Introduction
Assam , Conflicts
Since the formation of the Indian state in 1947, the Northeast region of the country has seen numerous violent conflicts of varying intensity. As a region which ‘challenges the separation of the colonial from the national’ (Bhaumik 2009:xiv) and where the ‘national standards’ are not often distinguishable from the ‘royal or imperial standards’ characterising colonial rule (Samaddar 2010:175), the nature of these conflicts have ranged from mass civil disobedience movements engendered by long-standing grievances against the State to armed militancy aimed at secession from the State. But practical experience has shown that instead of addressing the ‘underlying conflict causes’ (Reimann 2004:8) the State has often responded to them with large scale militarization and a strategy of co-option (Bhaumik 2007, 2009; Goswami forthcoming) of the influential sections within the conflict parties. This has led to the manifestation of new conflicts and exacerbation of old ones rather than to their settlement, resolution, or transformation. And these new conflicts have been directed not just against the State and its various agencies and actors, but have also led to violence between the numerous communities that constitute the multi-cultural, poly-ethnic mosaic of the region.
1 Ethno-Nationalism, Conflict and the State
Before going into the particulars of the conflicts in Assam , however, the key concepts informing the study need to be looked at and working definitions established. The following sections will also outline the broad intent of the subsequent chapters in this study.
1.1 Ethnicity
An ethnic community is defined as a collective of people sharing:
- a common proper name (or identity) to express the ‘essence’ of the community;
- a myth of common ancestry – which Horowitz (1985) calls a ‘super-family’ – that infuses a sense of ‘kinship’ and memories of a common past, legends, heroes, history. Together they form Anthony D Smith’s (1986:15) ‘quartet of “myths, memories, values and symbols”’;
- elements of a common culture, tradition, language, religion;
- the imagination of a common homeland, symbolic or otherwise; and
- a sense of solidarity at least among some sections of the people (Hutchinson & Smith 1996).
If this solidarity binds certain sections of the people together, it also leads to the process of ‘othering’ vis a vis certain other sections of the people. As Barth (1969) points out:
If a group maintains its identity when members interact with others, this entails criteria for determining membership and ways of signalling membership and exclusion.
Such exclusion arises, according to Barth, from a sense of boundaries which members of an ethnic community share. TK Oommen (1994) identifies various types of boundaries: ‘territorial, temporal, ideological to mention a few and they may be hard or soft, permanent or ephemeral, sacred or secular, static or dynamic’. But he does not subscribe to a conception of boundaries as ‘quiescent entities’ and maintains that ‘boundaries are contested but not abolished; the desirability of membership in solidarity groups is still valued’.
For many scholars like Oommen, territory plays an especially important part in ethnic identity formation, and they hold that the dissociation between people and their ‘homeland’ makes them an ethnic community (Oommen 2001). As he explicates:
The notion of definite territorial boundaries probably started with settled agriculture. Consequently the conception of land as a scarce and valuable resource emerged gradually rendering land disputes endemic in agrarian societies. Similarly, the idea of nation-state is firmly anchored to territory which triggered off numerous boundary disputes, quite a few of which have terminated but a large number are still persisting. (Oommen 1994)
Thus, the idea of a nation and nation-state are very closely related with the notion of ethnicity. It is not always possible to clearly confine a community within the broad definition of an ethnic community. However, the ethnographic sketches in Chapter 2 will illustrate how – among the communities under consideration in this study – the Bodo community of Assam can make a convincing textbook illustration for the accepted definition of an ethnic community. The Koch and the Axamiyā communities on the other hand, cannot be so easily labelled.
1.2 Nation and Ethnicity
A nation is commonly defined as a political (politicized) ethnicity. As Gellner (1994) puts it:
Ethnicity becomes ‘political’, it gives rise to ‘nationalism’, when the ‘ethnic’ group… is not merely acutely conscious of its own existence, but also imbued with the conviction that the ethnic boundary ought also to be a political one.
Conversely, being ‘a fundamentally social and cultural solidarity’ and in order to remain a ‘solidary, mobilizing force’, a nation must
...take over some of the attributes of pre-existing ethnie and assimilate many of their myths, memories and symbols, or invent ones of its own (Smith 1986:152).
There are many views about the trajectory of growth of the concepts of nationalism and ethnicity. Although invariably tracing the etymological origins of the terms to ancient European civilizations, many scholars consider that the growth of ethnic consciousness in recent decades is the result of postcolonial power struggles ‘over new strategic positions of power: places of employment, taxation, funds for development, education, political positions, and so on’, and that ethnic formations came into being as a kind of ‘political grouping within the framework of the new state’ (Cohen 1969). Thus,
… ethnicity is essentially a political phenomenon, as traditional customs are used only as idioms, and as mechanisms for political alignment (ibid 1969).
