Bongaigaon: Students of Bodoland University in Assam's Kokrajhar district staged a protest on its campus at Kokrajhar in lower Assam on Tuesday against an eminent historian and a writer for denoting the Bodo community as a "militant group" and a "violent tribe" in their books.

Historian Romila Thapar, in page number 378 of her book Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretation had referred to the Bodo community as a militant group.

Thapar wrote, "Few in India pause to count the number of militant groups, that are terrorising the areas of the sub-continent and are not concerned with matters of Islam, such as the PW, the Naxalites, the Bodo, the Ulfa, a variety of groups in the Northeast, some of whom go back 50 years, and various mafias acting like private militias."

Similarly, noted writer Sanjoy Hazarika in his book Strangers No More, had allegedly presented the Bodo community as a "violent tribe" by the lines he mentioned in page number 187 of the book: "The Bodo use of explosives was deadly: a series of 11 co-ordinated bomb blasts within a short space of time across Assam on 30 October 2008 had killed nearly eighty persons."

These controversial and defamatory words that the writers duo used in their books have hurt the sentiments of the Bodo community, said Akhi Boro, the general secretary of the Bodoland University Students' Union.

The union has demanded an apology from the authors and publishers of these books and stopped their sale till proper correction.

The student leaders also asked the authors to think and study the tribes of the Northeast before making such mistakes in the future.

When contacted by The Telegraph over phone, author Sanjay Hazarika, said: "I have heard about this for the first time. I will certainly look into it. I am a person who used to do a lot of research before I write something. I don't intend to harm anyone."