Adivasis in Assam – Extermination without a Camp: Suraj Gogoi and Prasenjit Biswas
Repeated genocides in Assam and justification and rationalization of the same can be seen as the severest form of crime against humanity that one can imagine. It is the most reprehensible form of hatred that is committed and perpetually pushed under the carpet. Located in the foothills of Bhutan, the villages where 81 or so Adivasi persons were exterminated in the recent killings by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction) is no less than a genocide. Apparently the motive for such killing is attributed to Adivasi villagers helping the army and police in busting camps of Bodo militants. Seemingly they turn out to be the easy targets for insurgent firepower.
The adivasis, therefore, remain in a state of being exterminated. If camps mark the predicament of a modern fragmented society, one might say that the Adivasis are permanently thrown into shelters and camps as internally displaced. An estimated 2.75 lakh people of Adivasi origin are settled in about 250 camps across Udalguri and Chirang. They are decamped before the act of being camped and by the very act of remaining in the state of being camped they are rightless and defenseless. Herein we find a sense of perennial othering which subverts any democratic attempt to empower them with right and dignity. They are othered in a state of displacement and pushed form their settlements to an uncertain destiny. This continual displacement completes the fate of marginality. The process marks an inner othering of the marginalized that actualizes fragmentation of mainstream social identities of Assam.
Identities at struggle
Demands for autonomous council in the name of a tribe or community, claims for ST status and more importantly, exclusion of others from such constitutional benefits remained as the prime motivating force for exclusivist struggles of both armed and democratic kind. Among such marginalized ethnic groups, the Bodos have been in the forefront is carving out a Bodoland Territorial Council comprising of four districts of Assam, namely, Baksa, Chirang, Kokrajhar and Udalguri. Repeated mass killings, enforced displacement of minorities in Bodoland areas have been a constant feature of civil and political life. Chronicles of targeting the Adivasis comprising of migrant and indentured labourers from Chhotanagpur plateau have been written on the corpses of the innocent since 1993.
After an apparent truce since formation of BTC under the leadership of Hagrama Mohilary, the same politics of minority bashing returned in Bodoland, much to the dismay of the political leadership. A host of non-state actors belonging to various frontal organizational and espousing the Bodo cause have been raising the pitch for a separate Bodoland that evidently resulted in ethnic cleansing one after the other. The democratic voices within Bodo ethnic formations such as student and literary bodies, human rights groups and other civil society bodies are seen helpless before the might of the smoking gun wielded by the non-state actors.
The grim situation for democratic forces in Bodoland not only prevailed within competitive electoral politics but it also engulfed the social and cultural life of multi-community, multi-linguistic Bodoland area. A regimen of suspicion, repressed anger and a pathologically divisive drawing of internal boundaries marred the very sanctity of living a life and participating in common economic and trading activities. Centuries old migrant labourers settled in and around tea garden areas of Northern bank of Brahmaputra are the worst victims of this deterioration of law and order and debasement of values of a common social life. They have been otherized just as Muslims have been, labelling them as outsiders in Bodoland. The main motive for such a denial of access to shared lived space only proves the point that Bodoland is only for a certain community.
The Assam Accord
The Assam accord of 1985 provided an immediate context for an assertion of Bodo identity, as they were not represented adequately in the new formation of Axom Gana Parishad that ruled Assam for two terms between 1985-89 and 1996-2001.. read more:
