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‘War’ against Indian state: real victims & outcome

Almost all movements of militant ethno-nationalistic mobilisation in Assam and its environs claim that their ultimate objective is the attainment of sovereignty and freedom for a people seen as suffering unendurable diminution and oppression by the Indian state. The fact that this part of the country became part of British India through conquest and annexation between 1826 and 1898 and, later, of the modern Indian state as a consequence of the arrangements that led to the transfer of power in August 1947 is almost invariably cited as clinching proof that the territories and the people of this region were historically never part of India. Since the modern Indian state has never agreed to negotiate on these fundamental issues, the argument goes, the only path left for the people of the region is to wage an armed struggle to regain their lost independence and sovereignty. To put it simply, and in the rhetoric of the public pronouncements of their leaders, they are at ‘war’ with the Indian state.

This inward-looking and pre-determinist reading of history ignores not merely irrelevant formulations about the ‘civilisational unity’ of all Indian people offered as a counter to separatism by the nationalists on the Right but also more relevant facts such as the living memory of the active participation of the people of the region in the freedom struggle and in the subsequent making of the Indian Constitution, and that the majority of these people do not seek separation though there is a desire for greater autonomy in matters that immediately affect them. That one of the most militant movements (Mizo) has made peace with the Indian state without in the least suffering any diminution of the unique Mizo identity has not influenced the resolve of the separatist movements in the region to carry on, regardless.

Three such movements, with several contending and sometimes cooperating factions within each, are active in the region. The Naga, the oldest whose separatist articulation has some historical legitimacy; the struggle in Manipur comprising three broad streams: the majority Meitei comprising three or four structurally separate organisations, the Naga that dovetails into the larger Naga struggle to the north, and a highly fragmented Kuki stream that is often accused by others as actually a ‘Made in India’ project; and the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the youngest and, in its rhetoric, the most uncompromising in its resolve to attain a sovereign and independent Asom.

Despite some tactical coordination among these militant groups, there are important differences even in their strategic objectives, natural given their international linkages and patrons having their own agendas vis-À-vis India, though they all claim to be ‘at war’ with India. The one common factor, however, is that there is a profound disconnect between their words and actions in the prosecution of the ‘war on India.’ For, despite the toll taken by these insurgencies, their confrontations with persons and institutions symbolising the state power have been surprisingly few. This note limits its analysis to the disconnect between the theory and practice of ULFA’s ‘war on India.’

ULFA, the premier insurgent outfit in Assam, formally founded in April 1979, was viewed in its early stages as merely an ‘extremist wing’ of the mainstream student organisation, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) that led the anti-foreigner agitation in the State and resisted the holding of the Assembly elections that were finally forced through in February 1983 with disastrous consequences. (The complex background to this resistance has been extensively analysed in these pages.) Informed as it was in its founding and early stages by some ill-digested ‘revolutionary’ catchphrases, its initial action programmes known in the texts as ‘armed propaganda’ comprised looting of banks, attacks on remote police outposts, and murder of persons who failed to respond to extortion demands. There was also an amateurish attempt on the life of Hiteswar Saikia, the ‘illegal’ Chief Minister, that probably had little do directly with ULFA for, the State did not seriously pursue the case though the alleged assailant was arrested.

ULFA, however, came into its own following the signing of the Assam Accord in August 1985 and the formation of the government by the Asom Gana Parishad, a party formed and led by the erstwhile leaders of the Assam agitation. Those days ULFA, supposedly a clandestine outfit, was all too visible in Guwahati, summoning the media to ‘secret’ rendezvous, issuing long statements duly carried verbatim in the press, extorting money and killing those who resisted the demand for payment. But even when ULFA had a seemingly unchallenged run, even in the capital Guwahati, it targeted few symbols of the Indian state; and though it did murder some political figures, they were for the most part elderly second rung leaders with personal factors influencing the killings or, more significantly, grass roots workers of the Left parties, the only organised group that resisted ULFA those days, though this correlation has now changed in respect of some Left parties.

Indeed, of the 10 officially acknowledged political killings in 1986, first year of AGP rule, only two can be described as explicitly so — of Saurav Bora, a CPI-ML student leader at Dibrugarh University on May 27, and of Kalipada Sen, an elderly advocate who was also the chairman of the Citizens Rights Protection Committee and the United Minorities Front, then in the context of the anti-foreigner agitation seen as part of a malevolent Bengali conspiracy against the interests of Assam. The rest of the victims comprised low-level Congress workers and their relatives, other local level politicians and the like. However, even during this high noon of ULFA that had a pause with the dismissal of the AGP government and the launching of Operation Bajrang (November 28, 1990-April 18, 1991) and a setback later during the now-on-now-suspended-now-off-now-resumed Operation Rhino (September 1991-May 1996), remarkably few symbols of the state were successfully targeted. Indeed, this correspondent cannot recount more than a score of explicit political killings during this period when ULFA challenged and confronted the authority of the Indian state.

The story since then is all too familiar. Even those who want the government of India to sit at talks with ULFA, concerned at the brutalisation of society in this endless violence and counter-violence, recognise that there is more than braggadocio to its stand that it will talk to the government only if its sovereignty demand is inscribed on the agenda. Indeed, the pretensions to militancy and an ideological commitment, however misguided and badly digested that ideology may have been, are now little more than tattered shreds of a ‘revolutionary’ cloak that cannot hide the stark reality that its activities now constitute little more than plain terrorism.

The victims of the last major symbolic resistance to the holding of the Independence Day parade in 2004 were schoolchildren of Dhemaji. Perversely inspired by its call to “fight against Indians and the Indian state,” young men have at least on two occasions attacked not merely those wanting to apply for jobs in the Railways but also petty shopkeepers and manual workers and unorganised migrant labour, a truly pan-Indian community that has always provided services which the community cannot do without, and inspired corresponding ‘militancy’ in Karnataka against the others seeking to muscle into the Kannadiga space.

Far from confronting the Indian state, let alone debilitating it and pushing it on the path to Death by a Thousand Cuts, such ‘wars against India’ have provided the rationale and some democratic sanction to the Indian state to vastly strengthen and refine its coercive instrumentalities. Is this what those fighting for a sovereign Asom want?

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