS cadets and leaders. It was for this that the South Virginia based Terrorism Research Centre named RSS as a terrorist organization.

Vengeance is a recurring feature of pogroms now as highlighted by Modi and Amit Shah. In Assam Modi said in Dhemaji, Assam, that the government was allowing the extermination of the endangered rhinoceros to let the illegal immigrant Muslims settle there. The audience would naturally be instigated to violence against Muslims. Shah asking the voters in western part of UP state to take revenge against those who killed the Jats is as serious as the Jats in their grand kham panchayat or assembly instigated their members to kill Muslims in order to protect Jat women! The Bodo leaders also had egged on the audience to attack Muslims who had not voted their candidate who had no chance of winning on account of the Muslims. BJP had always castigated vote bank politics ascribed to Muslims and days before the polling the Bodo leaders wanted to avenge it.

[1] http://www.rediff.com/news/report/ls-election-danger-to-modi-as-prime-minister-will-be-from-his-right-stephen-cohen/20140513.htm
Danger to Modi as prime minister 'will be from his right': Stephen Cohen

[2] http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/04/modi-assam-muslims-immigrant-congress-idINKBN0DK0FQ20140504
Modi rails against illegal immigrants after Muslim killings

[3] www.iamc.com

[4] http://www.tehelka.com/assam-violence-the-killings-never-stop-bodoland/

[5] Times of India March 27, 1984

[6] Syeda Hameed, Gunjan Veda. Beautiful Country stories from another India Harper Collins Publishers India. New Delhi (2012) p 5

India: independent report on Assam violence on May 2014

http://www.sacw.net/article8677.html

Assam Violence A Shame: Corrected version (some errors in the previous post-apologies)

Assam: Ethnic Communal Divides to the Fore

by Ram Puniyani

The recent (May 01and 02 2014) violence in Kokrajhar, Baska killing 44 Bengali speaking Muslims is one more reminder of the seeping Bodo-Muslim tension in the region. This violence is being attributed to Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), whose legislator Pramila Rani Brahma allegedly stated that her party candidate and Assam minister may not win in the present elections as according to her knowledge Muslims had not voted for him and have voted for a non-Bodo candidate. This is what seems to have provoked the violence, but surely this is tip of the iceberg as the problems between two communities are much deeper and are in a way continuation of the same reasons which led to the violence in the region in July 2012. This is also related to the subtle threat for the forthcoming Assembly elections of 2015.

The fear being expressed by the party of Bodos is that a defeat of their candidate will spell the doom for their demand for the state of Bodoland, which is high on their agenda. While the dissatisfaction amongst Bodos and the travails of Bengali speaking Muslims have been simmering for a long time, they got painful expression in the form of the violence in July 2012 in the Bodo Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) Kokrajhar, Chirang, which are governed by Bodo Territorial Council and part of Dhubri. This violence led to killing of 108 (79 Muslims, 22 Bodo, four non Bodo Non Muslim and displacement of nearly four lakh people.

The region is gripped by the problem, due to the misconception that the Bengali speaking Muslims in the region are infiltrators from Bangladesh. While the BJP, Modi, are projecting that the present elections are being fought on the issue of development, at every conceivable moment there is the propping up of the communal issue. In his speeches in eastern part of the country, Modi has been accusing Bengal Chief minister that she has more time to look after the Bangla Deshi infiltrators than the people of Bengal. In Assam, he went on to suggest that rhinos were being killed in Kaziranga National Park to find room for infiltrators. He also gave a threat that the infiltrators should pack themselves up as they will have to leave on 16th May, the day election results will come out and he is sure to become the Prime minister of the country.

The problem in the Assam region is a festering wound on the body politic of India. In Assam under the pressure of problems related to jobs and other livelihood issues have been given a communal tilt by the parochial forces which gave the slogan ‘Assam for Assamese’ quite on the line of Maharashtra for Marathis by the sectarian Shiv Sena in Mumbai. The first casualty of this propaganda and the attitude which was generated due to this; was the Nellie massacre (1983), in which nearly three thousand people, mainly Bengali speaking Muslims, were butchered by Lalung tribe. The massacre occurred in the midst of Assam agitation, which was demanding cleansing of the electoral rolls of ‘illegal immigrants from Bangla Desh’. A Tribhuban Prasad Tiwary Commission was instituted in the wake of massacre, but its report was never made public. Agitation of Bodo’s led to creation of Bodo Territorial Council (BTC), giving most powers to Bodos in the four districts, Khokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalgiri; three of which have undergone the massive violence in July 2012. The claim that Bodos are majority and need to preserve their ethnic identity and interests in the area, does not hold any water since the estimate of percentage of Bodos in this area varies from 22 to 29% only. With full powers given to them under this council they have marginalized other sections of society very badly. The other point of view is that despite the formation of Bodo Territorial Council, the Bodos did not surrender their arms, which was one of the conditions for accepting the demand of this regional council

