A requiem for ULFA

We are witness to the end of an era. According to the memorandum of settlement signed between top United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) leaders and the government, ULFA cadres will give up arms, and vacate their designated camps; and ULFA itself will be disbanded as an organisation. That the Paresh Baruah led faction of ULFA is not a signatory is no more than a minor blip in the broader trend that has been in place for a while.

The memorandum has only brought finality to the process. But it is far from obvious that it will mark the beginning of peace and healing and Assam. PREMIUM Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma with members of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) during signing of a peace accord between ULFA and the central and Assam governments, in New Delhi, Friday.

(PTI) The life and times of ULFA formed the bloodiest period in the history of modern Assam. For more than three decades, its members committed many acts of violence against civilians and others they regarded as legitimate targets. The Indian Army, other paramilitary forces, and the state police committed countless acts of abuse, including extrajudicial executions.

Thousands lost lives and limbs. Surviving family members still try to cope with the trauma. Assamese literature constitutes a virtual public archive of the “secret killings” and the violence during the days of ULFA. It keeps the experience of the period alive in public memory. Yet the memorandum barely makes any reference to matters of truth telling, accountability, and justice that could provide closure for those victims and their families.

There has been much criticism of the ULFA leaders for signing a document that is a far cry from the radical pronouncements they made in their glory days. It is hard to dispute the inference by an Assamese Opposition politician that “this pact does not look like an agreement between a sovereignty seeking group and the government”.

Yet ULFA leader Arabinda Rajkhowa claims that “we have got more than what we sought from the government of India regarding the development of Assam”. But unfortunately for him, the memory of ULFA for the people of Assam is not exactly that of a developmental NGO. ULFA began as a radical fringe of the Assam Movement (1979 85).

Critiquing the region’s long standing economy of resource extraction became a theme in the politics of Assam soon after India’s Independence. This took a striking form during the Assam Movement with slogans like “tez dim tel nidiu” (We will give our lives but not our oil). ULFA’s political platform gave a radical twist to this critique.

Assam, it argued, existed in an internal colonial relationship with New Delhi. The key demands of the Assam Movement were aptly captured in the “three Ds” — the detection and the deletion of the names of foreigners from the electoral rolls and their deportation. The issue did not feature directly on ULFA’s agenda.

But its ideologues viewed Delhi’s indifference to the serious consequences of unauthorised cross border migration and enfranchisement of non citizens as a symptom of the region’s subordinate political status in the post colonial Indian dispensation. In the debate on the issue then raging in the state, ULFA represented an alternative voice.

It appealed to all people living in Assam: Axombaxi rather than the Assamese people — transcending the narrow ethnic appeal of the latter term. Much has happened to the question of “foreigners” in Assam since then. The Assam Movement ended with the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985. But it soon became a commonly held view that the movement failed to achieve its primary goal.

This helped ULFA make its case that the pursuit of extra constitutional methods is the only sure path to Assam’s future well being. In the meanwhile, the Assam Accord became a hallowed document in the state’s political discourse. No political party could afford to be seen as not supporting the Assam Accord.

Yet whatever else one can say about the Citizenship Amendment Act, no one can doubt that it upends the letter and spirit of the Assam Accord; it rejects the premise that all unauthorised immigrants crossing the Partition’s eastern border, irrespective of faith, are foreigners. The Act has radically reframed the question of who is a foreigner in Assam.

Furthermore, of the three Ds of the Assam Movement, only the detection and deletion of the names of foreigners proved feasible. The diplomatic stakes for India are simply too high to create a Rohingya like crisis by expelling people that India unilaterally labels as “foreigners”. Our judiciary has adapted to this reality by inventing a new legal status of “declared foreigners” — people who will live in India with almost no rights except, perhaps, the right to bare life.

Yet there is no acknowledgement of any of this in the December 29 memorandum. Its formulations are caught in a time warp. It talks about preventing the “enrolment of illegal migrants in the voter lists” as if the question of “illegal migrants” is still the same as it was during the Assam Movement.

Chief minister (CM) Himanta Biswa Sarma clearly believes that Assam’s economy and society have changed enough that the structural explanation of the ULFA ideologues no longer holds up to scrutiny. He says he is willing to invite Paresh Baruah to visit the state to see for himself how much Assam has changed.

“If he stays in Assam for just seven days as our guest,” said the CM, “he will realise that the old Assam has changed a lot.” Apparently, Sarma has already convinced the ULFA signatories of the memorandum of this. How else would one explain their willingness to transition from being insurgent leaders to advocates of development? “We believed in the armed revolution.

We have been defeated.” Perhaps this acknowledgement by Sasadhar Chowdhury, another ULFA signatory, puts the document in perspective. It points to the limits of the bargaining power of a vanquished rebel group. ULFA as an idea was always more powerful than ULFA as a political and military organisation.

There were times when ULFA had an astonishing hold on Assamese public opinion. Despite its many flaws, the rebel organisation, as Hiren Gohain once put it, was widely seen as standing for “some legitimate and sound ideas of self determination.” It is now time for a requiem for that idea of ULFA.

Sanjib Baruah is the Andy Matsui Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The views expressed are personal Unlock a world of Benefits with HT! From insightful newsletters to real time news alerts and a personalized news feed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now! Continue reading with HT Premium Subscription Daily E Paper I Premium Articles I Brunch E Magazine I Daily Infographics Subscribe Now @1199/year Already Subscribed? Sign In SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Share this article Share Via Copy Link Assam Ulfa Violence.