Why Gorkha-Khasi Ethnic conflict in Northeast India ?

- Rabin Joshi

 

The Gorkha-Khasi conflict of the second half of May indicates not only the level of inter-community distance, but how it plays out amidst a border conflict between two states of the Indian Northeast ."

Marriages, history shows us, are often tactical arrangements between rulers to expand empires,strengthen political alliances, establish peace between warring nations, avoid wars or create harmony in aconflict-ridden society. The Romans did it, the Mughals followed suit, and Nepal's rulers were no different, in the seventh century marrying off Princess Bhrikuti to powerful emperor Songtsan Gampo of Tibet. Similarly, in the eighth century, King Jayadev II of Nepal brought home Rajyamati, daughter of Harshavardan, the king of Kamrup, Assam. In contrast, when Kul Bahadur Magar, a Nepali coalmine worker in an area of Meghalaya that borders Kamrup, married Deng, a local ethnic Khasi woman, he did not have lofty goals of alliance building or peace-making. Who thinks like that?' asked 45-year-old Magar. I liked her, she liked me. We were both young and one day we married.' That was 13 years ago. Since then, the couple has been living peacefully in a shack with their four children, near the coalmine where Magar works. But their peace has now been shattered. The simmering mistrust between Nepali-speakers and the local Khasi community erupted into full-scale conflict during the course of May. Several Gorkhas (Nepali-speaking Indians) and migrants from Nepal were killed, the tragedies highlighting the constant vulnerability of both categories of Nepali-speaking residents of the Northeast. At the heart of the conflict lies a beautiful village called Langpih (or Lampi), claimed by both Assam and Meghalaya. 

Both states are strongly backed by villagers sharply divided along ethnic lines. The Gorkhas want the present Assamese authority in the village unchallenged, while the Khasi feel the area belongs to Meghalaya. The dispute has existed since 1972, when new states were created in the Northeast, and Meghalaya was carved out of Assam. Occasional arson and the stealing of crops belonging to membersof the opposing community have been common in the area. But the latent tensions came to the world"sattention on 14 May, when the Assamese police gunned down four Khasi who were part of a mobattacking Gorkhas in the village and at the police checkpost. The mob had planned to attack the Gorkhas,particularly their leader, Chakra Bahadur Chhetri, who the Khasi feel represents and promotes theinterests of Assamese administration in the village.In turn, the Khasi started to vent their anger against Nepalis and Gorkhas throughout Meghalaya. While attacking or issuing quit notices, the Khasi rarely differentiate Gorkhas from Nepali migrants. But lately they have been raising voices against the provision of the 1950 Indo-Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty that allows the free movement of citizens from one country to another. The Khasi feel that this provision should not be implemented in Meghalaya, so as to stop the flow of Nepali migrant workers from Nepal.

The Khasi blame Nepali migrants for stealing their jobs charges that Nepali migrants reject, saying it isthe locals who own and run the coalmines, and hire Nepalis as cheap labour. One 70-year-old Gorkha, Loknath Bastola, was burnt alive in Umiam (Badapani) village, just south of Shillong. The Nepali workers believe there may have been more killings in the Jaintia Hills district that borders Bangladesh, where thousands of Nepalis labour in the unregulated coalmines. After the Langpih incident, the Meghalaya government set up a police post in the village µto protect Khasi people, at the insistence of Khasi organisations. The new installation is just a few hundred metres from the border outpost of the Fourth Assam Police Battalion. The village thus resembled a war zone, with armed villagers patrolling the area after dark. 

Settling the Jungle

The level of mistrust and anger is high at all levels. For its part, the Shillong government believes Guwahati is encouraging Gorkhas to bring more of their kin to the village so as to strengthen Assam claim over the land. Assam police is helping to bring up new [Gorkha] settlements, said Meghalaya chief minister, Mukul Sangma, adding that the move had created a sense of mistrust and insecurity among the population. Indeed, Gorkhas say they do feel the need to bring in more of their own from other parts of Assam, so that the Khasi cannot intimidate them. We have been living here for more than two generations, said Chakra Bahadur Chhetri, the village headman, or gaunbudha. "Our grandfathers came from Nepal and settled here when no Khasi lived here. It was a jungle at that time, and our grandfathers felt it was a good place for their cattle."The Nepali-speakers first arrived in Meghalaya not via Guwahati, like many do today. And they did notcome in search of employment. Rather, in 1827 they came armed, in uniform, as members of the Eighth Gorkha Rifles of the British East India Company from Sylhet, in modern-day Bangladesh. In 1835, Cherrapunji, also in Assam, was made the headquarters of the Gorkha Rifles, from where the British briefly ruled. 

