Of the many epithets -desi (native) , bidesi (foreigner) and Bangladeshi - applied to Assam's Muslim population, Basha Ali chooses one that best describes his family's journey from the banks of the Brahmaputra to the fringes of Alurbhui, a village in the Bodoland Tribal Autonomous District (BTAD): nadibhango, one who is destroyed by the river.
"Many years ago, the river rose up and swallowed my grandfather's land," Ali said, "So, my grandfather moved here just before Independence."
Traditionally, Assam's Muslims have farmed and fished along the riverside. The banks also provided sanctuary for Bangladeshi refugees who arrived during the 1971 war, assimilated with the local Bengali speakers, and were offered citizenship under the 1985 Assam Accord.
Yet, in the years since then, the Brahmaputra and its tributaries have swallowed several hundred sq km of land in Assam, pushing many Muslims into forest lands claimed by other communities. Studies and government data show the erosion accelerated in the past decade and created thousands of landless nadibhangos in a period of insignificant cross-border immigration. (Shrinking Land Resource)
This influx of landless peasantry into reserved areas such as the BTAD could explain the subterranean tensions that crested last fortnight, when suspected insurgents killed at least 45 Muslims in Baksa, and the Kokrajhar riots of 2012 in which a huge number of Bodos and Muslims were displaced. The river's growing appetite for land suggests the ecological and economic drivers of conflict are unlikely to abate, implying Assam's land conflicts may worsen in the future.
From 1990 to 2007, the Brahmaputra and its tributaries eroded 1,693 sq km, or about 418,350 acres of Assam's land, according to a 2012 report prepared by Nayan Sharma of Indian Institute of Technology-Roorkee. About a third of the missing land was from Dhubri and Goalpara, districts adjoining the BTAD. In these 17 years, the river system eroded land at a rate of 100 sq km a year, but the rate of erosion rose to 127 sq km a year during 1997-2007, proof more land was being eaten away at an ever-faster rate. As a contrast, Sharma estimates from 1912 to 1996, the rate of erosion was only 10.3 sq km a year.
"The rate of erosion is expected to significantly increase in the future, as hardly any comprehensive intervention for erosion control has been taken up," Sharma said. "The very high recurring land loss to river erosion superimposed on the very high population density has resulted in sharply rising demographic pressure on a very limited land resource."
The data do not include forestland, suggesting the scale of the problem is even greater than estimated. About two thirds of the total cultivable land in Kokrajhar, for instance, is classified as encroached forestland.
"The present conflict in the BTAD has nothing to do with the anti-foreigner movement," said Urkhao Gwra Brahma, a Rajya Sabha member from Assam and mediator in the 2003 Bodoland Accord, which resulted in the creation of the BTAD.
Rather, the conflict is a perfect storm of land alienation of the Bodo people, a raging insurgency and misplaced anti-immigrant sentiment. "Extremists take advantage of this anti-immigrant sentiment and gain support from mainstream Assam," he said. "Whenever there is a social or political problem, the extremists create chaos."
The BTAD did not alter existing land ownership, but reserved three fourths of the seats in the Bodoland Territorial Council for Scheduled Tribes (ST), of which the Bodos constitute a majority. The non-tribal community accepted the terms, observers said, as path to defuse the insurgency.
About 10 years on, the non-tribal community has grown restive with its exclusion from political process. The Bodoland People's Front (BPF), the political avatar of the surrendered militants of the Bodoland Liberation Tigers, controls the BTC. "The BPF has centralised all power. There are no elections for village councils; so, no grassroots democracy," Brahma said. "From 2006 to 2014, 27 people from my political party have been killed by the BPF's military wing. People are blaming institutions when they should blame the insurgents."
Despite repeated attempts to contact their leaders, the BPF did not respond to these allegations. In the past, the BPF has denied such claims.
Data compiled by researchers Sripad Motiram and Nayantara Sarma indicate Muslims in the BTAD fare worse than their ST counterparts, but their monthly consumption expenditure through the past 10 years has grown faster than that of the Bodos and the rest of Assam. The data does not capture changing land ownership patterns, but reveals an occupational shift - more Muslims are "self-employed in agriculture" and fewer as labour, suggesting more Muslims are tilling their own land. For STs, the trend has reversed, with the number of self-employed agriculturalists seeing a sharp fall and agricultural labour increasingly marginally.
Interviews indicate the increase in Muslim landholdings is through purchases or forest encroachment rather than forceful occupation.
"In our village, Nadibhango Muslims bought some land from Bodo people, but we decided we would not sell to them anymore," said Rajan Muchary , a 22-year-old Bodo farmer, pointing to a patchwork of paddy fields in Chakrashila village.
Yet, the hunger for land is unlikely to abate until the Muslims and Bodos find meaningful employment outside agriculture. In 10 years, the BTC has built roads, a university, and a central institute of technology, but jobs are still hard to come by.
In 2011, Bhasha Ali and his Bodo neighbour Rajendra Basumatary set up a brick kiln in Alurbhui. A tall chimney crowned by a trident and a crescent moon was erected on Basumatary's land. "We ran it for about a year until the riots of 2012, when the Muslims came and burnt my house," said Basumatary.
A day before the riots, Ali warned Basumatary a mob was coming. "I am a heart patient; so, I can't walk," he recalled. "Ali's son took my wife and I to safety on a bicycle."
The fact that the recent violence hasn't triggered widespread riots has given both men cause for cautious optimism. "Let the rains end," they said. "Maybe this year, we will restart our business."
