Assam riots Kokrajhar: The situation in violence-torn Assam continues to be tense as the death toll touched 44 but CM Tarun

Gogoi claims the situation is 'improving'.

According to latest reports, more than 170,000 people have fled their homes since July 19 after fighting between indigenous Bodo tribes and Muslim settlers in Kokrajhar and Chirang. Security forces have been given shoot-onsight orders by the Assam government to confront with any unexpected incident.

Also, a curfew has been imposed in the riot-hit areas.Indefinite curfew and shoot-at-sight orders were in force in worst-affected Kokrajhar district, while night curfew was on in Chirang and Dhubri districts.

Notably, there has been severe tension between indigenous groups and Muslim Bengali migrants in Assam for many years.

In a high-level meeting held on Tuesday, Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) Chief Executive Member Hagrama Mohilary has blamed Assam government for the ongoing violence in the state.

What is Bodoland Territorial Council?

The Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) is a territorial privilege established according to the Memorandum of Settlement of February 10, 2003. BTC came into existence immediately after surrender of BLTF (Bodo Liberation Tigers Force) cadres.

The BLTF laid down their weapons on December 6, 2003 under the leadership of Hagrama Mohilary and Hagrama was sworn in as the Chief Executive Member (CEM) on December 7, 2003.

The BTC has 12 electorate members each looking after a specific area of control called somisthi. The area under the BTC jurisdiction is called the Bodo Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD).

The BTAD is to consist of four contiguous districts Kokrajhar, Baska, Udalguri and Chirang carved out of eight existing districts Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Barpeta, Nalbari, Kamrup, Darrang and Sonitpur an area of 27,100 km (35% of Assam).

That the BTAD is created under the sixth schedule of the Constitution of India has been opposed by some organizations.

How current ethnic clashes began in Kokrajhar?

According to Police and other sources, clashes began when unidentified men killed four youths on Friday night in Kokrajhar, an area dominated by the Bodo tribe.

There are reports claiming that armed Bodos attacked Muslims in retaliation, suspecting they were behind the killings.

Soon afterwards unidentified groups set houses, schools and vehicles on fire and started firing indiscriminately from automatic weapons in populated areas.

Bodoland demand gaining momentum

The demand for a separate state of Bodoland is slowly gaining momentum, especially in view of possible talks between the Centre and the two factions of NDFB (National Democratic Front of Boroland).

However, Assam's main Opposition party AIUDF has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to dissolve the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) and place the districts witnessing violent clashes under Governor's rule.

All India United Democratic Front chief and MP Badruddin Ajmal has also demanded scrapping of the Bodoland Autonomous Treaty as it was against the interest of the non-Bodos in trouble-torn Bodoland Territorial Administered District (BTAD).

What is the 'actual' reason behind the violence?

Analysts say that the main cause of the present clash between Bodo tribals and immigrant Muslims is control over land. Kokrajhar and Chirang were predominantly a Bodo tribal majority areas till nineties.

But there were migration of immigrant Muslims to the Gossaigaon sub division areas in Kokrajhar district since beginning of nineties.

Immigrant Muslim population has increased exponentially in Gossaigaon sub division in last two decades.

Immigrant Muslims procured lands from many Bodos in Gossaigaon areas and outnumbered Bodos in many villages. Over a period of time, there were migrations of immigrant Muslims to Kokrajhar town areas. These immigrant Muslims are mainly agricultural labourers and daily wage earners.

The control over land by immigrant Muslims in Bodo heartland and increasing population of immigrant Muslims in Kokrajhar and other districts of BTC created fear psychosis among Bodos.

