India lives in her villages, we're told, in every other sanctimonious public speech. That's bullshit, just a figleaf. India dies in her villages.- Arundhati Roy Things took a bloody turn on Christmas eve for the residents of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Udalguri and Sonitpur districts in Assam. With the Peshawar killings still ripe in our memories, this spate of communal, territorial revenge in Assam caused nationwide shock. As many as 76 tribals were killed and more than 5,000 Adivasis and Bodos were displaced. But did you know that this was never an isolated incident? The region's nightmarish killings have been going on for two long decades now. The last five years have seen a steady rise in violence.

Why?

The indigenous Bodo tribes have been vociferous in their appeal for a separate state since the mid-80s as they feel cornered in their own region by Adivasis and Muslim settlers from Bangladesh, who were originally brought in by the Britishers in the nineteenth century to work in the tea plantations.

A political conundrum awaits both the Modi and the Gogoi government on how to approach such a sensitive issue. Will the use of force be a solution or a new problem in itself? or will giving in to the Bodos and giving them a state in itself be enough to contain the spread of violence?