New Delhi: On May 1, Union home minister Amit Shah declared a stretch of the Lala Lajpat Rai Marg in south Delhi as the Bodofa Upendra Nath Brahma Marg. The renamed section of the road is near the Kailash Colony metro station, located close to the official guesthouse of the Bodoland autonomous council of Assam. On the road, a bust of Upen Brahma was also inaugurated by Shah that day.Upendranath or Upen Brahma was a prominent student leader of the Bodo community of Assam, who went on to become president of the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU) during the turbulent days of 1986.Under his leadership, the demand for a separate state of Bodoland was vociferously raised by the ABSU on behalf of the Bodo community, which eventually saw a protracted political movement and a bloody insurgency alongside it.Having passed away on May 1, 1990, Upen Brahma didn’t live to see the three Bodo peace accords signed with the Union and state governments between 1996 and 2020.But even in his death, he is a figure that symbolises that demand hinged on the community’s identity. For the Bodos, he is Bodofa, the father of the community.Shah naming a road after him and inaugurating a statue in his name, therefore, holds immense significance for the community, and also for the Northeast in its entirety, as although the region witnessed a range of student-led identity movements over the decades, none was granted such recognition in the nation’s capital.All Bodo Students’ Union president Dipen Boro. Photo: X/@DipenBoroBTR.With Assam set for assembly elections in 2026, and the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR)’s districts scheduled to have autonomous council elections this September, where the BJP is a player too, Shah’s move can also be seen through a political lens.The Wire poses that question, and more, to current ABSU president Dipen Boro, based on whose memorandum Shah had agreed to bestow that recognition to Upen Brahma.Excerpts from the interview:A statue and a road named after the celebrated Bodo leader Upendra Nath Brahma in Delhi is a first of its kind for Assam’s Bodo community in the national capital. How old was this demand of the ABSU with the Union government?Before I answer your question, I would like to state a bit of the history of the Bodo political movement for The Wire’s national reader base to help them understand how this demand came to be. Bear with me.Upendranath Brahma, who was the first president of the ABSU and had led the political movement for a separate Bodoland state, passed away on May 1, 1990.On the day he was cremated, senior Bodo leader Sansuma Basumatary, who was then chairman of the Bodo People’s Action Committee (BPAC), suggested that Upen Brahma be bestowed the title of Bodofa – father of the Bodo people – which was unanimously supported by one and all within our community. The BPAC and ABSU had together led the political movement for Bodoland then.In the course of time, a trust was set up in the name of Upen Brahma under the leadership of the veteran Bodo leader U.G. Brahma. It was through that trust that several schools (UN Academy schools) were set up in the Bodo areas of Assam over the years, where education is given in the Bodo language.Currently, there are 90 such schools spread across the BTR and elsewhere in Assam, where 50,000 students are taking education in the Bodo medium.Gradually, the trust instituted the Bodofa Soldier of Unity Award for Humanity which has, so far, been given to 22 renowned personalities, including several Magsaysay awardees. Noted Assamese writer Mamoni Raisom Goswami was one such awardee too.In the course of time, when the movement for the third Bodo peace agreement had begun within the ABSU under the leadership of Pramod Boro in 2009-10, we felt that Bodofa’s birth anniversary, March 31, should be observed as Students’ Day in Assam. I was then the education secretary of the central committee of the ABSU. We began celebrating the day as Students’ Day in the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) districts of the state.After some time, we had approached the then-chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, with a memorandum demanding that March 31 be declared Students’ Day by the state government in honour of Upen Brahma.Gogoi was not keen on it; he told us that every student organisation in Assam has a student leader and that if he agreed to the ABSU’s demand, then he would have to agree to others’ demands too when their leaders pass away, and there would be no end to such demands.During that time, Bodo People’s Front (BPF) leader Hagrama Mohilary was the chief executive member of the BTC. The ABSU had approached him too with a memorandum, suggesting that if the Council gave that recognition to Brahma, soon the state government would be open to the idea. But he didn’t move on it.After the third peace accord was signed in 2020 with the Union and state governments which made Pramod Boro the head of the BTR, the ABSU suggested that he should take it up as the idea had germinated during the time when he was president of the students’ body. He readily agreed and issued a notification stating that March 31 would be celebrated as Students Day in the BTR.In 2023, the ABSU approached chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to take it to the state level, which he agreed to do through a state cabinet decision. So, since 2024, March 31, Upen Brahma’s birth anniversary, is celebrated across Assam as Students’ Day.Another big milestone for the ABSU was the Bodoland Mahotsav, held for the first time in Delhi, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2024. I had thought of that idea two months before we held it. We coincided the Mahotsav with November 16, which is the founding day of the Bodo Sahitya Sabha.The idea for the Mahotsav was born because by then, the Bodo community had got a GI (geographical Identification) tag for as many as 21 items, including our food, dresses, ornaments, musical instruments, etc. It was a great boost to the status of the community. I felt now was the time to take our community and its leaders to the national and international levels.Enthused by the success of the Mahotsav, on December 6, 2024, an ABSU delegation met Shah at Parliament House. There, we handed him two memoranda. One was to bring to parliament a Bill at the earliest to amend the 125th Amendment of the Constitution, which deals with autonomous councils.The 2020 Bodo accord is hinged on that promise to amend the 125th clause of the constitution. It includes the BTR’s financial independence and the extension of its area among other things agreed to by the government in that peace deal.That amendment would be beneficial to all the ten autonomous councils of the Northeast.The second memorandum was to invite the Union minister as the guest of honour at the fifth conference of the ABSU to be held at Kokrajhar, to which he agreed.I had carried a third memorandum too without informing anyone in the delegation. This demand was two-pronged – that Upen Brahma be accorded the Bharat Ratna; and that a statue of him and a road in his name be instituted by the Union government in Delhi.The Union minister agreed to the second demand. When he visited the ABSU’s fifth conference in March, he announced that in May 2025, on Upen Brahma’s death anniversary, there will be a statue and a road in his name in Delhi. Accordingly, on May 1, the promise was fulfilled.Union home minister Amit Shah, former Assam chief minister Sarabananda Sonowal among others during the 2020 Bodo peace accord talks. Photo: X/@himantabiswa.The BTR election is going to be held in a few months’ time. Early next year is the Assam election. The Bodo community plays a decisive factor in a number of assembly constituencies. The BJP will contest both these elections on its own. Do you see the party taking credit for it for electoral gains even though the idea was mooted by the ABSU?From my point of view, a government, be it the Union government or in a state, must respond to the grievances of the common people. Additionally, in the 1980s, Upen Brahma had raised the demand for a separate Bodoland state because it had stemmed from an identity crisis faced by the Bodo community in Assam then; he had propagated the ‘live and let live’ thought around that demand.Our community’s educational and socio-economic conditions, cultural and religious traditions and customs were in disarray then. He united our people to fight … that identity crisis.I can’t say anything here about the political objective of the BJP, but what I want to underline is that in that fight for identity, the BJP leaders of the times, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, heard us and responded to it. The result of it was the first Bodo Accord (signed during the time of Congress Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1993). Then, during the Vajpayee era, the second accord was signed (in 2003).In 2013, when the Congress-led Union government decided to declare Telangana as a separate state, it denied us Bodoland. Then came 2020, the era of Modi and Shah, when the third Bodo Accord was signed. I have a feeling that the party heard the grievances of the indigenous people. I won’t say though that Congress hadn’t, but coincidentally or otherwise, both the 2003 and the 2020 Bodo peace accords were in the BJP era.That is why I think that the recent recognition given to Upen Brahma by the BJP-led Union government is a part of that journey.I also want to reiterate here that the demand for a separate state by Brahma in the 1980s was to the Union government, but it was not against the nation. I would like to add that it was also not against the Assamese community; his fight was against the treatment meted out to him and the community by the Assamese leaders of the time, which I feel has changed altogether now.From the Union government’s current recognition of Upen Brahma, the indigenous people of Assam, Bodo or non-Bodo, can today feel that their grievances will be heard by New Delhi. So, I hope that no political party, even the ABSU, should claim credit for it or play politics with it.Recognising Upen Brahma was long overdue, and therefore