NEW DELHI: The All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) and the Bodo People’s Action Committee (BPAC), fighting for a separate Bodoland in India’s eastern region, Friday announced that the 1,000hour Assam strike would be resumed if the fourth round of tripartite talks on Bodo problem failed next month.
Talking to reporters here, ABSU president Upendra Nath Brahma categorically said “our struggle for a separate Bodoland will continue.”
The leader met Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal here Friday and they are likely to meet the home minister before they return home on January 14.
The ABSU movement for a separate “state of Bodoland” on the north bank of Brahmaputra took a violent turn in 1987. Since then over 600 people have been killed, thousands injured and large-scale destruction has been wrought by the militants in the state’s Kikrajhar, Barpeta, Nalbari, Dhubri, Kamrup, Sonitpur, Darrang and Lakhimpur districts of Assam
Official sources date the agitation back to 1967, when the plains tribal council of Assam (PTICA) demanded a separate state of “Uda-yachal”.
The current ABSU agitation, which also began in 1967, according to the sources, initially started with 35 demands, subsequently compressed into three.
The ABSU demanded creation of a regional council for non-Karbi tribes in Karbi Anglong autonomous district council, creation of district councils in the tribal compact areas of southern valley of the Brahmaputra and the creation of a separate state with the status of union territory for the plains tribal in the northern valley of the Brahmaputra.
The demands encountered certain difficulties since the area proposed was neither contiguous nor homogenous and, as the Bodos numbered only 7.65 per cent as per 1971 census of the entire area, they were not the only tribal group or the majority group in the area.
The militant posture of the ABSU has created an environment of strife, leading to “consolidation of their stand among non-Bodos., This has resulted in considerable communal tension in the state, official sources say.
Brahma accused the Asom Gana Parishad, the ruling party in Assam and one of the constituents of the National Front, the five party combine at the center, of misleading the center on the Bodo issue.
He also alleded that the Assam government wanted Thursday’s talk’s to fail so that “it could resort to police repression to suppress the agitation.”
The central government and the AGP government in Assam, which participated in Thursday’s talks, ruled out granting of a separate Bodoland but the Bodo leaders were adamant on their demand for a separate state.
Brahma pointed out that Thursday’s third round of talks would have failed but for the insistence of federal labor minister Ram Vilas Paswan on continuance of the talks to find an amicable solution.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 19, 1990
