But this whole thing is predicated upon whether there IS a
problem, whether Assam has any legitimate grievances or demands.
Those who cannot acknowledge that to begin with, cannot possibly
embark on developing those demands to bring to the table with GoI, can
they? If they do, they would be some of those despicable characters
that attempt to have it both ways.
At 9:55 PM -0500 6/29/05, Barua25 wrote:
>If forces outside the ULFA want to influence the terms of negotiation and get their ideas about what a secondary set of >demands ought to be, they ought to go about forming public opinion on this independently of the ULFA and hope the >organization will echo them in their own political interest.
I agree in principle to this idea. In fact I had been voicing for such a platform for a long time. This we may call the Assam-GOI platform, outside of the ULFA-GOI box (virtually ignoring ULFA). This is a must for the Hobo Diok Assamese whether there is ULFA or not. The idea is to come up with a set of sensible legitimate and rational demands for Assam which ULFA itself cannot raise on technical grounds. For obvious reasons, ULFA cannot (and should not) enter this platform during the negotiation phase for reasons pointed out by you. (It would be incredibly stupid if the leaders of the ULFA were to say we want independence for Assam and, by the way, lets also talk about handing over the rights to oil extraction to the state government.). In fact ULFA should understand that this Assam-GOI platform is going to discuss issues which ULFA cannot on its own discuss or negotiate due to the position they are taking. This way ULFA can achieve something without loosing face. Once GOI has agreed to grant some agreed broad issues to Assam through this Assam-GOI discussions, ULFA can later join the platform activley in finalization of details.
Now the question is what may be a set of such demands. This is not easy that one can just come up with a list. It will need indepth study of Assam's onging problems. I am really surprised that so far there has not been any such platform among the Assamese population for discussion of these problems. Even among the political parties there is no such discussions. Frankly speaking this means that we donot know what we want for Assam short of sovereignty.
In order to quantify what we want and why we want we need to discuss among ourselves, intellectually and rationally, so that we can decide what is in Assam's best interest short of sovereignty and short of trying to throw the Indian system out.
Rajen Barua
.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy, Santanu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 9:04 PM
Subject: RE: [Assam] Sunil Nath in Tehelka
> I think one should not forget the logical contradiction between demanding sovereignty and making public a set of supplementary demands. This holds no matter how unlikely or unrealistic the event that the GOI is going to agree to grant independence. Sovereignty is virtually all encompassing. It would be incredibly stupid if the leaders of the ULFA were to say we want independence for Assam and, by the way, lets also talk about handing over the rights to oil extraction to the state government.
> Even if the ULFA leadership is not Harvard trained, they have at least shown the intelligence to not say something like that.
> If forces outside the ULFA want to influence the terms of negotiation and get their ideas about what a secondary set of demands ought to be, they ought to go about forming public opinion on this independently of the ULFA and hope the organization will echo them in their own political interest. But they should not expect that at this stage (and even many stages ahead), the ULFA is going to go around publicly voicing the details of their minimum acceptable point.
> Santanu.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Assam mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam
>
> Mailing list FAQ:
> http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html
> To unsubscribe or change options:
> http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
>
_______________________________________________
Assam mailing list
[email protected]
http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam
Mailing list FAQ:
http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html
To unsubscribe or change options:
http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
_______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [email protected] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam
Mailing list FAQ: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html To unsubscribe or change options: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
