ABSU plans collective struggle for new states

From our Correspondent

KOKRAJHAR, July 25: The All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU) has taken a plan for collective struggle for new states in India with other struggling groups in India. It organized a get-together for Friends of Bodoland at Sankardev Kalakshetra in Guwahati recently where many prominent persolities from various parts of the Northeast and movement groups took part.

In his key note address, the president of the ABSU, Promod Boro said the ABSU had decided to bring all the friends of Bodos together to discuss and brainstorm on challenges, prospects and perspectives of ethnic communities in Northeast India with the objective to discuss the possible way forward for the struggle of different ethnic communities in Northeast India, to build strong solidarity for each other’s struggle, thereby amplifying the voices through democratic means and to chalk out future strategies to attain respective goals of struggles.

Boro said the forces that operate in isolation, only further remain isolated from the benefit of collective wisdom and cooperative action. He said, “When I say collective, collaborative and cooperative action, it need not mean necessarily a physical unification, but possibly an intellectual and political collective action, collaboration and cooperation. I am very much hopeful that this gathering is the beginning to the end of isolated efforts by all of us. As all our ethnic communities have unique problems, I believe their solutions are also unique.”

“For the Bodos, the single main agenda so far has been creation of a separate state with the me and style of Bodoland, provisioned under the Constitution of India,” he said adding that Bodoland was a demand that they had nurtured for decades to restore their glorious history, rejuvete cultural identity and reclaim their ancestral land and protect them for the generations to come. He urged upon all to critically examine and consider the kind support to their cause, so that the half-a-century old struggle gets boon and strength.

Boro said the concept note that they had shared with others of the unique similarities of ethnic communities in their region was the sense of alietion from the so-called mainstream socio-economic and political discourse. Second, all the ethnic communities have oral as well as written history of their ancestral land being captured by alien powers, thereby, being subjugated to rule of colonial powers leading to injustice, indignity and violence against the ethnic communities, he said.

The ABSU president said the Bodos were one such ethnic community which faced historical subjugation and oppression in the hands of the aggressive ruling cliques. During both pre-independence and post-independent era, the Bodos have faced relentless attack on their land, identity and history. Though the community by and large bravely withstood the aggressive onslaught of socio-political aggression, thereby keeping alive their rich culture, history, tradition and identity, it lost vast track of ancestral territory, faced continuous violence, cultural aggression and so forth. He said from the experience of several decades of struggle, the ABSU and Bodo organizations had come to a conclusion that one of the reasons for ethnic communities facing ubated subjugation, injustice, indignity and violence was lack of solidarity to each other’s struggle. Second, there has been a limited effort to solicit such support and solidarity and this in a way has led to weakening of voices and a dim intellectual and political discourse around the genuine issues taken up by the movement groups.