[The
hysteria in several of the country’s most advanced urban centers has
underscored the deep roots of ethnic tensions in India, where communal conflict
is usually simplified as Hindu versus Muslim, yet is often far more complex.
For decades, Indian leaders have mostly managed to isolate and triangulate
regional ethnic conflicts, if not always resolve them, but the public panic
this week is a testament to how the old strategies may be less effective in an
information age.]
By Jim Yardley
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Jagadeesh Nv/European Pressphoto Agency
People from northeastern
in
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What began as an isolated communal conflict here in the
remote state of Assam, a vicious if obscure fight over land and power between
Muslims and the indigenous Bodo tribe, has unexpectedly set off widespread
panic among northeastern migrants who had moved to more prosperous cities for a
piece of India’s rising affluence.
A swirl of unfounded rumors, spread by text messages and
social media, had warned of attacks by Muslims against northeastern migrants,
prompting the panic and the exodus. Indian leaders, deeply alarmed, have
pleaded for calm, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared in Parliament on
Friday to denounce the rumor mongering and offer reassurance to northeastern
migrants.
“What is at stake is the unity and integrity of our country,”
Mr. Singh said. “What is at stake is communal harmony.”
The hysteria in several of the country’s most advanced
urban centers has underscored the deep roots of ethnic tensions in India, where
communal conflict is usually simplified as Hindu versus Muslim, yet is often
far more complex. For decades, Indian leaders have mostly managed to isolate
and triangulate regional ethnic conflicts, if not always resolve them, but the
public panic this week is a testament to how the old strategies may be less effective
in an information age.
Last week, the central government started moving to
stabilize Assam , where at least 78 people have been killed and more than
300,000 have fled their homes for refugee camps. Then Muslims staged a large,
angry protest in Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, on the western coast.
A wave of fear began sweeping through the migrant communities after several
people from the northeast were beaten up in Pune, a city not far from Mumbai.
By Wednesday and Thursday, the exodus had begun. So many
people were pouring into train stations in Bangalore and Chennai that the Railways Ministry later added special
services to certain northeastern cities. By Friday, even as some of the fears
eased in the biggest cities, people were leaving smaller cities, including Mysore and Mangalore.
To many northeastern migrants, the impulse to rush home —
despite the trouble in Assam — is a reminder of how alienated many feel from mainstream
India . The northeast, tethered to the rest of the country by a
narrow finger of land, has always been neglected. Populated by a complex mosaic
of ethnic groups, the seven states of the northeast have also been plagued by
insurgencies and rivalries as different groups compete for power.
Here in Assam , the underlying frictions are over the control of land, immigration pressures and the fight for political
power. The savagery and starkness of the violence have been startling. Of the
78 people killed, some were butchered. More than 14,000 homes have been burned.
That 300,000 people are in refugee camps is remarkable; had so many people fled
across sub-Saharan Africa to escape ethnic persecution, a humanitarian crisis almost
certainly would have been declared.
“If we go back and they attack us again, who will save us?”
asked Subla Mushary, 35, who is now living with her two teenage daughters at a
camp for Bodos. “I have visited my home. There is nothing left.”
In 2003, India’s central government, then led by the
Bharatiya Janata Party, brokered a deal in which Bodo insurgents agreed to
cease their rebellions in exchange for the creation of a special autonomous
region, now known as the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts. It was a
formula long used by Indian leaders to subdue regional rebellions: persuade
rebels to trade the power of the gun for the power of the ballot box.
Now the Bodos dominate the government overseeing the
autonomous districts, even though they are not a majority, accounting for about
29 percent of a population otherwise splintered among Muslims, other indigenous
tribal groups, Hindus and other native Assamese. Competition over landownership
is a source of rivalry and resentment: the land rights of Muslims are tightly
restricted inside the special districts, even though they constitute the
region’s second-largest group, after the Bodos.
“This whole fight is about land and capturing power,” said
Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, a member of Parliament and a Muslim leader in a
neighboring district. “It is not a religious fight.”
These resentments exploded in July and early August, after
an escalating cycle of attacks between Muslims and Bodos. Soon entire villages
were being looted and burned. The authorities have made few arrests, and each
side has blamed the other. The Bodos say illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh are streaming into the autonomous districts and taking
over vacant land; Muslims say such claims are a smokescreen intended to
disguise a Bodo campaign to drive out rightful Muslim residents in a campaign
similar to so-called ethnic cleansing.
During the worst violence, the state government in Assam seemed paralyzed. One issue is that many former Bodo
rebels never turned over their automatic weapons; some Muslims driven from
their homes say Bodos scared them off by firing AK-47s into the air.
To visit some of the affected villages is to witness the
eerie silence of lives brutally interrupted. In Brajakhal, the entire Muslim
section was burned and looted, while the homes of non-Muslims were left
untouched. In the nearby village
of Chengdala
Sumitra Nazary, a Bodo woman, said her elderly father was
bludgeoned to death with an ax.
“He was paralyzed,” she said. “He couldn’t run away.”
It is uncertain when the people in the refugee camps will
be able to return to their villages. Paramilitary units and Assam police officers have erected temporary guard posts outside
many of the destroyed or looted villages, promising security.
At the camps, life is increasingly miserable. This week,
two members of the National Commission for Minorities visited the region and
documented problems with sanitation, malnutrition and living conditions at
different camps, particularly those inhabited by Muslims. One camp had 10
makeshift toilets for 4,300 people. At another camp, they reported, more than
6,500 people were crammed into a converted high school, including 30 pregnant
women.
The scene was little different at a Muslim refugee camp
created at the Srirampur R.M.E. School midday sun.
Goi Mohammad Sheikh, 39, brought his wife and five children
to the camp, but was returning to their village at night to protect their home.
It had been looted but not burned, he said, and he and a group of other men
were standing guard.
“We want to protect our houses,” he said. “In some
villages, it will not be possible to go back. It is too dangerous. But we will
not leave our village. If they kill us, let them kill us. How do we leave our
motherland?”
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.