What had happened at Batadrava on Saturday should not be considered a stray incident. A mob comprising both men and women attacked and set a police station on fire – such an incident had not happened in Assam before. Assamese or indigenous people have never indulged in such acts of violence even during the peak of ULFA or NDFB/BLT militancy. While the primary information is that a person suspected to be of a criminal background, who was held by the police had allegedly died under mysterious circumstances while being taken to a hospital, it is a big question in front of a civilized society as to whether that could be a provocation enough for someone to organize a mob and attack and reduce a police station to ashes. The demographic composition of the area under the jurisdiction of Batadrava, or rather, the demographic change that the area has undergone in the past 50 or 60 years, has to be taken into account while carrying out a detailed investigation into Saturday's incident. Batadrava or Bardowa is one of the holiest places for the Assamese people, it is not just the birthplace of the great saint-reformer Srimanta Sankaradeva, but also the place from where the Mahapurush had launched his amazing journey of social and religious reforms and literary and cultural renaissance in the 15th century. Given this backdrop, Batadrava or Bardowa should have been the most peaceful and most cultured place in the whole of Assam. That not all is not well in Batadrava and the adjoining areas can be easily understood from several social media posts by persons of the indigenous communities belonging to that area in the aftermath of Saturday's incident. In one such post, a well-known social entrepreneur hailing from that area has said that it is extremely risky for people to travel through Batadrava, Dhing and Doomdoomiya after sunset. There has been large-scale encroachment of land belonging to Batadrava Xatra by people suspected to be of East Bengal and Bangladesh origin in the past 50-60 years. All that is left of the once prosperous Kobaikata Xatra is just the portion of land on which the namghar stands. The same is the case with Patekibari Xatra. A detailed study and analysis of successive census reports of the area in the past ten decades will bring to light one of the finest examples of how systematically a demographic invasion of Assam has been going on. Hundreds of families belonging to various indigenous communities, which have abandoned their ancestral homes and shifted to other places, will testify how systematically they have been forced to leave by the encroachers and immigrants. There were times when cattle theft, lifting of girls and forcible reaping of ripe paddy from land belonging to families of indigenous communities were common there. The names of the villages will be enough to prove that those once upon a time belonged to various indigenous communities, most of whom have run away due to the swarming immigrants. At least two books published by the Assam State Museum in the late 1980s contain information about several such incidents where several Xatra institutions and land belonging to these institutions have been systematically encroached upon and forcibly occupied by the immigrants since the time Lord Curzon and Saadullah had opened the floodgates for the hordes of land-hungry Muslim peasants of East Bengal. With political patronage and protection provided by political parties like Congress, these immigrants have only become powerful and bolder every passing day. It is easy to sit in Guwahati and hold the police responsible for what happened at Batadrava on Saturday. It is a fact that there was laxity on the part of the police which had contributed to the situation suddenly turning so horrible. But then, only those who have suffered due to the demographic invasion of the birthplace of Mahapurush Srimanta Sankaradeva, and only those who have been to the Bardowa Thaan after passing through a large area where not a single inhabitant belonging to the indigenous communities can be found, will understand the ground reality of the area. There can be no second opinion that Saturday's Batadrava incident is a direct fallout of the increasing clout of the immigrants having their roots in erstwhile East Bengal or East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. But what is more important is that what had happened at Batadrava on Saturday could just be the beginning. Days are not far away when such incidents of attacks on police stations by the immigrants will become an everyday affair. How the government of Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma proposes to tackle this situation will be the most important thing to be noticed in the days to come.