The study of population statistics will make it clear that the beginning of coming of Bengalis speaking Muslims in Assam was due to the policy of British. There is a long history of Bengali speaking Muslims in Assam For example there were close to one lakh Muslims in Assam in 1931. In the beginning Bengal was the very populous and politically most aware area. Assam at that time was sparsely populated. British undertook a ‘Human Plantation policy’ in the beginning of twentieth century. The basic idea of British policy was three fold. One was to ensure the shifting of people from the overpopulated Bengal to Assam. Two, it aimed to reduce the incidence of famine and unrest in Bengal, and three British wanted to habitat Assam and collect revenue from that area.

Irrespective of the propaganda about Bangla Deshi infiltrators, research based on population statistics of last century shows that Muslims in the region are settlers from pre partition Bengal to begin with. Later there was some migration at the time of partition in 1947 and still later in the after math of 1971 war with Pakistan, leading to formation of Bangla Desh. Nilm Dutta Myth of Bangla Deshi and Violence in Assam (http://kafila.org/2012/08/16/the-myth-of-the-bangladeshi-and-violence-in-assam-nilim-dutta/) shows that the migration has taken place over a period of time and the increase of population stops after 1971.

The Assam accord of 1985 granted citizenship rights to all these who had settled in Assam till 1971. This accord recognizes all those living in this area as the legal setters and so most of the Muslim fall in that category. Not to deny that that some small number of illegal immigrants, the ones’ forced to migrate for economic reasons may also be there.

Despite these facts, the issue has become a big fodder for communal politics, which keeps harping on ‘Bangal Deshi infiltrators’. Here also they go on to say Hindu migrants from Bangla Desh are refugees while the Muslims are infiltrators. Even the 2012 violence was labeled by communal forces as strife between Bodos (Nationalists) and Muslims (foreigners!). The plight of the Muslims who speak Bengali is pathetic as not only they are marginalized and looked down upon, many of them do not even have the voting rights and some of them are put in the category of D voters, i.e. doubtful voters and so are not allowed to vote. There is an active hate industry blaming that the ruling party is encouraging infiltration for the sake of votes while in reality the economic migrations which are associated with the regional disparities like Nepali’s coming to India have also come down heavily with Bangla Desh economy looking up in last few decades.

The present violence is definitely and outcome of the communal venom spread through the election speeches and unresolved issues of the two communities. The Bodos not surrendering arms, after formation of BTC, as promised by them has been the major ground for violence. It is here that we need to concentrate. The demand for giving licenses to minorities for self protection has been in the air but probably better option is to disarm the Bodos, as per the accord which led to the formation of Bodo Regional Council. The human tragedy of such proportions needs and urgent response and long term measures from the state and central Government. The reconciliation between two communities must be given top priority, adequate rehabilitation along with the development of the region, the lack of which is given the direction of ‘Hate other’ by the tendencies demanding separate Bodo land. -- Response only to ram.puniyani@gmail.com

India violence 'politically orchestrated' | Wasbir Husain

Aljazeera

India violence 'politically orchestrated'
Authorities believe attacks by rebel breakaway group in Assam state aim to influence voting in polls for ethnic council.

Wasbir Husain Last updated: 08 May 2014 10:49

More than 40 homes were set on fire by the attackers [Biju Boro/Al Jazeera]

Guwahati, India - Authorities in India believe attacks by rebels against Muslims in Assam in which about 40 people died may have been "politically orchestrated" to distort voting patterns ahead of polls in an autonomous ethnic council.

Investigators are probing political and other motives for the violence in northeastern India's most populous state by gunmen belonging to the Bodo tribe that targeted Bengali-speaking Muslims in the area bordering Bhutan.

Assam's state government has called on national authorities to help investigate the causes of the bloodshed, which evoked memories of ethnic rioting two years ago in which about 100 people, mostly Muslims, were killed and more than 400,000 displaced.

I see the attacks on Muslims as an attempt to re-engineer the voting behaviour of the community in the area ahead of the Bodo council polls next year

Dr Akhil Ranjan Dutta, Political analyst

"I see the attacks on Muslims as an attempt to re-engineer the voting behaviour of the community in the area ahead of the Bodo council polls next year," said Dr Akhil Ranjan Dutta, a political analyst, based in the state capital, Guwahati.

"If the common candidate put up by non-Bodo groups comes to win the Kokrajhar Lok Sabha seat this time, it will be seen as a verdict against the demand for a separate Bodoland state by Bodo groups," Dutta said. The results of India's elections will be out on May 16.

