 |
 |
|
| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Perspectives |
|
|
Politics |
Talking Sense
|
| Can Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s third running victory bring peace-through-dialogue to a long-embattled state? |
|
|
| |
|
|
ANUPAM NATH / AP PHOTO |
|
| Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi waves to supporters after
election results were declared in Gauhati, India, 13 May 2011.
|
|
|
|
| W |
HEN THE CONGRESS WON 78 of the 126 seats
in the Assam assembly last month, no one
was more surprised than the party’s senior
leaders. The best projection, by CNN-IBN
and the Centre for the Study of developing Societies, said
the Congress would cut close to the halfway mark with 60-
63 seats. Other pre-poll surveys projected a hung |
assembly. And although Congress leaders involved in backroom discussions with smaller parties were told to pull out by Tarun Gogoi, who has been chief minister for three consecutive seasons, this grand old man of Assam politics said that his party would continue its alliance with the Bodoland People’s Front (BDF).
“They helped us in 2006 when we were in trouble, having
fallen way short of a simple majority. So we will keep them
in our government,” said Gogoi. When I asked him if there
was one particular factor that could explain his party’s landslide
victory, Gogoi said, “Assam believes we can bring back
total peace to this troubled state. And, God willing, we will.”
One of the first to congratulate Gogoi on his near-clean
sweep was United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) chairman
Arabinda Rajkhowa . “The people of Assam and those
in the ULFA welcome this great victory by the Congress under
the leadership of Tarun Gogoi,” he said. “We have great
expectations from his government. We hope it will work for
peace and a final political settlement in Assam.”
Gogoi was all assurance that the peace talks would now
begin in earnest. “We have stopped it because the opposition
would otherwise complain we were using the talks to
generate expectations that will influence the elections,” he
said. “We seek an early solution.”
Gogoi first came to power in May 2001, elbowing out the
Asom Gana Parishad and promising to start a dialogue with
ULFA and the Bodo rebel groups. A state in unrelenting
turmoil since 1979 had voted for the Congress in the expectation
that it would return Assam to peace and steer it
out of the financial distress of a massive debt burden. Although
Gogoi immediately extended himself, he had to
wait for three years, until the Congress returned to power
at the Centre in 2004, to begin the process of compromise
and conciliation. In 2006, Gogoi managed to retain power,
although with a reduced margin and in coalition with the
BDF, still balancing on the peace plank. He pushed the
process forward by catalysing an unconditional dialogue
between the Central government and ULFA, for which, in
September 2005, ULFA created its own negotiating panel,
the People’s Consultative Group (PCG), comprised of 11 Assamese
civil society notables. But the dialogue floundered
when the chief of ULFA’s military wing, Paresh Barua, refused
to drop his demand for the inclusion of the contentious
issue of Assam’s sovereignty on the talk’s agenda and
to declare a ceasefire, following which sporadic fighting between the security forces and ULFA continued. After the
calling off of the third round of talks, scheduled for May
2006, the PCG almost faded and was disbanded this February
by Rajkhowa.
This time, though, the situation seems reparable. Bangladesh,
in contrast to Pakistan, has cracked down hard
on all anti-Indian rebel groups functioning from its territory,
catching and handing over to India about 90 leaders
and activists belonging to such groups from the Northeast.
With the exception of Paresh Barua, the entire ULFA top
brass was nabbed in Bangladesh and delivered to Assam. Although
some ULFA leaders, including Rajkhowa, were initially
unwilling to participate in a conditional dialogue, they
soon realised that they had no real choice—their option was
either to begin a dialogue by dropping the sovereignty demand
that New Delhi hates to hear the merest mention of or
rot in the Indian jails.
The ULFA leaders were released one by one—but only
after each had agreed to a conditional, non-sovereignty dialogue.
Rajkhowa later summoned a party meeting for a consensus,
and got it. Barua was clearly upset: he is still insisting
that the issue of Assam’s sovereignty must be discussed (if
not granted), vowing, if the demand is refused, to fight on.
This essentially means that New Delhi has engineered a
split in ULFA between the pro-talk and the anti-talk factions,
although Rajkhowa continues to maintain that Barua is not
opposed to dialogue per se. But creating a perceptual divide
in ULFA is New Delhi’s biggest tactical gain so far; it leaves
open ground for the Union home ministry for a launching
pad, if one is ever needed, to decimate ULFA. This tactical
gain can become a strategic one if ULFA’s doves agree to a
settlement that involves greater autonomy, not sovereignty,
for Assam. The Centre chose well its negotiator with ULFA—former Intelligence Bureau chief PC Haldar, who, like
Home Secretary GK Pillai, knows the Northeast well.
ULFA had asked a committee of Assamese notables led by
Marxist professor Hiren Gohain to prepare a charter of demands
that should form the basis of negotiations. The charter
that Gohain recently handed over to Rajkhowa demands
a special constitutional status for Assam, such as the one
Kashmir enjoys under Article 370, appropriate measures to
stop infiltration from neighbouring Bangladesh in order to
ensure that “the Assamese don’t become foreigners in their
own land”, and greater control over the state’s natural resources.
The predicament the charterers are facing now is of
how to deal with other ethnic groups such as the Bodos, who
are expressing their resentment at the Centre discussing the
“future shape of Assam” only with an Assamese rebel group
like the ULFA. “We have resumed our agitation for a separate
Bodo state because we are obviously not considered important
enough to be represented in the dialogue,” said Pramod
Boro, president of the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU).
It is clear that the Centre will have to take other groups
like the pro-talk faction of the National Democratic Front
of Bodoland (NDFB) into confidence if it is sincere about a
comprehensive settlement. The advantage the Centre now
has is that ULFA and the NDFB—and other ethnic rebel
groups—are, militarily and financially, at their weakest ever, mainly due to the crackdown by Bangladesh.
And the groups know it, too. The peace constituencies
in these rebel groups have expanded, with only a hardline
fringe still willing to fight on. At the least, the Congress has
three more years in Delhi and five more in Assam. Analysts
say that considering the moderate nature of ULFA’s
demands and its obvious weaknesses, this is the right time
to expedite the peace process and forge an early solution—better, in any case, than to allow the negotiations to drift,
like in neighbouring Nagaland, where the dialogue that began
in 1997 remains inconclusive.
“Speed is of the essence, and it is possible to work for a
quick solution in Assam because there is no territorial demand
involved, unlike in Nagaland, where the NSCN [National
Socialist Council of Nagaland] wants a greater Naga
state,” said analyst Nani Gopal Mahanta. Others feel that the Union home ministry and the agencies under it will have to
speed up their act. And the Congress has to prod and pummel
various bureaucrats because the party has so much to
gain from a settlement in Assam.
Subir Bhaumik is a former BBC correspondent and author of two acclaimed books.
| | | |
| |
|
|
|
|
Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
|
| Be first to comment on this article |
|