Assam is at a new juncture. Recently, the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) completed 100 days in office, and a sense of optimism is perceptible in all quarters of the administration. However, amid the general sense of hope, there are also signs of worry. Some political commentators have hinted at the resurgence of Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) elements — which took birth from the All Assam Students Union (AASU) — within the new government. Guesses are being hazarded if the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the formerly active ultra-nationalist group, is trying to make a comeback. To understand these developments, it is important to know the State’s history of violence.

Kishalay Bhattacharjee’s Blood on My Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters, published last year, recounts the confessions of a serving army officer, and also gives a glimpse of the time past: “What we read about the late 1970s seems quite like regular boys and girls going to college. And then one day, they started violently protesting against the Indian government’s attitude towards Assam… Then came the monster: The United Liberation Front of Assam or ULFA as they had baptised themselves… In 1991, the then chief minister of Assam … managed to break the group to bring a large number of senior cadres and leaders of this armed group overground… They called themselves Surrendered United Liberation Front of Assam… The same goons who were killing people were now getting around like junior MLAs… When Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) came to power, that was the fruit of the labour of the agitation; and a rotten fruit at that. ”

Sarbananda Sonowal, the new chief minister, has said in a recent news report that “clearing the mess left by the previous government is a huge challenge.” In a report in The Indian Express , Sonowal listed the “successes” of the first 100 days: “Hospitals have more equipment and medicine. Over 700 new doctors are being appointed. Over 60,000 poor students have got free admission after high school. Posts of 7,000 teachers have been regularised, the process to appoint 11,785 Sarva Shiksha teachers is on.”

However, coinciding with the administration’s buoyant mood, news reports also suggested a spurt in action by ULFA and other terrorist factions. A recent abduction, allegedly by the armed ULFA cadres, upset the happy tune. Although this is not yet a major challenge, past records can be crucial lessons, particularly those like this telling episode from Bhattacharjee’s book. “It is a winter morning in 2004, after the harvest festival in the month of January. It is the time for feasting and festivities. The sun is elusive and the air mostly wet and dull... It has been extraordinary season. The Royal Bhutan Army — aided by the Indian Army, in one of the biggest covert operations ever in the Northeast — has dealt Assam’s twenty-five-year-old terrorist group, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), a devastating blow.”

One can only guess the extent to which the government, both at the Centre and the State, were held captive to secessionist activities: Bhattacharjee writes, “…Assam’s dark period came after the lessons learnt in Bengal and Punjab, so here the dirty game was made so sinister that one couldn’t even fathom the level of State involvement… in Assam, the political parties had smartened up and used others to carry out their dirty work. The AGP was implicated in fake encounters, and see where the party stands today. It is decimated. The Congress, which actually got it started, has maintained a distance from it, and conveniently passed on the responsibility. They failed to act on any of the commission reports.”

Sanjay Hazarika, director of the Delhi-based Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, was a journalist with the Associated Press when the AASU agitation began in 1978-79 and peaked in the following years. The chief demand was to remove the names of illegal immigrants from the voters’ list. The movement, says Hazarika, occasionally lurched towards violence. “These were justified in different ways but the killing of innocents, the climate of fear and hatred was unacceptable. The cause was a great one, but the violence shook the State to its very core.”

Today, what matters is that few have been held responsible either in the government or in the district administrations or the mobs which attacked with impunity. “The carnage in Nellie, Gohpur and Sawulkhowa Sapori was another black mark. Most of the disputes, I have often said, were rooted in land disputes but for these to descend into absolute mayhem was unacceptable. Decades later, victims ask: where’s the justice?” says Hazarika.

Bobbeeta Sharma, senior spokesperson of the Congress party in Assam, and a well-known television personality, recalls the AASU agitation which happened when she was young. “I’ve heard stories of how people of a particular community were forced to leave or take shelter in relief camps. The Nellie massacre shook the world at that time.” Sharma considers the AASU agitation a trying time in Assam’s history. “Outside Assam you were constantly asked: Is it safe to go to Assam?”

Subir Ghosh, independent journalist and writer, became aware of the AASU movement from faraway Gujarat. The Assam movement, Ghosh believes, was different despite the pitfalls, fallacies and contradictions: “It was indigenous. It was a call of the land.” The land bit, he says, is important to understand the socio-ethnic movements in the context of the North-East. “All ethnic movements and agitations are about ‘our’ land. If one can’t understand this, one will never understand the Assam movement, and certainly not empathise. Why it eventually failed — it’s really wonderful being wise after the event — is a different story altogether.”

