Those who are trying to portray the present crisis in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District as a Hindu-Muslim clash are consciously trying to bring about the polarisation along religious lines. At its core, the issue is about control over land. The current tragic situation in the BTAD is the outcome of wrong policies which have been pursued since Independence, all resulting in the marginalisation of the plains tribal communities and the dispossession of their rights to land. What is urgently required at this present juncture is strong steps to prevent further alienation of tribal land and forest reserves coupled with measures to protect the constitutional rights of the other communities in the BTAD area.
The burden of history is proving ever so heavy for the indigenous peoples of Assam. Since the 1930s,1 the issues of land, immigration, demographic change and identity have been core ones in this region.
In the years immediately preceding Independence when the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League were ranged against each other on the question of immigration of land-hungry peasants from the then East Bengal, the Assam Legislative Assembly debated at length on the land question, the rights of tribal communities to their lands and the demand by the immigrants to scrap the Line System.2
In 1937 the Assam assembly set up a committee headed by F W Hockenhull to look into the entire issue of land and suggest measures which could be ¬acceptable to all the parties concerned. In his report submitted a year later, Hockenhull observed that the indigenous people by themselves would not be able to develop the wastelands, but he insisted that the Line System should continue and suggested stronger and more effective steps to prevent alienation of tribal land. Following the Hockenhull Report, the Congress ministry headed by Gopinath Bardoloi initiated several measures aimed at freeing the protected tribal land from encroachers. But permission for new settlements to landless peasants, both Assamese and immigrants was not stopped. Hence, the pressure from the immigrant lobby continued. Things took a different turn when, in November 1939, the Bardoloi ministry resigned following the AICC’s war directive and Syed Mohammad Saadulla took over with the full backing of the Muslim League. Soon after taking charge, Saadulla signed an agreement with the Assam Tribal League3 which surprisingly did not have any specific clauses on the land question, despite the latter’s insistence that the Line System should be strictly enforced to protect tribal land. Instead, Saadulla went ahead with his plan for settlement of East Bengal immigrants as demanded by the Muslim League which, in its first provincial conference held in November 1939, insisted that the Line System be totally scrapped and land be made available to all immigrants from East Bengal. However, the Saadulla ministry fell in December 1941 because of the withdrawal of support from the independent Assamese member Rohini Kumar Chaudhury and two other MLAs. Governor’s rule followed and in March 1942 the governor scrapped the Land Development Scheme.
But when Saadulla returned to power on August 1942, the situation was politically quite congenial for him to go ahead with his Land Development Scheme which was clearly intended to ensure continuing support from the Muslim League legislators who had made their intentions clear of bringing in more immigrants into the province.4 Meanwhile pressure was mounting also from the Muslim League government in West Bengal where the state assembly passed a resolution calling upon Assam to open up its reserves to land-hungry immigrants from Bengal.5 Within a year of his assuming office, in August 1943 the Saadulla ministry adopted a new resolution on land settlement which provided for the opening up of grazing reserve areas and wastelands in the districts of Nowgong, Darrang and Kamrup to immigrants from Bengal as part of the “Grow More Food” programme6 aimed at helping the war economy.
This scheme called for distribution of wastelands and the de-reservation of select grazing reserves in the Nowgong district, the de-reservation of professional grazing reserves in Kamrup and Darrang and the opening up of surplus reserves in all the submontane areas ¬ostensibly for settlement of landless people, the overwhelming majority of whom were Muslim immigrants. Referring to this Amalendu Guha writes:
S P Desai, a senior ICS man, was appointed Special Officer to ascertain what portion of professional grazing reserve could be declared as surplus available for settlement. Desai reported that the forcible occupation of grazing lands by immigrants had already taken place to a large scale, even in predominantly Assamese and tribal areas. His conclusion was that there was no surplus land available for new settlement. Ignoring the report, Saadulla’s Muslim League Coalition Government threw select professional grazing reserves open for settling immigrants.7
Opening Assam to Immigration
It was this scheme which opened up vast areas of central and western Assam8 to immigrants and had grave implications for the indigenes, especially for the tribal population who were accustomed to a different mode of agriculture. The tribal farmers lacked proper land documents and were accustomed to using “unclaimed land” for shifting cultivation. Initially, Saadulla’s development scheme met with roadblocks in the form of ¬severe opposition from the Congress which effectively voiced the concerns of the indigenous peoples. But the Muslim League under the leadership of Maulana Bhasani9 had become more and more strident and continued to press its demand for further opening up of grazing reserves and the abolition of the Line System meant to protect indigenous and tribal land from occupation by immigrants. In its provincial conference held in April 1944 in the lower Assam town of Barpeta,10 the Muslim League demanded that the immigrants be given land or the Saadulla ministry should resign. Discussing the differences that had cropped up between Saadulla and Bhasani, Amalendu Guha observes:
