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Bodos restive as Govt keeps mum
Published on Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 12:00, Updated on Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 14:51 in 
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Udalguri Camp: Since the May 2005 ceasefire, militants of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) have stopped carrying guns.
But they remain in training and the young cadres are given lessons on guerilla ambush tactics.
"We are still strong enough. If we wanted to, we can strike India, we can damage India with resources and power," General Secretary of NDFB, Basumatari Swmkhwr.
After flushing the Bodos out of their jungle camps in Bhutan in 2002, the Government may now be waiting for the NDFB to weaken in military terms.
And at the Udalguri camp of the NDFB, the wait for a separate Bodo state is on. Frustration is evident as over a year later, the Government of India is yet to start talks.
"We are struggling for the liberation of Bodoland. That means, we want to liberate the land owned by the Bodo people. The present situation is for peace and we are on the peace processes and arms is not necessary at this moment," says Swmkhwr.
Unlike other rebel groups in the Northeast, the NDFB is not visibly flexing its muscle. "We had a relationship with NSCN and ULFA and other militant groups of the northeast. But after having ceasefire with the Government of India, we are not in close terms with those organisations," says Swmkhwr.
Though on the surface, the NDFB cadets strike a different note, deep down there is simmering discontent. "For my people, for Bodo land, I joined to bring freedom to Bodo land," says an NDFB Cadet.
The Bodo demands are not secessionist. But the autonomous territorial council created in 1993 within Assam, did little to satisfy their democratic aspirations or bring development to their villages, and so the struggle for a Bodo identity stays alive…
"Though India says that it is ruled by democracy, though it says it has a federal system, but states under the Government of India don't have the right to exercise or utilise its own resources," says Swmkhwr.
The only way to erase real and imagined perceptions of suppression of the indigenous people of India is to give them the right to govern their traditional homeland.
This calls for a radical restructuring of the Indian federal system. Otherwise, inaction will continue to aggravate the hidden wars of India.
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