Such a patently instrumentalist[2] outlook definitely goes against the view of ‘primordialists’ like Clifford Geertz (1973) who considers certain ‘primordial ties’ to be the basis of personal identity, the drive for which interacts with the drive for an ‘efficient, dynamic, modern state’ (Hutchinson and Smith 1996). But both views apparently agree that ethno-nationalism is the basis of State formation. Tracing the connection between ethnicity, nationalism and State formation, Thomas H Eriksen (1993) writes:
A nationalist holds that political boundaries should be coterminus with cultural boundaries, whereas many ethnic groups do not demand command over a state. When the political leaders of an ethnic movement make demands to this effect, the ethnic movement therefore by definition becomes a nationalistic movement.
Chapters 3 - 6 will trace the growth of ethnic and nationalist politics in Assam and the relation of this process with the processes of State formation and functioning.
1.3 Ethno-Nationalism and Nation-State
Theoretically speaking, when a political association is formed to provide sovereignty to a nation, a nation-state is formed. Most existing nation-states of the world however do not follow this ‘descriptive precision’, and the idea of one nation one state – though widely desired – has hardly ever been implemented (Dunn 1995:).
The need for a State on which the nation must rest is largely based on the principle that shared nationality provides allegiance, and the State machinery provides the ‘external authority (which) is a device for furnishing protection’. Thus,
Taken together, they furnish a basis for rulers and subjects to live together with greater imaginative ease than either party would be likely to draw from the other taken separately (ibid:).
In practice however, there has often existed a tension between the State and the nation(s) it governs. John Dunn (ibid:) identifies two major doubts nurtured about the State by its subjects:
The first is a doubt about the intentions of those who at any given time direct state power: a skepticism that these intentions are in the case in question (or usually, or often, or ever), as benign as they are fulsomely proclaimed to be… The second (and perhaps even weightier) doubt concerns the state’s efficacy in relation to its expressed intentions: above all as a device for furnishing security to its subjects.
The manner in which the India State was put together following the transfer of power from the British rulers – often through diplomatic manipulations of sovereign princely states (Chatterjee 1997, Menon 1961) – left much room for such and other types of scepticism to crop up among the newly subjected nations. In the Northeast, ‘India’s failure to resolve key issues like governance and state reorganization, power-sharing and ethnic balance, economic development and state-building’ led to ‘alienation, and ultimately rebellions’ among those ethnic communities and nationalities of the region that had initially given India’s poly-ethnic experiment a chance after 1947 (Bhaumik 2009:206). Conflicts between and within communities and against the State has thus become a norm in ‘post’-colonial Assam and the Northeast as a whole. Chapters 4-6 trace the development of the conflicts in Assam .
1.4 Conflict and Ethno-National Conflict
The simplest definition of a conflict is ‘a difference that matters’ (LeBaron 2003:11). The TRANSCEND approach conceptualizes conflict as having three aspects – the A, B and C of conflict, namely, Attitude, Behaviour and Contradiction (Webel & Galtung 2007:22).
Conflict is not the same as violence. Conflict is a challenge... However the outcome, whether it is creative, constructive and peaceful, or whether it becomes violent and destructive, depends mainly on behaviour – whether it is peaceful or not, and influenced by attitudes towards the other. The behaviour is the visible element of the conflict... Often, the contradiction, the incompatible goal, is eventually forgotten as the cycle of animosity and violence spirals. This is especially the case of protracted violent conflicts, in which violence creates a self-perpetuating dynamic, and the violence obscures the real contradiction (Graf et al 2007:131).
Violence itself has three dimensions: direct, structural and cultural violence. Whereas direct violence is ‘an event’, a manifestation, ‘to understand the event one needs to understand the process which led to it’. This involves an understanding of ‘structural violence’ which is ‘the difference between the potential and the actual’.
A violent structure impedes the development of the group and the self through a structure which is generally invisible. Cultural violence is the hardest to change, it is the deep-rooted constant which legitimates structural and direct violence, especially when there is a reaction (violent or not) against the structural violence by those who are victims of it (ibid).
In addressing conflicts, the ‘deep structure’ or ‘patterns of relations between the segments of society’ cannot be ignored. It is the ‘deeper dimension of conflict’ which is always present and ‘influences every aspect of a society’s organization, and the patterns of power relations’. A deep structure is structurally violent when it shows an asymmetry of power between the different segments of society and violations of the basic needs of others (ibid:132). The relationship pattern between ethnic groups and communities is an example of deep structure. Where there is structural violence in this deep structure, violent ethnic conflicts make themselves manifest.
