A house of entertainment is the unlikeliest of places for an extremist organisation to be born. But then, the two-storey Rang Ghar — one of Asia’s oldest amphitheatres with a roof shaped like an inverted boat — has been more than a heritage structure designed as a high seat for members of the Ahom royalty to watch cultural programmes on an adjoining field. It has been a symbol of Assamese pride since King Pramatta Singha had it built in present-day Sivasagar in 1744. And of peace.
Peace was perhaps far from the minds of six young men who converged at the Rang Ghar on April 7, 1979, to form the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). Their goal: establish a “sovereign socialist Assam” through an armed struggle. The six were Bhimkanta Buragohain, Rajiv Rajkonwar, alias Arabinda Rajkhowa, Golap Baruah, alias Anup Chetia, Samiran Gogoi, alias, Pradip Gogoi, Bhadreshwar Gohain, and Paresh Baruah.
They had a reason to be agitated. A storm had been brewing in Assam since 1978 over reports that “illegal immigrants” were being enlisted on the State’s electoral rolls. It crossed the tipping point in April 1979 when the Election Commission published the draft electoral rolls for a byelection to the Mangaldoi Lok Sabha constituency. The perceived large-scale enrolment of non-citizens led to an agitation that began in June 1979 and ended with the signing of the Assam Accord in August 1985.
While organisations such as the All Assam Students’ Union spearheaded the six-year agitation for the “detection, disenfranchisement, and deportation” of foreigners, ULFA quietly recruited people with a revolutionary zeal to train them for the fight to rid Assam of “Indian occupational forces”. The outfit divided its members into the political and military wings with Rajkhowa heading the former as its chairman and Paresh Baruah becoming the ‘commander-in-chief’ of the latter. Pradip Gogoi became the vice-chairman and Chetia the general secretary.
Reign of terror
ULFA established contacts with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, which later split into the Isak-Muivah and the Khaplang factions, in 1986. Through the NSCN, it reached out to the Kachin Independence Army of Myanmar for training and arms.
Apart from Myanmar, ULFA began setting up camps in Bangladesh in 1989, the year it formed the Indo-Burma Revolutionary Front with other extremist groups of the Northeast and neighbouring countries for coordinated operations. Initially used as safe havens and training centres, the ULFA camps in Bangladesh became crucial for the shipment of arms.
The third country ULFA targeted for carrying out hit-and-run operations was Bhutan. By the early 1990s, the outfit set up at least 13 camps in southern Bhutan, some shared with the National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) and the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation.
As Assam started recovering slowly from the impact of the anti-foreigner agitation, ULFA struck in May 1990 by killing Surendra Paul, a tea planter and brother of the U.K.-based industrialist Swraj Paul. This triggered a panic and more than 20 tea estate managers fled the State on a chartered flight. A string of subversive activities made the Centre dismiss the Prafulla Kumar Mahanta government and impose President’s Rule on November 28, 1990. ULFA was banned, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act was imposed in the State, and Operation Bajrang, an Army offensive, was launched.
Counter-insurgency operations led to the arrest of 1,221 ULFA members in the early 1990s but the outfit continued to carry out strikes, a few of them jointly by the now-disbanded NDFB. The reign of terror intensified after a group of ULFA members surrendered in 1992. They became SULFA, or the Surrendered ULFA, who won plum projects and were later (1998-2001) allegedly used by the State forces to help identify and execute ULFA hardliners and members in what came to be known as guptahoitya or “secret killings”. Despite setbacks, ULFA continued to be an irritant for the government.
By the turn of the millennium, ULFA began losing public support, particularly after 13 people, including children, were killed in the August 2004 school bombing in eastern Assam’s Dhemaji. Nevertheless, the government kept the talks option open.
ULFA spurned music maestro Bhupen Hazarika’s offer to broker peace but it agreed in 2005 to mediation by an 11-member forum of prominent citizens called the People’s Consultative Group. The initiative fizzled out.
By then, ULFA was a depleted organisation. It suffered a major setback when Bhutan ejected the outfit’s camps in December 2003, leading to the death or arrest of some top leaders while others fled to an accommodative Bangladesh. The return of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League to power saw Rajkhowa and other ULFA leaders being flushed out of Bangladesh during 2009-10. Arrested and subsequently released, these ULFA leaders signed a ceasefire agreement with the Centre in September 2011. Paresh Baruah, opposed to the talks, “expelled” Rajkhowa from ULFA in 2012. The latter headed the pro-talks group while the former renamed its hardline faction as ULFA (Independent).
On December 29, 2023, the pro-talks group signed a peace accord that Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma termed “historic” for ensuring “more safeguards” for the indigenous communities than the Assam Accord and the National Register of Citizens, updated in August 2019.
Chasing peace
The Chief Minister said ULFA accord ended 90% of the extremism in Assam with only Paresh Baruah’s ULFA (I) staying out of the peace process. Baruah, operating from the Myanmar-China border, has refused to come to the negotiation table unless the government discusses the issue of Assam’s sovereignty.
Conflict specialists believe there cannot be lasting peace unless the ULFA(I), albeit weakened, gives peace a chance. That the outfit continues to appeal to a section of people in Assam is evident from young men and women joining it now and then. The outfit has also been carrying out low-intensity blasts.
Bhupen Hazarika, who lyrically documented social and political upheavals in Assam, sang Saraipungor kopou sorai (Doves of Saraipung, a jungle in eastern Assam where ULFA had its headquarters in 1991) to reflect the general soft corner for the outfit. More than a decade later, as the mindset changed, he sang Suryoday jodi lakhya amaar, suryastor piney dhaboman kiyo (Why are we racing toward sunset if sunrise is what we seek?).
The ‘sunrise’ was an allusion to the rising sun, the symbol of ULFA. With Baruah and his band of 200 fighters playing hard to get, the sun is unlikely to set on ULFA anytime soon.
