Another round in Assam

Suspected members of the NDFB, the pro-Bodoland outfit, perpetrate a massacre on the Assam-Bhutan border. And in Guwahati, ULFA, linked to the NDFB, launches an audacious mortar attack.

PERHAPS the most horrifying aspect of the gruesome October 27 killing of 21 non-Bodo villagers in Datgiri-Hatisar, a rural settlement in Kokrajhar district on the Indo-Bhutan border, is that such outrages have become chillingly routine exercises. Many of those killed, by persons suspected to be belonging to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), were migrant labourers. The NDFB is an outfit that claims to be fighting for the establishment of a `sovereign Bodoland'.

If one were to go by the accounts of the terrified survivors of the massacre, there is nothing about this macabre event that is unique or without precedent. As in the past, the heavily armed killers were dressed in combat fatigues and raided the isolated, defenceless village in the dead of night. They knocked on doors and broke down those flimsy doors which would not be opened. They rounded up 31 men, assuring the wailing women that their men would be safely returned after `questioning'. The captured men were then marched to an open area and promptly gunned down. Twenty-one villagers died and ten survived with bullet injuries.

The events after the tragedy, too, followed the book. There was a sense of deja vu in the despatch of security forces (whose convoy was ambushed, leaving six police personnel injured), the visit later by political and administrative leaders under heavy security, the expressions of outrage and condemnation, the assurances of safety and protection, the promise that the culprits would be brought to book, the heightened security alerts and even the inevitable combing operations and announcements of arrests of `suspected militants'. The administration virtually goes through these motions after every such outrage.

In the most recent incident of its kind, the NDFB killed nine non-Bodos in a relief camp at a forest village near Kokrajhar on the night of July 14 this year. The victims included five women and a seven-year-old girl.

Since the beginning of this year, 79 civilians and 10 members of the security forces have been killed by suspected NDFB personnel. According to figures compiled by the Database and Documentation Centre of the Institute for Conflict Management, Guwahati, a total of 1,518 persons (1,341 civilians and 177 security personnel) have been killed by the NDFB since 1992.

In a significant coincidence, there was a mortar attack in the high security area of the Dispur capital complex in Guwahati on the evening of October 27, within hours of the massacre on the Assam-Bhutan border. The attack, in which there were no casualties, has been attributed by the authorities to the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which has close links with the NDFB. Both the organisations are known to have camps and `hideouts' in Bhutan. Accusing the two organisations of creating a `fear psychosis', Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi blamed actions such as these for the lack of development and the high rate of unemployment in the State.

Again, following well-established precedents, the Chief Minister demanded additional security forces from the Centre. He also wanted the Centre to carry out anti-insurgency operations in Bhutan, whose borders with Assam have some 67 entry-exit points. He described the Assam-Bhutan border as a `free-for-all'.

The Chief Minister's reference to `fear psychosis' is rather revealing. A decade ago, the impact of ULFA was all pervasive and the ULFA mindset, which transcended those who were in the thick of it, found resonance in the strangest of places and among the most unlikely people. At present that very class of people (if such a term can be used to refer to a rather amorphous category) which sustained and propagated such a mindset is absorbed in the business of having a good life. It is not fear but pleasure that defines the life of those with the wherewithal, who a decade ago would have been scared to be seen splurging. No wonder the Chief Minister is worried and outraged.

Even allowing for the apparent linkages between ULFA and the NDFB, their commitment to a `sovereign Assam' and a `sovereign Bodoland' respectively and a shared hostility towards `India', it would be facile to see any broader common strategic objective for the two organisations. Indeed, some of the `subsidiary linkages' in the complex grid involving these outfits defy such readings.

For instance, one of the sections strongly opposed to the creation of the Bodoland Territorial Council BTC are the Koch-Rajbongshis, a caste Hindu group historically belonging to the Bodo-Kachari stream. They have recently organised themselves as Sanmilita Janagosthiya Sangram Samiti (SJSS), a coordinating body comprising 18 non-Bodo organisations that are opposed to any form of greater political autonomy for the Bodos. One of their demands is for the declaration of the Koch-Rajbongshi people as a Scheduled Tribe, a status that has been accorded to the Bodos. This demand has been strongly opposed by the Bodo leadership. There have been several reports, all denied by SJSS leaders, that the organisation is closely linked with ULFA.

If such reports are accurate, ULFA, which has acknowledged links with the NDFB, would also have some kind of links with an outfit whose objectives run directly contrary to even moderate Bodo nationalist aspirations.

In an interesting reaction, the implications of which are still unclear, the Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti (MASS), a human rights organisation once known to be close to ULFA (security agencies suggest it was simply an ULFA front), has strongly condemned the killings. A MASS statement said that the killing of innocent people cannot be justified under any circumstances. Even more interestingly, the MASS statement condemned the ambush of the police vehicle and the mortar attack on the Dispur capital complex.

However, it would be premature to see in this reaction any real significance. The latest massacre, like every other outrage of its kind, has to be seen in the context of both the stated resolve of the NDFB to achieve a `sovereign Bodoland' and its contention with the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), a rival outfit with an equally macabre reputation for killing. The BLT, which is widely known to be the armed wing of the All Bodo Students' Union and the Bodo People's Action Committee (ABSU-BPAC), is currently in the process of making a deal with the Central and State governments regarding the creation of a Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC). The BTC will supposedly be an advance from the now infructuous Bodoland Autonomous Council (Frontline, August 2). The prolonged process, which has involved hard bargaining on all sides, in particular about the inclusion of 93 additional villages listed by the ABSU and the BLT in the envisaged BTC, is, as usual, making slow and steady progress. However, there is little doubt about its denouement the creation of yet another political structure corresponding, though not similar, to the two autonomous Districts within Assam.

For the NDFB, with its avowed commitment to a `sovereign Bodoland', any accommodation with the BLT is simply out of the question. However, even though the NDFB chairman explicitly rejected the BTC in his speech on the occasion of the outfit's `Foundation Day', a more telling point being made by the NDFB is that there will be no peace in the envisaged BTC area, or indeed in Assam, unless the authorities initiate talks with outfits like itself and its allies. Irrespective of the eventual outcome of the ongoing talks with the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN), the ripple effects created by that initiative and the expectations it has raised in the other insurgent outfits of the region can be felt in Assam.

The choice of non-Bodo settlements, especially those of Adivasis (the preferred nomenclature for those who were once known as Tea Garden Labour and ex-Tea Garden Labour) for such attacks too follows established patterns. Though the BLT is now engaged in seeking a settlement, that outfit has perpetrated massacres on defenceless Adivasis on earlier occasions. The inescapable demographic reality of any envisaged Bodoland area is the minority status of the Bodo people in predominantly Adivasi areas. At one point, it appeared as if the proponents of a Bodoland were bent upon `ethnic cleansing' of non-Bodos. The NDFB, still committed at least in its public utterances to a `sovereign Bodoland', is not inhibited in continuing the task.