Two years after an ethnic clash left more than a hundred
people dead and an estimated 4.5 lakh displaced, western Assam is on the
boil once again. Earlier this month, suspected Bodo extremists killed
44 Muslim villagers. Thousands of others have fled their homes in panic
once again.
The recurrence of violence in the region even before the wounds of
2012 had fully healed points to deep-rooted tensions among people of
different ethnicities cohabiting in the region, and exposes the inherent
instability of the special administrative regime governing the region
since 2003. In that year, the centre, the state government and militants
from the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) group signed a peace accord to
establish the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD), an
autonomous council comprising four districts, headquartered in the Bodo
heartland of Kokrajhar. A political party launched by the former
militants, the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), has ruled BTAD since then,
and shares power in an alliance with the Congress party at the state
level.
The Bodos are the largest plains tribe of Assam, and
share a history of loss and discrimination with other tribals of the
state. While the peace accord addressed their alienation, and helped the
former BLT militants consolidate their position as the most effective
spokespersons of the tribe, it drove a wedge between the Bodos and
non-Bodos living in the region. The non-Bodos include Assamese-speaking
non-tribals, Bengali-speakers (Hindus and Muslims), smaller tribes, and
ethnic groups such as the Koch Rajbongshis who have long been demanding
tribal status.
Despite constituting roughly 70% of BTAD’s population,
the non-Bodos were marginalized in the new administrative set-up. In
trying to appease one minority group, the state ignored the interests of
other communities, sowing the seeds of future conflicts. If the
original sin of the flawed peace accord was not egregious in itself, the
state compounded the problems by failing to fully disarm surrendered
militants or to effectively tame other Bodo extremist groups. As a
result, the cycle of extortion against non-Bodos remained unbroken,
driving further resentment against an accord which belied initial hopes
of peace.
When a high-profile non-Bodo candidate, Naba Saraniya
declared his candidature for the prestigious Kokrajhar seat and was able
to secure the support of influential leaders from non-Bodo communities,
it created a major flutter. To add to the BPF’s woes, one of their own
men revolted against the party to stand as an independent even as other
high-profile Bodo candidates joined the fray. As Guwahati-based
political scientist Bhasker Pegu pointed out
in the online edition of this newspaper, the fear of losing in
Kokrajhar, which has historically elected Bodo lawmakers made the BPF
leadership jittery. BPF leaders complained publicly about Muslims voting
against them in large numbers on polling day, and the attacks on
Bengali-speaking Muslim settlers followed a few days later. There are
fears of another bloodbath in western Assam after 16 May if Saraniya
indeed wins the election in Kokrajhar.
While a large section of non-Bodos in BTAD are resentful
of the BPF leadership, it is the increasingly aggressive
Bengali-speaking Muslim community which has been the most vocal in its
opposition to the BPF, and has borne the brunt of the attacks from
extremists sympathetic to the Bodo cause. The fact that they are late
settlers in Assam, and that some of them have migrated illegally, makes
them sitting ducks in a backlash.
If the flawed Bodo peace accord has created new fault
lines in the region, the failure to solve the problem of illegal
immigration has perpetuated old suspicions and bitterness in the region.
On both counts, the Tarun Gogoi-led state government has been a
colossal failure. Gogoi has failed to rein in his alliance partners in
the BPF, some of whom have been implicated in the 2012 violence. He has
also never seriously attempted to find a rational solution to the
problem of illegal immigration, allowing tensions to simmer. Like a
modern-day Nero, Gogoi has watched the delicate social fabric of the
region torn asunder by extremisTS.
PRASHANT SHARMA
PGDM 1ST YEAR
2013-15
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