Remains of the Day in Kokrajhar

I began my career as a photojournalist in 2006 in the Kokrajhar district of the northeastern state of Assam on the India-Bhutan border. Six years later, I was back there to cover the aftermath of the violence that broke out in June and July 2012 between the indigenous Bodos and the Bengali-speaking Muslims, whose ancestors had immigrated from the parts of undivided Bengal, which now form Bangladesh. It was a war between the poorest of the Indians.

Kokrajhar is a pastoral idyll, but its tranquil beauty belies a long history of violence. Graffiti on walls exhorted “Do or Die for Bodoland!” One village housed a “Bodoland Martyrs Cemetery,” where the men killed in the insurgency between Bodo rebels and Indian security forces were buried.

Kokrajhar is the de facto capital of the four districts of western Assam, which the Bodo minority of Assam named Bodoland. After suffering from years of neglect from the Indian government, the Bodos began in 1987 a movement for the creation of a separate state of Bodoland in western Assam. Negotiations failed, and the Bodos started an armed insurgency against the Indian government in the early 1990s. Two main Bodo groups led the militancy, the Bodo Liberation Tigers and the National Democratic Front for Bodoland.

Bodo Liberation Tigers signed a peace accord with the Indian government in 2003 and won a self-governing area, the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts. Since 2003, Kokrajhar and other areas in the autonomous districts have seen some development. Yet the Bodos, who make up 29 percent of the population in those districts, fear that the presence of non-Bodo ethnic groups like Bengali-speaking Muslims will harm their chances of getting a separate Bodoland state.

In the summer of 2012, the tensions and resentment that had been festering between the Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims escalated into violence. Around 100 people were killed, and 400,000 were displaced, mostly Bengali-speaking Muslims. Hundreds of villages were set on fire.

I made my way through the remains of the mayhem with two friends, a reporter and a photographer. Village after village had turned into ash, thousands of people were tucked away into makeshift refugee camps. An eerie silence engulfed the place, shattered only by news of more violence. A harsh rain fell for days. I stayed on for a few months collecting stories, taking pictures.