The recent Chhath Puja clash in Karbi Anglong — between Bihari settlers performing a sacred river ritual and local Karbi organizations objecting to their use of tribal land — is not an isolated episode. It is the reverberation of a seven-decade-old demographic experiment that began under the Congress government’s post-Independence “Grow More Food” policy.

From Food Security to Demographic Engineering

In the aftermath of Partition, India’s first planners faced a twin crisis — food scarcity and refugee management. The central government launched the Grow More Food programme (1947–1956) to boost agricultural output through land settlement in “underpopulated” areas. In Assam, this policy took a distinctive and politically charged shape.

Encouraged by influential Congress leaders and colonial-era administrators, the government invited Muslim peasants from East Bengal — later identified as Miyas — to settle in the fertile riverine tracts (chars) of Lower and Central Assam. These were hardworking cultivators, adept at reclaiming floodplains for paddy production. Officially, it was a food security project; in reality, it became a vote-bank and land consolidation strategy.

As the Miya population expanded across Goalpara, Barpeta, Nalbari, and Darrang, ethnic Assamese and tribal communities grew anxious. They saw in this policy a deliberate attempt to dilute their demographic and political dominance. The fear was not unfounded — by the early 1950s, administrative reports already warned that the “line system,” which restricted settlement by outsiders, was being ignored.

The Counterbalance: Importing Bihari Peasants

Sensing the demographic anxiety among Assamese Hindus, the Hindu nationalist and bureaucratic lobby within the Congress apparatus quietly advanced a counter-plan — to introduce poor Hindu peasants from Chapra, Siwan, and Bhojpur districts of Bihar into Assam’s frontier hills. This “silent counter-migration” was designed to balance the Miya influx with a Hindu demographic presence.

The Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills — thinly populated tribal areas under Sixth Schedule protection — became the chosen sites. These settlers, later known as Bihari Hindus, were given small land plots under developmental pretexts. Some were attached to forest clearing projects, others to local tea garden labour settlements.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad, India’s first President, reportedly supported the idea as a humanitarian gesture — relocating Bihar’s landless poor to areas of “unused potential.” Yet, the colonial mindset of land as empty space overlooked the deep-rooted tribal ownership systems that predated modern revenue records.

Over time, the Karbis saw their traditional commons — forests, jhum fields, grazing hills — fragmented under state allocation. To them, the Bihari settlers represented not individuals but the instrument of state intrusion. What began as a food policy turned into a demographic project; what was framed as development evolved into displacement.

Faith and Territory Collide: The Chhath Puja Flashpoint

The recent confrontation at Zirim Bazar in Karbi Anglong — where Bihari residents gathered at a riverside ghat for Chhath Puja, and members of a Karbi student body objected, citing unauthorized use of Sixth Schedule land — is the modern echo of this buried history.

For the Biharis, the ritual is sacred, performed in gratitude to the Sun God — a tradition their ancestors carried from the plains of Bihar when they migrated as labourers and settlers. For the Karbis, it symbolized a claim of presence and ownership in an area where tribal control has steadily eroded. The incident quickly escalated — local protests, market shutdowns, and community mobilizations followed, transforming a religious ceremony into a political statement of belonging.

This clash reveals the continuum between land and faith, where even a ritual becomes a territorial act. In Karbi Anglong, religious assertion doubles as demographic geography — temples, churches, and markets often stand as markers of community control over contested terrain.

Land, Autonomy, and the Sixth Schedule Dilemma

At the root of the Karbi–Bihari tension lies the unresolved land question. Under the Sixth Schedule, tribal land cannot be transferred to non-tribals without the permission of the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC). In practice, however, decades of informal occupancy, political patronage, and weak enforcement have created a parallel property system, where settlers hold de facto ownership while tribals retain de jure rights.

This duality has made land both invisible and explosive — invisible in legal terms, explosive in political reality. Each eviction drive or land survey becomes a trigger for ethnic unrest. Each new temple, market, or religious site becomes a spatial declaration of identity.

Thus, when Karbi organizations opposed the Chhath Puja gathering, they were not rejecting the festival — they were defending territorial memory. For the Bihari settlers, opposition felt like a denial of dignity and belonging. Both narratives are valid; both are born of state failure.

A Policy That Became a Security Threat

The “Grow More Food” campaign was meant to fill granaries; instead, it planted demographic tension that still shapes Assam’s political geography. By weaponizing migration for political and economic objectives, successive governments created internal borderlines within the state — lines that today divide valley from hill, tribe from settler, indigenous from migrant.

The Miya vs. Bihari dialectic — one Muslim, the other Hindu — is a reflection of this historic demographic chessboard. Both groups were pawns of state policy, resettled to serve competing ideological interests. Today, both are accused of encroachment, both scapegoated in election rhetoric, and both alienated from the indigenous core.

What connects them is tragedy: they were both instruments of political design, now trapped in its unintended consequences.

The Larger Lesson

The Chhath Puja flashpoint is therefore more than a communal dispute — it is a reminder of the costs of policy myopia. The Karbi–Bihari conflict is not about religion alone, nor merely about land — it is the aftershock of state-engineered demography.

In the evolving security landscape of Assam, ethnicity and demography have become parallel weapons, shaping politics as much as insurgency once did. Unless the historic land issues of Karbi Anglong are addressed through dialogue, legal clarity, and development justice, the district will remain a permanent conflict zone — a border within the border.