Assam: TRPA Opposes Renaming of Tribal Places, Demands Protection of Tribal Heritage and Identity

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOKRAJHAR: Tribal Right Protection Association (TRPA) has vehemently opposed the renaming the important places belonging to tribal people in the name of a particular religious messiah and urged the state cabinet to rename the rivers, hills, and important places by revisiting the historical facts.

The president of TRPA Janaklal Basumatary said in a statement over the move to change the name of Hojai Nagar to Srimanta Sankardev Nagar, “Hojai is for Hojai tribes and there is no necessity to change its name to Srimanta Sankardev Nagar. This is injustice for tribal cultural heritage.” He said that earlier, the forest department recorded wrong etymology of the name of Orang reserve forest saying that it was named after Oran people which was against the actual Boro etymology ‘Oronbari’ which means a tick forest. He said that the Oran people were migrants for tea garden work during the British tea plantation period whereas the Bodos are the original inhabitants of Assam since time immemorial. He also said that all names of the rivers and places, trees, and grasses had Boro-origin and thus the Boro word, ‘Oron’ (thick forest), is the origin-name of Orang reserve forest.

The president of the association Janaklal Basumatary demanded that the Assam cabinet should change the wrong records of the forest department and re-correct it to its origin name of forest. “The name of a forest cannot be after some group of people, that too who are not original inhabitants of the state. Similarly, Hojai Nagar relates to the original inhabitants ‘Hojai tribe’ and there is no valid reason to change its name to Sankardev Nagar,” he said, adding that the change of name of a particular place of tribal people will hurt the cultural heritage and antiquity of Hojai tribes. He also termed that the Assam cabinet’s decision to change the name of Hojai Nagar to Sankardev Nagar was unjustified and unnecessary.

Basumatary said that there was a growing tendency to ignore the right of tribal people to protect and promote their culture and cultural heritage and a tendency to suppress the identity, antiquity and history of tribal people, the original indigenous sons of the soil in Assam. Citing examples, he said that Kalaguru Bishnu Prasad Rabha Prekshagriha was changed to Sankardev Prekshagriha, and the area of Rupnath Brahma Park was changed to Bhupen Hazarika Park in Kokrajhar town without rhyme and reason. Basumatary claimed that it showed the rising chauvinistic attitude of Assamese people. “Our tribal MLAs fail to protect rights of the tribal people and to promote their culture and cultural heritage of those who are the sons of the soil, original indigenous people of Assam,” he said.

The tribal leader and former IRS officer of Rajasthan questioned the word ‘khilanjia’ (indigenous) and asked what is the constitutional safeguard and to whom to protect. He said that the constitutional safeguard is provided to those communities who need protection from the domination and exploitation, culturally, economically, educationally, politically, and of land rights by other advanced majority communities.

“People who need protection are schedule caste and scheduled tribes and no non-tribal is qualified for special constitutional safeguard as he or she enjoys full rights of constitution and do not need any protection, being the dominating class in the society,” he added saying that the dominating class cannot be indigenous people as per UN charter definition of Indigenous People, held in 2007. He also said that AASU’s (including 30 tribal organisations) demand for implementation of clause 6 of Assam Accord is a ploy to exploit the constitutional safeguard of tribal people in the name of their artificially defined indigenous status.

“This is a high class example of exploitation of the rights of tribal people. They are diluting the constitutional safeguard of tribal people with the artificially defined non-tribal indigenous. There is no provision to grant to these artificially-defined non-tribal indigenous people the special constitutional safeguard in the constitution of India,” he added.

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