Bullets sprayed

It was a sultry pre-monsoon night in Balipara, a village with tin and thatched-roof houses adjoining vast paddy fields in Kokrajhar district, when the first attack occurred just before midnight on May 1.

Mohammed Sayat Ali, 28, was dozing on his bed as his mother Sayatun Bewa, 45, wife Sonabhan Bibi, 22, and two-year-old daughter Suhana Khatun slept at his father's house in the same courtyard.

Without warning 20 gunmen suddenly burst into Ali's house and turned the life of the sawmill worker upside down. Sayat, like others who work outside their villages, had come home to cast his vote in India's national elections.

"I was woken up by a commotion, I heard gunshots in neighbour Bacchu Ali's house. Looking out, I saw a group of black-hooded gunmen breaking open doors in other nearby houses. I ran to the jungle," Sayat said, breaking down as he related the incident.

"I heard the sound of gunshots and called my wife on her cellphone. My mother picked up and said, 'Son, I'm dying, give me some water'. I realised my family had been shot."

Sayat found his daughter already dead and his mother and wife still breathing, blood splattered on the bed. "I gave both of them water, but they died in my arms. I could do nothing."

Four others from the same village died in the attack.

Earlier that night in Narsingbari, a Muslim village of 60 families in nearby Baksa district, Sona Miya, 45, a day labourer, was sitting in his courtyard with his wife Ramisa Khatun, 30, daughter Rashida, 12, neighbour Shampa Bewa, 50, and her three-year-old granddaughter Taslima.

Four gunmen appeared on bicycles and opened fire with automatic weapons, killing Sona Miya, Ramisa and Shampa. The girls suffered bullet wounds and are now in hospital.

Authorities believe the attackers were from the Bodo tribe and were targeting Muslims who have lived in the area for decades alongside them and other tribes as well as Assamese and Bengali Hindus.

People flee


The following day Muslim residents loaded their belongings into carts and began to flee to safety, recalling the bloodshed caused by ethnic rioting in the area in 2012.

"The authorities were unwilling to set up relief camps for fear it might attract thousands of people like in 2012," said Lafiqul Islam Ahmed, a leader of the All Bodoland Muslim Students' Union (AABMSU).

"But panic-stricken people who fled their homes have set up camps of their own with tarpaulin roofs."

Nonetheless, the authorities were quick to attribute the violence to the breakaway Songbijit faction of the separatist National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) which, unlike two other factions of the front, are not engaged in peace talks with the Indian authorities.

"We believe rebels of the NDFB-S are behind the attacks," AP Raut, Assam's additional director general of police, told Al Jazeera.

However, the Songbijit faction (NDFB-S) denied the charge in an audio clip sent to local television stations.

Later that evening, gunmen descended on Narayanguri, another Muslim village in Baksa district close to Manas National Park World Heritage Site, and set fire to more than 40 houses before opening fire on villagers, killing several men, women and children.

The last rites of the dead were delayed after locals squatted on a highway with the bodies of their kin, wrapped in black polythene, calling on the state's chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, to visit the area and guarantee their security.

Gogoi did not visit the region, but sent a minister – and security forces. Officers from the elite Cobra unit of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were later deployed to patrol the area.

Investigation

Although investigations are at a preliminary stage, Assam's authorities believe the attacks could be politically motivated and have asked the National Investigative Agency (NIA) to step in, a request accepted by New Delhi.

"No one will be spared, we want to fix responsibility," Gogoi told Al Jazeera. He said a judicial enquiry by a retired judge will also be launched.

Non-Bodo leaders say the Bodoland People's Front (BPF) - which controls the autonomous Bodoland Territorial Council that administers the areas gripped by violence - was trying to force Muslims "to vote in a certain manner" ahead of next year's council polls.

"The arrest of a forest ranger and seven forest guards, at least two of whom were former cadres of the rebel Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), on the basis of specific police complaints by the victims, has proved the attacks were political in nature," Ahmed of the ABMSU said.

Abdur Rahim Khan, a state legislator from the pro-Muslim All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), blamed a "loaded statement" by Pramila Rani Brahma, a legislator belonging to the BPF, which is allied to the ruling Congress party, for the violence.

"Her statement that Muslims did not vote for her party candidate in the Kokrajhar seat in the national elections that have just concluded had incited certain Bodo forces," he said.

Brahma insists her statement was misinterpreted and wants a federal investigation to ascertain the truth.

Ethnic cleansing

The AIUDF, Assam's key opposition party, is headed by global perfume baron Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, who is also seeking a federal investigation into the attacks and has called on the Congress party to break its ties with the BPF.