Thus, ethnicity in itself is not the root cause of conflict nor, as Hutchinson and Smith (1996) have observed, is there a ‘necessary connection between ethnicity and conflict’. But more often than not, ethnic or nationalistic politics introduces structural violence which leads to ethnic conflicts. Struggle for scarce resources, inclusion of one or more ethnic groups within a territorial state, linguistic, religious and cultural differences, and distribution of political rewards have been identified as some of the causes of ethnic conflict (Hutchinson and Smith 1996, Horowitz 1985). Asymmetry of power, deprivation of rights, discrimination and exploitation result from these causes and shake up the deep structure.
Over and above that, collective myths and fears shared by ethnic groups often lead to mass- or elite-driven mobilizations that spur ethnic conflict (Kaufman 2001 cited in Bercovicth and Jackson 2009:5). These myths and fears are part of ‘deep culture’ which has been defined as ‘a web of notions about what is true, good, right, beautiful, sacred’ (Galtung 2000:33). Deep culture ‘is composed of the operating paradigms and cosmology of a society’ (Graf et al 2007:133) and especially in protracted conflicts,
...these deep attitudes and assumptions often work to impede a peaceful end to the conflict, and are the raw materials for the dynamics of escalation and polarization, which are in turn exacerbated by populist and fundamentalist policies. Throughout culture (in religion and ideology, language and art, empirical and formal science) such deep cultural meanings can be identified, and they can be used to legitimize direct or structural force, and are transferred from one generation to the next (ibid).
The conflicts that developed in Assam will be analyzed from all these perspectives in Chapters 3-6.
1.5 Resolving/Transforming Conflicts
Conflicts need to be managed or resolved because their non-resolution can lead to a dysfunction in the system within which they occur (Bercovitch & Jackson 2009:). However, most prevalent approaches to conflicts limit themselves to understanding and tackling direct violence alone. The structural and cultural violence – which are the underlying causes, and potent enough to re-ignite conflicts even after the cessation of direct violence – are often left unaddressed. In this approach to settling conflicts, sustainable peace remains unattained. This has also been the case with the Indian State ’s handling of the ethno-nationalist conflicts in Assam and the Northeast. For the most part, it has confined itself a conflict settlement approach, which ‘defines conflict as a problem of political order and of the status quo: violent protracted conflict is thus deemed the result of incompatible interests and/or competition for scarce power resources, especially territory’ (Reimann 2004). Chapters 7-8 will deal with some aspects of the Indian State ’s engagement with the conflicts in Assam . They will also illustrate despite primarily emphasizing on conflict settlement, the Indian State has also in the process, made some half-baked efforts at conflict resolution or ‘process oriented activities that aim to address the underlying causes of direct, cultural and structural violence...’ (ibid). Under this approach, conflict is used for constructive purposes as ‘an essential catalyst for social change’:
The aim then becomes to eliminate the violent and destructive manifestations of conflict that can be traced back to the unmet needs and fears of the conflict parties. The key is to make the parties aware of these underlying needs for identity, security and participation, and then use them to redefine both interests and positions (ibid).
The conflict transformation and long-term peace-building approach – which aims to overcome ‘revealed forms of direct, cultural and structural violence’ (ibid) – has however been manifestly absent. Chapters 9-10 will emphasize the need to adopt such an approach and put forward some workable suggestions for conflict transformation in Assam .
The conflict transformation approach is a step ahead of conflict resolution, and is akin to John Burton‘s notion of ‘conflict provention’ by which he means
...deducing from an adequate explanation of the phenomenon of conflict, including its human dimensions, not merely the conditions that create an environment of conflict and the structural changes required to remove it, but more importantly, the promotion of conditions that create cooperative relationships (Burton and Dukes 1990:2).
To create cooperative relationships however, the focus should be on peace, not on security. This is because, as Galtung (2007:14) points out, ‘conflict transformation has itself to be peaceful in order not to make the situation worse by sowing new seeds for future violence’. And herein arises the need for transcendence, or ‘going beyond the goals of the parties, creating a new reality’ (ibid). The ultimate aim of conflict transformation is restoration of relationships and to this end, reconciliation becomes necessary in order to restore ‘social harmony of the community in general and of social relationships between conflict parties in particular’ (Boege 2006).
Reconciliation can be thought of as the restoration of a state of peace to the relationship, where the entities are at least not harming each other, and can begin to be trusted not to do so in future, which means that revenge is foregone as an option (Santa-Barbara 2007:174).
This study will draw from these concepts and analyze some of the ethnic conflicts that have been raging in Assam for decades now. It will also look at the ways in which these conflicts have been addressed by the State, and in the end, explore the possibilities of ethnic reconciliation.
