Indian tribe halts hunger strike

By Amitabha Bhattashali
BBC News, Coochbehar, West Bengal

Rajbongshi demonstrators want a homeland of their own

Nearly 10,000 people belonging to the Rajbongshi community in the Indian state of West Bengal have ended a separatist hunger strike.

Community leaders met officials and their demands for a separate tribal state were sent to Delhi, senior local official Ravinder Singh said.

"The government's reply will reach them by 15 October," he added.

Strike spokesman Banshibadan Burman said it had been called off after the administration's positive response.

But he warned it could start again if the strikers' demands were not met by the central government.

Lost kingdom

The state's chief minister, Buddhadev Bhattacharya, will visit the flash-point town of Koch Bihar on Saturday.

Five people including a senior police official were killed last week when police opened fire to stop rampaging groups of strikers.

The strikers mostly inhabit the north of Bengal, two adjoining districts of Bangladesh and some neighbouring districts of the north-east Indian state of Assam.

Rajbongshi kings ran the powerful Koch Bihar kingdom in eastern India.

It was a princely state until it merged into the Indian union, like the princely states of Tripura and Manipur, after the British left in 1947.

As in Tripura and Manipur, in Koch Bihar the local communities - or some of the most ethnically conscious among them - question the king's decision to merge with India, thereby sweeping aside their distinct identity, which was recognised by the British, at least on paper.