The Aftermath

A documentation of the 2012 ethnic violence in Assam makes it to one of the biggest international photography festivals, Rencontres d’Arles

In the last week of July 2012, the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD), administered by the autonomous Bodoland Territorial Council of Lower Assam, witnessed large-scale ethnic violence between local Bodos, considered original inhabitants of the area, and migrant Bengali Muslims. More than 400,000 people of both communities were reportedly displaced during the clashes. Ethnic conflict, displacement and migration in Lower Assam is, however, not a new phenomenon. It has often been used by both State and non-State actors as a political tool, resulting sometimes in the mass exodus of entire communities, an ethnic cleansing of sorts. In July and August 2012, an eerie silence accompanied me as I traversed the vast Western Assam countryside, dotted with one burnt village after another, both of Bodos and migrant Bengali Muslims. Arson had been used as a tool of terror with devastating effect by both sides of the brutal conflict, with villages targeted on the basis of the identity of their residents.

— Text by Vivek Singh

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