2 Conflicts in Assam : A Brief History
The history of ‘post’-colonial Assam is a history littered with many conflicts – linguistic, political and economic – between the autochthons[3] of Assam and the many settler communities that had been coming into Assam following the colonial rule. It is interesting to trace how the settler-indigenous conflicts that had united the various ethnic and autochthonous communities under a nativist banner, could not keep these communities united for too long. For various reasons which shall be discussed in details in Chapters 4-6, the autochthonous communities soon turned on each other and conflicts between them – some of a manifestly violent nature – broke out in Assam . This is a study of the conflicts between the Axamiyā, Bodo and Koch-Rajbangsi communities in particular.
When the British were withdrawing and Assam decided to join the Indian Union, those at the helm of running the State in its nascent stage did not foresee conflicts arising along ethnic and/or indigenous lines. In Assam , the Axamiyā people had begun to assert their nationalistic aspirations in the 19th and 20th centuries, when Assam began to be shaped as an integral part of the Indian nation, a process that will be discussed in details in Chapter 4. But once the Indian State was formed, it was not long before grievances surfaced among the Axamiyā leadership in ‘post’-colonial Assam against the perceived ‘step-motherly’ treatment of the State. From stipulating that Assam share ‘India’s refugee burden’, to denying it economic development while exploiting its rich oil and coal reserves besides tea, the Indian State was seen as indulging in ‘colonial exploitation’ of the region (Bhaumik 2007:19). The grievances peaked in the 1970s after the formation of Bangladesh as a nation and the inability/reluctance of the Indian State to stop the flow of refugees into Assam . Continued illegal influx of populations from the neighbouring country raised fears of demographic swamping and loss of identity among the Axamiyā people whose resentment found expression in a mass civil disobedience movement that started in 1979. The movement which came to be known as the Assam Movement lasted till 1985 and ended with the signing of the Assam Accord in that year. Simultaneously with the mass movement, the period also saw the birth of various armed militant groups with a secessionist agenda[4], of which only the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) survived and is today one of the strongest insurgent groups of Assam and the Northeast as a whole[5].
While the ULFA continues its armed movement based on the idea of an independent federal Assam where all ethnic communities of Assam – and even the settler communities – can co-exist (Bhaumik 2009:37), the Assam Movement had the exactly opposite impact on the interethnic fabric of Assam. It marked the period when every small and big ethnic group began distancing itself from the Axamiyā identity and subsequently started placing demands for separate ethnic homelands. Since the formation of the Axamiyā nation, the Axamiyā-speaking Hindu middle class had been in the forefront of the nation building process and it had traditionally assumed an attitude of cultural superiority and social dominance over the other ethnic groups. This had started a process of gradual erosion of the interethnic identity – to be discussed in details in Chapter 3 – that had been building up in Assam over the past so many centuries. When the Indian Union was formed, and the Axamiyā middle class became its ‘political sub-contractor’ in the Northeast (Bhaumik 2007:18), this process gained momentum. By 1985, the breaking point had been reached and the smaller ethnic groups began to assert their own distinctive identities and nationalist demands.
2.1 Conflicts between Communities
At the receiving end of the political outrage that led to the launching of the Assam Movement were migrant populations from Bangladesh – formed in 1971 from what was earlier East Pakistan, and even before that, East Bengal . These migrants continued immigrating to Assam in hordes, often illegally, even after the creation of international boundaries following the Partition of India in 1947. Fears of demographic swamping, political disenfranchisement given the rising numbers of illegal migrants, and loss of livelihood, identity and religion were some of the reasons that led to the outbreak of the Movement.
In spirit, the Movement had set out to demand that the Indian State should take concrete measures to stop the illegal influx of these illegal immigrants, who were the bidexis, or foreigners. Gradually however, it became more and more xenophobic in nature and demanded the ouster of all ‘Ali Kuli Bangali, Nak Sepeta Nepali’ where Ali stands for the East Bengali (later Bangladeshi) Muslim peasant, Kuli for the tea garden laborers brought into Assam in large numbers by the British from parts of mainland India, Bangali for the Hindu Bengalis, and Nak Sepeta Nepali for the ‘flat-nosed’ Nepalis whose immigration into Assam had also begun during the British period. Despite the fact that early migrants from most of these communities had already embraced the Axamiyā language and identity, and been in turn allowed membership into the Axamiyā fold, the chauvinism generated by the Assam movement obliterated all distinction between legal and illegal migrants. Parochial Axamiyā elements took control of its agenda and all bahiragatas or outsiders – that is, non-autochthonous peoples – were seen as threatening the land, livelihood, language and identity of the Axamiyā community in varying measures, and depriving the ‘sons of the soil’ of their due.