The Bodoland Territorial Council was created by an agreement signed in 2003 between India's government and Bodo groups agitating for a separate state, but statistics suggest Bodos are not in a majority.

Of the 3.2 million people in the four districts under the council's control, Bodos comprise just 28 percent, Muslims 19.5 percent, and other groups the remainder.

Mohammed Sayat Ali explains that his family has lived in the region for decades. "My grandfather died in 2008 aged 65. He was born here at Balapara," he said.

Although there are strong charges that Assam's population has been swelled by illegal migrants from Bangladesh, claims by leaders of some parties like the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that Muslims in the Bodo Council area are "Bangladeshi immigrants" are misleading.

"No one will buy the politics on the issue but the political message is clear - the Muslims in the volatile Bodo heartland have united with other non-Bodo groups, a bonding that is threatening to alter the voting dynamics for all future electoral politics," said Dr Noni Gopal Mahanta of the Peace and Conflict Studies Centre at Guwahati University.

"This is what is resented by certain forces who want to keep their hegemony intact, resulting in the Muslims being targeted by passing them off as people with doubtful citizenship, or painting all of them bluntly as Bangladeshi immigrants."

Political analysts say the latest attacks on Muslims are a clear attempt at ethnic cleansing.

"There have been periodic attacks on Muslims and Adivasis belonging to the tea plucking community in the Bodo Council area. This is part of a systematic plan to try and cleanse the area of non-Bodos," said Dr Monirul Hussain, a political scientist at Guwahati University.

Where everyone is a minority | Sanjoy Hazarika

The Hindu, May 7, 2014

Where everyone is a minority

Sanjoy Hazarika

Bodoland’s demography is one reason why trouble will fester rather than abate: it has nothing to do with illegal migration. It has everything to do with the fact of how a minority of the population controls the lives and destinies of the others

The grim and bloody incidents in the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), that narrow wedge of land in western Assam where everyone is a minority — or rather a non- majority since their numbers don’t have it — have been aggravated by the verbal violence of our politicians, the blame game and the total incapacity of the State government to deal with existing conditions.

For the second time in less than two years, thousands of Muslims and smaller numbers of Bodos are fleeing their homes, frightened by their complete vulnerability to gun-wielding terrorists, the nightmare of seeing loved ones, ranging from infants to elders, butchered in front of them and, perhaps worse still, the fearful knowledge that the government can’t protect them.

Today, the capacity of the Congress-led government in Assam to ensure the protection of minorities is being gravely questioned. For in every major communal clash or bout of violence in the Bodo areas — 1993, 2008, 2012 and now — a Congress Party government has ruled Dispur.

Complex play of factors

The State government’s seeming failure may be a tipping point for the last round of the Lok Sabha election elsewhere in the country. Ironically, the greatest violence in the country during an otherwise seemingly flawless massive election exercise has been, ironically, in the home area of one of the country’s Election Commissioners, H.S. Brahma, who is incidentally a Bodo.

There is a larger failure here too, of “us,” of civil society, researchers and scholars, the media, despite the courageous and silent role of dedicated activists and groups which have tried for years to reduce the tension between Bodos, Muslims and other ethnic groups in western Assam.

While the State government has directly blamed the shadowy Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Boroland for the massacres, there is, as always, a complex play of factors here.

One is the fact that the militants were under tremendous pressure from security forces since they killed an Additional Superintendent of Police in Sonitpur district. The police went after them with a vengeance, taking down several cadres; one police official believes it is this pressure that forced the faction to hit vulnerable targets, to take the heat off, get time to regroup while also stoking communal fears and exposing the shortcomings of the State government.

In addition, a statement by a prominent Bodo leader, Pramila Rani Brahma of the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), complicated matters and triggered outrage even from the Congress, the BPF’s coalition partner at the State level. She said (without revealing the basis of her information) that since Muslims had voted against the party’s Lok Sabha candidate, he was unlikely to do well. This has led to calls for her arrest.

Yet, the trail of blood goes back, unlike many other events and challenges in the region — barely 20 years. Before 1993, there had been few clashes involving Muslims and Bodos. Later, an armed group, the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), attacked Santhals as well as Muslims. For their own safety, they were placed in relief camps, which again came under attack. Accounts say that not less than 50 were killed in those incidents.

In 2002, there were a series of attacks; in one, non-Bodo passengers were pulled out of a bus and shot. Soon after this, the BLT decided to come to the negotiating table.

The BPF is the party in power in the BTC, which rules the “Bodo” districts. But there’s a major flaw in the system — the BPF doesn’t have control over law and order: the State government has jurisdiction of the police. This is because the BTC was formed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which enables small tribes in four States of the north-east to run their own affairs in the manner of an expanded Panchayati Raj system, instead of being completely dependent on the whims of the State government.

