A wake-up call on Ulfa notoriety
Much blood has flown with water into the Brahmaputra basin just as much has happened over the decades to undo the efforts of Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi in ensuring that Assam remained part of India and not erstwhile East Pakistan. After India’s Independence, Bordoloi worked closely with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to secure Assam’s sovereignty vis a vis China and East Pakistan and also helped to organise the rehabilitation of millions of Hindu refugees who had fled East Pakistan due to widespread violence and intimidation in the aftermath of Partition. However, illegal migrants from East Pakistan till 1971 and Bangladesh thereafter, continuously poured into Assam and settled there and eventually spread to many other parts of India, swelling the number in West Bengal too.
In October 1962, when China attacked India, then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru made the damning statement “My heart goes out to the people of Assam.”
Two decades later the Assam agitation got going on the “foreigners” issue culminating into lot of bloodshed, signified by Nellie and seven neighbouring villages of Nagaon district, where Muslims were killed in broad daylight because they had taken part in the election and cast their vote despite warnings of those opposing the election.
The official figure of those brutally killed stood at 2,191. Then came the Assam Accord, a new political party Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and a new armed group United Liberation Front of Asom, which claimed to champion the cause of exploitation of the people of Assam by “Delhi Durbar”.
In Confronting the State: Ulfa’s Quest for Sovereignty, Nani Gopal Mahanta examines the complex nuances and dynamics that made Ulfa a formidable insurgent group and exposes its notorious aspects.
The book is another wake-up call as it dwells on the dicey demographic shifts which have by now affected at least eleven districts of Assam and caused communal tension off and on and riots as recently as mid 2012.
Ulfa was formed on April 7, 1979 to establish a “sovereign socialist Assam” through an armed struggle. When the Army launched Operation Bajrang, Ulfa top brass escaped to Bangladesh.
Barua, a frequent visitor to Karachi since 1992, was reported to have met Osama bin Laden there in 1996. Ulfa leaders paved the way for ISI to enter India’s North East and link up with other insurgent groups there.
In November 1998, then Assam governor, Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha submitted a report titled “Illegal Migration into Assam” to the President, in which he brought out that the Muslim population of Assam had risen 77.42 per cent from 1971 to 1991 and that whereas Dhubri, Goalpapra, Barpeta and Hailakandi had become Muslim majority districts.
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