Bodo vs Bangladeshi

[G.Subramaniam]

In the beginning, armed Muslims riding motorcycles attacked a few Bodo villages, including Joypur in Kokrajhar district, where they killed four people. Soon enough, Bodos riding motorcycles were moving around in the same area, picking on Muslim targets. A Muslim pharmacy-owner was killed this week by three Bodo men on motorcycles, who fired as they sped past his shop. “These killers on motorcycles dodge the army and the police. They have become a terror,” says a local Muslim leader, Shariful Haque.



Some large mobs were led by prominent Bodo leaders, including a lawmaker, Pradip Brahma. When the head of India’s governing party, Sonia Gandhi, visited camps that had been set up to house the displaced Muslims, wailing women complained to her about Mr Brahma. On August 23rd he was arrested and Assam’s state government imposed an indefinite curfew in the whole area, for fear of reprisals.



More than 80 people, most of them Muslims but some of them Bodos, have been killed so far. Scores are missing and nearly half a million are homeless—again, more Muslims than Bodos. The army was called in to help, but even a month after the rioting erupted, reports of sporadic killings and arson are still trickling in. “This is now India’s worst internal displacement crisis but Assam is not getting the attention it deserves,” says Ranabir Sammadar of the Calcutta Research Group, a think tank.” Too many people have been made homeless in too short a time.”



In the affected villages, life is not returning to normal. “We are struggling to survive here,” says Monowar Hussein as he moves about listlessly in the squalid, makeshift camp near Bilasipara town that houses 15,000 Muslims like him. “For food, for drinking water, for space to sleep, we are worse off than animals in barns.”



It is no different in the makeshift camps housing Bodos displaced by the violence. They want to go back home but are afraid to. “We are all traumatised over the events of July,” says Jhunu Boro, who came from Joypur village where the four young men were killed. “We thought we will be safe in the camps, but here we face survival problems.” “Houses have been razed to the ground, our fields have been damaged and our cattle hacked to pieces,” says Pramila Goyary of Gossaigaon village.



Militant Bodo groups have vowed not to let local Muslims return to villages that fall under the jurisdiction of the Bodoland Territorial Council, an autonomous body created seven years ago. “They [Muslims] will have to prove beyond doubt that they are Indian citizens before we allow them to come back,” says Govinda Basumatary, who heads a faction of a group called the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB). Mr Basumatary’s insinuation is that some or all of his Muslim neighbours are actually Bangladeshi nationals. Technically, the NDFB has been outlawed as a separatist group, but nevertheless one of its factions has been able to negotiate with the central government in New Delhi over a peace settlement for the past four years.



Under the terms of a ceasefire with Indian security forces, the NDFB is supposed to deposit all its weapons in designated camps. But the groups, now split into two factions, still have hundreds of armed fighters equipped with Chinese Kalashnikovs, grenades and even mortars. G.K. Pillai, a former home secretary of India, explains that “the whole Bodoland area is awash with illegal weapons. Nobody has done anything to check that and now we are paying the price.” - above url



Look at the firepower of the bodos as opposed to none with hindutva groups