LAND AND LOATHING ON THE BRAHMAPUTRA
ACTOR ZERIFA WAHID ATA RELIEF CAMP IN BASUGAON
Zerifa Wahid is Assam’s heartthrob. This evening in the courtyard of a higher secondary school in Basugaon, more than 200 km away from Guwahati, she is playing out a role scripted by her conscience, with no movie cameras to exaggerate her emotions. The setting is social realism at its starkest. The dispossessed and the displaced in tatters form a perfect circle around the fairy princess who has come all the way from the city to share their sorrows. Skinny children, naked and unwashed, perched on the tired shoulders of their fathers, stare at this benevolent apparition in awe. Draped in crisp cotton, she moves from one tiny spectator to another famished one, patting their bare backs, whispering comfort into their ears. The lines of Azan Fakir, the 13th century Sufi saint revered by all Assamese, rendered by local singers, provide background music worthy of this performance: Mor monot aan bhab nai O Allah/ mor monot bhin par nai O Allah/ Hindu ki Mussalman/ Ekei Allahr farman/ mor monot eketi bhab ( There is no difference in my mind/ Hindu or Muslim, we are all children of one god/ I feel the same for all).
The evening breeze won’t carry the poetry of peace beyond the school building, which is today just another Muslim relief camp swelling with fear and tears. “All they are asking for is home, the home they built over the years with so much hard work. They are in so much distress and yet they could understand our language of love,” the actor later tells INDIA TODAY. Elsewhere in Bodoland, defying the best intentions of part- time peace volunteers like Zerifa, swirls the politics of hate— ethnic, religious and tribal, as raw as the hills that surround these scalded plains. Ever since the outbreak of violence and vandalism in the interior villages of the autonomous Bodo region in lower Assam, the districts of Kokrajhar and Chirang have become the site of competitive victimhood, a place where the other is the attacker, who continues to remain invisible
in the leafy lushness of this tropical remoteness. Every relief camp is a house of stories. Stories about midnight marauders, about fire and blood, about poison arrows and gunshots. And there is always a storyteller who can fill the notepad of the visiting reporter— the most conspicuous intruder in the camp nowadays— with the spasmodic narrative of being alive. In the Bodo camp, which is comparatively well managed, the killer who dominates the story is the Muslim. Atul Basumatary, 75 years old and too frail to stand and show the multiple scars on him, sits on the tarred road outside the camp, waiting for anyone who would listen. He survived with dagger wounds, he tells you, but his wife and his sister- in- law did not. Here, as stories of lives lost and houses burnt multiply, children in faux Armani T- shirts playing football in the open green fields seem to be the only ones who have the luxury of a diversion. Don’t be bewitched by this beautiful deception, a young Bodo man with an MBA who is now building a career in the secretariat of Bodoland Territorial Council ( BTC) warns you. He takes you to what he thinks the remains of the horror: Charred houses where the still intact Tata Sky antennae are the only reminder that these places have seen happier days. In Kokrajhar, whose pathways are lined by bamboo groves, nature provides a picture postcard backdrop to the carbonised legacy of hate. “Coexistence with them ( Muslims) is now impossible,” says the young Bodo apparatchik, whose Samsung Galaxy tablet carries within it all the statistics that suit his selective argument.
He talks as an empowered tribal, and he knows that the prerequisite for power is an enemy, who has only one name in the autonomous Bodo territory: “The illegal Muslim immigrant.” “You know the root cause, I don’t have to name it,” says Kampa Borgoyari, deputy chief of BTC, the supreme authority of the autonomous Bodo districts. Seated in his spacious office on the fourth floor of the council secretariat in Kokrajhar, Borgoyari is busy emphasising his own victimhood: “It’s not true that Bodos are killing Muslims. It’s a wrong media projection. I’m also not saying that all Muslims are illegitimate, but I would say that legitimate Muslims are helping illegitimate Muslims.” “But the land- owning Bodos need the Muslim labour, illegitimate or legitimate, right?” you ask him. “No, not true, the basic issue here is the land. Migrant Muslims are joining land- holding Muslims, and remember, Muslims are the fastest growing community here, changing the demographics of Bodoland.” He echoes the fear of Chandan Brahma, the state transport minister and a leader of the Bodoland People’s Front ( BPF), the ruling party of the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts ( BTAD): “We may lose our land because of dubious citizenship ( of Muslim immigrants).”