As the Movement progressed, its agenda came to be hijacked by the ethnic elite among the Axamiyā Hindu middle class which actively propagated the idea that ‘sons of the soil’ referred only to the Axamiyā-speaking Hindu community, and at places launched attacks even on other autochthonous indigenous and ethnic communities. The Movement, purportedly one of civil disobedience, turned violent in places. Pogroms were staged against migrant communities – in 1983, thousands of East Bengali Muslims were killed in Nellie, a few kilometres from Guwahati city. Violence at other places like Phulung Sapori and Gohpur targeted the Bodos. And in the final analysis, a movement that had begun on the basis of real felt grievances and had had a mass base among all indigenous and non-indigenous autochthonous communities of Assam became a turning point in defining the relations of the dominant Axamiyā Hindus with all other communities of Assam, indigenous and settler.
The Assam Accord was signed in 1985 as an agreement between the Indian State and the Axamiyā leadership to put an end to the Assam Movement, but certain clauses in the agreement lent themselves to interpretations inimical to the indigenous autochthons. Chapter 8 will discuss these in details. Already, there had been a growing sense of alienation among the smaller ethnic communities. Government policies – of which perhaps the most hated was the Official Languages Act of 1960 which sought to impose the Axamiyā language upon all communities of Assam and had led to mass protests – when juxtaposed with expressions of cultural and social superiority by the Axamiyā Hindus managed to create widespread anti-Axamiyā feelings. The process of alienation and proliferation of new identity movements gained momentum, and post-1985, rumblings of ethnic separatism were being heard. Two years later, in 1987, the Bodo Movement (1987-2003) for a separate homeland was launched.
The Bodo Movement marked the complete separation of the Axamiyā identity from its indigenous roots and invalidated its true historical nature and cultural heritage. Its leaders unfortunately conceded the claims of the Axamiyā Hindus to the exclusive use of the Axamiyā (Assamese) label and the trend has continued. Ruing the lower status of the community in the ethnic hierarchy of Assam , the Bodo leaders lamented:
The immigration, spread and growth of the Assamese started only since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries during the period of Ahoms only. They migrated from Konouj … But, surprisingly and cleverly, this artificial Assamese community has captured Assam and its administration and now dominating the once master-ruler of Assam – the Kacharis – the Bodos. The outsider Assamese has unjustifiably overthrown the original master Kacharis! (ABSU 1987:)[6]
The insider-outsider rhetoric thus took a completely different turn and although sentiments against immigrant communities continued escalating, conflicts within the autochthonous communities also grew simultaneously and exponentially.
The Bodo Movement took place in two phases: the first phase lasted between 1987 and 1993, when a settlement was proposed by the Assam government in the form of the Bodoland Autonomous Council (BAC) Act[7]; and the second phase started with the failure of the initial settlement in 1993 and lasted till 2003. The first phase of the Bodo Movement was launched by leaders like Upendranath Brahma and Prem Singh Brahma who had participated in the Assam Movement but felt betrayed by its settlement. Prem Singh Brahma, for instance, had been an active member of the Gana Sangram Parishad, an umbrella association of various organizations leading the Assam Movement. However, after the signing of the Assam Accord, he was sidelined from the political scene and what is more, persecuted under various charges.
Under a similar sense of betrayal, the charismatic Upendra Nath Brahma, widely considered the ‘Bodofa’ or ‘father of the Bodos’, launched the Bodo Movement for a separate state in 1987 under the ABSU banner. The All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU) was at the helm of the leadership just as the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) had taken the lead in the Assam Movement. In fact, the Bodo Movement had a lot of similarities with the Assam Movement, trained as its leaders were in the intricacies of leading a civil disobedience movement from their experience during the latter Movement. The Assam Movement had brought home the lesson that the state does not listen to peaceful petition making; noisy agitation was the only course of action if redress of grievances was sought. What is more, the Bodos learnt from the mistakes of the Assam Movement and thus proved more effective in their methods of anti-state agitation.
Under Upendranath Brahma’s leadership, the ABSU demanded that the territory of Assam be divided by half, the north bank of the Brahmaputra being given to the Bodo as their exclusive homeland. Their rallying cry at this stage of the Movement was ‘Divide Assam Fifty-Fifty’. They denounced strongly the dominance of the Axamiyā:
The Bodos … can also ask – why not the Assamese people read, speak and accept Bodo as a whole for a link language and for the integrity of Assam ? Will the Assamese agree? (ABSU 1987a:)
The cultural chauvinism of the Axamiyā was also attacked:
The Assamese people have never accepted the tribals as the part and parcel of Assamese community and society in real sense, though they give a motivated slogan of Greater Assamese Nationality. As for instance, a Goswami Brahmin family will never allow or agree to give its daughter for a social marriage with a tribal youth (ibid:).
