Assam-Mizoram conflict | Reopening old wounds along the border

Two British-era notifications are at the root of the Assam-Mizoram border conflict which escalated on July 26 claiming the lives of six Assam policemen. Rahul Karmakar reports on the long history of a dispute that awaits a permanent solution

A month before on July 26 claimed the lives of six Assam police personnel, Lalchhandama was in Champhai town near the Myanmar border when his farm shed and areca nut plantation, 320-km north at Aitlang, were destroyed. Aitlang is within the Inner-Line Reserve Forest, which is a 509-sq km green belt that the British India administration had notified in 1875. They did this to separate the plains of the tea-rich Surma or Barak Valley from the hills inhabited by the Lushais, who would often raid the plains. The and other ethnically related communities came to be called the Mizos decades later. The Inner Line Reserve Forest runs along the 146.6-km Assam-Mizoram border. Not clearly demarcated, it separates the Aizawl, Kolasib and Mamit districts of Mizoram from the Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj districts of Assam. About 300 Mizo families — all residents of Mizoram’s border town Vairengte — have broomstick or areca nut plantations in the hilly Aitlang, which Mizoram claims is in Kolasib district. Assam claims it is in Hailakandi district and has periodically been evicting Mizo “encroachers”.