One morning earlier this week, at an eatery in Bhawaragiri town in Assam's Kokrajhar district, over tea in mini-sized glasses, Abdul Ahmed and his friends sat reading the Assamese paper Agradoot. The paper had led with the provocative speech made by Narendra Modi in Jammu in which he claimed he would vanquish the three enemies of India – AK47, Defence minister A K Antony  and AK49 Arvind Kejriwal. Right below, was a story on the Congress manifesto's silence on the issue of corruption.

"Modi ka hawaa chal raha hai. There is a Modi wave in the country," pronounced Ahmed, when I asked him about the headlines. "But it won't affect elections here. Here, the violence of 2012 is still in the air. Yahan abhi bhi 2012 ka hawaa chal rah hai."

***

Nearly two years ago, entire villages – both Muslim and Bodo – emptied out, after clashes broke out between the local indigenous people, the Bodos, and Bengali-speaking Muslims, who form the largest migrant community of the region. Homes were been burnt, people killed. Four lakh people were displaced. It was one of the worst displacements in post-Independent India.

As Padmaparna Ghosh reported in the Times of India recently, the two communities are back to the villages, but they are still a long way from rebuilding their lives and mutual trust – or even homes, for that matter.

In Lakhigaon, Rotima Musahary sat under a tree weaving a dokhna, the traditional Bodo wrap-around dress. "We had lost all clothes," she said, looking up from the loom. "I'm trying to make them back."

When the violence started, she, her husband, and their daughter, were among the last to leave the village. Her husband was caught and beaten up by Muslims from a nearby village. He survived. After several months in a relief camp, they came back to find their house had not. It had been completely razed to the ground. Today, they live in a makeshift house, with plastic sheets as wells, and a tin sheet as roof. Tin sheets were part of the government's compensation package, as were food rations, and 52,700 rupees.

"That's not enough to build a house," Rotima said.

"If we had money, we would build a new one," said her husband, Biro, "even though some of them (Muslims in the area) say don't rebuild your house. It could come down again."

***

Musalmanpara is where the first incidents of violence had taken place. Ajimuddin Mondal was in Delhi when he got a call from his old mother. "I took the first train home," he recalled. "If we have to die, we should all die together, I thought. What would I do living alone?"

They stayed in a relief camp for seven months. They came back to find the house had been burnt down, the house that they had built using the money Mondal had made working at construction sites in Gurgaon and Saharanpur.

"It won't be easy to rebuild it again," he said. "It had cost us Rs 2.5 lakhs."

Deciding to stay back, Mondal used up the money in his savings account to buy an autorickshaw instead.

"How are things?" I asked him.

"While driving around I hear about bad things," he said, "but I haven't seen anything with my own eyes."

"Who would you vote for?"

"For whoever makes me feel like a brother."

***

In Bodoland, the Bodo community forms a third of the population. Bengali-speaking Muslims, Bengali-speaking Hindus, Adivasis, Rajbonshis, Rabhas, and others make up the rest.

The ruling Bodoland People's Front, which is an ally of the Congress, had the support of a large section of Muslims, which gave it an edge over the other Bodo party, the Bodo People's Progressive Front.

But the 2012 violence seems to have changed that.

"It is a tight contest this time," explained the editor of a local newspaper, who did not wish to be named. "Bodo votes will be split between Chandan Brahma of BPF, UG Brahma of BPPF, which has the support of the All Bodo Student's Union. Some might even go to the candidate ofthe Trinamool, Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary, a former National Security Guards chief and the governor of Meghalaya. But it is the non-Bodo vote that is crucial."

Twenty one non-Bodo organisations have extended their support to Hira Sarania, a commander of the armed insurgent group United Liberation Front of Assam. Sarania is contesting as an independent.

But like elsewhere in the country, there are factions within each of the parties and organisations. And there is money power. "Remember, ruling parties have deep pockets," said the editor, suggesting that it would be simplistic to believe non-Bodos would vote as a block.

***

In Bhawaraguri, Ahmed, who identified himself as a businessman, said there was little doubt that the ruling BPF had "failed to give security to people".

It wasn't just the clashes of the violence of 2012, he said.

"There are murders, kidnappings, extortion demands. When you step out from home, you don't know if you would return."

"So much money has come in, but there has been no development under BPF," he went on.

This struck a false note. Even in the villages where Muslim homes had been burnt down, I had been told that development works had picked up after the creation of Bodoland. Near Musalmanpara, a bridge was under construction. Ajimuddin Mondal had pointed in its direction, and said, "Vikaas kar raha hai. Sahi kar raha hai. Lekin saath mien humko bhagaa bhi raha hai. The government is developing the area, but they are also pushing us out."

"Are you from a political party?" I asked Ahmed.

The men sitting at the table, Ahmed’s friends, laughed. He smiled.

"Yes, I am from BPPF. But I'm not going to vote for it this time.”

Ahmed claimed that all Bodo parties were equally anathema for the Muslims in particular and the non-Bodos in general.

"When the Bodos burnt out houses, they did not see who was from BPF, who was from BPPF…They burnt down all," he said. "Chuna kha ke muh jalta hai to dahi se bhi darr lagta hai. If you have burnt your mouth with limestone, you are careful even with curd. After all, the paste of limestone and curd both look the same."

But would a United Liberation Front of Assam commander be any better for the non-Bodo communities given ULFA history of intolerance for non-Assamese speaking people and its violent methods?

"Loha hi lohe ko katata hai," he said. Iron beats iron.

"People want nutan sarkar, a new government," he said.

And he wasn't talking about Narendra Modi.

***

Click here to read all the stories Supriya Sharma has filed about her 2,500-km rail journey from Guwahati to Jammu to listen to India's conversations about the forthcoming elections -- and life.