Replying to Bhasani’s long harangue, Saadulla charged the greedy headmen of immigrant villages, dewanis and matbars, had unceremoniously managed to get for themselves pattas for seventy to hundred acres each, with a view to induct sub-tenants… He cited instances of their driving out even Assamese Muslims from newly reclaimed lands. To drive the point home, he drew a parallel with unrestricted Jewish migration to the Arab homeland. He pleaded for protection of Assam’s tribals in the plains from the onslaught of more enterprising settlers. Finally, he appealed for support to his policy, since the Line System had already been relaxed to a great deal with a view to its abolition.11
Differences with the Muslim League leadership as well as continued resistance to his land policy from the Congress, compelled Saadulla to try to reach a compromise and convene an all-party conference to discuss the issue. But this did not deter Saadulla from bringing in another resolution on the land issue in January 1945 where he tried to arrive at a compromise between the demands of the indigenes and those of the Muslim League. Speaking at the budget session of the Assam assembly in March 1945, Gopinath Bardoloi put up a tough fight against the Saadulla government’s policy of opening up the reserves and grazing areas to the immigrants. Referring to the anti-tribal policy of the Saadulla government, Bardoloi said:
The government resolution makes no provision for Tribal Blocks in areas other than places which have been termed as Tribal Blocks. This will make the position of the tribals impossible…the tribal people will have to move to the hills if they require land for settlement and cultivation.
Bardoloi referred to Clause 15 of the government resolution which stated:
The area required for them (the tribals) will be calculated at double the area occupied by the present people in the submontane tracts…it will also afford provision to other tribals living outside the area to be defined, who may wish to remove themselves within the tribal belt. Superfluous lands in the present loosely defined tribal area will be excluded and thrown open for settlement under the planned scheme. In other words, the tribals are not to find land in areas which are now under occupation by them, but they shall have to go to tribal areas…posterity will blame us if we cannot protect the rights of the indigenous people, the tribals (emphasis added).
Bardoloi was strongly opposed by the Muslim League members and Saadulla went ahead with his land development scheme which led to the opening up of more and more government reserve areas to the immigrants.
In 1946 the Congress was voted to power and one of the first acts of the Bardoloi ministry was to clear the grazing and forest reserves of illegal encroachers12 as per the tripartite agreement of March 1945. But resistance from the immigrants and the fear of reprisals on Assamese villages forced the government to go slow. Hence, the alienation of tribal land continued. However, within a year of Independence, the Bardoloi ministry, in a bid to prevent further alienation of tribal land, amended the Assam Land Revenue Regulations, 1886, and created reserved tribal belts in different regions with the aim of protecting the tribal people from competition from non-tribals, mainly immigrants. Ten tribal belts and 23 tribal blocks were constituted and it was hoped that the measure would prove to be a final check on occupation of tribal land. But in the hands of manipulative officials, most of the provisions were subverted. In the years that followed, continued pressure on land held by the indigenes kept mounting because of immigration from then East Pakistan.
Alienation of Tribals
The denial of Sixth Scheduled status for the Bodos, which would have given them constitutional protection when they needed it most to protect their land and identity, can be seen as one of the primary causes leading to the alienation of tribal land in the post-Independence years. The Bangladesh war added to the changing demographic scenario of the state, with several lakhs of immigrants, mostly Bengali Muslims, staying back in the Brahmaputra Valley. Finally, when the Assam Movement against foreign nationals erupted in 1979, the land issue proved to be the central one. Discussing this, M S Prabhakara writes:
…The land question in Assam is extremely complicated and even more than the ‘ethnic’ dimension and the ‘threat to identity’, it was the land question which invested the Assam agitation with a measure of legitimacy. Vast areas of the state have for years been settled upon and cultivated by people who have no formal claims on the land.13
Thus, Assam has long been caught in the time warp and what we are witnessing today in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD) area is the result of failure as well as unwillingness on the part of the government to act decisively with a political will to put an end to the alienation of tribal land. As for the Assamese middle class, it was too occupied with the language question to give time to the progressive alienation of tribal land owing to continuous immigration, the strong and unambiguous stand that the Assam Congress leaders took during the Assembly debates before and after Partition notwithstanding.
