In a decade when the Muslim population in Assam grew by 29.30 percent, in the erstwhile Sidli Revenue Circle of Kokrajhar district, and now a part of Chirang, Muslim population declined by an alarming -49.89 percent. How did Chirang’s population alarmingly decrease between 1991-2001? In the two decades from 1971-1991, the villages with which Chirang district was formed in 2003 as one of the four districts of the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (henceforth, BTAD), growth rate of population was an alarming 103.33 percent, almost double of Assam’s average growth rate of 53.26 percent during the same period. Only in Dhemaji district of Assam, a higher growth rate of population of 107.50 percent was recorded (Census of India couldn’t be carried out in Assam in 1981 due to severe political unrest). In spite of such a high growth rate of population spanning two decades, Muslims constituted no more than 23 percent, approximately, of the total population of these villages in 1991, thus negating any scope for speculation that this growth was due to influx of illegal ‘Muslim’ Bangladeshi immigrants. In contrast to the 103.33 percent growth rate that was recorded in Chirang’s villages over a span of two decades from 1971-1991, the population in these villages plunged shockingly in the succeeding decade, that is, between 1991-2001. The Census of India 2011 records Chirang’s population growth rate between 1991-2001 as -0.08 percent during a decade when Assam’s average population growth was 18.92 percent. Chirang should have added at least 82,000 more to its population with an 18.92 percent growth rate between 1991-2001. Instead, a decade later in 2001, it was left with fewer numbers of people than it had in 1991. In a period of one hundred and ten years between 1901-2011, no district in Assam, except Chirang, had ever recorded a negative decadal growth rate of population. There was no catastrophic natural disaster or an epidemic to account for such shocking depletion of population in Chirang between 1991-2001. Yet, in a state where growth rate of population has become a highly contentious issue, inextricably linked to claims of continued unabated illegal immigration of Muslims from Bangladesh, no one found it pertinent to investigate this ‘unnatural’ negative growth rate of population to find out what it represented, till the Strategic Research & Analysis Organisation took note of this. Read full story at bodoethnicconflict.in/opinions/untold-stories-of-ethnic-cleansing-from-the-bodo-heartland/
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 07:29:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015