BJP out to exploit Bangladeshi issue in Bodoland

Hafizur Rehman remembers the fateful day in July, 2012 vividly. "I was on my way back from Srirampur in Dhubri district, where I had dropped my old uncle and aunt, and I heard on my way that villages were being burnt here," he says. He reached home to find his wife and children preparing to flee. We ran out into the streets, which was full of people fleeing.

"I took my family on a bike, suffered a minor accident, and somehow put them on a car to send them to safety," he says, recalling that it started raining. Hafizur stayed back to report on the unabated violence; he's a stringer for a local newspaper and a news channel. The aadivasi woman who he stayed back with later received threats, he says.

The 2012 bloodbath, that left over 150 dead, and displaced the lives of lakhs, was carried out in Gossaigaon, Chirang and Dhubri. Mostly, Muslims were targeted. In 2008, in Udalguri and Darrang, over 35 Muslims lost their lives, while many more lost home and hearth.

In 1996, in Sekidhani village, under Kochagaon, 48 people were hacked to death and their bodies thrown into the river. Only one person survived. It took two years to file a police complaint.

"The violence is carried out by both communities," says Utpal Sarma, a retired government official, who worked as an additional deputy commissioner in Goalpara in 2012 to 2014. In 2008, he was posted in Guwahati, and was asked to help restore law and order in Udalguri. "Houses of both communities were destroyed, and since it was December and the rice crop needed to be harvested, we provided police protection to the locals," he says. Relief camps were set up, too.

The continuing violence in these areas is compounded by the presence of various identities. Who is a Bangladeshi, how does one tell? Hafizur says that his grandfather came to Gossaigaon in 1901. The Assam Accord, that wanted to safeguard the interests of the indigenous Assamese, and now the National Register of Citizens (NRC) lead to several complexities.

Himanta Biswa Sharma, BJP's most prominent face, says that only Bangladeshi Muslims are the intruders, because they choose the Partition. His stance has changed from the time he was in the Congress, when he intruders were simply Bangladeshi. His claim that then BJP will include people who were in the 1951 voters list under the NRC, up from the 1971 list, has angered many.

Shibnath Brahma, BJP's president from Kokrajhar, says that for the Bodo community, the Bangladeshi is an election issue, and there's no difference between Bangladeshi Muslim and Bangladeshi Hindu. "We want then to go away from our lands, they are the intruders here," he says, adding that they will approach the Supreme Court if BJP comes to power. "We condemn any sort of violence," he says.

MP UG Brahma, president of the United People's Front (UPF) says that the Bodo community is not violent by nature, and it is political parties that drum up these issues. He blames the Bodoland Peoples Front government of corruption. "There was no rehabilitation of the conflict affected. Hagrama Mohilary's militia has aided his corrupt practices, and shoot anyone who voices a dissent," he says