Any attempt, therefore, to understand the present situation in the BTAD must take into account the fact that the Bodos have been a community long accustomed to shifting cultivation and their transition to settled farming is of relatively recent origin. During the colonial days the Bodo and other Assamese tribal communities were known to be averse to acquiring permanent tenure over land. This lack of formal tenure often made them appear as encroachers on government forestland and helped the immigrant non-tribal peasants to permanently occupy the land which was once the preserve of the tribal farmer. During the initial years of migration of peasants from the then East Bengal which was actively encouraged by the colonial state to meet its commercial needs, communities like the Bodos could still move within their land and practise their non-commodity production.14
The colonial administration was not happy with such cultivators because they practised temporary cultivation and were unwilling to pay land revenue. But as the flow on migration increased in the immediate years before and after Independence, tribal land was increasingly acquired by non-tribal immigrants who secured permanent tenure. Therefore, it was a losing battle for the Bodos who were pitted against the sedentary farmers who started raising cash crops.
Present Clashes
The present clashes between the Bodos and the immigrant Muslim settlers have a long history.15 Ever since the movement for a separate Bodoland16 started in March 1987, the question of Bodo identity has been linked to land and demography.17 The fight for Bodoland which was attended by a large degree of violence resulted finally in the Bodo Accord of 2003 for the creation of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) and the BTAD which politically empowered the Bodos within certain territorial limits in which they were clearly a minority, constituting just around 30% of the total population of the BTAD area.
The creation of a particular ethnic homeland without ensuring the constitutional rights of the other communities living in the region was the beginning of the conflict lines leading to repeated clashes between the Bodos and other communities, especially the Santhals and the immigrant Muslims. It did not take long for the Bodos, after securing a measure of political autonomy, to realise that the demographic equation and, particularly, the land factor were not in their favour. What is important is that the land question was not seriously addressed in the Bodo Accord and encroachment in forest areas continued. Bodo desperation was heightened by the fact that the idea of a homogeneous homeland in a highly heterogeneous polity was a virtual impossibility. This became even more evident as Bodo militancy started ebbing and the non-Bodo communities started consolidating themselves under new banners. All these developments certainly added to the sense of uncertainty among the ¬Bodos regarding their goal of a separate Bodoland and the entire atmosphere was surcharged with suspicion and distrust. A chain of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations by the Bodo and non-Bodo organisations finally prepared the ground for the present conflagration which has given rise to a massive humanitarian crisis.
A significant aspect of the present outbreak of violence is that it has been confined largely to the Bodo and Muslim communities, a large section of the Muslims being long-time settlers of the region while there have certainly been significant new additions as well. The resistance put up by organisations like the All Bodoland Minority Students Union (ABMSU) made it clear to the Bodo leadership that the major challenge to Bodo aspirations would come from the immigrant Muslim population who seemed to be the most organised of all the non-Bodo communities in the BTAD area. Moreover, the fact that the immigrant Muslim population depended almost solely on land strengthened the impression that they were the main threat to tribal land and the protected reserves. Added to this was the high decadal birth rate among the Muslim community which spurred Bodo fears of being further marginalised demographically in their home¬land.18 The distinct failure of the government to curb immigration from Bangladesh (a fact now admitted, even if much belatedly, by Assam’s chief minister), the absence of any strict land regulations aimed at preventing further alienation of tribal land, the failure to protect whatever is left of the BTAD region’s reserve forest areas,19 the dilly-dallying over the question of updating the national register of citizens (NRC) are but a few causes leading to the present humanitarian crisis involving the common masses of both the communities. While restoration of peace and bringing about rehabilitation of the displaced people would naturally be of topmost priority, yet unless the root causes are attended to, the BTAD region is bound to fester.
While trying to analyse the present clashes, care must be taken not to see them through the usual Hindu-Muslim lenses as a communal fallout. There are many more subtexts to this than ethnic cleansing, the communal angle or the Bangladeshi immigrant factor. Writing as way back as 1994, M S Prabhakara commented on the 1993 violence:
To see the violence as merely a calculated move to drive out the non-Bodos and ensure that the Bodos would form a majority in the Bodoland Autonomous Area would not merely be a mechanical reading of a complex situation but also ignoring the hard demographical realties of the region.20
In the same article, the author wrote:
…the antagonism towards aliens of migrant origin (was) grounded in everyday experience of tension arising over the very fact of such settlements which came up (and in some cases were set up) quite illegally in ¬areas officially designated as tribal belts and blocks.
The Bodo struggle needs to be seen as the story of resistance (however despicable this might appear to some because of the successive waves of violence it has triggered) of a small ethnic nationality trying to preserve its identity which is so inextricably tied up with land. Today the Bodo community is seized by an element of uncertainty and insecurity and, in many senses, the attendant ¬violence is a reflection of this.
