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Interview | 'There Are Few Documents on the Diverse History of Koch Rajbanshis'

Guwahati: A few days after the lynching incident of two youth, Nilotpal and Abhijeet Das in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district, a Koch Rajbanshi boy was brutally beaten in public. The video of that incident was streamed on social media and selectively ignored by both regional and national press. The mob had aggressively questioned whether his name appeared in the National Register for Citizens (NRC) or not.

This is not the first time that the rights of a Koch Rajbanshi individual have been violated. In the peak of the Bodo Movement (1989), more than 200 Koch-Rajbanshi families belonging to 43 villages from the northern part of Bongaigaon (now Chirang) district, fled from their homes, leaving behind their valuables and took shelter in various designated camps to escape the slaughter of armed Bodo militants. The dominant cultural amnesia might have wiped out these events but the long lasting trauma among those inflicted has remained intact.

Historically, the term “Koch” has three meanings and uses – it is the name of a dynasty, an ethnic group and a desh (country) i.e. Cooch Behar. Accounts from the Mughal period, like the Ain-i-Akbari and Baharistan-i-Ghaybi, have referred to the area as “Koch”. Within India and South Asia currently, the term “Koch” has been (almost) replaced by “Rajbanshi” in North Bengal, Bihar and Nepal. Since 1996, the terms ‘Koch’ and ‘Rajbanshi’ are officially used as one term ‘Koch–Rajbanshi’ in Assam.