No Way Out of the Woods Political Ecology of Extraction, Livelihoods and Conservation in Assam Anwesha Dutta Dissertation presented in fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D. degree in Political and Social Sciences, Option Political Sciences Ghent University Academic year 2018-2019 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Bert Suykens Map of the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts by Furfur. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. ii Under a CC BY license. Version due to Ram, M. S., Kittur, S. M., Biswas, J., Nag, S., Shil, J., & Umapathy, G. (2016). Genetic diversity and structure among isolated populations of the endangered Gees Golden Langur in Assam, India. PloS one, 11(8), e0161866, which is modified and reprinted from Choudhury et al 2002 [4] under a CC BY license, with permission from Zoos’ Print Journal, Coimbatore, India, original copyright 2002. iii 2018 connues Struggle for a separate state - 2015-Present Bodo Clashes Bodo- 2014 Dec: Adivasi Muslim ClasHes and May: 2003 BTC Created -Muslim ceasefire 1998-1999 clasHes.BLT clashes Bodo iv 1996 Bodo-Santhal Accord. aRacks. 1993-1995 1993 Bodo st BAC Created - 1 launches more violent Dissa?sfied witH BAC.BLT MoS connue to More violence 1991 Bodos Bajrang demand for statehood. 1990 Feb-Mar launched by GOI Operaon movement /AASU/ABSU 1989-1990 ULFA agitaon connues. Bodoland . gets more violent. Assam Bodoland 1987-1989 Movement for a separate state of Violence, arson, loot. 1987 v I Want to be Killed by an Indian Bullet I heard the news long ago that they were looking for me; in the morning in the afternoon at night. My children told me; my wife told me. One morning they entered my drawing room, the five of them. Fire, water, air, earth, sky — are the names of these five. They can create men; also destroy men at whim. They do whatever they fancy. The very avatar of might. I ask them: “When will you kill me?” The leader replied: “Now. We’ll kill you right now. Today is very auspicious. Say your prayers. Have you bathed? Have you had your meal?” “Why will you kill me? What is my crime? What evil deed have I done?” I asked them again. “Are you a poet who pens gobbledygook and drivel? Or do you consider yourself a seer with oracular powers? Or are you a madman?” asked the leader. “I know that I’m neither of the first two beings. I cannot tell you about the last one. How can I myself tell whether I’m unhinged or not?” The leader said: “You can be whatever you would like to be. We are not concerned about this or that. We will kill you now. Our mission is to kill men.” I ask: “In what manner will you kill me? Will you cut me with a knife? Will you shoot me? Will you club me to death?” “We will shoot you.” “With which gun will you shoot me then? Made in India, or made in another country?” “Foreign made. All of them made in Germany, made in Russia, or made in China. We don’t use guns made in India. Let alone good guns, India cannot even make plastic flowers. When asked to make plastic flowers India can only produce toothbrushes.” I said: “That’s a good thing. Of what use are plastic flowers without any fragrance?” vi The leader said: “No one keeps toothbrushes in vases to do up a room. In life a little embellishment has its part.” “Whatever it may be, if you must shoot me please shoot me with a gun made in India. I don’t want to die from a foreign bullet. You see, I love India very much.” “That can never be. Your wish cannot be granted. Don’t ever mention Bharat to us.” Saying this, they left without killing me; as if they didn’t do anything at all. Being fastidious about death I escaped with my life. Thangjam Ibopishak Singh, 2003. Translated by Robin S Ngangom. vii Contents Acknowledgement xii Abstract xiv Nederlandstalige Samenvatting xvii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 The Personal Shall Always be Political . 1 1.2 Whose (forest) land is it, anyway? Contextualizing Conflict — Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) and Northeast India . 3 1.3 Historicizing the Conflict Context in BTAD . 5 1.4 Political Ecology: Of Extraction, Conservation and Counter-Insurgency . 10 1.5 Illegal Timber Extraction and Conservation on War-footing . 14 1.6 “We are encroachers in the forest” — Of Space and Legal Geography . 16 1.7 Political Ecology (and Economy) of Livelihoods . 20 1.8 The Notion of ‘Everyday’ and Northeast Indian Studies . 24 1.9 Organization of the PhD Thesis . 27 1.10 References . 31 2 Methodology 37 2.1 Personal Intimacies of Conflict in the Everyday — Field Notes from Beyond the Chicken’s Neck . 37 2.2 The Landscape and I: Context and Description of the Setting . 