Opinion In Assam, a deepening paranoia, strife between communities
Since the colonial era, many Assamese and indigenous people believe that the migration of Hindu and Muslim Bengali people from across East-Pakistan/Bangladesh had eaten into their land, demography, culture and identity. But the recent Karbi conundrum has raked up old faultlines and seems to be creating new ones
Being dissatisfied with the HC order and “apathy” of both the KAAC and the Assam government, the Karbi organisations’ leaders swung into full-scale agitation The last few days of 2025 saw Assam plunge into a fresh bout of fear, fury and flames. The epicentre of violence this time was the West Karbi Anglong district in central Assam. The Karbi community is one of the Northeast’s oldest aboriginal groups. They constitute the third-largest ethnic group in Assam, next to the Bodo and the Mising. Undivided Karbi Anglong is geographically the largest of Assam’s 35 districts. It accounts for over 13 per cent of the state’s land mass, but only 3.7 per cent of its population.
This tract of land, which reported the second-lowest population density figure (63 persons per square kilometre) is an unlikely site for social tensions around land and demography. But that’s precisely what happened. The sequence of events at the close of 2025, when the situation turned gory, has its beginning in early 2024. The root of the discord was the alleged settlement of Bihari and a negligible number of Bengali Hindu families on the Professional Grazing Reserve (PGR) and Village Grazing Reserve (VGR). Both these varieties of reserved grasslands are meant for open grazing by livestock belonging to both the indigenous Karbi people and old settlers from the plains of India. But no one, not even the “sons of the soil”, have the legal entitlement to settle in reserve grazing lands. Discontent surfaced towards the beginning of 2024 when Karbi nationalist organisations started hurling allegations that the Bihari settlers had encroached on PGR and VGR and built permanent structures. They came down on the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC) and the Assam government, claiming that such “unabated encroachment” on a big scale by “outsiders” diluted the safeguards accorded to Sixth Schedule areas under Article 244(2) of the Constitution of India.
Tension mounted when, in January 2024, a group of Bihari settlers under the banner of Rachanatmak Nonia Sangyukt Sangh (Creative Nonia United Front) submitted a memorandum to the President of India. In that representation, the Sangh pitched for regular rights of possession over PGR and VGR lands where the Bihari people had settled. This daring move from “illegal encroachers” clearly infuriated the Karbi organisations. Sensing the mood of the Karbi organisations, the KAAC asked its officials to issue notices of eviction. But some 300+ Bihari migrants approached the Gauhati High Court with a request to quash the eviction order. The HC stayed the eviction drive with immediate effect.
Being dissatisfied with the HC order and “apathy” of both the KAAC and the Assam government, the Karbi organisations’ leaders swung into full-scale agitation. The fast-unto-death stir was disrupted by the police on December 22. The next day, it was eyeball to eyeball between the Karbi protesters and the Bihari-Bengali Hindu settlers. Reportedly, there were cries of “Jai Shri Ram” and scores of houses were set ablaze. In the police firing that ensued, a Karbi demonstrator, Linus Phangcho, was killed and in the retaliatory violence, a specially able Bengali Hindu, Suruj Dey, was burnt alive when the violent Karbi agitators torched his house. Close to 180 people, including the protesters and the police, sustained injuries. Even the state DGP reportedly could not escape the stone pelting.
In Assam, since the colonial era, many Assamese and indigenous people believe that the migration of Hindu and Muslim Bengali people from across East-Pakistan/Bangladesh had eaten into their land, demography, culture and identity. But the recent Karbi conundrum has raked up old faultlines and seems to be creating new ones. The visible consolidation of different indigenous fronts as a sequel to the Karbi upsurge is an ominous sign of a spike in the paranoia that indigenous communities are already experiencing.
The writer is associate professor and head, Department of Economics, Cachar College
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