BODOLAND NO-GO LAND

August 7, 2012

The Kokrajhar region of the North-East Indian state of Assam is still in the grip of ethnic violence, as another three people were killed on Monday night. The hostilities between the Bodo Tribesmen and immigrant Bengali Muslims have been smouldering and flaring for years and they erupted again on July 19, 2012, when the murder of four Bodo men led to an orgy of violence and destruction against immigrant settlements. Of the 71 reported dead, 59 were Muslim settlers, while another 400,000 of them were driven to relief camps as their villages were burnt down.

Kokrajhar is the capital of the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD) administered by the Bodoland Territorial Council that was formed in 2003 after an agreement with the government in Assam, following a struggle for independence. The Bodo, who are predominantly Hindu, have been accused of trying to ethnically cleanse the area from Muslim settlers from Bangladesh.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has allied himself to the Bodo and is allegedly too enmeshed to be able to take decisive action to stop the onslaught against the immigrant population, while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit on July 28 did little to heal the rift. The Bodo militants, for their part, are keen to promote Bodo hegemony, as they currently only constitute one-third of the population in Bodoland (the rest consisting of Assamese and Bangladeshi immigrants).

Rama was an exile for 14 years. I wonder if he would have been welcomed if he would have stopped by.