Rohingya issue mirrors violence, xenophobia faced by many in NE
GUWAHATI:
Killing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and their exodus to Bangladesh, described by a UN official as ethnic cleansing, is similar to what many communities across the eight Northeast states in India have suffered intermittently since 1948, according to social scientists.
Tribe or region-specific extremist groups in the Northeast are blamed in most cases of targeted killings, often labelled as “riots” despite being onesided or xenophobic mass movements, the social scientists argue. Clashes are often attributed to the insular characteristic of most ethnic groups that makes them suspicious of other cultures and view numerically and economically more powerful communities as aggressors.
The perception, more of secessionist groups, that “mainstream” groups such as Hindi and Bengali speakers have replaced the British as colonisers is also a factor, according to NE watchers.
Political scientist Akhil Ranjan Dutta acknowledges these as factors, but says the main reason for conflicts is the penetration of state dynamics into mostly tribal communities that are used to a certain kind of living and resource-sharing.
“The ultimate aim is political space for each community. The state has been playing a divisive role because it can’t control collective resistance. This division has percolated down to ethnically different communities and within certain tribes,” he said.
The NE has not had any major incident of targeted killing since 2012 when 114 people were murdered and 450,000 displaced in the Bodo-dominated Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) areas of western Assam. The victims were mostly migrant Bengali Muslims. “But given the seeds of distrust sown as a political strategy, there is unlikely to be an end to ethnic violence in the region,” he said.
Bengali academic Nabanipa Bhattacharjee wrote of “breathing in an atmosphere of immense vulnerability, torment and fear” in Meghalaya capital Shillong in the 1980s and 1990s.
“I witnessed… the non-tribals of Shillong being persecuted and brutally murdered. I recall the disruption of puja processions, days and nights of curfew, the rush for essential supplies, deserted streets, the plight of refugees, arson, and much more.
I, therefore, joined the great dkhar (Khasi word meaning foreigner) exodus and left Shillong in 1994,” she wrote for a website in 2015.
Almost every community or sub-region has a word, often used derogatorily, for outsiders. What dkhar is to Meghalaya, mayang is to Manipur, and fatarniborok to Tripura. In Assam, the word bohiragata is often used to distinguish outsiders from the khilonjia (indigenous).
But the animosity is not restricted to those considered outsiders. For instance, extremists batting for the Nagas have a history of hostility toward those clubbed as Kukis.