Build-up to Recent Violence
The build-up to the present violence began with a string of protest programmes taken up by the non-Bodo organisations against what they have been long describing as the discriminatory policies of the BTAD administration against the other communities residing in the BTAD area. The Bodo leadership has been repeatedly accused of encouraging a policy of intimidation and extortion against non-Bodo sections of the population. It is significant that as long as Bodo militancy was at its height, efforts by non-Bodo communities to organise themselves did not meet with much success. But, once militancy started ebbing with even the dreaded National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) faction led by Ranjan Daimary21 going in for a ceasefire and willing to open talks with the Government of India, the non-Bodo communities drew courage to organise themselves under the umbrella organisation called the Non-Bodo Protection Forum (NBPF) which included representatives from the ABMSU, the All Assam Koch-Rajbongshi Students Union, Bengali Students Federation, the All Assam Gorkha Students Union and the All Assam Tea Tribes Students Union. Amongst these components, the ABMSU which was a wing of the All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU) and which represented the Muslim settlers was an influential presence.
Beginning with May 2012, the NBPF initiated a series of protest programmes and made clear its opposition to the creation of a separate Bodoland state as demanded by the Bodo People’s Front22 and other Bodo organisations. Along with the NBPF, the Koch-Rajbongshis, one of the major non-Bodo communities of the BTAD, too upped their ante for a separate state and scheduled tribes status. They held huge rallies at Bongaigaon and other places on 22 May. Within a week of this, the ABMSU called for a 24-hour Kokrajhar bandh on 29 May to protest against the administration’s refusal to allow an Idgah maidan on government forestland near the Chakrasila wildlife sanctuary. During the ABMSU bandh, there was widespread violence and several government and public vehicles were torched and scores of people injured. In response to this, several Bodo organisations led by the ex-Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) Welfare Society and a faction of the NDFB held a mass rally on 30 May to protest the violence indulged in by the ABMSU and to reiterate the demand for the clearing of encroachers from forestland in the Bedlangmeri area. All this set the stage for a full-scale confrontation between the Bodo organisations and the immigrant Muslim settlers now led by the ABMSU. The following month (June) was marked by isolated incidents in different parts of the BTAD, with the ABMSU blockading the national highway to be followed by a massive rally held by the Bodo People’s Front to press for the demand for a ¬separate state.
As opposition to such a demand mounted from the non-Bodo organisations and primarily from the ABMSU, tension between the two communities kept on mounting and on 6 July two activists of the ABMSU were shot at in the Kokrajhar district. This was followed by the killing of four former BLT cadres in the Joypur area of Kokrajhar on 20 July. With this the mayhem may be said to have begun. Swift reprisals were carried out by the Bodo community and the violence soon spread to Chirang and Baksa as well as the adjoining Dhubri district. Within a week, scores of people were killed and nearly four lakhs were displaced. This has easily been one of the most massive displacements in the country’s post-Independence history.23 Interestingly, this time the violence did not affect the Udalguri district which had been witness to large-scale riots between Muslim immigrants and Bodos and other communities in 2008 when over 70 people were killed and over a lakh rendered homeless. One explanation is that during the present spell of violence the initiative has been taken by the former BLT rebels while the predominantly Christian NDFB factions have not been so proactive.24
Both the Muslim and Bodo refugees in the camps maintained that in most cases the houses were burnt but large-scale killings did not take place. They also said that the nature of the violence was unlike that of a communal clash involving two communities. Rather, there seemed to be a pattern behind the entire violence as far as the burning down of both Muslim and Bodo villages was concerned. It is an undisputed fact that much of the violence could have been prevented had the security forces promptly moved into the affected areas. But there was a clear administrative failure in the deployment of forces and this resulted in the total erosion of confidence on the part of the people in the administration and the resultant fear and panic in which thousands from both the communities fled their homes. This partly explains the huge numbers of refugees in the camps.
Another significant aspect of the present violence in the BTAD area is that, by and large, Assamese and Bengali Hindus, Nepalis, Koch-Rajbongshis and adivasis have not been affected. There has clearly been selective torching of houses by both sides and only occasionally have the other communities been caught in the violence. While all these communities are represented in the NBPF and one of its most vocal leaders is an Assamese caste-Hindu, yet the more organised group within the umbrella organisation is the ABMSU which has emerged as the representative of the immigrant Muslim community.
