Violence in Northeast India

[Rama G.]

Suffering the effects of poverty, neglect, exploitation and religious conversion

Turn on the television any day of the week, anywhere in the world, and you are sure to catch current news detailing terrorist atrocities occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although similar violence is being committed by insurgents in Northeast India, these latter crimes are receiving surprisingly little news coverage.

On a single day in early October, 2004, militants set off bombs and opened gunfire all across India's Northeast, killing at least 46 people and wounding nearly 100. Two bombs exploded in a marketplace in Dimapur, the commercial center in the state of Nagaland. At the same time, a third bomb ripped through a nearby railway station. Twenty-six people died in the Nagaland attacks. Later on the same day, heavily armed Bodo tribal guerrillas in the neighboring state of Assam drove into a town square and gunned down eleven people who were shopping in a local market. Almost simultaneously, guerrillas of the United Liberation Front of Assam, the biggest of the insurgent groups in the Northeast, set off grenades at four places in Assam killing nine people.

India's mountainous Northeast is home to nearly 200 underground militant organizations, some of which have thousands of fighters. (See http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terroristoutfits/index.html) It is generally reported that a portion of these groups are seeking greater autonomy or statehood, while others are demanding secession and the formation of Christian states. http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/2005/1-3/62-65_tradition.shtml

 

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