Despite its stated non-violent nature, the movement turned violent in pockets and a large number of Axamiyā government employees were brutally killed or forced to leave the area. An armed wing of the ABSU, the ABSU Volunteer Force (ABSU-VF) also known as the Bodo Volunteer Force (BVF), was formed by Prem Singh Brahma and it was involved in activities ranging from bomb blasts to attacks on passenger trains, the killing of security personnel and civilians, as well as extortion and arson. The ruling Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government of the time – which had been formed by the victorious leadership of the Assam Movement – reacted with brutality to suppress the Bodo Movement. By 1990, however, the AGP government was ousted and the Congress government, which had in its turn brutally suppressed the Assam Movement, was returned to power. It took advantage of the sudden leadership vacuum among the Bodos created in the early 1990s following the death of Upendranath Brahma and hastily drew up the BAC Accord in 1993.
However, given the lacunae in the Accord – which will be discussed in details in Chapter 8 – within a year of signing it, Sansuma Khungur Bwismutiary resigned as the Chief Executive of the BAC and Prem Singh Brahma took over. By 1996 a disillusioned Brahma formed a militant outfit, the Bodoland Liberation Tigers (BLT), with the aim of creating a separate state of Bodoland yet again. The second phase of the Bodo Movement had begun, and it was a period of militant nativism. Ethnic cleansing of settler communities started in 1993 and then again in 1996 and 1998. The aim was to create a Bodo majority in the areas to be included within Bodoland. The National Democratic Front of Boroland[8] (NDFB) had in the meanwhile been formed in 1986 and its stated aim was the formation of a ‘sovereign’ Bodoland that, unlike the Bodoland demanded by the ABSU and later the BLT, would be outside the ambit of the Indian constitution. The NDFB also indulged in much of the ethnic cleansing although it did not extend its support to the BLT-led Movement. Unlike the NDFB however, for the ABSU and the BLT, separatism was never an option and even their vocabulary always remained within the confines of constitutionally sanctioned demands.
Finally, to settle the BLT-led armed conflict, the state drew up the second Bodo Accord, known as the Memorandum of Settlement on Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) 2003, which gave enormous legislative, financial and executive powers to the Bodo leadership. It provided for minimum interference by the state government in the functioning of the autonomous council formed through an amendment of the Sixth Schedule, thus giving it a constitutional status. Flushed with funds that the state government had no control over except in its disbursal, the Bodoland Autonomous Territorial District (BTAD) was envisaged as having powers equivalent to a state with only the constitutional status of being one not granted. As part of the agreement reached between the government and the BLT leadership, general amnesty was announced for all its cadres, and 2641 BLT cadres, led by BLT chairman, Hagrama Mohilary, surrendered in Kokrajhar. Mohilary went on to become the chief executive of the interim council sworn in on 6 December the same year. In the elections to the BTC held in 2005, he was returned uncontested to the office. Currently, Mohilary’s party, the Bodo Peoples Front (BPF), has entered into a seat-sharing agreement with the current Assam government. On the face of it therefore, the Bodo-Axamiyā conflict has been resolved at a certain level.
The creation of the BTAD has however, brought the Bodo as well as the Axamiyā communities into conflict with the Koch-Rajbangsis. The Bodo community especially has vehemently opposed the Koch-Rajbangsi community’s main demands – for being enlisted as a Scheduled Tribe (ST) in the Indian constitution and for the creation of a separate homeland of Kamatapur. The Koch-Rajbangsi community has yet to launch a sustained movement like the Assam or the Bodo Movements, and its political demands are yet to attain the intensity of overt violence and widespread political mobilization. However, over and above a few political parties, the community also has a strong students’ union – the All Koch Rajbongshi Students’ Union (AKRSU) – and students’ unions have traditionally been the main mobilising force behind most political action in Assam and the Northeast as a whole.
Since the 1990s which saw the birth of most of the major organizations that are currently fighting a political battle for the rights of the community in North Bengal, the Koch-Rajbangsi organizations is Assam also have become politically more vocal and active. The AKRSU was formed in 1993 in Assam , and after the formation of the Kamatapur People’s Party (KPP) in 1996 and of the Greater Koch Bihar People’s Association in 1998 in North Bengal , it joined forces with these organizations to intensify its political mobilization. In 2008, a faction of the AKRSU contributed to the formation of a joint forum of the Koch-Rajbangsi populations of Assam and North Bengal – the Greater Kamata United Forum – to overcome the difficulties inherent in fighting a united battle by a community divided by administrative boundaries, political affiliations and constitutional statuses. In any case, even if they are not directly part of a joint forum, most other Koch-Rajbangsi organizations of Assam have been extending their support to the organizations of North Bengal (Das 2008).