Rehabilitation
The rehabilitation process has been severely affected by the contrasting positions adopted by the Bodo and the immigrant Muslim leaderships. The former has been steadfastly asserting that among the Muslim refugees in the camps there is a sizeable section of “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh and the citizenship bona fides of these people must be verified before they are rehabilitated. The latter has been insisting that rehabilitation must precede all such verification. The state government is obviously in a bind and cannot decide either way.25
Relations between the Congress and its coalition partner the Bodo People’s Front have already been frayed and any strong stand in support of the migrants would certainly add to the divide. As it is there are signs of the Bodo political opinion moving away from the Congress, with parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party trying to make inroads. On the other hand, any decision in favour of the Bodos would finally alienate the huge Muslim vote-bank of the Congress. At the same time, speedy rehabilitation without verifying the citizenship status of the camp inmates is bound to be seen by both the Bodos and the Assamese as a surrender to the immigrant lobby. But what should really be of concern is that any attempt to speed up the rehabilitation process of the Muslim settlers without confidence-building measures between the two communities and proper security infrastructure in the affected areas would invariably lead to further attacks on the immigrant population.
This has been borne out by past experience and the recent attacks on a group of immigrant Muslims who were returning to their homes from the camp at Chirang signify that the former Bodo militant cadres are bent on forcing the displaced people to stay on in the camps and not return to their homesteads.26 That rehabilitation is not going to be an easy process can be seen from the earlier instances of violence and displacement in the area.27
Past History of Violence
Though the movement for Bodo auto¬nomy has been going on since the 1980s and violence against civilians and state property was quite rampant,28 it was only from the 1990s onwards that the Muslims and other communities living in the region that was being claimed for a separate Bodoland began to be targeted and quit notices were issued to the non-tribal population in many areas, followed by isolated violence. This was seen as part of a wider plan to create a more or less homogeneous Bodo homeland where the Bodos were clearly in a minority. But the odds were heavily placed against the Bodos who could perhaps be described as the economically least developed among the plains tribes of the Brahmaputra Valley. In the first few decades following Independence, the Bodo peasants had been progressively pushed out of their land by non-Bodo settlers29 amongst whom the Muslim immigrant peasants constituted the largest single group.
Tribal land in the tribal belts and blocks was continuously usurped by rich and middle non-Bodo peasants and the encroachment of forest areas, with the connivance of a corrupt bureaucracy, also continued apace. It needs to be noted that the violence against other communities escalated only after the Bodo movement was hijacked by the militant armed groups initially led by the United Tribal Nationalist Liberation Front (UTNLF) and the Bodo Security Force and subsequently by the BLT and the NDFB.
The first major attacks by the Bodos on Muslim settlers took place in October 1993 in western Assam to be followed in early 1994 by the burning down of over 60 villages of old Muslim settlers in the Barpeta district, including an attack on a refugee camp which claimed some 90 lives. In May-June 1996 the Santhals were targeted and more than 200 people were killed and some two lakhs were displaced. Further clashes took place in 1998 and 1999 when ethnic violence displaced 756 villages of Kokrajhar district, of which 196 were revenue villages, 25 were recognised forest villages and 535 were encroached forest villages.30 More than 50 persons lost their lives and over 80,000 were displaced. It needs to be noted that during all these clashes, a large number of Bodo people were also displaced when their villages were burnt down primarily in retaliatory violence.
The year 2008 saw clashes between the Bodos and Muslims in Udalguri and Darrang districts, with more than a 100 people losing their lives and over a lakh and a half displaced. A significant feature of that wave of violence was that the other non-Bodo communities had distanced themselves from the Muslims, a process which is also to be seen in the present violence. In earlier clashes, apart from the Bodos and Muslims, other communities such as the non-tribal Assamese, Koch-Rajbonghis, Bengali Hindus and Rabhas were also caught in the violence and displaced.
Thus, in the course of time, the brunt of the Bodo anger and frustration was targeted against the immigrant Muslim peasants who happened to be concentrated in certain areas and were also posing a challenge in demographic terms.31 But it needs to be noted that the flow of immigrant Muslims into the BTAD area has also been linked to the developmental programmes in the form of road building and other infrastructure that have been imitated by the BTC and which needed cheap labour. Added to this has been the rather sudden rise of a Bodo middle class in the BTAD area which necessitated sharecroppers and peasant labour to till the land that belonged to this class. And, in the majority of cases, this was provided by the immigrant Muslims.
New Equations
Just as the Bodo-Muslim violence has led to the consolidation of Muslim opinion throughout the state, it has likewise brought together the different streams of Bodo politics – both populist and militant. As trouble in the BTAD mounted, one could see a unanimity of views amongst the different Bodo organisations and outfits ranging from the All Bodo Students Union and the Bodo Sahitya Sabha to the former BLT-led Bodo People’s Front and the two factions of the NDFB. This coming together is bound to bring about a major change in Bodo politics. Another marked feature of the recent developments has been the coming closer of the Bodo organisations to what maybe termed as Assamese mainstream politics.32
Whereas ever since the agitation for a separate Bodoland began, the prime target of the Bodo leadership has been the Assamese middle class and its hegemonistic ambitions,33 recently the former seems to have made several overtures towards the latter. Bodo organisations and leaders have called for the implementation of Clause 10 of the Assam Accord34 and the updating of the NRC,35 – something which they had been indifferent to all these years.
