Sunday, October 01, 2006

Gorokhiya's jottings-ULFA and National Liberation

The name of this blog is Unnayan.Development.And specifically we are talking about the development of Axom.And in the context of Axom,development is linked to peace like Siamese twins joined at the head.You can't get devlopment witout peace.And to a certain extent ,vice versa.And unfortunately just when the light ,albeit a glimmer was seen at the end of a long ,dark and twisted tunnel,it has been snuffed out yet again.

After the Bhutan operations against ULFA,the outfit suffered heavy losses.After lots of speculation a group of mediators calling themselves the PCG came forward to prepare the ground for talks between the Central Govt and Ulfa.Despite bumps and hiccups an agreement about some sort of ceasefire ,though informal ,was reached.But between ULFA's insistence,rather obtuseness about releasing their top leaders before talks and Delhi's taking cover behind legalese the talks were scuttled.Now everything is back to square one.The army is out of barracks and presumably ULFA is readying itself for a show of force.The only question is when and where?

This state of affairs evokes a feeling of deja vu.The real sufferers are the people of Axom.Flip through the pages of history and it has always been the same story.The greatest danger to any race are not its enemies but its self styled liberators.Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge gang ,in the name of saving Cambodia from Vietnam killed off 3 million Cambodians by the simple means of starving them.Stalin shipped off millions of "reactoneries " and "enemies of the revolution" to the gulag in Siberia.Mao was going to do the same thing with The Great Leap Forward.Only because of Deng Xiaoping things turned out to be diferent.And the less said about the Contras and Sandinistas and the African warlords the better.

Enough of history.A search on wiki will pop out many more examples.Axom is now standing at crossroads.It is slowly slipping down a precipice whose bottom is littered with genocide,anti personnel mines and warlords.In short,like in Afghanistan or Darfur.And to add to its misfortune,Axom lacks true leaders,keepers of its conscience.We need a Voltaire.We need honest leaders,whom we sorely miss.The political parties are corrupt and too spineless to demand what is Axom's right.They are too meek to raise their voice against the neglect of Axom .They are also scared shitless to criticize the extremists.The civil society is no good,engrossed as it is now eith mall culture.The leaders of ULFA are still living in the era of Castro ,Guevera and Lenin if their press releases are anything to go by.This is post 9/11.It is a completely new paradigm out there.

Maybe the second generation of ULFA's leadership would be more understanding.But do they have a second ,new generation.Indians like to hold on to power,whether it is in political parties or in extremist organizations.Ultimately the people of Axom will have to help themselves.Indians had chased out the British Empire ,the empire where the sun never set.And the Assamese people did not stay out of the fight.If we could solve our problem then there is no earthly reason why we cannot solve our problems now.I m an optimist.The glass is half full,not half empty.