Where everyone is a minority - The Hindu

7th May 2014 - Link

The Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), that narrow wedge of land in western Assam where everyone is a minority.

Current violence

While the State government has directly blamed the shadowy Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Boroland for the massacres, there is, as always, a complex play of factors here:

• Militants were under tremendous pressure from security forces since they killed an Additional Superintendent of Police in Sonitpur district. The police went after them with a vengeance, taking down several cadres.forced the faction to hit vulnerable targets, to take the heat off, get time to regroup while also stoking communal fears and exposing the shortcomings of the State government.

• A statement by a prominent Bodo leader, Pramila Rani Brahma of the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF):  "Since Muslims had voted against the party’s Lok Sabha candidate, he was unlikely to do well". This has complicated matters and led to calls for her arrest.

Timeline:

1993 - An armed group, the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), attacked Santhals as well as Muslims. For their own safety, they were placed in relief camps, which again came under attack. Accounts say that not less than 50 were killed in those incidents.

2002 - there were a series of attacks; in one, non-Bodo passengers were pulled out of a bus and shot. Soon after this, the BLT decided to come to the negotiating table.

2003 - The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which enables small tribes in four States of the north-east to run their own affairs in the manner of an expanded Panchayati Raj system, instead of being completely dependent on the whims of the State government.

The Sixth Schedule aims to protect tribal rights from encroachment by larger non-tribe groups and is in place in parts of Assam, all of Meghalaya, Mizoram and a part of Tripura.

The Schedule was extended to the western Assam plains to create the BTC as part of an agreement between the Centre, the State government and the BLT.

Drawback:
BPF is the party in power in the BTC, which rules the “Bodo” districts. But there’s a major flaw in the system — the BPF doesn’t have control over law and order: the State government has jurisdiction of the police.

2008 - A major outbreak occurred in which both Bodos and non-Bodos including Muslims were rendered homeless and placed in camps. In 2008 again, bomb blasts across the State killed over 100 persons including 80 in Guwahati.

These were attributed to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, led by Ranjan Daimary, which sought independence from India.

2012 - when over 100 died and about 4.5 lakh were displaced in rioting and killings, was described as the most extensive internal displacement since Partition.

Reasons for failure of peace accords

The core of the problems in the north-east, be it in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam or elsewhere, lies in the mobilization of identity over land.

There are two issues here:

First:

• If key problems are to be tackled, then all sides need to sit down together to work out the ways that land and resources can be shared without creating further ill-will.
• The State government and the BTC have failed to do so. They have failed because they have looked for quick-fix solutions without going deep enough and far enough to meet people’s grievances. The fallout that we see today is that of manufactured consent.

Second:

• There is a second critical point: if such processes are to gain momentum, then there must be a relentless campaign against terrorist groups.
• The way governments proclaim that they will tackle ethnic and communal violence with a “firm hand”; yet, once the bloodshed is over, the displaced go home and the issues vanish from the headlines, it’s back to business as usual with the criminals, extortionists and their partners in politics and the bureaucracy.

In this situation, tossing out the mantra of “Bangladeshi” immigrants as being at the heart of the problem would be extremely ill-advised. Nothing could be further from the truth, so insidiously easy to push, so dangerous to stoke.