Creating a homeland also entails the simultaneous creation of homelessness and acts of othering. In a non contiguous heterotopic ethno-linguistic mosaic that Assam and the North East are, the creation of ethnic homelands through acts of mapping, creates ethnic conclaves where the other-ethnic and the non-ethnic is rendered politically and culturally homeless in a space that they have perhaps been located in for ages. Simultaneously, those of the same ethnic stock for whom the homeland was created, but outside its mapped purview, degenerate into outsiders in the very land that their ancestors had tilled and lived in. Thus, the Bodos who are outside the purview of the recently created BTAD have become outsiders in their age-old homestead, while at the same time they are ineligible for all the benefits enjoyed by the Bodos within BTAD. Moreover, the sanctity of such abstractions like map induced homelands is often attempted in the ground through acts like ethnic purging in an attempt to ...
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