Ethnic cleansing and the Bodo imbroglio

Shailesh K Singh

Since 1966 the Bodos have struggled for a seperate political identity for themselves. Starting off modestly, they now demand, among other concessions from the Central Government, the creation of a seperate State on the north bank of Brahmaputra as well autonomus districts for their Rabha and Tiwa tribal cousins on the south bank, so that these plains tribes are all able to achieve a measure of self rule. They also demand restraints on unlawful habitation in "Bodoland"; the allocation of a bigger share of planned development expenditure (as has been enjoyed by other tribal states); the driving out of "undesirable human elements" either lawfully or by force; complete control over the economic, social and political life in their state; and effective measures to tackle unemployment.

The Bodos began their agitation in the late sixties, mainly to demand the inclusion of the Bodo language as the medium of instruction in their schools, and followed this up with a movement for their own script in 1972. The Bodo Autonomous Council (BAC) has only recently adopted the Roman script for the BAC areas, replacing the Devnagari script that was allowed to them earlier.

The script movement was followed by a movement for the recognition of the Bodo language as an official language of Assam. After four years of struggle, the Assam Government granted the Bodo language the status of an associate official language of Assam. (It is significant that the Assam State Government had some years earlier allowed the use of the Roman script for the Mishing language, which caused much resentment among the Bodos, who saw the rejection of their own demand for the Roman script as discriminatory).

Until 1987, the Bodos were content to demand an autonomous council along the lines of the other hill tribes of Assam. (Both the Karbi Anglong and North Cachar hills people have autonomous councils in which they enjoy a modicum of self-rule). This demand was originally put up also by a Bodo regional party, the Plains Tribal Council of Assam. They were not successful in achieving even this limited degree of autonomy.

Insensitivity to the problems of the Bodos coupled with the "chauvinism" of successive state governments in Assam was responsible for escalating a manageable problem into a major one. Coupled with insensitivity, "dirty tricks" by the Central Government's intelligence agencies are believed to have played a part in promoting the militancy of the Bodos. In an interview with The Statesman (Nov. 8, 1997), B. K. Rao, a key government negotiator in the talks leading up to the Bodo accord, notes that: In the mid' 80s, when the whole of Assam stood behind the All Assam Students' Union and the United Liberation Front of Asom, the Centre decided to directly foment an agitation to weaken this force. With the Bodo stir taking shape, the ULFA and the AASU lost half of their support since the new movement was fully backed by (the tribal people of) lower Assam, considerably sapping the strength of ULFA which would have otherwise influenced the tea gardens (and their tribal labour) in that area.

After several years of violent agitations, the Indian Central Government and the State Government of Assam negotiated an accord with some major Bodo groups. The Bodoland Autonomous Territory Accord was signed in February 1993. The accord has not worked because some of its essential provisions have not been implemented and severe infighting among the Bodo factions and their competing populist leaderships made it impossible to achieve stability within the BAC. In the five years since the accord was signed, no elections were held for the Bodoland Autonomous Council (the initial operation period of the council ran out long ago). No proper boundary was drawn, marking the autonomous tribal region (comprising the contiguous geographical areas between the rivers Sankosh and Mazbat.) The Central and Assam Governments also deliberately complicated matters to avoid implementing the accord, particularly the financial provisions, that had devolved powers to the Council to mobilize resources while fixing plan and budgetary accountabilities on the Assam Government exchequer.

It is widely believed by both bureaucrats and politicians that the situation in the area would not have deteriorated to the extent that it has if the Bodoland Autonomous Council Accord had been handled more sympathetically. The ABSU president U. G. Brahma, recently said that, "my organisation had signed the agreement in 1993, keeping in view the ground conditions that time. But now, the accord, even if implemented in totality, cannot satisfy the Bodos. Last year (1997), even before participating in the tripartite talks in New Delhi, the ABSU president had said, "there can be no solution to the problem by discussing the Bodo Accord and its implementation. Rather the talks should now mainly focus on the modalities of granting a separate state to the Bodos." In September last year, as the tripartite talks were about to begin, the Congress party demanded that adequate safeguards for non-Bodos living in the Bodo Autonomous Council areas must be incorporated in any negotiated settlement of the Bodo issue. They felt that "Bodo leaders must remove the apprehensions among non-Bodos that their democratic rights may be curtailed under the BAC and that the Bodos and Non-Bodos will have equal status in all matters under the BAC set-up".