it was done by the Indian government, for which we are very happy. I would thank the state and Union governments for acting on our demand, but would like to add that nobody should play politics over it.After the 2020 peace accord, the ABSU had declared that the Bodoland state demand would be kept in abeyance indefinitely. Five years after that declaration, can we now say that the demand is heading towards its natural death?There are two or three angles here. The demand for a separate state of Udayachal by the Bodo community was raised back in 1967. The movement for a separate state, in the course of time, saw political fractures. Then came 1986, when we saw the movement being raised by the ABSU under Upen Brahma, and the demand for Bodoland started in 1987.Then, we had a peace accord in 1993 that was signed by the ABSU and the BPAC with the state and the Union government. But it was not successful. We began to see various political factions sprouting within the Bodo community over the years and also the birth of armed insurgent groups.Then came the 2003 peace accord, signed with the Bodo Liberation Tigers Force led by Mohilliary and Premising Brahma. The BPF political party was born but within six months, one of its top leaders, Sansuma Bwiswmuthiary, came out of it.I must underline here that in the course of the movement, more people from our community died in intra-faction fights than at the hands of armed forces.Since 2003, the ABSU kept the Bodoland demand in abeyance, but in 2010 we took a resolution to re-launch a democratic movement to demand Bodoland under the leadership of Pramod Brahma. Because we felt a lot more needed to be done. In 2020, the third agreement was signed under Brahma’s leadership with the Modi government and the Sarma government.The Bodoland Territorial Region within Assam. Photo: Furfur/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0.Like before, the ABSU took a resolution that our focus should be on the Union government’s implementation of the 2020 agreement and the clauses stated in the new accord. Therefore, we would keep the statehood demand on hold for five years as that was the time period mentioned in the agreement for its implementation.But five years have passed since and its core clauses have not been implemented.However, at our recent conclave, Shah said publicly that the Union government would implement all clauses in the next two years. So, the time period for its implementation has been extended by the Union government by another two years.Now, to answer your question, I would say a lot depends on the government’s sincerity. Time and the situation would direct us on whether we should go back to that demand or not. For us, the financial independence of the BTR and the expansion of its area as mentioned in the peace agreement are extremely important in order to consider it a success.(Currently, the BTR covers four districts in Assam – Baksa, Kokrajhar, Chirang and Udalguri – a stretch located along the Assam-Bhutan border.)We see a new student body within the Bodo community, which for some time has demanded a separate Bodoland state. What do you have to say to that?Yes, the Bodo National Student Union (BNSU) has raised that demand recently. Earlier too, we had seen another students’ body in our community, the Bodo Students Union (BSU), which was the youth wing of the BPF. But it was not a success. About the BNSU, I would say it is politically motivated; I also don’t see it in a good organisational state yet.My last question to you would be, do you see your community ever going back to the dark days of insurgency?On whether our region would go back to those dark days, a lot would depend on the sincerity of the Union and state governments. After the 2020 peace agreement was signed, two or three groups emerged within our community. One such group was the National Liberation Front of Bodoland; it had gone underground for about a year and had even reached Myanmar. But we reached out to it and convinced it to lay down its arms and return to the mainstream.Then there was another group, the United Liberation of Bodoland (ULB), that was hinged on the demand for a separate Bodoland state. It didn’t have arms but was in the state of organising its cadres. That group had educated youth.Some time ago, a student at Bodoland University came to meet me and asked a range of questions about what more the ABSU would do for the community. Later, I got to know that he was one of the main leaders of the ULB. We reached out to it too and helped them return to mainstream.Then, there was another small group ready to take up arms.The ABSU’s stand has been clear here; we want a non-violent and peaceful atmosphere in the BTR. Violence is no answer to bring any good to a community. We don’t want any other insurgency movement in our areas. That mindset should be discouraged. We must get our political rights through a democratic, non-violent movement and through advocacy and lobbying.Having said that, I would also like to add here though that no condition should be created that would push the community towards insurgency.