The Sixth Schedule aims to protect tribal rights from encroachment by larger non-tribe groups and is in place in parts of Assam, all of Meghalaya, Mizoram and a part of Tripura.

In 2003, the Schedule was extended to the western Assam plains to create the BTC as part of an agreement between the Centre, the State government and the BLT. The BLT was virtually given an amnesty and morphed into a legal, “democratic” political entity: after some changes, the Bodoland People’s Front was born. The idea was an effort to resolve a bloody armed movement that had taken a toll of hundreds of lives. But to do so, without taking into consideration the overall realities of the region, was a recipe for disaster.

Another major outbreak occurred in 2008 in which both Bodos and non-Bodos including Muslims were rendered homeless and placed in camps. In 2008 again, bomb blasts across the State killed over 100 persons including 80 in Guwahati, the commercial and political heart of Assam; these were attributed to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, led by Ranjan Daimary, which sought independence from India.

Fallout of manufactured consent

The worst outbreak of violence, in 2012, when over 100 died and about 4.5 lakh were displaced in rioting and killings, was described as the most extensive internal displacement since Partition. A majority of victims and homeless were Muslim; the involvement of the BPF turned up in the arrest of one of its council members, who was accused by witnesses of leading the attacks.

The area’s demography is one reason why trouble will fester rather than abate: it has nothing to do with illegal migration, Bangladeshis, etc. It has everything to do with the fact of how a minority of the population (the Bodos are some 30 per cent of the BTC area) controls the lives and destinies of the others. From an armed group, the BLT became a political party within a larger political process, with access to Central and State funds, power, land and resources. A number of its leaders were once wanted for their role in alleged killings and explosions; when they rose to office, their acolytes benefited. Their opponents, even the moderates within the Bodo community, suffered intimidation, pressure and worse.

An opposition movement has grown that sought to protect the rights of the other groups which do not comprise just the Muslims — there are Assamese and Bengali Hindus, Koch Rajbongshis and Adivasis. Together they make up nearly 70 per cent of the population. Any system that does not guarantee some basic rights to them and protect their interests is bound to fail.

The core of the problems in the north-east, be it in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam or elsewhere, lies in the mobilisation of identity over land, territory and natural resources. Many of the disputes between States, communities and even villages can be traced to this. The same is true of the Bodo areas, where Bodo lands have been encroached and settled upon by others.

There are two issues here: If key problems are to be tackled, then all sides need to sit down together to work out the ways that land and resources can be shared without creating further ill-will. The State government and the BTC have failed to do so. They have failed because they have looked for quick-fix solutions without going deep enough and far enough to meet people’s grievances. The fallout that we see today is that of manufactured consent.

If it isn’t, then Delhi should be worried because this volatile region is in danger again of falling back to the times of earlier troubles. At the State and local levels, governments and policy makers need to involve people working in the field and community representatives in search of answers.

Playing politics

There is a second critical point: if such processes are to gain momentum, then there must be a relentless campaign against terrorist groups. What has filled many with frustration and anger, within the north-east and outside, is the way governments proclaim that they will tackle ethnic and communal violence with a “firm hand”; yet, once the bloodshed is over, the displaced go home and the issues vanish from the headlines, it’s back to business as usual with the criminals, extortionists and their partners in politics and the bureaucracy.

Recent history shows how those involved in the violence are “negotiated” with, in State after State. Settlements reward the perpetrators with even more powers, cocooned by security provided by the State. This is described as part of the democratic process.

I doubt if this will wash any longer: too much blood has been spilt these past years.

In this situation, tossing out the mantra of “Bangladeshi” immigrants as being at the heart of the problem would be extremely ill-advised. Nothing could be further from the truth, so insidiously easy to push, so dangerous to stoke. The Bharatiya Janata Party needs to understand these issues in greater depth before asserting positions which could have devastating consequences on a fragile landscape.

(Sanjoy Hazarika is director, Centre for North East Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia.)

May 2014 Gruesome Massacre in Bodoland (Assam): Statement by New Socialist Initiative (NSI)

Condemns the Gruesome Massacre in Bodoland (Assam): Statement by New Socialist Initiative (NSI)

New Delhi; 07/05/2014

New Socialist Initiative (NSI) strongly condemns the gruesome massacre of Bengali speaking Muslims in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) in Assam, which has witnessed the resurgence of the ugly head of ethnic violence. As per latest official reports, 44 people have been killed, the majority being women and children, while several have been injured and many are missing.