There seems to be an eagerness amongst Bodo organisations to come closer to their Assamese counterparts in their common fight against immigration from Bangladesh. But, interestingly, the response of the Assamese “national” organisations has been rather lukewarm. The Assamese dilemma clearly springs from the fact that over the years a section of influential Assamese public opinion has been favouring the inclusion of the immigrant Muslims within the expanding parameters of the Assamese nationality. On the contrary, Assamese irredentism and over-zealousness in protecting their language and identity eventually resulted in alienating the plains tribal communities of which the Bodos were a major constituent.
Assamese social leaders and intellectuals have been maintaining that the immigrant Muslims or Na-Asamiya (neo-Assamese) who have been recording Assamese as their mother tongue are now an integral part of the Assamese nationality. Therefore, in the event of a clash between the Bodos and the neo-Assamese Muslims, the latter would naturally be expected to bank on the support of the indigenous Assamese. The present clashes have, therefore, revealed the dilemma of the Assamese leadership. This partly explains the lack of stridency on the part of organisations like the All Assam Students Union (AASU), the Asom Sahitya Sabha or the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chattra Parishad during the recent clash. Sections of the Assamese press and electronic media seemed to have almost overnight abandoned the Na-Asamiya Muslim and started referring to them as Bengali-speaking Muslims! Such a development reminds one of a particular phase in the Assam Movement (1979-85) when the Muslim community as a whole, including the indigenous Assamese Muslims, was considered as a danger to the Assamese nation-building process. A similar situation seems to be evolving today with certain sections within the Assamese community trying to interpret the violence in BTAD as one between the indigenes and Bangladeshis or foreign nationals.
Such a position almost totally marginalises the neo-Assamese Muslim who happens to form a major plank of the Assamese nationality. This approach would invariably lead to distrust and animosity and widen the gap between the Assamese and the neo-Assamese Muslim while at the same time further aggravating the identity crisis of the Assamese indigenous Muslims. Polarisation along religious lines would bring about major fault lines in the otherwise religiously tolerant Assamese society. Unfortunately, such a process seems to have begun. As a result of this, Assamese public opinion though sympathetic to the Bodo position in relation to immigration is still quite cautious about extending unqualified support for the Bodos. This is so particularly because of the large number of Assamese living in the BTAD area who are opposed to the Bodo Accord.36 Added to this is the increasingly uncertain position of Assamese civil society regarding the status of neo-Assamese Muslims of the BTAD. In this highly complex scenario relating to Assamese nationality, rightist parties are trying to communalise the entire issue along Hindu-Muslim lines. But given the broadly secular nature of the Assamese national institutions, Assamese concern about immigration from Bangladesh and the consequent demographic change cannot be expected to translate itself into simple communal equations.
Not a Communal Clash
Therefore, those who are trying to portray the present crisis in the BTAD as a Hindu-Muslim communal clash are either not acquainted with the Assamese social scenario or are consciously trying to bring about polarisation along religious lines. But even in the latter case, it needs to be kept in mind that some 12% of the Bodos are Christians while the majority are followers of the Brahma sect and traditional Bathou religion.
Finally, whatever the present equations, however repulsive the violence and the magnitude of the human tragedy, the fact remains that the present highly tragic situation in the BTAD is the outcome of wrong policies which have been pursued as part of a political agenda from the years immediately following Independence till the present times – all resulting in the marginalising of the plains tribal communities and dispossessing them of their rights to land and a distinct way of life linked inextricably with it. If the peaceful and “indolent” Bodos are today being accused of violence against the other communities residing in the BTAD area, then part of the blame certainly lies with the cruel historical process aided and abetted by successive governments since the colonial days.
What is urgently required at this present juncture is strong and effective steps to prevent further alienation of tribal land and forest reserves coupled with measures to protect the constitutional rights of the other communities in the BTAD area. This can certainly be achieved through a meaningful dialogue. All the violence attributed to the Bodo people cannot take away from the fact that theirs is a struggle to keep their land and identity. What course this struggle eventually takes remains to be seen. Demands are being raised for the dissolution of the BTC and the imposition of president’s rule in the state. In such a situation one can only hope that the experiment at bringing back the militants into the democratic process, however flawed it might be, does not end in failure. For, such a development is bound to have frighteningly grave implications for the entire north-eastern region.
