7 April 1979 will ever remain a landmark for Assam. That was the day the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was founded. On the same day that the new state assembly of Assam (after the break-up of the state) started to function. The state was familiar with violent separatist insurgencies before that date but all those involved, until 1979, were Assam’s restive tribespeople. 1979 changed all that. That year also , a powerful anti-foreigner agitation began to build up over demands that the by-election at Mangaldoi should be postponed until the electoral rolls were cleansed of illegal migrants. And though the ULFA did not began with a bang, it has since remained a force to reckon with. As the state assembly celebrated its anniversary on 7 April 1979, it surely looked back at the happy memories of a much bigger Assam, an assembly of much greater ethnic diversity reflecting the state’s unique position as the pivot of the Northeast.

33 years later, those memories are fading, rather fast receding. Far from a return to Bor Asom (Greater Assam) which might have done a world of good to the region, the state is threatened by further vivesection, as several groups of angry tribespeople like the Bodos are demanding their own separate (if not independent) homeland.

The Bodo movement for a separate state was born from the womb of the Assam agitation and reflects a curious twist of fate. The tribes-people, who were the sword-arm of the Assam agitation, were left feeling high and dry in the aftermath of the 1985 Assam Accord. Three decades later, the Bodos remain unhappy despite the experiments of extensive autonomy. So do a section of the Karbis and the Dimasas, upset as they are with the Assam government’s handling of the DHD-UPDS negotiations. But now the Bodos have major allies at the national level. The All Bodo Students Union has teamed up with other statehood movements like Telengana and Bundelkhand, even as Mamata Banerjee, after taking over as chief minister, has managed to put the Gorkhaland movement somewhat on a backburner through deft negotiations. Despite her many other faux pas, the way Mamata has so far handled the Gorkhaland agitation – her determined effort to convince the Gorkha Jana Mukti Morcha that the future of their people lies in Bengal – is a lesson for the leadership of other states who face similar statehood movements.

 

The All Bodo Students Union, which has spearheaded the movement for a separate state since 1987 with the slogan of ‘Divide Assam fifty-fifty’, resumed its agitation for a separate state in early 2012. They were joined by several other Bodo groups, who are equally frustrated with the autonomy experiment that started after the creation of the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Council, but has not really resulted in local development and in meeting the Bodo aspirations on linguistic and educational issues. The council is controlled by the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF), led by Hangrama Mohilary, a former guerrilla leader. The BPF split not long after its formation, the breakaway faction alleging that Mohilary had unleashed a reign of terror. Besides corruption, there were allegations of vote rigging and use of violence to retain power – charges that Mohilary denied. But his supporters even burnt down newspapers that reported his lavish wedding, and Bodo human rights groups complain that there have been more than 150 assassinations in factional feuds in the Bodoland area in the last four years.

For the time being though, the Bodo movement for a separate state has been pushed onto the backburner after large scale violence erupted in the Bodoland Territorial Council area in July. The violence involved Bodos and Muslims of East Bengali origin. It continued well into August, and the army had to be called out to help the state government control law and order. More than 100 people, mostly Muslims but many Bodos as well, lost their lives in the bloodletting. Hundreds of villages were burnt down, and nearly half a million people, both Bodos and Muslims, were displaced. Many of them went back home after the rioting was controlled, but cases of stray violence continue. Senior BPF leaders close to Hangrama Mohilary have been accused of leading mobs against the Muslims and at least one BPF legislator, Pradip Brahma, has been arrested by the police on charges of rioting.

 

Bodo groups like the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Progressive) have now demanded that the Muslims should be allowed to return to their villages only after their Indian citizenship has been proved beyond doubt. This has complicated rehabilitation of the internally displaced. The NDFB(P) has also raised the demand for revising the National Register of Citizens (NRC) with 1951 as the cut-off date. Much as the ABSU may have felt that the resumption of the movement for a separate Bodo state would help it get adequate weightage in Bodo politics, the NDFB(P) and its fraternal groups would imagine that a strong line on the illegal migrants issue would help it in a similar way. Both the demand for a separate Bodo state as well as the ouster of illegal migrants appeals to the Bodo tribes-people. So it is natural that those Bodo groups who are not comfortable with the monopoly of power enjoyed by the Hangrama Mohilary-led BPF would seek to benefit by raising these issues rather strongly and on the streets.

 

For the moment, though, the spotlight is on the illegal migrants issue, as various Assamese and tribal groups are starting to raise the demand for detection and deportation of the ‘Bangladeshis’. The movement has spread to Upper Assam – and indeed to neighbouring Nagaland and Meghalaya. Even the Meghalaya Governor R.S. Mooshahary, a former Director General of India’s elite National Security Guard, has supported the resumption of the movement against illegal migrants. Mooshahary, who is from the Bodo community, has supported the All Assam Students Union (AASU) for reviving the movement against illegal migrants that it led in the 1979-1985 phase.