On the evening of 1st May at 7.30 pm, 8 armed Bodo youths riding on 4 bicycles entered a house in Narasinghbari village in Baksa District and fired gunshots. The next day (2nd May), allegedly 40 Bodo militants surrounded 77 houses in Narayanguri village in the same district and fired indiscriminately. Until now 36 dead bodies have been found. According to district administration 15 people are still missing, among them 12 children and 3 women. Simultaneously, in Balapara village in Kokrajhar district at around 12.30 am on 2nd May, armed Bodo youths killed 8 people. The survivors in Baksa district told that the death toll will substantially increase as the militants killed and threw the dead bodies into the Beki River that flows through the area.

Bodies of victims outside Kokrajhar Police Station
Even though the Assam government and BTAD administration blame National Democratic Front of Bodoland’s Songbijit faction for the carnage, survivors and people from the affected communities have refuted the government’s claim and asserted that former cadres of Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) were involved in the massacre. They strongly feel that the ‘planned’ massacre was a reprisal for not voting for the Bodo People’s Front (BPF) candidate Chandan Brahma, who is a powerful minister in the Assam State government, in the Lok Sabha election for Kokrajhar constituency held on 24th of April. Chandan Brahma is in the fray against, among others, sitting BPF MP Sansuma Khungur Bwismwithiary who is contesting as an independent candidate this time. The media statement given by Pramila Rani Brahma, former Minister in the Assam Government and present BPF MLA from the Kokrajhar East constituency, on 30th of April in which she accused the Muslims of not voting for Chandan Brahma, reasserts the survivors’ claims. Ms. Brahma’s speculation amounted to dividing the populace on the basis of religion and is in violation of the law as it amounts to promoting hatred, ill-will or animosity on the basis of religion. Survivors have also intimated that the attack was carried out under the leadership of Amiya Brahma, Ranger of Basbari Forest Range, and that the assaulters used .303 rifles belonging to the Forest Department. Since the massacre, Amiya Brahma along with several forest guards and former militants were arrested for involvement in the massacre.

Naba Saraniya, a former commander of United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the non-Bodo consensus candidate of Sanmilita Janagosthiya Aikkyamancha (SJA) which is an amalgamation of at least 20 ethnic and linguistic groups that form 74% of the total population in the BTAD areas, is widely tipped by poll analysts to win the election. People from the affected communities have also affirmed that they voted en masse for Mr. Saraniya. Despite perceived threats of violence, voting amongst non-Bodos is reported to be about 65% and in certain pockets where non-Bodos are a majority, voting percentage even crossed the 90% mark. The likely victory of a non-Bodo candidate is a significant change in the politics of the region in which the BPF and its predecessors had strongly dominated for the last couple of decades.

It should also be noted that before the violence on the 1st and 2nd of May, tensions had begun to strongly manifest in the region. Since the 25th of April, hundreds of Muslim people from the villages under the Harbhanga polling booth had been harassed by the police. This was done in allegations over the death of police personnel on election duty the day before, owing to a rumor of an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) being rigged.

The tensions that were evidently building up since the polling day (14th April) culminated in the massacre of 1st and 2nd May where perpetrators resorted to extreme violence, entering into indiscriminate killings including women, children and the elderly. The worsening of the situation in the region was either not comprehended or left to chance by the state administration. Despite tensions building up, the inability to prevent the massacre brings to fore the utter failure and short-sightedness on part of the Assam Government. It is condemnable that to divert attention from its failure Assam government is mulling arming Bengali-speaking Muslims in BTAD area with licensed guns and has asked for applications from villagers. Forest minister Rockybul Hussain told media on Sunday that for their self-defense, Bengali speaking Muslims villagers should be given licensed arms by the state government. He has been quoted to have said that, “Since the home department in Bodoland area is under the state government, the government can provide licensed arms if anyone applies for it.” The minister and the Assam government should know better than others that the need of the hour is to de-arm BTAD completely rather than arming it further.

While innocent civilians are massacred, certain sections of media and society have twisted the issue and are raising the bogey of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants to cover up the causes of the violence. This is done to gain political mileage out of a tragedy as the Bengali speaking Muslims living in Assam have historically been easy to victimize and made scapegoats out of. Various political parties and ethnic groups have time and again played the game of discrimination and accusation solely targeting the Bengali speaking Muslims, the most recent example being Bharatiya Janata Party’s Prime Ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi.

