A mob in Assam’s West Karbi Anglong district on Monday set fire to the ancestral home of Tuliram Ronghang, a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and the chief of Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council, a district official told Scroll.
Following the violence, the authorities in the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts prohibited public gatherings under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita until further orders.
Members of the Karbi community have been on a hunger strike for about two weeks, demanding that Hindi-speaking persons with origins in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh be evicted from the town of Kheroni. The town is about 25 km from Dongkamukam, where Tuliram’s home is located.
The protesters have been demanding that Hindi speakers be evicted from village grazing reserves and professional grazing reserves.
On Monday morning, the Assam Police detained seven protesters, including women, from the site of the hunger strike. This triggered protests later in the day, and led to Tuliram’s home being burned down, a resident of the area told Scroll.
Four persons, including a policeman, were injured when security forces opened fire at the demonstrators, PTI reported.
A police officer who was at the spot said that about 800 to 1,000 persons arrived in the area and broke police barricades.
“They threw stones at us,” the official said. “Many police personnel, including the superintendent of police, were injured.”
Pawan Kumar, a member of the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council, said that the protesters also tried to torch his home and damaged a vehicle. “They tried to torch the house, but the security personnel prevented them from doing so,” Kumar told Scroll.
The Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council is a self-governing body set up to administer the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. It is currently headed by the BJP.
The Karbi community is Assam’s third largest tribe, constituting 11.1% of the state’s 38.8 lakh tribal population, after Bodo and Mising.
In February 2024, the council ordered officials to evict more than 2,000 families from grazing land in the hills of Assam, alleging that they were unauthorised occupants of the land. Most of those affected were Hindi-speaking residents with origins in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
The action had come in the backdrop of protests and demonstrations by Karbi civil society groups against the Hindi-speaking population in the region. One such protest was followed by violence in Kheroni on February 15, 2024, when members of a Karbi students’ group came under attack allegedly from Hindi speakers.
Also read:
Why tribal groups in Assam’s Karbi hills are demanding the eviction of Hindi speakers
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