Assam’s angst

The pattern in the latest outrage was chillingly similar to those that occur with sickening regularity in J&K. This was nothing but a carefully planned and ruthless executed attempt at ethnic cleansing, when five truck-loads of non-Assamese workers were waylaid and gunned down in an isolated area by a small group of ULFA militants. What the militants hope to achieve by this is also quite clear. At one level, they aim to keep driving a wedge between the local Assamese population and Hindi-speaking migrants, whether they be Bihari labourers or Marwari businessmen, through such incidents. At another, they wish to buttress their political relevance in the region by grabbing national headlines. The ULFA, it must be remembered, is going through an existential crisis of a kind. Their base camps at Bhutan are now under threat, with the government there exhibiting a firmer resolve to get them out of its territory. It is this development, as well as intelligence reports of the widespread smuggling of arms across theIndo-Bangladesh and Indo-Myanmar borders, that have put the security forces in the area on high alert.

All this should have made the Assam government more alert to the possibility of terrorist attacks but the Prafulla Kumar Mahanta government has displayed a shocking lethargy in protecting vulnerable communities in his state. Not surprisingly, then, the Opposition there has even called for President’s rule in the state. Yet, according to information provided by some captured ULFA militants, the terrorist outfit is hoping to provoke the Centre into taking precisely such a measure, which is bound to alienate public opinion in the state. President’s rule is not the answer to Assam’s present plight in any case, the state goes to the hustings next year. What Assam needs is a united political and public response to the politics of terror. Ironically, earlier this week, political parties in Assam had jointly resolved to work towards maintaining unity and communal harmony in the state and Mahanta had personally vowed to provide full security to all sections of the people in the state. The time has come to redeem thatpledge with all the force at his command and the Centre should assist him in this.