From the 1960s through the 1980s, the Bodo movement shook Assam. 

It went down in Northeast India’s history as one of the most significant autonomy struggles, with its effects spilling onto Assam’s wildlife, particularly the Manas Tiger Reserve, an important transboundary conservation landscape that is home to several protected areas in northeastern India and southern Bhutan. 

The insurgency turned the park into a conflict zone.  

In the absence of forest guards, poachers had a field day; forests were cleared for settlements, thus wiping away the home of the wild. Tigers, rhinos, elephants, and deer started to decline; the greater one-horned rhinoceros and male tuskers among elephant populations were pushed to the brink of local extinction as poaching threatened their numbers. 

But today, if you train your gaze on Manas National Park, there’s a starkly different story that’s unfolding. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site — the park’s 1985 status was restored in 2011, and it is also a tiger reserve, an elephant reserve, and a biodiversity hotspot. 

While it was a Herculean effort by the local government, the Forest Department, and NGOs, we turn our gaze to the efforts of Dr Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar, whose conservation efforts were recognised with the prestigious IUCN Heritage Hero Award in 2016.  

In the heart of the Bodo movement: Bibhuti Lahkar’s journey

In 1992, the scale of damage to Manas Wildlife Sanctuary (a World Heritage Site) was so devastating that UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site “in danger”. And much of the blame lay with the insurgency unfolding as the Bodo people, the largest plains tribe in Assam, protested their marginalisation following India’s independence in 1947. 

The movement was led by the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) and various other Bodo organisations. Their demands were clear — a system that preserved their cultural identity and gave them political representation.

After almost three decades of insurgency, in 2003, peace made its way into the region with the Bodo Accord, a memorandum of settlement between the Indian government, the Assam government, and the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT). It ended years of armed struggle, creating an autonomous, self-governing Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC). But even as the way for peace was paved, there was a lot of work to be done to........

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