Ethnic & Political Struggles in Assam, Northeast India

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT *

This article examines the ethnic conflicts in the Indian state of Assam and the prospects for peace. The author sets out the long history of migration across the porous border with Bangladesh, the legal definition of the illegal migrant under the Citizenship Act 1955, and the National Register of Citizens, whose provisional list excluded some four million people. A second strand traces the position of the Bodo community, the Assam movement of 1979 to 1985, the first and second Bodo Accords, and the establishment of the Bodoland Territorial Council, noting that implementation of the first accord was assessed at only twenty-four percent and that armed groups reformed in consequence. The author concludes that exclusionary policies will not produce stability, and argues instead for securing basic rights and livelihoods and for inclusive political participation. The characterisations reflect the author’s own perspective; this journal’s editorial position is neutral.

KEYWORDS *

Assam, National Register of Citizens, migration, statelessness, Bodoland, Bodo Accord, Bodoland Territorial Council, ethnic conflict, citizenship, North East India, inclusion, peace accords

INTRODUCTION

The article herein is probing into the ethnic conflicts in Assam, North Eastern State of India. Assam is fronting mammoth encounters as to illegal immigration, and the government of India decided to make a National Register of Citizens (NRC) is critically examined in the backdrop of efforts to bring peace initiations in the State. Auxiliary, this article pacts with the Bodo Accord, the peace accords signed between militants and the government; and further the article is exploring opportunities for peace and rebuilding democracy in the backdrop of relentless conflicts and ethnic clashes in the State of Assam.

Introduction

Assam is a state in India with migrants from different parts of India and the world. Assam shares a porous border with Bangladesh, and migration from Bangladesh was a repetitive aspect from colonial to partition days, and it continued even after the formation of Bangladesh. Of the total population, it is estimated that a total of 1.10 lakhs immigrants are in Assam from foreign countries, and 56% are from Bangladesh, as per the 2011 Census. Besides immigrants from Bangladesh, there are immigrants from Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maladies, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, UAE, Kazakhstan, Europeans, Africans, Americans, and Sri Lanka. Immigration from other Indian Sates to Assam is estimated at about 4.95 lakhs people. Immigration is overwhelmingly in rural areas of Assam, and that makes the issue more complicated. Along with immigration, Assam is facing ethnic struggles and clashes which are between the ethnic groups of Bodo and Adivasi’s, Bodo and Muslims, Karbi and Kuki, Karbi and Dimarsa e.t.c claimed more than thousands of lives, and lakhs of people got displaced.

MAIN CORPUS

Illegal Immigration

Illegal Immigrants are not refugees, according to Indian Law. Illegal immigrant as defined under the Citizenship Act, 1955, is defined as a foreigner who has entered into India: – (1) without a valid passport or other travel documents and such other documents or authority as may be prescribed by or under any law in that behalf; (2) with a valid passport or other travel documents and such other documents or authority as may be prescribed by or under the law in that behalf but remaining therein beyond the permitted period of time. Thus, an illegal migrant is excluded from the acquisition of citizenship through birth, registration, or naturalization.

National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a register maintained by the Government of India (GOI) containing the name of certain relevant information for the identification of Indian Citizens. Assam, the first state in India where updating of the NRC, being taken up, to include the names of those persons whose name appeared in the NRC of 1951. This was the outcome of the Assam movement led by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) from 1979 to 1985, and the subsequent accord they entered into with the (GOI) on August 15, 1985. Authorities under NRC are setting up detention centers and Tribunals, to decide on nationality, sparking fears of arrest, detention, or deportation in the minds of immigrants. The provisional list of Citizenship for the State of Assam excluded 4.1 million people, and most of them are Muslims who are migrated from Bangladesh.

Bodo Community & Clashes

Bodo is a group of people from four districts of Assam on the north bank of the Brahmaputra River, by the foothills of Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. They are an ethnic group that speaks Tibeto- Burman language; and an ethnolinguistic group, and the largest minority group in Assam. The Bodo kingdom was at its pinnacle during the reign of the Koch King Narayanan (1540- 84). In 1832 the last Bodo kingdom in Cacher fell with the seizure by the British. Thereafter the Bodos got marginalized and subsumed and submerged under the dominant cultures.

The All- Assam Students Union (AASU) led militant agitation, along with All Assam Gana Sangam Parishat ( AAGSP), with a slogan of throwing out immigrants was tensed, and was targeted more against non-Assamese people, gripped the State from 1979-1985. The agitation was more against Bangladeshi immigrants, popularly known as the Asian Movement, and came to an end with signing an accord in the year 1993, and the important chapter in the accord was to consider that all the people who immigrated to Assam after 1971 would be declared as illegal. Along with the same, the most prominent ethnic struggle was for a separate state for Bodo, named Bodoland.

However, the peace accord failed in determining the territorial demarcation for Bodo Land Autonomous Council (BAC). The Peace Accord Matrix of the University of Notre Dame ranks the Bodo Land Accord implementation after 10years as 24%, notes that the accord failed. As the result, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) formed as a militant group for demanding a separate Bodo Land, by erstwhile militants, who were parties to the 1993 Peace Accord. Later, in 2003, negotiation between the State government, Central government, and Bodo Land Liberation Tigers (BLT) to the signing of a peace accord popularly known as SECOND BODO ACCORD. In the reorganization, the four districts came under the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC).

