Assam: BJSM criticizes ‘distortion’ of Bodo history by Rajbongshi intellectuals

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOKRAJHAR: The Bodoland Janajati Suraksha Manch (BJSM) on Friday expressed its deep anguish and strongly condemned what they called malicious, baseless, and historically distorted statements made by certain Koch-Rajbongshi leaders and intellectuals through social media and other platforms, wherein they claimed that the Bodos were not indigenous of Assam and were allegedly brought from Tibet or Bhutan by the British under the Indo-Bhutan Sinchula Agreement of 1865.

The vice-president of the BJSM, DD Narzary, unequivocally stated that such assertions were entirely false, academically unsound, defamatory, and deeply humiliating to the Bodo society. He said that these statements constituted a direct attack on the dignity, identity, and ancient civilizational history of one of the oldest indigenous communities of Assam. He also said that historical truth could not be erased by fabrication.

Narzary said that according to historical research, Bodo migration into the Brahmaputra valley took place thousands of years before recorded history, far preceding the colonial era. He said that eminent scholars had been unable to determine the exact era of Bodo settlement due to its prehistoric antiquity.

Narzary said that historically and linguistically Koch is a branch of the Bodo race, speaking a Tibeto-Burman language and sharing culture, tradition, and ancestry with Bodos. Rajbongshi, on the other hand, is a distinct caste group, predominantly Indo-Aryan Bengali-speaking, with no linguistic or ethnic linkage to Koch or Bodo, he said. He also said that the presently used term ‘Koch-Rajbongshi’ was an artificial and convenience-based construction which had no alignment with historical reality, and that at present, the artificial label of ‘Koch-Rajbongshi’ was being used despite the impossibility of combining two distinct linguistic and ethnic groups into one community.

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