In the Name of the Nation: India and Its Northeast by Sanjib Baruah

Author:Sanjib Baruah [Baruah, Sanjib]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, India & South Asia, Political Science, History & Theory, Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781503611290
Google: 5HHNDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1503610705
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2020-02-03T23:00:00+00:00

AFTER ULFA: THE CHALLENGE OF REBUILDING LEGITIMACY

Defeating Ulfa militarily was not much of a challenge for the Indian Army. Ulfa had a significant political constituency, but it was little more than a small band of armed rebels. They were defeated quickly and decisively. For instance, the first military operation against Ulfa that took place in November and December of 1990, says a news report of the time, “turned out to be something of a dampener.”⁹⁶ The Indian Army faced almost no resistance, raising doubts about Ulfa’s actual strength; many even dismissed the organization as little more than a media creation. But it became amply evident quite soon that there would be a price to be paid for employing crude military methods for ending a political conflict that was fundamentally about a collision of national imaginaries. The rebel organization, to be sure, had enough influence in bureaucratic circles to have access to classified information. As a result, its top leaders “seemed to know the date on which the army would move in” and were able to escape before it arrived.⁹⁷

In post-Ulfa Assam, rebuilding the legitimacy of state institutions has become a major concern for successive Indian governments. This becomes evident in a number of areas. For instance, in February of 2011, after Ulfa’s political appeal, membership strength, and public image took a severe beating, a delegation of the still-outlawed group was received by high officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs in New Delhi. Ulfa’s chairman, Rajib Rajkonwar—better known by his nom de guerre, Arabinda Rajkhowa—led the seven-member group. Just a few months before, he and a number of his colleagues were ensconced in safe havens in Bangladesh to avoid reprisals by Indian security forces. Yet their visit to the nation’s capital even included a meeting with the then prime minister, Manmohan Singh. The delegation presented proposals to Home Ministry officials to serve as a basis for negotiations for an “honorable, meaningful and peaceful resolution of . . . issues between Assam and India.”⁹⁸ It is unlikely that many people in Assam thought of Ulfa at that time as a political force that had the authority to negotiate “issues between Assam and India.” It is equally doubtful that the Indian security establishment was pleased with media images of India’s highest-ranking elected officials exchanging pleasantries with leaders of a defeated and outlawed armed group. Why give the rebel group visibility and recognition at a time when sustained counterinsurgency operations had broken its back? Ulfa leaders, national security bureaucrats could argue, were being given an opportunity to regain some of their lost luster. In their interaction with the press, Ulfa leaders spoke of constitutional safeguards for protecting the rights and the identity of the people of Assam. But there was no political appetite in New Delhi for discussing issues of such grand political scope. Yet Indian Home Ministry officials did not seem overly concerned with the substance of those proposals. They were more concerned about organizing the Ulfa leaders’ visit to the national

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