BTC is an elected body that was established in Assam according to the settlement. It came into existence immediately after the surrender of the Bodo Liberation Tiger Force (BLTF). BTC has 46 executive members with a divided area of command and control by each member of the Council. The Bodoland constitutes 35% of the marginalized tribal groups including Bodos, Rabhas, Garaos, Keots, Rajbougshi, Sarania e.t.c.

SUMMARY

BTC met with various formidable challenges, including opposition from non-bodo communities. Non-bodo communities, with a group of 18 ethnic groups, are resisting the smooth function of BTC. Further, the attempts by dominant state politics to divide bodo leadership are succeeding. The latest of these being NDFB attack carried out in 2016, known as Kokrajhar Shooting. A group of militants opened fire at a market near Kokrajhar town, and 14 people were killed and 16 were injured as a result of the attack.

Minorities, the local communities like tribe villagers, and immigrants in Assam fear that they are losing cultural identity, rights over land, and thereby culturally and politically subjugated.

CONCLUSION

4.0 Towards an inclusive resolution.

Hence, instead of a policy and announcements for excluding immigrants, working towards a resolution by securing them with basic rights by ensuring livelihood, and engaging and working for meaningful inclusive politics can bring a lasting peace for the state of Assam. An ingenious policy that shelters the basic rights of immigrants, and protecting the ethnic and culturally marginalized tribes, with a focus on re-settling, rehabilitating, and empowering through socio-economic policies and politics, with appropriate participation in civil administration along with a focus in violence prevention and conflict management, will bring eternal peace and harmony for the conflict-torn people of Assam.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The two strands of this article are usually treated as separate problems, and the article’s implicit achievement is to show that they are one. The Bodo movement arose because a community felt displaced in its own homeland; the citizenship register arose because Assamese society feared demographic change; and the accords intended to settle the first created new minorities within the autonomous areas, who then feared the same thing. Every remedy applied so far has redistributed the anxiety rather than addressed it, which is why each settlement has produced its own successor conflict.

The implementation record makes the point most sharply. An accord assessed at less than a quarter fulfilled did not merely disappoint; it created the constituency for the armed group that followed, composed of the very people who had signed it. This is the recurring lesson of peace agreements everywhere and it bears restating: an unimplemented accord is more damaging than no accord, because it teaches those who took the risk of compromise that compromise does not pay. Any future agreement in Assam therefore requires what the earlier ones lacked, namely a published implementation calendar, an independent monitor accepted by all sides, and phased benefits that arrive early enough for people to see them.

Territorial autonomy needs rethinking on the same basis. Where an autonomous council governs a territory in which the community it was created for is not a majority, autonomy for one group becomes exclusion for the others, and the eighteen non Bodo communities resisting the council are responding to exactly that. Non territorial arrangements offer a way through: guaranteed representation, protection of language and culture, and control over community affairs attached to people rather than to land, so that safeguarding one community’s identity does not require subordinating another’s. Combined with reserved seats and rotating executive offices within the council itself, this converts a zero sum contest over territory into a shared administration.

On the citizenship question, the humanitarian consequences are already visible and are separable from the legal dispute. Whatever a state decides about status, people whose exclusion is under appeal require due process they can actually use, legal aid, comprehensible procedures, and reasonable evidentiary standards for populations with poor documentation, since illiteracy and flood destroyed records are common in rural Assam. Prolonged detention of people who cannot be removed anywhere serves no purpose and should be replaced by regularised residence with the right to work, which costs the state little and prevents the emergence of a permanently rightless population, which is the surest generator of the next conflict.

Finally, the local level deserves the attention it rarely receives. The violence recorded here is not primarily between armies but between neighbouring villages, over land, grazing, water and market access. District and village level mediation panels, composed in balance across the communities present and supported by traditional authorities, can settle these disputes where they arise and prevent the incidents that repeatedly reignite the wider conflict. In a state where identity has become the language in which every material dispute is expressed, resolving the material dispute quickly is often the most effective way to keep identity out of it.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

References:-

Nisha Masih, A Crackdown in India on suspected illegal immigrants could leave millions Stateless, The Washington Post, Aug.27, 2019.

John Thomas, National Register of Citizens: Assam has its own context, misrepresenting it won’t help, The Economic Times, Sep.05, 2019.

Goalpara, Assam NRC: Workers at India’s first detention camp for illegal migrants may end up there, India Today, Sep.08, 2019.

Jaiklong Basumatary, Quest for Peace in Assam –A Study of the Bodoland Movement, KW Publishers, New Delhi, 2014.

Nani Gopal Mahante, Politics of Space and Violence in Bodoland, Economic & Political Weekly, 28(23)2013 P. 52.

Pathi Saika, Political Opportunities, Constraints, and Mobilizing Structures: An integrated Approach to Different Levels of Ethno-Political contention in Northeast India, India Review, 10(1) , 2011, P.28.

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

The Citizenship Act, 1955 (Act No. 57 of 1955), India, and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019.

The Assam Accord, Memorandum of Settlement signed at New Delhi, 15 August 1985.

Memorandum of Settlement on Bodoland Territorial Council, 10 February 2003, and the Memorandum of Settlement on Bodo issues, 27 January 2020 (the third Bodo Accord).

The Constitution of India, Sixth Schedule, provisions on autonomous district councils in the North Eastern States.

Peace Accords Matrix, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, data on the Bodo accords.

United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 1954, and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, 1961.