Ethnic Unrest Over, Wails Refuse To Die In Assam

By Aishik Chanda

19 September, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Kokrajhar, September 18: More than nine months have passed since the latest ethnic violence in the westernmost district of Assam and Bodo Territorial Administrative Districts (BTAD), but still residents of New Angthaibari relief camp near Kochugaon in Kokrajhar district refuse to go back to their village, less than a kilometer away from the camp.

“What if the Adivasis attack us again? We are few in numbers here. Again we have to leave everything at the mercy of mobsters and flee to safety,” said 63-year-old Pramila Mushahary. This camp consists exclusively of Bodo Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Her fear is echoed 42 km from the camp in Sapkata, which not long had one of the largest relief camp for Muslims in the district. After two years of Bodo-Muslim conflict, the Muslims are slowly rebuilding their lives.

“We had pucca houses, livestock and some land. Our houses were turned into ashes by the Bodo mob. I fled to Dhubri district (a Muslim-majority district outside BTAD) in just a shirt and a lungi. I could not take any of our belongings. Everything was lost when we returned several months later,” said Mohammad Abdul Mollah, then a farmer and now a rickshaw puller.

The soft targets of any conflict are women and children and in the recurring ethnic violence here, it is no exception.

“Infants used to be killed and three or four of the dead bodies pierced with sharpened bamboo sticks like seekh kebab and thrown into rivers. A cold wave runs through my spine when I remember those days,” said Nagina Begum, whose husband was stabbed and thrown into a pond.

Every ethnicity wants to portray themselves as the victim and the other as the perpetrator. “Why would the Bodos start the conflicts? In both the conflicts, the non-Bodos (Muslims and Adivasis) had first killed innocent Bodos. If somebody hits you, would you stay quiet? There has to be a retaliation,” says an Assam Police constable who had only 12 days left for retirement, atop a winger van from Kokrajhar to Kochugaon.

During the journey, he showed several Muslim villages that were surrounded by Bodo villages but which he claimed were left untouched during the violence in 2012.

“My family fled and returned, rebuilt and again fled from the same village thrice – 1996, 1998 and in 2014. Every time we try rebuilding our assets, our livelihood, our lives, we have to flee again, leaving everything behind to be burned down. So, we have stopped spending much on our house and immovable properties. We don’t know when we have to flee again,” said Ajit Kisku, a social worker hailing from a village near the Bhutan border.

During a food consumption survey, the author found that many people in the relief camps eat only rice and salt on nearly five of the seven days a week.

“In the riot days, we used to sleep on the floor, not on the beds. The militants used to fire at a low level from outside the house. Sleeping on beds was very risky then. We used to hear gunshots every night and for long periods of time. One night they came, and we had to flee our village leaving everything, only with our life in our hand,” said Rajesh Islary.

“At my village, during the conflict with Adivasis, one afternoon my father, who was working in the fields saw some Adivasis coming with bows and arrows. He thought they were out for hunting. But an arrow directly came and hit his right thigh and he fell on the ground. The attackers left him wounded and headed towards the Bodo village. Five people were killed there,” said Robert Daimari.

Abhishek Tudu smiles and shares a joke or two in Bodo language with Bodo customers at a cigarette shop where he sits in the evening. A little scratching and Abhishek takes you to a corner and keeping his voice low, opens up:

“The Bodo militants do the killings, nicely wrap the guns in plastic sheets and bury them in the forests of Bhutan. They take the civilian dress and take asylum in the towns of Kokrajhar and Gossaigaon, with rich Bodo businessmen who fake the militants as ‘relative from far away’. When the situation calms down, the militants make way to the jungles. This happens after every riot.”

“Do you think these militants would have guts to kill so many people without help of the local Bodos? Never!,” he thunders.

“Bodos kill people of every caste (community). Only the Adivasis and Muslims protest. So, we are massacred. If Bodoland is created, we will be butchered,” said Ishtiaq Ali, whose ailing father was dragged on the streets and killed because he could not flee.

The ethnic riots in two consecutive years have led to ghettoization similar to what was observed in Gujarat post 2002 riots. Bodos in non-Bodo localities have sold their lands and fled to Bodo-dominated villages and the vice versa.

The economic angle also comes to fore. Many Muslims and Adivasi victims claimed that the government jobs are all bagged by the Scheduled Tribe Bodos from the lowest to the highest levels. “Do you think we will ever get ST status? Modi government has promised us…,” wonders Jacob Marandi. He himself gives an answer to his question,

“The Bodos would never accept ST status for the Adivasis. But when the Adivasis of neighbouring northern West Bengal can get ST status. Why can’t we? We are also the same peoples brought from the same place (Chotanagpur plateau) by the British to work in the tea estates, then why such discrimination?”

The Adivasis of Assam are listed as OBCs and have been waging a long struggle for the ST status. They hope the ST status would uplift them to a great extent.

“The concept of this territorial council is a flawed one. The Assamese hegemony has not gone. So many years have passed since BTC was created, what development has happened here? A handful of Bodo politicians have become rich, the rest are where they were,” says Monojeet Wary, a college student in Gossaigaon.

However, some people voice hope in the future. “Here, if you want to live, you will either have to dominate or get dominated. Until and unless people interact and know each other more and accept each other more, peace won’t come. Interaction is necessary how much ever you fight. The day interaction stops, all hopes of peace ends,” sighed 70-year-old Bijoy Bwsumuthiary.

The writer is pursuing M.A. in Dalit and Tribal Studies and Action in Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He was a working journalist at Deccan Chronicle and The New Indian Express at Hyderabad. He is now an independent journalist.