Ever since Bodos attained autonomy following the BTC accord in 2003, the Bodo leadership has been struggling to reinvent itself. The Bodo Liberation Tigers, the guerrilla organisation that signed the accord, has become the more respectable BPF, which is also a partner in the Congress government in Guwahati. The erstwhile revolutionaries are realising that maintaining peaceful autonomy is a harder task than waging an armed struggle for autonomy. The question is: Have all the arms been surrendered? Did some of
EVER SINCE THE OUTBREAK OF VIOLENCE IN THE INTERIOR VILLAGES OFTHE AUTONOMOUS BODO REGION IN LOWER ASSAM, THE DISTRICTS OF KOKRAJHAR AND CHIRANG HAVE BECOME THE SITE OF COMPETITIVE VICTIMHOOD, A PLACE WHERE THE OTHER IS THE ATTACKER.
them go into the hands of new generation tribal tigers? In the BPF office in Kokrajhar, a building adorned by the cardboard cult of Hagrama Mohilary, the chief of BTC, young party workers are engrossed in the gladiatorial spectacle of Troy on the movie channel HBO, and the room is littered with leaflets crying out “We want police action against communal forces.” The autonomous region has no control over the security forces. In an area where tribal passions are explained by an alphabet soup of acronyms, bloodlust has so many variations. “The accord could not resolve militancy at all,” says Nani G. Mahanta, an associate professor of political science at Guwahati University, “organisations like the dreaded National Democratic Front of Bodoland and Kamatapur Liberation Army are still causing panic.” The tribal alienation, he argues, is a colonial legacy: “The British rulers have introduced a number of policies such as Excluded Areas Act and the Partially Excluded Areas Act, which have effectively put an end to the traditional interaction between the people of the plain areas of the Brahmaputra valley and the hill tribes.”
What angers the Muslims is the ignominy of being labelled “illegal”. Assam shares a porous border with Bangladesh and illegal migration is a fact, but it is not the singular reason for tribal bloodlust. “I met hundreds of children, from infants to six- year- olds, and they can’t possibly cross the border. They
are born here and they are Indian citizens. In the camps, both Bodos and Muslims recognised me. Bangladeshis could not have instantly recognised an Assamese film actor. You can’t call the entire Muslim community illegal. It’s a dangerous trend,” says Zerifa Wahid. Asks Sherman Ali Ahmed, an All India United Democratic Front ( AIUDF) MLA, “If the border is so porous, why is there no action against BSF?” For the Muslim- dominated AIUDF, Assam’s main opposition party led by the perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal, the community is the victim of a hate campaign. “They are scared of the Muslim growth rate, and of course, for our own sake, it should be contained. Education and social leadership from within the community are the only solution. Demonisation won’t work. It will only lead to radicalisation of the disenchanted youth. They are already saying, don’t give us relief, give us arms,” says Ali Ahmed.
The most saleable commodities in Bodoland today are fear and hatred. If the Bodos, the ruling establishment, are united by the “endangered” land, the Muslims, the working class, are united by faith. As the political commentator Hiren Phukan writes in The Assam Tribune, “If fear is to be removed, the authorities have to come out with a specific plan, not mere verbal assurances, that meets the needs of both the indigenous and settler communities.” He argues for the relocation of Muslim immigrants across India and the sealing of the border. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has said that the updating of the National Register of Citizens would be com-
“Sonia Gandhi has 100 per cent faith in me. I don’t need a certificate from anyone else.”
pleted in three years. Will granting citizenship to those who have migrated to Assam before 1971 be the end of the issue? Even Gogoi doesn’t think so. When INDIA TODAY meets the Chief Minister in his hilltop bungalow on the outskirts of Guwahati, he is an embodiment of calm. “The Bodos are accusing me of being Muslim- friendly, and the Muslims are accusing me of being Bodo- friendly. I must be doing something right then,” says the grand old man of the Congress in the North- east. He thinks the number of illegal immigrants has come down. “Sealing the border is difficult. But my government’s record in fencing the border is better than other states. Today I can say with hundred per cent certainty that the conflict in Assam is not about illegal immigrants.” Then what is it? “It is about land and identity. And tomorrow it could be something else.” He needs those much demonised immigrant labourers. “We need them for development.” In Bodoland, his formula for peace is a combination of “justice, employment and education”. Gogoi is not worried about being called the clueless ruler of one of India’s most volatile states. “Some people say I was insensitive to wear a Bodo scarf in Bodoland. Why not? I want to be one with every tribe of Assam, and I’m proud of it.” He takes out a yellow scarf, the latest one he got from another tribe. So criticism doesn’t bother you? “No. Sonia Gandhi has 100 per cent faith in me. I don’t need a certificate from anyone else.”
In Assam, even its most powerful politician sees himself as a victim.