Also one should be very careful not to fall into the trap of equating the whole of the Bodo community with militancy and terror. No community is homogeneous to the extent it is made out to be. Within the Bodo community there are divergent voices, beliefs, ideologies and aspirations. The fact that there were five Bodo candidates, including the two mentioned above, contesting from the same constituency affirms the same. What one needs to question and fight against is the economic and political hegemony of the people in power. It is the nexus between the tiny Bodo ruling elite and the ruling dispensation in Assam which pits ordinary Bodo people against similar non-Bodo people. It should also be remembered that historically Bodos have been an oppressed community in Assam, and hence the genuine aspirations of Bodo people should be respected. However, the genuine aspirations of the Bodo people have been completely hijacked by the politics of power mongering and of vested interests. This ruling elite can further it's interest only at the cost of the rights of other ethnic groups as is being done for a decade by pitting ordinary Bodo people against similar non-Bodo people of the region. Further the genuine economic and social interests of the larger Bodo community remain neglected and throttled in this play of power and privilege. It is time to re-imagine the idea of Bodoland for a better future. It is time to demand that BTC Accord be re-worked and revised so that the genuine democratic aspirations of all sections of population are upheld and realised.

We therefore demand that:

A high level judicial enquiry be instituted, as state (Assam) security forces have utterly failed to prevent the massacre and can not be relied upon to carry out fair and thorough investigations.
Adequate compensation and rehabilitation package be provided to families of deceased and injured.
Secured relief camps with adequate standards be provided to the victims till they feel confident to return to their villages.
Instead of arming further, de-arm BTAD immediately by seizing all arms and ammunition.
FIR be registered against Pramila Rani Brahma for her inflammatory public remarks.
Since it has come to light that guns belonging to forest department have been used in the massacre and involvement of forest guards have been suspected, investigate the possible involvement of official and executive members of the forest department of Bodoland Territorial Council.
Rework and revise the BTC accord so that the genuine democratic aspirations of all sections of population are upheld and realized.

Source: http://nsi-delhi.blogspot.in/2014/05/condemns-gruesome-massacre-in-bodoland.html#more

Ricochet in Bangladesh of India's 2014 election connected Assam Attacks : Hindu households, temple attacked

Hindu households, temple attacked in Bangladesh
PTI | May 5, 2014, 08.02 PM IST

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Hindu-households-temple-attacked-in-Bangladesh/articleshow/34695463.cms

Condemn the Massacre in Assam, Demand immediate arrest of Pramila Rani Brahma; Ensure safety of Muslims in BTAD: A Statement by Civil Society Groups and Concerned Citizens

http://www.sacw.net/article8591.html

India: The violence in Assam is about neither 'Hindu-Muslim' nor 'illegal Bangladeshi immigrants' | Kaustubh Deka

From scroll.in

The violence in Assam is about neither 'Hindu-Muslim' nor 'illegal Bangladeshi immigrants'
The Bodos form only 26% of the population in the area they want to carve out for their separate Bodo state. The other people who live there are protesting the dominance of a minority – and facing bullets for it.

[by]Kaustubh Deka


On Thursday, heavily armed militants shot dead three members of a family in Assam's Baksa district. On Friday, militants shoty dead eight and left many more dead in neighbouring Kokrajhar district. Another 12 bodies were found in Baksa on Friday night, and the militants also set ablaze a hundred houses and a bridge. All the dead – 32 so far – are Muslim and the militants are Bodos. Hundreds have fled their homes. The suspected perpetrators, the National Democratic Front for Bodoland, have denied their involvement.

Appalling as this violence is, it is not surprising for those who have followed the conflict in this area. Outside Assam people think of it as a Hindu-Muslim conflict or one about illegal immigration from Bangladesh. It is neither.

Who are the Bodos? Pronounced "Boros", the Bodos are a tribal community, listed in the scheduled tribes. They are animists who follow the Bathouist faith, though some are Christians. They are politically aligned with Assam's ruling Congress. The political party that represents their interests is the Bodoland People's Front, which has a Lok Sabha member and a Rajya Sabha member. Its 12 legislators in the state assembly are part of the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress coalition.

What is Bodoland? With the argument that they are native people, the Bodos waged a self-determination movement off and on since the 1960s. This ultimately resulted in the militant group Bodoland Liberation Tigers' Force surrendering arms to sign an agreement with the Assamese and Indian governments in 2003. The agreement resulted in the creation of a semi-autonomous Bodoland Territorial Council that administers four districts in western Assam. These four districts – Kokrajhar, Baksa, Udalguri and Chirang – are together known as the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts. The Bodos seek to transform the BTAD into a "pure" homeland of the Bodos. That ambition is at the heart of the recurring conflict in these districts. Identity, territory and power have come together to make Bodoland the biggest flashpoint of ethnic violence in Assam today.

