QUO VADIS INSURGENCY AND IDENTITY: ACCOMMODATING ‘THE THIRD VOICE’IN  CONFLICT ZONES OF NE INDIA.

ROLE OF INDIAN STATE IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION : Our argument is there is very little in the Indian State's response to ULFA that can be called an engagement with the ideological chal­lenge posed by the radical turn in Assamese sub-nationalism. The political settlement that was attempted in the Assam Accord of 1985 turned out to be unenforceable. Since then there has been no fresh attempt to engage those issues. By and large, it is fair to say that the State's response to ULFA has been more militarist than political.

The Indian army and paramilitary forces have been employed to deal with the challenge, and in the process extreme authoritarian methods have been introduced into the fabric of everyday life, es­pecially in those parts of Asom that are seen as ULFA strongholds.The history of resolving conflict in India shows that the State is always after a ‘rag-tag’, piece meal approach. The response of the Indian State to some of the intractable ethnic insurgencies in the North-east have so far been to —· Divide the rebel organizations and attempt to control them with the help of the renegades,· 'Times New Roman'"> corrupt the leaders of insurgent groups in front of the public by providing all luxurious lifestyle once they come out for talks,· ‘Buy time’ as much as possible in the name of negotiation.·         physically eliminate the family members of rebel organizations,·         Develop and help counter insurgency forces,·         Put maximum State power with the help of police and army.·         Appoint the retired army generals , police and intelligence chiefs as the Governor of this insurgency affected regions,·         Put all the draconian undemocratic laws into practice.·      

   After a considerable period of time when the armed groups are tired, people are fed up, impose an accord (like Assam Accord, Mizo Accord, Bodo Accord, Shillong Accord—the list is endless) the provisions of which will be hardly implemented. It’s not that such accords resolves ethnic issues-but it gives provisional respite to the State and provides a face saving device to the leaders of the insurgent organizations, who immediately captures power of their respective states and becomes a part of the State machinery.

In such gambling of power, which is played in the name of the people, the real issues are always sidelined until this is taken by a new brand of leadership.In fact the most important objective of the Government is to bring the armed groups to the negotiation table. –“once they come out we shall see how do they go back to the jungles”—is the most important guiding principle of the negotiators comprising of the bureaucrats, intelligence officials, army and police officials. In addition to the above strategies—the response of the State is myopic and devoid of understanding the identity issues in its totality.  State in this region follow a policy of ‘tribal to tribal approach’ in which attempt is to satisfy the elites of the ethnic organizations . The typical security attitude of the Indian State was best reflected by a statement of the Governor of Assam in an all India Police Golf Tournament at the Shillong Golf club where he talked about his version of bringing peace to Assam. In a clear disapproval of the United Liberation Front of Asom’s (ULFA) demand for preconditional talks, he categorically said that the dialogues should be on “ or our terms and pressure should be maintained on the ULFA”.

His another point was militancy in the region has substantially declined due to fatigue and disintegration amongst the militants groups, and now seeing no other alternative, they were coming forward to the peace talks. In addition, the Governor in number of occasions talked about the “final battle” to “wipe out” ULFA forever. This is an attitude what can be termed as “victor and vanquished”. History has proved again and again that issues must be settled in its merit –not in the approach of victor and vanquished.

The USA is terrorizing the whole world to end terrorism. But the so-called defeated or the vanquished in Afghanistan, Iraq and in many parts of the world have bounced back again and again against the Americans. The same ‘victor and vanquished’ approach is in operation in the Middle East. The Palestinians are answering each and every act of State terrorism unleashed by Israel state—although the Palestinians are paying a heavy price for it.