Earlier in 2005, the All Assam Koch-Rajbongshi Sanmilani (AAKRS) had issued a call for a 120-hour economic blockade in Assam . The aim of the blockade was to disrupt the movement of commercial vehicles to and from the Northeast through Srirampur and Baxirhat, the gateways to the entire region in western Assam . AAKRS General Secretary Durlav Chamua claimed the blockade would paralyse the operations of oil refineries and movements of goods trains. He threatened:
We have been leading a democratic movement for the community since 1967, demanding ST status. Successive governments at the Centre have not given due importance to our demand. The patience of the community is running thin and a radical section is raring to join the militant movement for a separate Kamatapur state which is gaining ground in parts of North Bengal and western Assam (Statesman 2005).
The Kamatapur State Demand Committee (KSDC) was subsequently formed as an umbrella organization of several Koch-Rajbangsi organizations including the AKRSU, AAKRS, Chilarai Sena, All Koch Rajbangshi Mahila Samiti, Koch Rajbongshi Sahitya Sabha, All Kamatapur Students’ Organisation, Greater Coochbehar Democratic Party, Greater Coochbehar People’s Association, KPP, and so on. In 2009, the KSDC held a mass rally in Kokrajhar, the heart of the BTAD, and placed the same demands. AKRSU President Biswajit Roy threatened to launch a ‘rigorous movement’ if the demands were not met (Assam Tribune 2009).
More and more, the Koch-Rajbangsi people in the BTAD are getting restive. On 21 October 2010, 12 Koch Rajbanshi and Kamatapuri oganizations met at Bongaigaon, adjacent to Chirang district of the BTAD, and expressed the need to come together for a common struggle for Kamatapur besides laying the strategy for a sustained agitation (www.kamatapur.com). A few organizations of the community in the BTAD have since organized themselves under the Koch Rajbongsi United Forum (KRUF), a conglomeration of around 10 Rajbangsi organizations, to intensify their stir for a separate state of Kamatapur. The KRUF consists of the All BTAD Koch Rajbongsi Sanmiloni, All BTAD Koch Rajbongsi Yuba Satra Sanmiloni and All BTAD Koch-Rajbongshi Mahila Sanmiloni, besides the AKRSU, AAKRS, All Koch-Rajbongshi Mahila Samiti, All Assam Koch Rajbongsi Yuba Satra Sanmiloni, All Kamatapur Students’ Organization, Koch-Rajbongshi Sahitya Sabha and Koch Rajbongsi Krishi Bikash Parishad. Demanding that a separate Kamatapur state be carved out of Assam and North Bengal and Scheduled Tribes status be given to the community, the KRUF held a rally in Kokrajhar on 15 November. It submitted a memorandum to the Indian Prime Minister through the Deputy Commissioner of Kokrajhar district and announced a series of agitation program including a sit-in in New Delhi on 25 November, a 12-hour rail blockade and road blockade on 14 and 27 December respectively and a 12-hour Assam-West Bengal bandh (general strike) on 30 December (DY365 Bureau 2010). Stray incidents of violence were reported in the course of the rally as in the course of most of the other programs of political protest undertaken by the representative organizations of the community. For the most part however, the community leaders have resorted to democratic means in the course of their demand for a desired constitutional status and a separate homeland.
Meanwhile, a Koch-Rajbangsi militant organization, the Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO), was formed in 1995 which is demanding, among other things, the formation of a sovereign State of Kamatapur , independent of the Indian Union. Although not very strong in terms of cadre or arms strength, the idea of militant nativism it espouses has earned the KLO considerable support among the community. Many of the overtly political organizations have also been alleged to have close links with the armed group. ‘Post’-colonial Assam history has shown that the presence of an armed group to represent a particular ethic group has invariably been a recipe for wide scale violence sooner or later. This study wishes to explore whether there is any scope for reconciliation between the ethnic groups in conflict before manifest violence breaks out between them.
2.2 Conflicts within Communities
As it stands, experience has shown that the conflict settlement/resolution methods that have been adopted so far have failed to heal historical wounds between communities. What is more, they seem to have failed in more ways than one if the large scale violence that continues unabated in BTAD is anything to go by. Some amount of this violence is of course the result of the ongoing political agitation launched by the Koch-Rajbangsi community. For the most part however, this violence is the result of conflicts within the Bodo community in the aftermath of the 2003 settlement.
