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Mainstream, VOL LI, No 10, February 23, 2013

How to Extinguish Bodo-Muslim Conflict and other Ethnic Conflicts in Assam

Tuesday 26 February 2013, by Syed Shahabuddin

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According to the tentative results of Census 2011, Assam with an area 78,438 square kilometres has a multi-ethnic population of 31.2 million, distributed in 27 districts. It is said to have 72 identifiable communities including a large number of ethnic tribes who have their own religion and language, though many of them have been culturally Hinduised. The Bodos are the biggest tribe, claiming to be the original inhabitants; they are scattered all over the State but concentrated in the north-east. They form about 10 per cent of the State’s population and the four north-east districts constitute the Bodo Autonomous District, namely, Kokrajhar, Chirang, Udalguri and Baksa. However, even in the Bodo District they form only about 25 to 30 per cent of the population. Assam is said to have 21 Constitutional Statutory Administrative Autonomous Councils to accommodate 21 ethnicities, big and small, apart from five or six who are agitating. Besides the local tribes, many other groups, tribal and non-tribal, have entered Assam over the centuries. These include Santhals from Jharkhand and Scheduled Castes from North Bengal.

From the Bodo point of view, supported by other indigenous tribals, all the later immigrants are outsiders who have encroached upon their territory. The biggest of them are the Bengali-speaking Muslims who are now generally described as ‘Bangladeshis’. The migration of Bengali-speaking farmers was encouraged by the British in the 19th century to develop the area agriculturally and was then welcomed by the local tribals who were not in a position to cultivate the land, partly because of their natural indolence and partly because of their lack of skill. Then came the Partition, followed by the creation of Bangladesh. There was a steady migration of Hindus and Muslims from East Pakistan due to both communal and economic reasons. The migration turned into a torrent in 1971 but the refugees later went back to Bangladesh.

There was an agreement between India and Bangladesh that those who had come to Assam before March 24, 1971 shall be given citizenship of India while those who arrived after the cut-off date have to be detected and deported back to Bangladesh. Unfortunately, the communal forces in Assam, which had taken control of the Anti-Foreigner Students Movement, felt that the Hindu Bengali-speaking migrants were refugees who could not be sent back but the Muslims were foreigners and had to be pushed out. In 1985, under the Assam Accord, the Central Government agreed to detect and deport the migrants from Bangladesh after the cut-off date. This was easier said than done because while the alleged number of migrants is said to be 3.9 million, only a few thousand have been detected! The National Citizenship Register of 1951 is being continuously updated. The bilateral border with Bangladesh has not been totally sealed. Nor is it possible become of rivevine terrain. However, the seepage now is no more than a trickle.

All Muslims in Assam do not speak Bengali nor have they all entered Assam after 1947 or after 1971. They had come to Assam much before and became citizens on Indepen-dence. They include Muslims who were invited by the Ahom rulers to serve in their armies. There are some Assamese who were converted to Islam by the Sufi saints. In the seventies, for the sake of assimilation and survival, many Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam recorded their mother tongue as Assamese. This was a gift to Assam because without counting them, Assam would not have a 60 per cent majority speaking Assamese which thus became its official language. However, at the crucial time, even adoption of Assamese as their formal language did not save them from savage killings as in Nellie in 1983.

The other point to be remembered is that the Assam Movement assumed power for two terms under Prafulla Mahanta as the Chief Minister but even they could not make any notable progress in detection, identification and deportation of Bangladeshi migrants. In any case, very few could have been deported because there is no agreement on deportation between the two governments and without a judicial determination of their foreign, and specifically Bangladeshi, citizenship, the question of Bangladesh accepting the deportees did not arise.

The Bodo Movement had two aspects. Over the years, Assam was partitioned gradually among small ethnicities who were given autonomy and even states in their own areas. But the Bodos are scattered through a large area and they claimed 50 per cent of Assam.

The other aspect was the war cry by the Assam Students Movement for the ouster of Muslims as foriegners. It was in this context that in 1987 the Bodo leadership, which had till then been very friendly with the Muslims, demanded a separate State. The Bodo militants became increasingly violent, acquired arms, attacked the Muslims in 1993, 1994, 2008 and 2012 and also the Adivasis (ten-planters) from Jharkhand and the Kochis from Coochbehar in West Bengal in 1986 and 1988. Finally, the Central Government and the Assam Government agreed to the creation of Bodoland Territorial Autono-mous Districts (BTAD) in Kokrajhar, Chirang, Udalguri and Baksa districts.

