By Barun Das Gupta
It was learnt in early June that formal peace talks between the ULFA and the Government would begin by June end or July beginning. But that did not happen. Prospects for talks brightened after an eight-member ULFA delegation led by its chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa met Home Minister Chidambaram and Home Secretary G. K. Pillai and rounded off their meetings with a call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on February 14. Within a week of their return to Guwahati, the leaders held a meeting of their General Council which gave the green signal for the talks. Now, P. C. Haldar, the chief interlocutor appointed by the Centre for interacting with the ULFA leaders, says that talks could be expected to begin ‘sooner than anticipated earlier’. What has this long delay – from February to July – been due to?
The reason is that ULFA could not complete the formalities from its own side to prepare the ground for opening formal peace talks. Now that it has announced (July 12) a unilateral and indefinite ceasefire from its side, the path has been cleared for moving ahead. The Government is expected to reciprocate soon by announcing a ceasefire by the security forces.
Meanwhile, ULFA has crossed another hurdle. A civil society body calling itself Sammilita Jatiya Abhibartan (SJA) was silently preparing the ground for the talks for a long time. It prepared a detailed brief for the ULFA on the demands that the latter should present to the Government when talks begin. Although the contents of the brief were never made public, it is learnt that several specific proposals were made that would give Assam greater autonomy and provide safeguards for protecting the Assamese people from being outnumbered by “outsiders” – whether from other States of India or from neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Nepal. The sovereignty has, however, been dropped.
ULFA is now understood to have given the ‘finishing touches’ to the SJA brief and formalized its stand at the talks. Among other things, a Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) is proposed to be set up to oversee ceasefire and decide on the location of the camps where ULFA cadres would be lodged during the peace talks. The JMG would be a tripartite body comprising representatives from the ULFA, the State Government and the Centre.
It may be recalled that decades ago, when the Naga National Conference (NNC) (which was then carrying on an armed struggle for the ‘independence’ of Nagaland under the leadership of A. Z. Phizo) entered into a ceasefire agreement with the Government, a similar body called ‘Peace Observers’ Group’ was set up with representatives from the armed wing of the NNC, the Army and the Peace Mission at Kohima headed by Marjorie Sykes, a well-known Gandhian leader. The main task of the Group was to keep a watch that the ceasefire was not violated by either side – the rebels and the Army – and to intervene speedily whenever a violation took place. The proposed Joint Monitoring Group may be playing the same role in Assam in a slightly different context.
Arabinda Rajkhowa has, meanwhile, warned his cadres that the ceasefire decision should be implemented scrupulously “in letter and spirit” and any violation would be dealt with sternly. In practical terms, however, it means little because Rajkhowa’s cadres are all for peace and not for taking up the gun again. It is the anti-talk faction led by ULFA’s self-styled and self-exiled “commander-in-chief” Paresh Barua who has refused to join the peace process, vowed to carry on the armed insurgency and denounced Rajkhowa and his colleagues who are suing for peace. Rajkhowa has no control over this group. Barua has called on his followers to disregard Rajkhowa’s peace moves, entrusted the job of ‘fund collection’ (a euphemism for extortion) to his trusted lieutenant Dristi Rajkhowa and appealed to the people not to give a paisa to the renegades led by Rajkhowa.
After the declaration of the indefinite ceasefire, ULFA vice-chairman Pradip Gogoi has said that a delegation from their side would visit Delhi later this month to hold talks at the “ministerial” level. As the demands of the ULFA are not known, it is difficult to say how the talks would progress. But the Centre’s interlocutor who has been in constant touch with the ULFA leadership, must have kept New Delhi fully posted with the mood of Rajkhowa and his comrades and the demands that they are likely to raise.
The Centre, as well as the State, is fully aware that any decision on the nature and extent of autonomy for Assam must be acceptable not only to ULFA which represents the Assamese-speaking people but also to all the other diverse segments that make up the population of Assam, like the plains and hills tribes, tea garden labourers, Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh who have been long settled in Assam permanently and the sizable chunk of Nepali population. It would be a long and arduous process in which all the principal communities of Assam will have to be assured that their separate and distinct identities would be protected and not abridged in the proposed set up. (IPA Service)