When elections to the newly created BTAD were announced, the ABSU-BLT combined leadership floated a new political party, the Bodo People’s Progressive Front (BPPF), to fight elections from a common platform. However, during the process of selecting candidates to stand in the elections, splits surfaced and factionalism reared its head within the leaders of the community. The party split into two groups not long after its formation – the BPPF headed by UG Brahma, a former ABSU leader and parliamentarian, and the BPF headed by Hagrama Mohilary. As a result of the split, newer incidents of violence were witnessed leading up to and during the first elections held in 2005.
Meanwhile the NDFB, which had been demanding secession from the Indian union, had always been opposed to the BLT, the surrendered leaders of which group subsequently gained power over the BTC. One of the major reasons for this opposition was that it was widely alleged that the BLT had been propped up by the central government of India to destabilize a regional party-led government in Assam and to foment ethnic conflicts in the state – Chapter 7 will discuss this in more details. The NDFB which was anti-India in its stated intent thus had a huge ideological difference with the BLT. This difference between the two groups exacerbated after the formation of the BTAD and widespread internecine violence broke out.
Following a further split in the ranks of the NDFB engineered by the Indian government’s call to bring the rebels of the outlawed group to talks, violence between the pro- and anti-talks factions of the NDFB have also been on the rise. The BTAD is today one of the most violent regions in Assam with more than a hundred persons being killed in the area in 2009 alone (Dainik Agradoot 2010). In February 2010, the Indian Home Secretary GK Pillai has also been reported as expressing concern over the large number of illegal arms in currency in the BTAD (Asomiya Pratidin 2010). Most of these arms were retained by the former BLT cadres although they had surrendered and been granted amnesty by the government. These weapons found their way to more than 200 youth camps that came up in the BTAD subsequently and despite efforts by government and security agencies to seize these arms, the exercise does not seem to have been very successful (ibid).
Such an atmosphere of continued violence has posed some major challenges for this study which has been based on fieldwork conducted primarily in the four districts under the administration of the BTC – Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa (Bagsha) and Udalguri in western and northern Assam . The following chapter will discuss the field area as well as the challenges involved in working in the area in details.
[1] Sikkim has been belatedly added as the eighth state of the Northeast. It was annexed to India in 1975. As recently as 2002, the North Eastern Council (Amendment) Act placed it within the ambit of the North Eastern Council (NEC), an advisory body to the Government of India in respect of the development of the Northeastern areas (www.necouncil.nic.in). For the purpose of this study, only the ‘seven sisters’ of the Northeast – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura – will be covered under the notion of the ‘Northeast’.
[2] “…’instrumentalists’ treat ethnicity as a social, political and cultural resource for different interest- and status-groups” (Hutchinson and Smith 1996)
[3] The label ‘autochthonous’ is used here for all communities that claim to be ‘sons of the soil’ of Assam. Communities such as the Ahom and the Axamiyā-speaking Hindus and Muslims are considered non-indigenous autochthons to distinguish them from the many ‘tribal’ communities or indigenous autochthons of the region. The onset of colonial rule is generally taken as the dividing line determining which populations are autochthonous and which are settlers.
[4] These include the Assam Peoples Liberation Army (APLA), North Eastern Region Defence Army (NERDA), Seven Sisters United Liberation Army (SSULA) (Nath 2002).
[5] The ULFA claims that: ‘The struggle for national liberation of Assam never is a seperatist (sic.) or secessionist movement’ as ‘Assam was never a part of India at any point of time in history. The fact is independent Assam has been occupied by India, and deploying occupation forces they are oppressing our peoples and persecuting them’ (www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/7434/ulfa.htm).
[6] Such grammatical, syntactical and idiomatic errors in the English language as are present in this quote are characteristic of much of the political literature emanating from Assam in English in recent decades.
[7] Available online at: http://www.neportal.org/northeastfiles/Assam/ActsOrdinances/Bodoland_Autonomous_Council_Act_1993.asp. Last accessed 17 January 2011.
[8] The NDFB uses the spelling ‘Boro’ instead of ‘Bodo’ in its representation of the community. The ABSU booklet Why Separate State? distinguishes between the terms Bodo and Boro – the latter including only the ‘purely Bodo speaking people although some sections may have forgotten their Bodo language’ and the former then referring to ‘all Kochari or Bodo groups of people such as Boro, Rabha, Koch, Garo, Sonowal, Lalung, Deori, Dimasa, Saraniya, Barman, Hojai, Hajong, Tripuri (Tipperah), Chutiya and Moran whose languages are very close to Boro or Bara’ (ABSU 1987a:).
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