Why we must go beyond the usual script in dealing with North-East violence

Appearances can be deceptive.

A first time visitor to Assam’s capital Guwahati may be forgiven if she thinks the state has managed to come out of the cycle of violence it was witness to in the 1990s and early years of this century. After all, Guwahati and other towns have witnessed a boom in their economic activity; multi-storied buildings now dot Assam's capital; shopping malls, multiplexes, fancy new restaurants have sprung up in large numbers not only in Guwahati but also in smaller towns like Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Tezpur and Tinsukia. Tourists now flock to Kaziranga National Park in greater numbers than before.

But as last week’s mayhem unleashed by one of the three factions of the proscribed outfit National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) shows violence in Assam is never far below the surface. At last count, more than 80 Adivasis, including women and children were mercilessly gunned down by the cadres of the Sangbojit faction of NDFB. Many thousand have fled to the safety of government relief camps.

Shocked by the brutality of the senseless killings, thousands of people came out in the streets accusing the state government of inaction. Home Minister Rajnath Singh too visited Assam and spoke of tough measures to rein in the renegade outfit. The Indian Army, deployed in Assam since November 1990, was told to go after the perpetrators of the attack.

The sad part is: in Assam the pattern is invariably the same: One targeted killing followed by a retaliatory attack. The spiral of violence gets unleashed. Innocent men, women and children, young and old, get maimed, killed, injured in a series of well-orchestrated attacks and are scarred for life.

Kuki-Naga clashes; Bodo-Muslim confrontation; Adivasi-Bodo feud; Bloody showdown between Reanga and Mizos, between Bengalis and tribals, the list has been endless for the past three decades that I have been reporting from the North-east of which Assam is the largest state. The metropolitan media lands up in droves. The usual stories of pathos, the humanitarian crises, the apathy on the part of the government occupy prime time news and front page headlines for a couple of days. Then, its business as usual.
 
There was only one—and to me a welcome—change: Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s firm stand on treating the massacre as a heinous crime. “The massacre by the NDFB(S) should not be underestimated as an ordinary incident of militancy. It is an act of terror,” he said. The unambiguous stand by Rajnath Singh is a major departure from the tendency during the UPA regime to treat the gun-wielding militias as insurgents.
 
The Tarun Gogoi-led Assam government is particularly guilty of going soft on the numerous armed groups in what it called ‘buying peace in the interest of the state.’ In doing so, Gogoi’s administration abdicated its responsibility in Assam for the past decade. Instead, it chose to shower the groups like NDFB with the state’s largesse even when their cadres continued to go on rampage and kill innocents at will.
 
Weighed down by a large group of dissidents snapping at his heels, the veteran Congress leader has allowed the administration to drift and in the process allowed armed militias like NDFB ( I refuse to call them insurgents) to unleash violence at will.

A more alert administration would have averted last week’s multiple attacks since the NDFB faction had been on the back foot after more than 40 of its well-trained cadres had been eliminated by the security forces in the past few months and a retaliatory attack was expected if only to demonstrate its clout. Intelligence sources now say the NDFB(S) which has just about 250-300 hardcore cadres, has recently been strengthened by the return of some freshly trained members from their training camps in Myanmar.
 
So is there a solution to the periodic and apparently senseless violence that erupts in Assam in particular and the north-east in general?
 
The answer is yes only if two or three steps are taken. To begin with, both the Centre and the State Government must completely disarm all groups that are observing ceasefire with the government in the north-east. Otherwise, these militias continue to terrorise people in their area of influence and also indulge in rampant extortion. Second, negotiations cannot be allowed to drag on indefinitely. Without a time-bound roadmap, leaders of the armed outfits continue to enjoy the State’s hospitality at the cost of the exchequer. The appeasement policy towards even the smallest of rag-tag outfits adopted by the UPA regime for a decade must end. And finally, an unambiguous message must go out from New Delhi that the currency of guns is not acceptable in India. The country’s Constitution is flexible enough to accommodate all aspirations of even peripheral and marginalised communities. A firm adherence to these principles and not molly-coddling of armed and cruel militias will yield acceptable returns. 

The question is: Will Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his home minister Rajnath Singh show the resolve to go beyond the hackneyed script that has guided India’s policy towards armed groups in the North-East?