The death toll of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam’s Bodo Council districts of Baksha and Kokrajhar, which has now risen to more than 30, underlines once again how fragile the security situation is in that state which is the gateway to the Northeast.
The unprovoked massacre, which commenced late Thursday night and continued for some 24 hours, also attests to Assam’s febrile communal atmosphere, and the singular inability of the Tarun Gogoi government to control violent Bodo gangs who seem to be flush with weapons.
Muslims were attacked by the Bodos in 2012 also. There is little evidence to suggest that the state administration has done anything concrete to deal with the basic issues that divide the Bodos and the Muslim community in the Bodo belt of the state. In the present case, the ineptness of the administration is also highlighted by the fact that it could not anticipate the violence even though some intelligence inputs reportedly pointed to its likelihood. The administration was, on the whole, late to react, and hopelessly ineffective when it did move. We have, of course, seen the familiar curfew and flag march by the Army. But this can hardly give us confidence that violence of the kind we have just seen will be a thing of the past.
Perhaps because it is a Congress-led government in Assam, the Centre has refrained from asking Mr Gogoi tough questions. Indeed, New Delhi could have impressed on Assam that frequent outbreaks of communal violence in a state could lead to destabilising the communal atmosphere in the country as a whole.
The massacre by a Bodo militant group exposes the hollowness of Mr Gogoi’s claim of running a more or less militancy-free state (other than the occasional burst of violence perpetrated by the armed ULFA faction whose leaders take shelter in areas beyond Indian jurisdiction). It does appear that the Centre should bestir itself and assist the state to sort out the questions that bedevil the relations between the Bodos and others.
The Lok Sabha elections underway have gone peacefully so far, except for the violence in Assam. Although the state government has held the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit) responsible, many believe that the open attacks were carried out by those aligned to the Bodo People’s Front, which is aligned to the Congress and also has a minister in the state government. The BPF apparently accused the Muslims of not voting for its candidate for the Lok Sabha and was taking revenge. There must be an impartial probe of this angle if suspicion is not to linger. Also, the state must be freed of high-calibre assault weapons.
