Territorialisation of Ethnic Space: Politics of Identity among the Bodo Tribes of Assam

Abstract

The relation between region and nation are understood as emerging simultaneously. An understanding of the articulacy of the Bodoland movement which demands a separate homeland in terms of a separate state carved out of Assam in India, demonstrates that, although the Bodoland movement challenges the distribution of autonomy over territory, it reflects in it the Bodo question of identity. This is reflected in the imagined boundaries which endow the problem of land alienation and render it in terms of ethnic space. At the same time, these boundaries present the viable part of being a home to many other communities other than the Bodos. In doing so, the Bodos trace their belongings and affiliations to a tribe. This study is a reflection upon how the Bodoland movement of the twentieth century takes up the issue of tribal land alienation in the proposed Bodo homeland. The paper intends to brings out the relation between land alienation and the government policies of land allotment which are being used for various development purposes.