New Delhi: In a series of coordinated attacks, militants of a faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) have killed 62 people in an hour at four places in Assam, targeting tribal settlers who work largely on tea plantations.
The killings are being seen as revenge for an offensive by security troops against the militants. Tribal settlers, who migrated to Assam more than 100 years ago, have been targeted by Bodo rebels in the past along with Muslim settlers in the state. The Bodos are an indigenous tribe in Assam, making up 10 per cent of the state’s 33 million people.
The NDFB wants a separate homeland for indigenous Bodo people who, they say, have been marginalised by the arrival of outsiders in Assam. The NDFB (S), which has just about 250-300 hard-core cadres, has recently been strengthened by the return of some newly-trained members, male and female, from their training camps in Myanmar.
According to intelligence sources, the newly-returned cadres from Myanmar were told to demonstrate their capability in Tuesday’s multiple attacks. Apart from testing the new cadres, the NDFB has also succeeded in its twin objectives: spreading terror in the area and sending a message to the government that as an organisation it is still potent.
Tribals oppose the Bodo claim for an independent homeland, arguing that in many areas of the state, their ethnic group is in the majority. At least 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Assam in the last three decades.
The problem of insurgency in the hills of North-East India has defied solution for the past fifty years. The transition from a tribal polity to a Parliamentary democracy left the hills communities losing their political foothold within their own territories. The accession to the Indian state and having people from the plains as their new political masters bred discontent in these communities.
According to well known defence expert Nitin Gokhale, “The multiple attacks by tribal guerrillas in Assam should have been anticipated and prevented by the authorities since NDFB was likely to seek revenge after 40 of its well-trained members were killed in a major offensive by security forces in the past few months.”
Trans-national linkages have remained a crucial force-multiplier for the insurgents in Northeast India. While the Naga insurgents received patronage from the Chinese in the 1960s and 1970s, safe bases in countries including Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar have been used by the outfits to sustain themselves.
According to eminent strategic affairs analyst Wasbir Hussain, “India’s Northeast is one of South Asia’s hottest trouble spots, not simply because the region has as many as 30 armed insurgent organisations but because of the trans-border linkages that these groups have ... With demands of these insurgent groups ranging from secession to autonomy and the right to self-determination, and a plethora of ethnic groups clamouring for special rights and the protection of their distinct identity, the region is bound to be a turbulent one.”
A report by the Centre for Development and Peace Studies states, “India’s Northeast has been the land of thousand mutinies. Starting with the Naga insurgency since India’s independence in 1947, several insurgency movements have sprung up in most of the constituent states of the region. At one point of time, about 120 insurgent groups carried out their activities in the seven states of the Northeast.”
Demands of the insurgent groups have been wide-ranging. While groups like the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), NSCN-IM (National Socialist Council of Nagaland: Isak-Muivah group) aim at establishing independent states, outfits such as the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) demand separate states for their tribal constituency. Fringe outfits, such as the United People’s Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) and Dima Halam Daogah (DHD), confining their activities to the geographical limits of separate districts in Assam, have fought for maximum autonomy, within the purview of the Indian Constitution.