Ghosh though is cynical about Assam’s syncretic culture. “What also needs to be asked is whether the syncretic culture part is overrated. In my opinion, it is, and for two reasons. Firstly, ethnic clashes have always happened in Assam, and mutual distrust has always existed.” He thinks the “hatred has gone subterranean”, which is worse, and “second, ethnic schisms exist across the North-East.”

Ghosh also believes the Assam movement has been demonised by the mainstream Indian media and the Delhi mandarins who wanted to construct an image of the movement to fit their own elitist narrative. “Very broadly speaking, this was the Congress ecosystem,” says Ghosh.

Hazarika mulls over the challenges the new government faces. “The challenges are not new, apart from what you can call the ‘spectre’ of the old days. The illegal migration issue has been around since pre-Independence times, when the Congress party won the 1946 State legislature ballot on that campaign under Gopinath Bordoloi.”

The immigration issue, Hazarika agrees, is a fraught one. “One way is to publish the National Register of Citizens in October and wait for responses from those whose names are not there, and who can back up their claims to citizenship. The other is to ensure that the Foreign Tribunals are active.” However, Hazarika points out that “deportation is not even mentioned in the BJP’s vision document.”

Sharma believes it’s time to settle the issue of illegal immigrants. “We want it solved once and for all.” It should no more be used for election propaganda, she adds. “The fear that the illegal migrants will take over Assam has entered the mind and heart of the Assamese people. That this is propaganda is another matter. But if it is true, if there is indeed this threat, then the present government has got everything on their side — the Central and the State governments are in sync. Nothing can, or should stop them from resolving this problem once and for all,” says Sharma.

Ghosh postulates that the BJP has a different agenda from the earlier AGP. “The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has been working at the grassroots level for almost two decades now. They got a foothold shortly after Operation Rhino when the ULFA had to pack its bags and flee to Bangladesh and Bhutan. This was also the time the AGP shot itself in the foot and lost the elections.”

The AGP came back to power later, adds Ghosh, but it frittered away the mandate a second time. The subsequent decline of the AGP, AASU and ULFA created a political vacuum, says Ghosh. “A lot depends on how Sonowal plays his cards. He may belong to the BJP, but he is also a son of the soil. The way he sees Assam would be radically different from the way a knicker-wallah in Nagpur or Amit Shah sees it. At the moment, BJP needs Sonowal more than he needs them.”

As the issue of ethnic peace and deportation of foreign nationals rests on eggshells, Hazarika sees no other way but for the government to de-franchise the detected ‘aliens’. “This if you can’t deport them... ensure they do not get permanent settlement right and provide the post-1971 group work permits. That will work in the short term. But what about the long term? I doubt if anyone has an answer. I think an agreement with states which want such groups for large projects could be considered.”

And this may go a long way in keeping at bay incidents such as the one on August 22, when several television channels flashed the hapless face of Kuldeep Moran, BJP MLA Bolin Chetia’s nephew, allegedly abducted by the ULFA. Following the incident, Sanjib Baruah, professor of political science at Bard College, New York, wrote in The Mint , “ULFA as an idea has always been more powerful than ULFA as an organisation. That’s because it inhabits a political space that has a solid history. I have called it regional patriotism.” The heavily-armed commandos, with their faces covered, now seem determined to make a statement.

Blood on My Hands only rekindles that ghastly memory: “It was in the summer of 2003, if I am not mistaken. Thirteen years after ULFA mass graves were recovered in Upper Assam’s Lakhipathar area, the terror group had made a return… around seventy ULFA men had found their way back to where they began their armed insurgency, and in an ambush, they injured nine army men. The army launched one of the biggest operations in the forests that are deep and never-ending.”

Sonowal has miles to walk to aid Assam’s long struggle for national prominence, boost the economy, flush out terrorists as well as infiltration. Christened ‘ jatiya nayak’ or national hero, Sonowal’s task on hand is daunting. But this could just be the moment the State should grab to assert its identity ( jati ), its territorial and geopolitical integrity ( mati ), as well as to protect its homestead and people from natural disasters ( bheti ).

(Nabina Das is a poet and fiction writer currently living in Hyderabad and teaching creative wrtiting)

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