With more than 40 people reported dead and over 1.5 lakh displaced in a week, the Kokrajhar riots between Bodos and Muslims have again brought into focus certain issues that are not limited to Kokrajhar district, or for that matter to Assam. There will be the usual game of getting as much mileage from the dead and the displaced. There will be a lot of talk of Assam becoming another Bangladesh or even Pakistan, with careless fear mongering thrown in for good measure. There will be others who will sell the absurd fiction that almost no illegal migrants from Bangladesh exist in Assam. Article continues below the advertisement... If one looks at a special kind of map of the world, the type where different population densities are marked with different colours, something sticks out. The part of the world with one of the biggest continuous stretches of the highest range population density is Bengal East and West. Now incompletely split along religious lines, the Bengals are pressure cookers with millions of desperately poor people looking to migrate to any area with slightly better opportunities. With this in mind, let us come to Assam. Todays Assam state is the successor to the much larger province that included the huge Muslim-majority district of Sylhet, much of

it now in Bangladesh. When Sylhet was a part of Assam before Partition, Muslims were an important contending power bloc. Sylhet was also partitioned in 1947 on the basis of a referendum. The largely non-Muslim Congressites in Assam did not even campaign seriously for the referendum, for they were only too happy to see Sylhet go, so that they could have a complete grip over the legislature minus the Sylheti Muslim threat to power. The origin of the feeling of being slowly outnumbered and besieged also has a certain past. This feeling never died out. The postPartition demographic shift of Assam has again started sliding back. The presence of Bengali-speaking migrants from Bangladesh has led to a slow growth in this siege mentality. The reluctance to fulfill the terms of 1985 Assam Accord has added fuel to fire. The Bengali population bomb is not only Muslim. To the east and northeast of Bengal are territories that tribes have inhabited for centuries. Due to the post-Partition influx of refugees, some of these zones have become Bengali-Hindu majority homelands. One prominent example is Tripura. This tribal majority kingdom, inhabited by many tribal groups, most notably the Riyangs, is now a Bengali-Hindu majority state. There is the same kind of tribal son-of-the-soil versus settler-Bengali conflict as in Assam with a crucial difference. Here the Bengalis are the clear victors. The future of the tribal groups possibly lies in tenacious identitypreservation in Bantustans called autonomous councils or slow cultural assimilation into the Bengali mainstream. A similarly sad saga is unfolding in Bangladesh where the government, in its immense wisdom, settled large groups of desperately poor landless Muslim Bengalis in the hill tracts of Chittagong. The Chittagong Hill Tracts, one of those anomalies of partition, had a solid tribal-Buddhist majority, all through the

Pakistan period. After active state-supported migration schemes, now the Chittagong Hill Tracts are Bengali Muslim majority, except on paper. The army is stationed there largely to protect settler colonies as they expand. Clashes between the indigenous tribes and the settlers are common, with the military backing the settlers to hilt. Human rights violations of the worst kind, including killings, rapes, village-burnings and forced conversions, have happened, aided and abetted by the state. Like Assam, there has been an accord in response to insurgency by the tribes. It remains unimplemented. All of this is happening in a global context, where the questions of special indigenous rights are being raised. Some of it takes the form of racial politics of the majority as in certain European nations. There are the interesting cases of cosmopolitan cities like Mumbai and Karachi with sons-of-the-soil in and out of power respectively, but both with a strong undercurrent for rights of the local. It is easy to label these as xenophobic or prejudiced, especially in the 21st century interconnected world. But this, too, is dissidence and of a primal variety that dare not tell its name in these times. I am not talking of nationalism but a variety of ethnocentrism which has known and lived in a territory and now finds too many outsiders in that space, playing by different rules, making their own area less recognisable, all too sudden. The reaction to this loss of familiarity and challenge to position from outside groups constitutes a strain that cannot be shouted down for its supposed political incorrectness. Often, such migrations happen in spurts and successive waves, where kinship ties are crucial. Such settlers have more in common with cosettlers than the indigenous. Often, the settlers have a perilous existence, partly due to the animosity of the indigenous. This leads to huddling with the known rather than with the unknown. This inhibits the kind of integrative processes that in the past led to the formation of new communities. The host communities need

special rights. We need creative and serious devolution of power to local bodies.