Notes
1 The colonisation scheme which had been initiated by the British officials began in 1928 when large areas of Nowgong district, to be followed by Barpeta and Mangaldai subdivisions, were opened up primarily to immigrants from the then East Bengal. According to Amalendu Guha “during the six years preceding 1936, as many as 59 grazing, forest and village reserves had been thrown open in Nowgong under the Colonisation Scheme for settling the immigrants”. Guha writes: “The land-hungry immigrants, segregated and pitted against all odds, never appreciated the Assamese point of view. If all men were equal in the eyes of Allah, why should thousands of acres of land remain waste, particularly when men in search of a livelihood and lebensraum were available to them to turn into smiling fields?…They wanted the Line System to go”. See Amalendu Guha Planter Raj to Swaraj, p 210.
2 The Line System was first mooted in 1916 and adopted in 1920. It was an administrative measure aimed against the occupation of land belonging to the indigenous people by the immigrants. The clash of interests began when the immigrants started moving into areas held by the autochthones from their initial riverine bases. Under the Line System, a line was drawn in those districts which were under pressure from immigrants so that they could be settled in segregated areas specified for their exclusive settlement. But continuous encroachment by immigrants of lands earmarked for the local Assamese people ultimately made the Line System virtually infructuous.
3 The clauses relating to land settlement of tribal people were quite vague. Though it was agreed that steps would be initiated to defend the Line System, and settlement would be given to landless tribals “after taking into account the condition” of these people, yet no specific guideline or time frame was spelt out. The Tribal League has also been referred to as Plains Tribal League.
4 The majority of Congress MLAs were in jail because of the Quit India Movement.
5 The Bengal Legislative Council passed a motion on 16 July 1943, calling upon the Government of India to take immediate steps to remove all restrictions imposed by the Assam government on the land-hungry, emigrant cultivators from Bengal. See Amalendu Guha, ibid: 281.
6 Wavell termed it as the “Grow More Muslims” policy.
7 Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj, pp 281-82.
8 Central and western Assam is today in the grip of Bodo-Muslim violence.
9 Abdul Hamid Khan, better known as Maulana Bhasani, was a peasant leader of East Bengal but soon emerged as an influential leader of the Bengali Muslim immigrants in Assam. He was elected to the Assam Legislative Assembly in 1937 and as president of the provincial Muslim League mounted a series of agitations for the withdrawal of the Line System and the opening of the tribal belts and blocks to immigrant peasants. In February 1947 Bhasani planned a series of marches against the Line System as part of the Civil Disobedience programme of the All India Muslim League. But when the possibility of Assam being included in Pakistan receded, the move fizzled out.
10 By the 1940s the Barpeta subdivision of lower Assam was emerging as a stronghold of immigrant Muslims. In 1911 Muslims constituted 0.1% of the population of Barpeta subdivision; by 1941, they constituted nearly 49%.
11 Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj, pp 282-83.
12 Primarily post-1937 encroachers.
13 M S Prabhakara, “Land, the Source of All Trouble”, The Hindu, 15 July 1987.
14 For a discussion of the two land systems refer to “What Ails Western Assam?” by Arupjyoti Saikia, Seven Sisters Post, Guwahati, 10 August 2012.
15 As early as 1989, United Minority Front legislators in the Assam assembly accused the ruling Asom Gana Parishad of inciting the Muslim settlers against the Bodo tribals.
16 The Bodo movement for autonomy and separate statehood has passed through several stages. Initially, under the leadership of the Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) the demand was for a homeland for the plains tribal communities of central and western Assam inhabiting the north bank of the Brahmaputra. But owing to reservations expressed by the Mishing and Rabha communities, the demand got focused on an exclusive homeland for the Bodos who were the largest plains tribal group although clearly not a majority in the area earmarked by the agitators for a separate Bodoland. Under the leadership of the All Bodo Students Union which had the support of the militant United Tribal Nationalist Liberation Front (UTNLF), the movement acquired an increasing violent turn with government buildings. Schools and bridges destroyed and scores of civilians, both Bodo and non-Bodo being killed… Following the infructuous accord of 1993, Bodo militancy took on new wings with the formation of organisations like the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB). There is evidence to suggest that the central government under the Congress encouraged Bodo separatism in order to create difficulties for the Asom Gana Parishad government of the state. Finally, with a change of government in Delhi, an accord was arrived at between the BLT and the GOI which paved the way for the amendment of the Sixth Schedule and the creation of the BTAD with electoral reservations for the Bodo community in the BTC which was given a large range of powers minus law and order which remained with the state government. With 30 of the 46 seats in the BTC reserved for scheduled tribes (Bodos alone in this case), and only five for non-tribal communities and another five open seats, the other communities which constituted almost 70% of the population felt left out of the democratic process. Though the accord provided for the protection of the land rights of the non-tribals, and did not bar any citizen from “acquiring land either by way of inheritance, allotment, settlement or by way of transfer if such citizens were eligible for such bona fide acquisition of land within the BTC area”, the clause was later on seen by the Bodos as a ploy to continue acquisition of tribal land while the non-Bodos felt that this particular clause was not respected by the Bodo leadership.