As a consequence, five years after the Bodoland accord was signed, nearly all influential Bodo groups, including the All Bodo Students' Union (ABSU), which were signatories to the agreement, have resumed the movement for a separate state. The merciless killings of non-Bodos, particularly, the Santhals, point to the intensity of feeling amongst the more extremist Bodos who are bent on ousting Bengali and other minority settlers from what they perceive is their homeland. Since the eastern and northern borders of Bodoland were not delineated to their satisfaction they feel that by undertaking such actions, they can drive out "outsiders" and claim an area from Kokrajhar in the west to Darrang in the east, on the north bank of the Brahmaputra river, for their new state of Bodoland.

The outbreak of this war of ethnic cleansing between the Bodos and the Santhals has added another deadly dimension to the conflicts already raging in Assam. The cause remains the same: land. Explaining the Bodos' hunger for land, S. K. Bwismutiary, member of Parliament from Kokrajhar , noted in a newspaper intyerview recently:

The Bodos are now pretty sure that they are to get Bodoland. Maybe it will take another two or three years . But in the proposed Bodoland, there may be many areas where Bodos constitute less than fifty per cent of the population. Naturally, they are keen on seeing that by the time Bodoland materialises, their numerical majority also becomes an accomplished fact. Hence the urge to evict the non-Bodos and grab their land.

The two major non-Bodo land -owning segments are the Santhals and the immigrant Muslims from Bangladesh. The Muslims have settled only in the char or riverine areas of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, and there is no immediate conflict between the Bodos and the Muslims over land rights. Even so, scores of Muslims were killed in the 1993-94 riots. The Santhals, on the other hand, encroached on prime reserve forest lands, clearing them, and set up permanent habitations.

Severe tensions exist also between Bengali-speaking Muslim immigrant, Koch-Rajbanshis as well as Nepali settlers and the Bodos in the same disturbed region. While the violence between the Bangladeshi immigrants and the Bodos has been of relatively long standing, the recent violent clashes between the Bodos and the Santhals demonstrate the heavy price that failed political arrangements extract from the most vulnerable and poorest households who are usually unable to defend themselves.

The failure to resettle the Santhal refugees from earlier riots is one of the main causes of the renewed ethnic violence in Kokrajhar district, particularly the resettlement of refugees uprooted from the reserved forest areas. They have not been able to go back to these forests as in most cases, their settlements are now occupied by others, (despite court orders restraining people from settling in the reserve forests). Over 300 people had died in the May 1996 Bodo-Santhal clashes, which carried on for over two weeks and rendered 2,00,000 persons homeless. About 60, 000 of these are still living in the refugee camps. The district authorities used to supply the refugees with rice, which has now been stopped. Some of the Santhal refugees were also given a 'rehabilitation grant' of Rs. 10, 000 on the condition that they gave a written undertaking that they would not go back to the homesteads they had carved out of the forests. Unfortunately, however, some of them recently left the refugee camps out of desperation, and attempted to go back to their old homes where they confronted the same Bodo militants who had forcibly evicted them and who were now occupying these lands, and the killing began anew. Meanwhile, a tragedy of immense proportion is in the making in these refugee camps, where women and children live in unhygienic conditions. The number of deaths in these camps is now larger than the mortalities associated with the attacks by the Bodos.

The Santhals in Kokrajhar district, who had eked out a living from the forests before the violence began, are now believed to be getting help from their fellow tribesmen in West Bengal and Bihar. Santhals outfits, such as the Birsa Commando Force (BCF), Adiulfa and the Cobra Force, are trying to counter the Bodo onslaught by retaliating with acts of gruesome violence themselves. The Bodos say that these tribals (Santhals) are getting increasingly better organised.

The Bodo groups feel that their bargaining power in demanding a separate state of Bodoland has been subverted by migration into this region, which has changed its demographical pattern decisively. While these areas were traditionally Bodo-majority regions, the influx of migrants over the past few decades has reduced them to barely a third of the total population of the area. A bitter internecine struggle for the leadership of the Bodos has further worsened matters. Fratricidal killings between the two main Bodo terrorist organisations, the NDFB and the BLTF, are in the nature of a power struggle for supremacy over the BAC. (To be continued)