But this does not mean that the demands of the tribal communities in Assam for separate statehood will peter out completely. The feeling of denial of a share of power by any important faction in Bodo, Dimasa or Karbi politics may drive them to revive the demand for separate states at an opportune moment. So, for a government that may have to finally face agitations for a separate state, it would be judicious to balance the aspirants in the power-holder groups. Unfortunately, the rulers of both West Bengal and Assam have often tended to put all their eggs in one basket.

Like in Bodoland, so in Dima Hasao, the Gogoi government and the Centre have been able to strike a deal with the Dima Halam Daogah (DHD) to settle for autonomy and agree to a boundary for its autonomous council within the prescribed limits set by the Assam government. The DHD is a divided house, though. Its main faction is led by its chairman Dilip Nunisa and its military wing chief Pranab Nunisa. The breakaway faction is led by the controversial Jewel Garlossa .

On the face of it, these divided factions provide an opportunity to the central and state intelligence agencies to play on the divisions and control the hard with the soft. Hence, the effort to use Jewel Garlossa as a bargaining chip to neutralize the stronger Nunisa faction.

 

The same formula, of playing on the factional divides, is being tried out with the ULFA, the main rebel group that represents not merely the ethnic Assamese but other ethnicities loosely identified with the Assamese nationality. After Sheikh Hasina came to power in January 2009 following a landslide in the elections a month before that, the Bangladesh government reversed its policy of patronage to rebel groups from India’s North-east and started a massive crackdown against them. Nearly 100 leaders and senior activists have been nabbed and handed over to India by Bangladesh in the past three years – among them some of the most senior leaders of the ULFA like chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, ‘foreign secretary’ Sasha Choudhury, ‘finance secretary’ Chitrabon Hazarika and ‘deputy military wing chief’ Raju Baruah.

Though they initially declined to surrender, a few rounds of talks with the Centre’s interlocutor for Assam, former Intelligence Bureau chief P.C. Haldar, convinced Rajkhowa and his colleagues to start negotiations with Delhi by giving up the demand for Assam’s independence. That upset Paresh Barua, the hardline chief of ULFA’s military wing, who told journalists visiting his hideout on the Sino-Burmese border in January 2012 that talks were possible only if the issue of ‘Assam’s sovereignty’ was included in the agenda for negotiations. In fact, the Barua faction has appealed to Rajkhowa to return to the ULFA’s fold without any further delay and ‘not betray the movement for which thousands of Assamese young men and women have laid down their lives.’

Rajkhowa and his colleagues of the pro-talks faction have, however, refused to oblige. While some of them decried Paresh Barua ‘as a warlord playing into the hands of the enemies of Assam and India’, Rajkhowa has refrained from personal attacks but emphasized that his group will carry on the negotiations to ‘seek a settlement that will protect the indigenous peoples of Assam and their culture from the rampant encroachment of the illegal infiltrators.’

 

On its part, and in a possible replay of the 1985 Assam Accord, the Centre has said that it is ‘actively considering’ the denial of voting rights to migrants of East Bengali origin who settled in Assam between January 1966 and March 1971 for at least ten years. Officials in the Union Home Ministry have told journalists that the option was considered following the ULFA’s insistence on working out a safeguard formula for the indigenous Assamese population who fear marginalization and loss of identity that could fast turn them into a minority in their own homeland. The people who are thus disenfranchised would get back citizenship and enjoy government development benefits but will be debarred from voting rights. Once the ten-year period ends, their voting rights will be restored.

‘This arrangement would not only discourage illegal foreign migrants from entering Assam but would push out many illegal migrants from the state’, a Home Ministry official told this writer. He said the ULFA leadership led by its chairman Aurobindo Rajkhowa has discussed this matter with the Centre’s representatives, including the Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh, Assam interlocutor P.C. Haldar and other officials during their last talks at the North Block on 9 April 2012. He said that the ULFA, during their April 9 talks in Delhi, had expressed serious concern over the ‘large-scale infiltration of Bangladeshi citizens into Assam even today’ and wanted a dependable safeguard formula, along with proactive measures to detect and deport illegal migrants from Assam.

 

It is reliably learnt that the confidential report available with the government also indicates ‘continuation of illegal infiltration into Assam although on a much smaller scale’ despite several measures introduced by both the state and central governments. The report states that illegal migrants from Bangladesh continue to enter Assam in some numbers, mainly by using the riverine routes. The Assam Governor Janaki Ballabh Patnaik has already sent a detailed report on illegal migration from the neighbouring Bangladesh and detailed how this has impacted the state’s socio-economic and cultural identity. Patnaik’s report, in its tenor and detail, is not much different from the one of his predecessor, retired General S.K. Sinha.

