At Bodo outreach, PM Modi’s allegation — ‘Congress created instability in Assam, helped infiltrators for vote bank’

Paying tributes to the tall leaders from the Bodo community, the PM said, “Bagurumba Dahou is not just a festival. It is a medium to honour our great Bodo tradition, a medium to remember the great personalities of the Bodo community: Bodofa Upendranath Brahma, Gurudev Kalicharan Brahma, Rupnath Brahma, Satish Chandra Basumatary, Moradam Brahma, Kankeshwar Narzary, and many other great personalities who strengthened social reform, cultural renaissance, and political consciousness.”

The Bodos are the state’s largest tribal community and constitute around 5% of the state’s population. This massive cultural outreach also coincides with the ongoing politicking to consolidate alliances ahead of the Assembly elections, as part of which the BJP is trying to maintain an alliance with both major Bodo parties in the state, the Bodoland People’s Front and the United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL), which are rivals.

The area under the Bodoland Territorial Region roughly accounts for 15 of the state’s 126 Assembly constituencies. At the same time, a section of Bodo organisations are discontent with the state government supporting the demand for Scheduled Tribe status to six major communities of the state ahead of the elections.

According to Assam Cultural Affairs Minister Bimal Borah, the preparations for the Bagurumba performance entailed 25 experts training nearly 400 instructors earlier this month, who in turn taught dancers across the districts. The dancers then came to Guwahati on January 12 to rehearse at the venue, the Sarusajai stadium.

Referring to the history of conflict in the state’s Bodo belt stemming from Bodo separatist insurgency, he said, “The 2020 Bodo Peace Accord brought to an end a conflict that had lasted for years. This agreement restored trust, and thousands of young people abandoned the path of violence and joined the mainstream…”

“Since the peace agreement,” he said, “our government has been continuously working for the development of Bodoland. The government has accelerated the rehabilitation process, provided financial assistance worth crores of rupees to thousands of youths so that they can make a new beginning,” he said.

Launching an attack on the Congress, the PM said, “Assam and the Bodoland region remained cut off from the mainstream for so many decades, and the Congress is solely responsible. The Congress created instability in Assam for its own political gain, pushing Assam into the flames of violence… The Congress does not consider the people of Assam as their own.”

“Congress leaders prefer foreign infiltrators because they come here and become a staunch vote bank for them,” he alleged.

“That is why, during Congress rule, foreign infiltrators continued to arrive, occupying millions of acres of land in Assam, and the Congress government continued to assist them,” he said.

Bagurumba Dahou performance comes less than a year after another grand folk dance performance from the state – Jhumur of the tea garden communities – by around 8,600 artistes in front of the PM.

In April 2023, the PM also witnessed a Bihu performance by around 11,000 artistes of Bihu. These mass performances have been pitched by the state governments as an effort to showcase the state’s diverse cultural traditions.