GUWAHATI, Dec 29: The recent clashes between Karbi Anglong?s majority Karbi and minority Kuki communities had about a decade-long history of acrimony behind it. Though the Karbi leaders are trying hard to project the clashes as ?group clashes?, reality speaks otherwise. Leaders of both the Congress and the Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC) are blaming the anti-talk faction of the United People?s Democratic Solidarity (UPDS), a Karbi militant group and the Kuki Revolutionary Army (KRA), a militant group of the Kukis, for the recent developments. They also go to the extent of demanding a ban on the KRA.
But the facts speak something different. The Kukis, who claim themselves as the old inhabitants of Karbi Anglong like the Karbis, are, however, not regarded by the Karbi leaders as the aboriginal people of the district. The Karbi leaders, irrespective of their political allegiance, view the Kukis as the ?new settlers? or in other words, the tendency of the Karbi leaders is such that they are prepared to treat the Kukis only as persona non grata.
Against the claim of the Kukis that they have been living in Karbi Anglong since time immemorial, the Karbi leaders assert that hardly 50 to 60 years back the Kukis came to the district. But, the Kukis produce the Government orders issued to some of them by the British Government on several occasions, to prove their domicile status in the district.
The size of Kuki population in the district has gone up after the Kuki-NSCN clashes in Manipur as the Kukis from that neighbouring State started to migrate to Karbi Anglong following the NSCN attack on them, claim the Karbi leaders. The Karbi leaders describe this flow of the Kukis from Manipur as an ?influx? and are demanding steps to stop such migration. However, Kuki leaders like LL Kuki, the spokesman of the Kuki National Assembly, are not prepared to accept this as an influx. ?The word ?influx? is generally used only in the cases of illegal migration of foreign nationals and in that case the migration of the Kukis from Manipur is an inter-State migration. We were the inhabitants of undivided Assam and our migration can never be described as influx. Moreover, the so-called migration has not occurred at such a large scale that should provoke such reactions from the Karbi leaders. Only some poor farmers have migrated in the recent past to Karbi Anglong from Manipur?, said LL Kuki emphatically, while talking to this correspondent at Diphu on December 27.
The Karbi leaders like Bidya Singh Engleng, the Congress MLA from Diphu, attribute the recent flare-up between the two groups to the dispute between the UPDS and the KRA over the right to extort the Kuki ginger farmers and the middlemen who are in the trade of this commercial crop. The Kukis are the main producers of ginger in Karbi Anglong. According to a rough estimate, they produce around 2, 000 MT of ginger every year. Though the Kuki ginger farmers get only a nominal price on their produce, the middlemen earn huge amounts from the toil of these farmers.
In the Sighasan Pahar area of the district, the place where most of the Kukis live the main or sole agricultural item produced by the Kuki farmers is ginger. These farmers have to carry their produce to the markets at Manja and Longnit, which are about 50 km and 40 km far from the places like Ganjang, Thekerajan and Jawllian in Singhasan Pahar, for the purpose of selling. The residents of these places use to describe the distance of their areas from the markets and police stations in terms of days, not in terms of minutes of hours. There is no road or any communication facility that may facilitate speedy communication of the people of these areas with the administration. The police stations of Howraghat and Diphu, under which these areas are placed are located at a distance not less than 30 km from these areas.
Why there is no road or other communication facilities connecting these areas with the rest of the district? The Karbi leaders say that these areas are reserve forest areas and the Kukis are staying there illegally. Karbi leaders like ASDC (U) president Holiram Terang however, claim that the Karbis, who have been settling in the Singhasan Pahar areas are staying there from time immemorial. Some of the Kukis were settled near Bokajan in 1942-43 and later they shifted to Singhasan Pahar areas.
As ginger requires more areas for its cultivation, the Kukis started to expand the size of their occupancy and the flow of their fellow people from Manipur has also been making the size of the Kuki population in Singhasan Pahar areas to swell up, said Terang while speaking to the All Party Delegation from the State Assembly at the Diphu Circuit House in the evening of December 27. It may be mentioned here that the anti-talk faction of the UPDS had asked the Kukis to leave Sighasan Pahar on the plea that the Kukis? ginger cultivation had been posing a serious threat to the ecology of the area.
Referring to a statement of the Kuki Impi, the apex body of the Kukis, Terang said that the KRA was the creation of the NSCN (IM) and it had been maintaining links with the NDFB and other militant groups. The issue of its banning should be taken up with the Union Government, he said, maintaining that the UPDS should be appealed to come forward for negotiation. The approach of District congress president Biren Singh Ingti towards the developments concerning the Kuki settlement is also no different from the approach of Terang.
Congress? member of the Karbi Anglong Autonomous District Council Pradip Signar maintained while speaking to this correspondent that the Kukis were not paying tax on the ginger they produce nor they were paying any land tax as the land belonged to the Forest Department. But there political expediency on the part of some of the Karbi leaders compounded the issues in Karbi Anglong.