The worst fears of the skeptics seer to be coming true: having recovered from the shock-effect of the Central crackdown the powerful All Assam Students Union (AASU) certain leaders of the Asom Gana Parishad and the emotive Assamese press have launched a counter-attack. The distinct but disturbing signals are that the sub nationalist drive of the early eighties is being revived with a vengeance.

On December 8 the executive committee of the AASU met at its headquarters on the Guwahati University campus and adopted a very vital resolution seeking a restructuring of the Constitution to a truly federal model so that the people of Assam and other states can truly exercise their right to self-determination.

More ominous is the warning issued by AASU president Atul Bora and its general secretary Samujjal Bhattacharya that state repression cannot stop the revolutionary upsurge of an oppressed people who are demanding an end to the colonial exploitation of Assam by the Centre. By state repression they mean the operation launched by the army to neutralize the outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).

The refrain was taken up by Pulakesh Baruah senior AGP leader and Speaker of the assembly now kept in suspended animation. Said Baruah who wants the Centre to initiate talks with the ULFA without setting any   conditions The Assamese youth had never taken up arms earlier. It was the state terrorism unleashed on Assam in 1983 (when the Congress was in power) which compelled the youth to take up arms. Bipin Pal Das the veteran parliamentarian who quit the Congress (I) recently to form the United People’s Congress of Assam has said that the ULFA issue is a political problem which needs a political solution.

Going a step further the Assamese press is full of the exploitation of Assam by New Delhi the dismissal of the AGP government and the subsequent imposition of Presidents rule are being projected as the latest instance of this exploitation.

 And the media is also targeting the outsider business interests For instance the Budbbar a radical weekly carried an editorial titled The Call of Sarai Ghat which advocated the boycott of multinational tea giants like Lipton and Brooke Bond. (Incidentally the title of the editorial was a throwback to the battle at Saraighat in 1871 where legendary Ahom general Lachit Barphukan inflicted a crushing defeat on an invading Mughal army led by Ram Sing.)

The intellectual section which had been critical of the violent ways of the U.L.F.A. too have protested the Central rule and the black acts-a reference to the Disturbed Areas Act and the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act now in force in the state Said Hiren Goltain fat avowed Marxist and professor of English at Guwabayj University: It is simply not possible to stamp out the ULFA by terror. A dialogue is a must with the ULFA which is a group of misguided youth all right but very much a part of the Assamese society.

Gohain along with D.N Bezbaruah the editor of The Sentinel who is a vocal critic of Central rule is now busy forming the All Assam Democratic Citizens Convention which would have humanism and anti-terrorism as its ideals. At the moment the intelligentsia like the emotionally charged AASU cadres is mounting A fight against state repression. And despite the presence of the army Delhi may find it difficult to the shots in the state for long.

Article extracted from this publication >> February 22, 1991