General Sinha’s report to the Centre on 8 November 1998, had expressed serious concern highlighting ‘dangerous dimensions of the unprecedented migration of Bangladeshis to Assam and the security threats and the strategic and economic consequences thereof.’ The report observed that ‘the unabated influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh into Assam and the consequent change of demographic patterns in the state has been a matter of grave concern. It threatens to reduce indigenous Assamese people to a minority in their own state, like it happened in Tripura and Sikkim.’

 

During their April 9 discussion with central officials, the ULFA leadership is said to have referred to the rise of the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) led by Badruddin Ajmal which had won 18 seats in the last assembly elections. The ULFA urged the Centre to take note of the ‘growing influence of this political group and the unnatural growth of Bengali speaking Muslims and also Hindus in different districts, particularly in border districts including Karimganj, Silchar, Hailakandi and Dhubri’ and said that the ‘indigenous Assamese locals today feel insecure in their own traditional homeland and have been left far behind.’

The ULFA leadership is believed to have also pointed out that the National Register of Citizens Act 1951 has not been updated. Its leaders observed that some ‘sporadic attempts in this regard did not yield much result’ and that ‘a coordinated exercise is a must to get effective results on this sensitive issue.’ Besides debarring the 1966-1971 migrants from voting rights, the ULFA also wanted a massive exercise to update the NRC and to continue this exercise at regular intervals to monitor illegal migration.

Even other militant outfits belonging to the different ethnic minority tribes of Assam, including the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), also demanded debarring of voting rights to those who entered Assam post-1951. The Centre is not averse to the proposal of disenfranchisement of those who entered after January 1966, as the Citizenship Act, 1955 was amended and section 6-A was introduced covering all the issues after the Assam Accord was signed in 1985. So, there is nothing new and unique in this formula. The 1985 Assam Accord, clause 5.3 to 5.6, reads as follows: 5.3 Foreigners who came to Assam after 1.1.1966 (inclusive) and up to 24th March, 1971 shall be detected in accordance with the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order 1964. 5.4 Names of foreigners so detected will be deleted from the electoral rolls in force. Such persons will be required to register themselves before the Registration Officers of the respective districts in accordance with the provisions of the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939 and the Registration of Foreigners Rules, 1939. 5.5 For this purpose, Government of India will undertake suitable strengthening of the government machinery. 5.6 On the expiry of a period of ten years following the date of detection, the names of all such persons which have been deleted from the electoral rolls shall be restored.

 

Another important concession the ULFA leadership is determined to extract from the Centre is the ‘constitutional arrangement’ for management of material resources of the local indigenous population of Assam and financial and economic arrangements, including settlement of all royalties on mines/minerals including oil, on a retrospective compensatory basis and the rights of independent use for sustainable economic development in the future.

The ULFA leadership is pushing for an amendment of the Constitution and the introduction of Article 370 status that was given to Jammu and Kashmir. On economic issues, particularly on the issue of distribution of natural resources, the pro-talk ULFA leadership is ready to discuss even the neighbouring ‘Nagaland pattern’. They also want some kind of safeguards on the ownership and transfer of land and its resources. Nagaland was given special provision under Article 371-A of the Constitution. The Home Ministry is not unwilling to give the pro-talks ULFA faction a good enough accord that will provide Rajkhowa and his supporters some ballast to face the Assamese people and isolate Paresh Barua and the hardliners.

 

Senior Home Ministry officials give the impression that only if an accord of some consequence is worked out with the pro-talks ULFA, will the Indian government be able to achieve three critical objectives: (a) political isolation of Paresh Barua and the hardliners that will severely weaken the armed movement, despite safe locations and access to weapons in the jungles of Burma; (b) by responding to the illegal migration issue and offering some kind of a solution, the Centre can deflect those ethnicities demanding their own homeland and convince them to stay on in a united Assam, now that the demographic issues on their turf will be addressed; and (c) uphold a possible accord with the ULFA as a model for other insurgent groups in Assam and elsewhere in the region.

Even as the ULFA’s pro-talk faction draws up the agenda for negotiation, they are having to perpetually look back at the reaction from the jungles of northern Myanmar, where their hardline colleagues have amassed a modern armoury and are training for a bitter struggle ahead, having allied with other similar minded underground groups from elsewhere in the region. Violence and vivesection remain a twin threat for Assam, victory over which calls for vision, a long-term mix of sagacity and accommodation rather than chauvinism or confrontation.