A Rajdhani Express in Assam was ripped apart by a bomb blast 280 km from Guwahati, near Kating village. The train had to travel 1.5 km to the nearest Chongajan station before stopping. Dead bodies fell off the train before it halted. The attack has been carried out by the ANLA (Adivasi National Liberation Army) as a reprisal against the recent attack on tribal protestors in the streets of Guwahati. There a tribal girl was stripped and molested. The Assam police believe that external insurgent forces as well as Assamese tribal welfare groups may also be involved. The bombs were planted under the ballast of the tracks.This has been reported by CNN.

To prevent such human tragedies in the future we have now to look for answers to some questions. Why are the tribal people in Assam unhappy? And if someone is indeed displeased with the Government, does that give them the right to be violent? And previously Assam had been rocked by xenophobic killings of Hindi speaking minorities. Is Assam the new intolerant face of regionalism in India?

Our Constitution makers envisaged a fair and just India. The tribal people of the land have always felt left out from the mainstream. So job and educational reservations became a necessity. But now opportunistic politicians are using this Reservation-provision to play caste-politics. They have effectively removed any economic parameters from the consideration of who among the reserved categories might receive help. Present day Reservation policies are biased against the General Category. There are lakhs of impoverished General category students who face bleak futures and unemployment just because they have been born in the General category. There are educated, well off SC and ST families whose younger generations continue to reap the advantages of reservations. The truth of the matter is that, often the really needy and poor SCs and STs do not get any help from the Governments. These disparities are repeatedly leading to tribal-protests and counter protests. This reprehensible blast is an outcome of this dialectics of Reservation-related violence.

Geographical isolation from mainland India leading to regional biases and unemployment has made the North-East feel long-neglected. Assam is seeing a change of sorts — when people feel lose out to competition; they start hating particular communities for their own problems. This has led to increases xenophobia in Assam. Many of the tribals in Assam speak a different language from the main urban populace. These tribals face linguistic opposition in Assam. This xenophobia is still simmering. The train blast is a backlash against all these prejudices.

Unless the governments in both the Centre and the State do something, this sort of violence will only escalate and spiral out of control. But when our politicians are busy pushing their own agendas, there is no hope for the ordinary Assamese.

Images: MC News & China Daily