But the excessive rain and humidity of the location said to be one of the wettest places on Earth eventually forced the British to find a cooler area, explains Bikram Bir Thapa, a Shillong-basedwriter who tracks Gorkha history in the area. Ultimately, the British settled on Shillong, the capital of present-day Meghalaya, and moved in during 1866. The following year, the Eighth Gorkha Rifles also shifted their base to the new capital. After they retired from the service, these Nepali soldiers did not return home. Rather, they stayed on near the cantonment area of Shillong, creating a community that grew as relatives and neighbours from Nepal migrated to the area. Once the retired soldiers stayed here, said Thapa, a retired Gorkha soldier himself,µtheir near and dear ones started coming in from Nepal. Some of them were farmers and cattle herders who didn't stay in Shillong but shifted to the surrounding hills and spread across Meghalaya. By all accounts, the size of the Nepali-speaking community started growing in earnest in the 1880s, and the descendents survive today as Indian citizens of Nepali origin.By 1876, the Gorkhas had already opened a school in Shillong, today known as the Gorkha Pathshala. 

According to the Gorkha community's history, the Khasi were not living in the area when they began to settle in and around Shillong. Based on Indian census data, the Gorkhas do appear to have constitutedthe majority community in Shillong until around 1960. But the numbers have since dwindled sharply, with just 30,000 Gorkhas today living in the city of 600,000 made up mostly of Khasi. On the other hand, there is no reliable data about how many Nepali seasonal migrants work in the coalmines in Meghalaya,but it is commonly accepted that more than 100,000 Nepalis work in the mines during the peak season,from December to May. Work is slow during summer, when migrant labourers go back to Nepali villages to tend to their own fields. The presence of Nepalis in Meghalaya has been an issue in local politics since 1986, when hundreds of migrant workers were chased out of the state from the coalmine areas of the Jaintia Hills. The next year, the Gorkhas of Shillong were targeted, during which time some 30,000 Nepalis and Gorkhas were expelled from Meghalaya. Nepalis were also targeted during the anti-foreigner" movement that swept the whole of the Northeast during the early 1980s, triggered by the µson of the soil" agitation in Assam. 

Harmonious, but few rights 

Ethnicity-based conflicts are not new in the Indian Northeast, of course, and neither are they limited to those between the Nepali and Khasi communities. While the first group of Nepalis to arrive in Meghalaya were soldiers, this is not the case in other parts of the Northeast, especially present-day Assam, which had close ties with Nepal long before the arrival of the Gorkhas in Meghalaya.Today, Nepalis are the only ethnic group with a presence in each of the seven states of Northeast India, said a Gorkha in Shillong who works for the government but asked not to be identified. No Garo lives in Arunachal, no Mizo is found in Meghalaya they prefer to live in their own respective states. But Nepalis are everywhere, and have been living in harmony with all these communities in all these states."This harmonious" circumstance has done little to ingratiate the Nepali community to the Indian state, however. 

The government worker added that Nepalis in all of these states have generally been ignored by the Indian authorities, who do not consider the population as one of its own. Many of these indigenous communities in the Northeast are fighting for independence from India," he said. But we the Nepalis arefully committed to the Indian union we are in fact working for the strengthening of the Indian union. But the irony is that we, the linguistic minority, are taken for granted by the Indian establishment.The obvious problem lies in the confusion between migrants and recent arrivals who are citizens of Nepal, and Indian Nepalis or Gorkhas, who seek to consolidate their Indian citizenship. An additional complication exists in the form of the India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950, by which each country seeks to consider citizens of the other as its own. By this token, even the migrants from Nepal should be able to avail themselves of the Indian state's protection. But India's Nepalis today see the 1950 Treaty as a bane, as it does not create enough of a distinction between them as Indians and the migrants who are Nepali citizens. This mix-up of identities makes Indian Nepalis easy targets at times of tension,and makes them suspect in the eyes of officialdom in both New Delhi the states of the Northeast. Neither has the Nepali integration into local communities been complete. Though they have been living inthe region for some two centuries, the Gorkhas have found it difficult to assimilate with some indigenous communities. 

While most Nepalis in Assam live in harmony with the locals, having learned the language and adapted to the culture, certain cultural, linguistic and social differences has made assimilation difficult in Meghalaya. And this is not necessarily surprising: a Khasi-majority state created exclusively to look after the community's interest, everyone else is an outsider in Meghalaya. For instance, the large majority of Khasi are Christian, while the Gorkhas are Hindu hence worshiping the cow, which the Khasi eat. They try their best to convert Nepalis to Christianity, said one Gorkha leader in Guwahati, adding that they target those who are unwilling to convert." On the other hand, several factors bring the Gorkhas closer to the Assamese. Both communities speak languages that belonging to the Indo-Aryan group. Khasi belongs to the Austro-Asiatic practice the same religion and live in patriarchal societies. (The Khasi are matrilineal.) Gorkhas can own land in Assam with ease like any other Assamese, but they cannot in Meghalaya, where tribal communities get priority. Assam also faces land disputes in other parts of the state, from Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. With the majority of the residents in their border areas belonging to the ethnic community of the claimant state, Assam has found it difficult to lay claim over these areas. 

ORIGINAL SOURCE