The Congress hand The BTAD area has one seat reserved for the scheduled tribes in the Lok Sabha that has been held by the Bodoland People's Front, a party formed by former militants of the Bodoland Liberation Tigers' Force. The Bodoland People's Front also controls the Bodoland Territorial Council and is an ally of the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government. The Congress has been accused of handling the situation badly from the start. It reached the 2003 settlement with the Bodoland Liberation Tigers' Force without involving the majority non-Bodos who live in the area. Second, the Bodos have repeatedly violated the ceasefire they promised as part of the agreement, but the Congress government has taken no action. The Congress has thus been seen as deliberately helping the Bodos consolidate power in the area for its own political benefit.

A dominant minority The 2003 Bodoland Territorial Council accord is an official recognition of the Bodo political aspiration as one of the "earliest inhabitants of Assam". As per the accord, the aim of the Bodoland Territorial Council is to “fulfill economic, educational and linguistic aspirations and the preservation of land rights, socio-cultural and ethnic identity of the Bodos…” This created a perverse condition for Bodo dominance in a territory where the Bodos constitute only 26% of the population. The accord made them a dominant minority by giving them special status under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution (meant for tribal rights) at the cost of the 74% of non-Bodo population. This was felt as a gross violation of equality and democratic rights by the non-Bodo majority. At the same time the non-Bodo communities have often expressed fear of the consequences of demands that Bodo leaders prove their majority in the BTAD areas. This gives the Bodos an incentive to try to create a majority through acts of violence. Ethnic cleansing is round the corner.

The Muslims of Bodoland Politics around Muslim rights and grievances in Assam has come a long way. The All India United Democratic Front with significant clout over the Muslim vote and has become the principal opposition party in the assembly, replacing the Asom Gana Parishad. The AIUDF has actively supported the All Bodoland Minority Student’s Union to emerge in recent years as a powerful body representing Muslim interests in the BTAD.

In the 2010 elections to the Bodo Territorial Council, the organisation had demanded that the Bodo People's Front give atleast three seats for Muslims in those constituencies where they have absolute majority. When this demand was not accepted, the All Bodoland Minority Student’s Union together with the All Assam Minority Student’s Union formed the Sankhyalagu Aikhya Mancha (Minorities United Front) to contest the Bodoland Territorial Council election from constituencies with the highest number of Muslim votes and caused some electoral damage to the Bodoland People's Front-Congress alliance.

The All Assam Minority Student’s Union has called for dissolving the BTADs time and again, citing growing incidents of murder, kidnapping, extortions and rape. These incidents have made life and property extremely insecure for non-Bodos. Besides, the All Assam Minority Student’s Union has demanded proportionate employment policies to the community numbers and reservations for minority students in medical and engineering colleges in the area. Another All Bodoland Minority Student’s Union-All Assam Minority Student’s Union demand includes removing non-Bodo majority villages from the BTAD areas.

The Muslims of Bodoland are both Assamese-speaking and Bengali-speaking, and the Bengali-speaking Muslims are not recent migrants from Bangladesh. Bengali-speaking Muslims have lived in Assam since the British era. But many have been forced to migrate from one place to another within Assam because of floods and land erosion. It is significant that one of the prominent demands of the All Assam Minority Student’s Union has been a rehabilitation package for people affected by floods and land erosion, and that the government take preventive measures against land erosion. In a politics constructed around land rights, Bengali-speaking Muslims have become doubly insecure about the language they speak and because they face displacement from floods and land erosion.

Not just Muslims The killings this week or the large-scale riots in 2012 are not a straight case of communal violence targeting Muslims. The violence is a specific response to an effort by all non-Bodos to assert themselves politically. The Bodo elites show complete intolerance towards anyone who challenges or could challenge their homeland doctrine of a Bodo territory with autonomy and a special status to Bodos as the dominant power elite of the area. The Bodo elites have consolidated power and privilege through the BTAD and do not want to share it. In the past they have also targeted adivasis and ethnic Assamese speakers. Hapless Muslim villagers in western Assam are the latest victims of Bodo assertion, but they were not the first and won't be the last.

The unified fight against Bodo dominance In this Lok Sabha election, the All Bodoland Minority Student’s Union and the All Assam Minority Student’s Union, along with 18 other non-Bodo groups under the umbrella Sanmilita Janagostiya Aikkyamancha, an amalgamation of non-Bodo ethnic and linguistic groups based in the BTAD, supported the independent candidature of Naba Saraniya, a former militant leader of the United Liberation Front of Assam. Saraniya is seen to outweigh the powerful Bodoland People's Front candidate Chandan Brahma, formerly a minister in the Assam government. While the Bodo votes are split in many parts, this Sanmilita Janagostiya Aikkyamancha managed to unite the non-Bodo votes. That is why 32 Muslims were killed in Kokrajhar and Baksa this week, including women and children, one of them as young as two years old.

source URL: http://scroll.in/article/663524