17 For an analysis of the early phase of the Bodo movement, refer “Bodo Stir: Complex Issues: Unattainable Demands” by Udayon Misra, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol XXIV, No 21, 27 May 1989.
18 That demographic change was a major concern was reflected in Clause 8 of the Memorandum of Settlement between the GOI and the All Bodo Students Union signed in February 1993, which stated that “the BAC shall, within the laws of the land, take steps to protect the demographic complexion of the areas falling within its jurisdiction”. Though this clause does not figure in the Bodo Accord of 2003, it points to the demographic challenge that small nationalities in the north-eastern region have been facing primarily from immigration.
19 Though exact figures regarding occupation of tribal belts and blocks and government reserve land are not available, it is a known fact that over the years there has been continuous encroachment. In figures released by the state government as way back as 1986, immigrant Muslims, former tea-garden workers, Nepalis and non-tribal Assamese constituted almost half of the total number of settlers in the 25 forest divisions of the state where some 1,74,489 hectares were under occupation.
20 Prabhakara, The Hindu, Madras, 2 August 1994.
21 It was this faction that has been held responsible for the highly coordinated bomb blasts which shook Guwahati and several other towns on the 31 October 2008 which claimed scores of lives.
22 The Bodo People’s Front which is a coalition partner of the Congress government led by Tarun Gogoi is made up of former BLT members.
23 Till date official figures put the number of killed at 97, with the immigrant Muslim settlers bearing the brunt of the violence. But many Bodos have also lost their lives and over a lakh have been displaced.
24 According to observers, there has been a Christian-non Christian fault line within the Bodo movement right from the beginning.
25 Even the state government has, in so many words, accepted the presence of migrants from Bangladesh in some of the camps and the chief minister has gone on record saying that his government would provide relief to foreign nationals but the question of rehabilitation did not arise.
26 Muslim and adivasi (Santhal) victims of earlier rounds of violence in 1993, 1996 and 1998 are still lodged in camps in Bongaigaon and Kokrajhar.
27 For details about displacement figures from 1993 onwards, refer to “Conflict-Induced Internal Displacees and Their Security: A Case Study of Lower Assam” by Subhash Barman in Akhil Ranjan Dutta (ed.), Human Security in North-East India: Issues and Policies, Guwahati, 2011.
28 Up to April 1989, for instance, as many as 150 civilians were killed and these included those gunned down in fratricidal strife between the supporters of the All Bodo Students Union and the Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) as well as state government employees and schoolteachers.
29 These settlers included, apart from the immigrant Muslims, non-tribal Assamese, adivasis and Nepalis.
30 Subhash Barman, op cit, p 227.
31 It may be recalled that the growing tension between the immigrant Muslims and the tribals was highlighted as way back as 1989 when during a session of the Assam Assembly a United Minorities Front member accused the Asom Gana Parishad of inciting the Muslim settlers against the Bodo tribals.
32 Recently, BTC chief Hagrama Mohiliary announced a grant of several lakhs of rupees for the setting up of centres at the initiative of the Asom Sahitya Sabha for Bodo and Assamese language training in the BTAD area.
33 During the Bodo movement, scores of Assamese civilians, schoolteachers, petty businessmen were targeted and Assamese peasants in many Bodo-majority areas were compelled to sell off their land at throwaway prices.
34 Clause 10 of the Assam Accord reads: “It will be ensured that the relevant laws for protection of encroachment on government lands and lands in the tribal belts and blocks are strictly enforced and unauthorised encroachers evicted as laid down in such laws.”
35 A long-standing demand of the All Assam Students Union and other Assamese organisations.
36 Though Clause 4(3) of the Bodo Accord contains safeguards for the “settlement rights, transfer and inheritance of property, etc, of non-tribals”, yet the general complaint of the non-tribal population has been that their citizenship rights have been totally marginalised by the accord and that they have been reduced to a second-class citizen status.
Vol – XLVII No. 37, September 15, 2012 | Udayon Misra
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Udayon Misra (udayon_misra@yahoo.com) is a former national fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
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