Go back they whack their own people
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The Guardian : India needs talks for Assam's peace
Discussions need to be had about Assam's independence – even if it is not the real solution to this brutal internal civil war
In most rural areas of India's north-eastern, oil-rich state of Assam, life comes to a halt a little after sunset. People latch their doors, and when children cry they are hushed up with the threat of army soldiers coming to shoot them. This was worse in the early 1990s, when brutal counter-insurgency operations to break down the separatist movement rocked the whole state.
During the past three decades, these military operations have ended up spreading not only mistrust and even more resentment against the Indian state, but deep fears among the people of Assam over abuse.
The state is now yearning for peace. Previous efforts by author Indira Goswami and the People's Consultative Group to broker talks between the Indian government and the insurgents had stalled in September 2006 to great disappointment. So when a new attempt at restoring peace between the insurgency and the government was taken up last month by Hiren Gohain – Assam's most respected public intellectual – millions of Assamese were looking forward to its outcome with great hope.
This newly formed State Level Convention proposed that both parties – the government and the rebels – stop the civil war and agree on "unconditional talks" for the sake of peace and negotiate "a special federal relationship", where the Assamese people would have more autonomy and control over its resources. Both parties rejected the proposals, preferring to continue the war. The decision taken by the commander-in-chief of the secessionist outfit ULFA, Paresh Barua, comes from stubbornness. If this opportunity for peace isn't ever taken, my home state will be flung into an abyss.
Already, a lot has been lost. A whole generation of thinking men who took up arms with the hope of a free Assam in 1979 have been wiped out, maimed, co-opted. Many others were almost driven into insanity during the state-wide systematic killings of rebels' relatives, allegedly by the Indian government. The secret killings of Assam remains a dark event that went almost unreported in the international press. As well as the stubbornness of Paresh Barua – who wants secession or nothing – perhaps the Indian government can also be blamed for creating an environment unsuited to a peace process.
The ULFA was formed in 1979 with mass support in Assam. In the following 30 years, brutal state terrorism has tested the loyalties of the Assamese. As reports of ULFA becoming pawns of organisations such as Pakistan's ISI, which seek to destabilise India, is regularly published, the dream of a sovereign Assamese republic has ceased. It is a tragedy that even after prolonged oppression and hardship, when several major ULFA leaders were captured in December, a large crowd gathered around the Guwahati high court shouting: "Hail ULFA".
As the Assamese romanticise the ULFA as their saviours, there remains the reality that Assam is one of the greatest failures of the Indian nation. During Indira Goswami's peace efforts, the common cry was: "Please bring our sons back." The "occupying" Indian forces don't know how to deal with such strong emotions. Perhaps Delhi's decision to continue the "counter-insurgency operations" is a ploy to keep international attention away from the real issues: the rights of the indigenous Assamese people in oil-rich Assam.
Secession isn't the real solution to the Assam crisis, but discussion of secession is. It is time the world finds out whether the accusations of internal colonisation on the peripheral states of India is true. It is time also to analyse what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi said in 1946, in Srirampore, a year before independence: "It (Assam) must become fully independent and autonomous ... If you do not act correctly and now, Assam will be finished."
On the day of celebrating India's independence, many places in Assam refused to unfurl the national flag. Instead, there were black flags fluttering in the summer air.