In demarcating the border of the Bodo territory, two basic mistakes were made. The first was to include the non-Bodo majority villages lying on the fringes of Bodoland, and the second was that although the area of the Council had only 25-30 per cent Bodo population, 30 out of 46 seats were, directly or indirectly, reserved for the Bodos. In this Council, the Bodo People’s Front, one of the several Bodo organisations, is in power and it is also a coalition partner of the Congress in the Assam Government. So while Bodos were not satisfied, the non-Bodos felt marginalised. Naturally, in an area where they form a 30 per cent minority, they cannot impose their culture or economic dominance. They control the entire administration, minus law and order and cannot reject the non-Bodos from the land they occupy. The Bodos also claim that the rate of growth of Muslims is much higher than that of the Bodos. The net result is that the Bodos are using both politics means and guns to secure a majority in Bodoland through repeated wave of ethnic cleansing. Neither the Central Government nor the State Government is prepared to redraw the boundary of Bodoland which gives rise to a permanent conflict of identity and territory.

Muslims feel insecure, physically, linguistically and socially as well as religiously and at the same time they are being continuously subjected to repeated judicial checks on their nationality. In the targeted violence, the Bodos actually do not make any distinction between the old residents and the newcomers, if any. Over the years, particularly after 1994, the Muslims also began to procure arms in order to protect themselves and to form militant groups. It may be added that when there was agreement with Bangladesh, and later with the Bodo militants, one of the conditions was that the Bodo militants would surrender their arms but no step was taken to disarm them, then or later. They still have their arms. Interestingly, when on November 17, 2012 the second conflict of 2012 began, the police arrested a senior Bodo leader, a member of the Council, and confiscated AK-47 rifle from him, on order from the State Government.

Violence may subside but after every flare-up lakhs of people who are displaced continue to live in the refugee camps. By 2012, more than five lakh Muslims are said to have found shelter in camps. Theirs is also a psychic impact, because so far no one has been prosecuted for the murder of Bengali Muslims in Nellie in 1983 nor anyone for any killing in Bodoland. Tension between the two communities is ever present and even little incidents develop into organised attacks in which houses are torched and more people are pushed into the refugee camps.

The Bodos have now made a fresh demand that only those displaced should be allowed to return to their village home who can prove their legal status or at least their ownership and possession of the land they till. In the meantime, the State Government has not provided even primary health or education facilities in the camps as they promised to the Muslim leaders. It is yet to fulfil its commitment to restore land to the tillers or provide alternative land for the resettlement of those who faced ouster more than a decade ago and cannot go back to their original villages.

There are several districts in East Assam where the Muslims form a majority. In the last Assembly election, Maulana Badruddin Ajmal formed the All India United Democratic Front which won 18 seats. In the next election, Muslims with better organisation may secure more seats. While the clash between the Assamese and Bengali Muslims has cooled down, the Bodo-Muslim conflict is bound to spark again and again because of the inherent mistakes committed in the demarcation of Bodoland and the composition of its Council.

All concerned agree that the Indo-Bangladesh border should be sealed by all possible means. It has been suggested by this writer many a time that at least in the border districts, the government should introduce identity cards to all those who are residents, so that newcomers can easily be identified. But this has not been done. So many Muslims living for many years have been arrested and prosecuted more than once. The issue is thus not one of foreign migration but of injustice to the Muslims who have been living in Bodoland and other parts of Assam for many generations.

For peace to return in Assam and Bodoland, all sections of the people, Bodos and non-Bodos, should be equitably represented in administration and in the local bodies and particularly in the law and order machinery and provided with documents which would secure their right to land and to freedom of religion and language and equitable share in the fruits of development through proportional reservation.

It is essential that as soon as possible before the next flare-up in Bodo-Muslim relations, the Government of Assam with the support and participation of the Government of India should organise a round-table discussion among all communities and ethnic groups which have a stake in peaceful co-existence in the Brahmaputra Valley, with the objective of building a consensus among them on all issues of conflict, beginning from a survey of all cultivable land which is at the heart of the conflict and the principles of demar-cation of the autonomous areas and sharing political power and fruits of economic development among the inhabitants. For demarcation, there is the excellent example of fixing the border between Haryana and Punjab on the basis that all border villages in adjoining Panchayats shall be assigned to one State or the other on the basis of the language, Hindi or Punjabi, spoken by the majority.

Secondly, in all local bodies beginning from the Autonomous Council, there should be proportional representation of all groups and sub-groups—in the case of Bodoland, of the Bodos and other tribals, the Muslims, the Adivasis, the Scheduled Castes. Thirdly, if the State Government reserves the law and order machinery to itself, it must ensure that the police force is not only recruited from all groups but is compositely posted at all level in all strategically sensitive police stations and outposts, so that all groups or sub-groups living within their jurisdiction have full confidence in its availability and impartiality and feel safe.

Fourthly, if Assam in the long-run is to regain its soul, as it was in 1947, under a new Confederate State of seven sisters, for their overall development and progress. This will also create a bulwark for national defence.

Fifthly, the Central Government must allocate adequate resources for the overall as well as individual development of the various sub-states and for exploitation of their natural resources and for developing are an educational system which respects all developed mother tongues and encourages each group to learn the language of its neighbours, apart from their mother tongue, English and Assamese.

The author is an ex-MP, and the former editor of Muslim India.

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