38 2.3 Weaving Ethnography — Political Ecology and Conflict Studies in a Fragile Context 41 2.4 Living with the Rich while Researching the Poor — Traversing through Challenging Terrains: the Insider-Outsider Conundrum . 44 2.5 “Why are you going to these Bodo villages? They have weapons in every house and they burnt our villages and killed our sons” — Research Site(s), Restrictions on Access and the Everyday . 47 viii 2.6 “So you are an Assamese? Or Bengali? Are you a Bangladeshi?”— In pursuit of my positionality while doing ethnography at home, or is it home? . 50 2.7 Risks and Ethics . 53 2.8 References . 57 3 The Politics of Complexity in Bodoland: The Interplay of Contentious Politics, the Production of Collective Identities and Elections in Assam 61 3.1 Introduction . 61 3.2 Background: Creation of BTAD, Contentious Politics, Ethnic Identity and Identity- Based Violence . 64 3.3 Political and Cultural (Non)Representation, Ethnic Subjugation, Contention: Bodos and the Ethnic ‘Others’ . 67 3.4 Parliamentary Elections: Collective Action, Mobilisation, and Shifts in Alliances . 70 3.5 Collective Action through Ethnic Mobilisation and Subsequent Retaliation . 71 3.6 The Bodo–Muslim Contention: Changing Demographics and Fear of Land Alienation 73 3.7 Making ‘Claims’: Retaliation Through the Use of Electoral Politics . 74 3.8 Aftermath: Observations and the Post-Election Scenario . 76 3.9 Conclusion . 78 4 Constellations of Power and Authority in the Political Economy of Illegal Timber Extraction in BTAD, Assam 80 4.1 Illegal Timber Economies in Violent Contexts . 85 4.2 The Constellation of Authority and Power in BTAD: (ex-)Rebels, the Indian State, and the (ex-)Rebel-State . 88 4.3 Historical Background . 88 4.4 The Travels of the Illegal Timber Economy: From Firewood to High Value Logging 90 4.5 (Unequal) Relations of Exchange: Power, Authority, and Control over the Timber Trade . 95 4.6 Regulatory Excess: Taxation, Protection, and Seizure . 95 4.7 Violence and the Timber Economy . 98 4.8 Coping Economies and Unequal Relations of Exchange . 99 4.9 Conclusion: Everyday Timber Extraction Consumption . 102 4.10 Footnotes . 103 5 Rural Informalities and Forest Squatters in the Reserved Forests of Assam, India 106 5.1 Introduction — Why Rural Informality? . 107 ix 5.2 Jungle Becomes Forest — The Colonial Project . 110 5.3 A Theatre of Violent Conflict on Ethno-Religious Lines: Forest becomes Frontline 111 5.4 Comparative Epistemologies: Urban-Rural . 113 5.5 Ethnographic Inquiry into the Site and the Notion of Dokhol . 115 5.5.1 Recurring Violence on Ethnic Lines . 122 5.5.2 Periodic Elections . 124 5.5.3 Episodic Evictions . 125 5.5.4 Construction of (Semi-)Permanent Structures . 127 5.6 Counter-Insurgency Operations . 128 5.7 Conclusion . 129 5.8 References . 130 6 Forest becomes Frontline — the Ecological Task Force, Conservation and Counter- Insurgency in a Space of Violent Ethno-Religious Conflict in Assam, India 134 6.1 Introduction . 135 6.2 Khaki Conservation or Green Militarization — Conservation, COIN and Conflict . 138 6.3 Conservation with Might . 139 6.4 Military and not Militarized Conservation . 141 6.5 “Our mandate is not COIN” — the Military’s (ETF) Role in Risky Conservation in Assam . 144 6.6 Conflict and Conservation in the RFs . 147 6.7 The Forest Department and the ETF — Community Engagement, Inter-Institutional Competition and Local Politics . 150 6.8 The ETF and the Local Political Context . 153 6.9 Concluding Remarks . 156 6.10 References . 158 7 A Phenomenological Exploration of Lived Experiences of Violence in Northeast India.161 7.1 Introduction . 161 7.2 The Two Cases — Sites of Violence and Methodology . 164 7.3 Situating the Study Within the Existing Discourse around Anthropology of Conflict 167 7.4 Analysing Comparative Lived Experiences of Conflict across Two Sites of Narratives168 7.4.1 The Case of the Relief Camp . 168 7.4.2 The Village of Misalmaari . 172 7.5 Emergence of two Tropes — Endurance and Survival . 175 7.6 In Conclusion . 176 x 7.7 References . 177 8 Conclusion — Carrying on in the Charred Forests 180 8.1 “This (forest)land is mine” — RF as Site(s) of Extraction, Encroachment and Informalities . 182 8.2 “No Counter-Insurgency is not our mandate and we are not here to foster relations with local communities” — Conservation by Armed Forces in Zones of Conflict . 186 8.3 Beyond the Woods — Conflict, Coping and the Everyday . 188 8.4 Avenues for Further Research . 191 8.5 “Every morning we go to work in the Bhutanese town of Gelephu, right across the border” — the India-Bhutan Borderlands . 192 8.6 “How does it matter who we vote for, our houses will be set on fire and our children will be killed, anyway” — Post-Colonial Democracy and Elections in Sensitive Spaces .