STATE/ASSAM CITIZEN CONTRIBUTOR

n g
pated the Bhutanese military offensive

i l l o
in December 2004. He was taken by

S h
surprise. He had too much faith in his
Bhutanese friends. He did not realise the

2050???
Bhutanese eat out of Indian plates, and
much of their budget comes from India,
so there is a limit to how much Indian
pressure they can stand. I am aware of
the total confusion in the ULFA lead-
Love Story
ership when the Bhutanese struck and
most ruthlessly killed the surrendered
leaders like Bening Rabha, Robin Neog
and Asantha Bagh Phukan.
Baruah may have lived in Bangla-
EP

desh for fifteen to seventeen years, but

When security becomes only concern.
Laldenga in 1986). Co-option and offers
of political accommodation can actually
trigger splits.
So unlike Pakistan, whose army felt
that if killing five lakhs Bengalis cannot
end the uprising, one has to kill ten or
even twenty lakhs. That approach forces
the opposition to fight to the bitter end,
leaving no other choice. That approach
turned an election driven moderate party
like the Awami League and a moderate
leader like Mujib (who wanted to be
prime minister of undivided Pakistan)
into a separatist organisation that would
run the liberation struggle to the bitter
end. India will never do that. It would
use cunning occasionally mixed with
brute force but force will never take over.
The ULFA must understand that. It must
also realise that major demands can be
achieved from a position of strength, not
from a position of weakness. You can’t
get India to accept Assam’s sovereign-
ty -- or even a discussion on the issue
-- from the kind of clout that the ULFA
now commands. It just does not have the
strength to force India to do that.
Even the formidable NSCN cannot
do that. Perhaps the Nagas could have
got a protectorate like Bhutan in the mid
1960s when their movement was really
Now the NSCN cannot create such a sit-
uation even after having created satellite
insurgent groups throughout the North-
east and after being called the “Mother
of all insurgencies in the Northeast.”
I am not discussing the morality and
politics of Assamese separatism. Paresh
Barua has every right to feel he is a mod-
ern day Lachit Barphukan who has been
ordained by the Heavens to liberate As-
sam from Indian occupation. I can easily
place myself in his shoes to figure why
he thinks the way he does -- a young boy
of Upper Assam who looked at the oil
rigs and felt that India was taking away
all the resources of his people and giv-
ing back none. But after nearly 30 years
as a rebel leader, Paresh Barua must dis-
play the capacity to be realistic to ensure
a political future for him and his group,
the ULFA. He must make a realistic as-
sessment of the situation, he must realise
that people in Assam are tired of conflict
and want peace, he must realise that he
needs much more strength than he has
now to push a separatist agenda. Five
to seven years of Naxalite movement
or Khalistani separatism put Bengal and
Punjab back by several decades. Assam
has been in perpetual turmoil since 1978.
He must also realise that the bombings
I think I understand Bangladesh better
than he does. Even a military run gov-
ernment is scared of Indian support to
the Awami League, which can bring
them down through sustained street
agitations. To ensure that does not hap-
pen, Dhaka will have to play by Delhi’s
wishes on the ULFA. The Bangladesh
intelligence has done a recent exercise,
sending its agents to Assam to check on
the ULFA’s popularity. I am aware of
this exercise by DGFI agents though I
cannot disclose details to protect my
sources. Does the ULFA realise why the
Indian Army chief General Deepak Ka-
poor is visiting Bangladesh next month?
Why is Kapoor pushing for stronger
military-to-military ties with Bangla-
desh? Fierce military operations in As-
sam must be backed by denial of foreign
base areas and the Indian Army will put
enough pressure on their Burmese and
Bangladesh counterparts to achieve that
objective.
I am not suggesting that Paresh Ba-
rua should cross the border at Dawki with
a white flag and surrender, but he must
live to fight another day. And he should
read Mao Tse Tung (as Muivah some-
times does) to figure out how he does
that. Paresh Barua and the ULFA have
a right to differ. They have a right to tell
me – you are not from Assam, you don’t
understand our reality. They can say we
are the descendants of Lachit Barphukan

strong and India was desperate to con-
tain new movements like those of the
Mizos, Manipuris, Tripuris and the first
outbursts of peasant violence at Naxal-
bari. That was when China was train-
ing and sending back hundreds of tough
Naga guerrillas to fight the Indian army.
that kill innocents will not help him. It
will alienate him from his own people.
Bombing Fancy Bazar not only threatens
a Bihari labourer or a Marwari business-
men, it threatens hundreds of Assamese
people shopping there.
Paresh Barua could not have antici-
and will go down fighting rather than
surrender. I will accept all that. But only
time will tell who is right.
(Subir Bhaumik is BBC’s Eastern
India Correspondent and a former
Queen Elizabeth House Fellow of Ox-
ford University.)
T
his could well be the future of Shillong if the Chief Minister of Meghalaya,
Donkupar Roy, would accept the plan of Mr. J. N. Khataniar, a Civil Consultant
Engineer. This according to Mr. Khataniar will help ease the congestion in the
city and also bring down pollution levels. This could just be the answer to all our
traffic problems.
Kudos to Mr. Khataniar for daring to dream! This is designed on the transporta-
tion network system of Sydney city and is popularly known as a monorail network.

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