The Killing Fields.

On the morning of 18th October, 2005 the nation was shocked when it discovered the intensity of the brutality, which characterizes militant attacks in the North-East: twenty-two people belonging to the Karbi community were hacked to death the previous night by Dimasa rebels in Central Assam’s Karbi Anglong district. The gruesome massacre took place after two buses were waylaid by militants and then, set on fire near a Karbi village called Charchim. The militants, next, raided the village, burning homes and killing fifteen more Karbis there. In the wake of this appalling incident, the administration had clamped an indefinite curfew in the area and had also issued shoot-at-sight orders. Karbi Anglong, indeed, is in a vortex of violence and blood-shed.
In 1970, the United Mikir and North Cachar Hills was split into the Mikir Hills district and the North Cachar Hills district and in 1976, the former was renamed Karbi Anglong. Though the district has a Karbi majority, over forty-thousand Dimasas live there and they had a peaceful coexistence until the late nineteen-nineties. This period witnessed the birth of the United People’s Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) which claims to be the protectors of Karbi interests and the Dimasa Halam Daoga (DHD), which wants a separate state for the Dimasas called Dimaraji comprising of North Cachar and portions of Karbi Anglong and Nagaon districts. This demand of the DHD combined with the fact that the area along the Dhansiri river in Karbi Anglong has a Dimasa majority made the UPDS antagonistic towards it and clashes between the two soon became inevitable. In May 2002, the UPDS had entered into ceasefire agreement with the government and the DHD followed suit in January, 2003. Under the ceasefire rules, the 450 listed DHD militants and 115 UPDS cadres were to confine their movement in and around their designated camps. But the rule was not to be adhered to.
What triggered off the recent spate of violence were the murders on September 26 of three Dimasa auto-drivers whose bodies were found near the predominantly Karbi town of Maza. In the three-week-long orgy of bloodshed and devastation that followed, 88 people officially confirmed killed, of which 76 were Karbis and nearly 45,000 people from 200 villages lost their hearths and are presently living in relief camps numbering around 55. The fact that it is the Karbis who are he worst affected by the violence has made many Karbi leaders contend that it was pre-planned by the DHD. The latter, however, has refuted the allegations and has, instead, foisted the charge on the Black Widow, a breakaway DHD faction. The blame-game does not end ever. The Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government in the state feels that both DHD and UPDS are responsible for the protracted violence as both have flouted the ground rules of the ceasefire. The Governor of Assam, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Ajai Sinha has even sent to Delhi the recommendation of disarming both the rebel groups. The authorities have also decided to investigate the allegations that the local CPI ML (Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist) leader Jayanta Rongpi and the former Defense Minister of India, George Fernandes –he visited the area twice before the outbreak-had instigated the clashes. But the Opposition parties like the CPI (ML) and AGP (Assam Gana Parishad) have blamed the State government, which according to them, could have stymied the violence through timely deployment of security forces n the area. The BJP and RSS, on the other hand, have accused the NSCN (Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagalim) of provoking the Dimasas and Karbis by proselytizing people in Karbi Anglong, an accusation to which the NSCN has reacted sharply. All these only render egregious the deplorable state of Indian politics in which every unsavoury occurrence sparks off volleys of accusations and counter-accusations.
The need of the hour, however, is an immediate and thorough revision of the ground rules through democratic consultations and also implementations of other measures like allowing not more than one designated camp for each outfit and that too, only in the area densely populated by members of their community. Monitoring of the militant outfits is also necessary. But these short-term measures are not sufficient; for permanent resolution of conflict between the Dimasas and Karbis, the first and foremost step that needs to be taken by the governments at Guwahati and New Delhi is to initiate peace talks with the DHD and the UPDS. But the DHD has declined to participate in talks unless the DHD camp in the Dhansiri region of Karbi Anglong is shifted; a demand which the DHD has refused to concede. There are, indeed, several hurdles in the path of resolution of the Karbi-Dimasa ethnic strife; the necessity is that the State and the Central governments should look in to the problem and its various aspects, in earnest.