North By North-East: Sanjoy Hazarika: Ulfa blasts its own image, needs to learn patience
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=14&theme=&usrsess=1&id=104423
Ulfa seems to be unprepared to listen to what people want: they have consistently and deliberately ignored the demands for peace and the counselling of patience.
Instead, they have gone about trying to show their ability to disrupt activities and affect the life of the common person.
Of course, their strikes do show up the failure of state and district administrations but you cant expect the Assam police and the paramilitary forces there to support it to be everywhere. The regional media, of course, for lack of a better story has again gone ballistic, showing a complete lack of maturity and blowing up a string of blasts into a major challenge to the state.
If there was a publicity contest for the Ulfa campaign, the organisation appears to have won. The media gave them a platform. But at what cost? Ulfa cannot have but alienated itself further from the
people it claims to struggle for. It appeared to have brushed aside the shaky appeals of its followers in the Peoples Consultation Group, a few of whom at least recognise that the public mood is against confrontation and that all issues should be discussed at a dialogue table.
There is little use of impatience in the process. Ulfa and its acolytes do not like the Naga example of talks to be held up saying that they are not going to be "tricked" by New Delhi into prolonged negotiations at the end of which there is little to show which is their view of Naga parleys.
If groups have the courage to take to arms to fight for a cause which they may regard as just though many may disagree with such an option they must have the patience and the greater will and courage to negotiate for such a cause. The latter takes longer because dialogue and negotiations are not one-shot deals.
There has to be give and take as well as maturity. Ulfa has shown a demonstrable lack of these qualities in these past days. Impatience plays into the hands of the Centre.
Ordinary people have suffered but the response from the public in Guwahati where the bustle of traffic and markets continued after the blasts indicates what people think of such events and efforts. They are determined to get on with life and refuse to be intimidated. That is to be respected.
The Government of India has fixed 7 February for the next round of talks with the PCG. It would again be unreasonable to expect it to go beyond briefing sessions and begin the textured laying of ground for talks with Ulfa.
But the important thing is to develop a momentum in the conversations so that suspicions are not fuelled in Assam that the Centre is adopting delaying tactics before the Assembly elections in the
state. Meet and meet again, meet often, reduce differences, broaden areas of agreement.
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As we move to the deadline of 31 January for the NSCN-New Delhi ceasefire, Nagas are upping the ante with peace marches and demands in Manipurs Ukhrul town, the home area of their principal leader Th Muivah. One of the slogans at a rally proclaimed "Dont employ negotiation as a forum for dividing the Nagas." But the fact that the process appears to have run into an impasse is not a good reflection on the conduct of the negotiations, of the many "advisers", activists and others, whove been trying to play a role through a mix of pontification and persuasion.
I now hear that the latest proposals by an interlocutor include a draft Consti-tution for Nagas: ie, there should be an Indian Constitution and a Naga Constitution. I wonder which government in New Delhi is going to sell that to
any other part of India or to Parliament, for a start.
You might as well give separate constitutions to each state because each state and each people are as unique as the other. Alas, in a democracy, numbers and size do matter. Not just whether one group has fought for 50 years for sovereignty or not.
It would be easier to sell such a package to Parliament if it was wrapped in the fabric of the Indian Constitution and wove such threads as would ensure the integrity and special status to Nagas even as a new Schedule, going beyond Article 371 A; and it would ensure that such a section could not be changed without a two-third majority in both Houses of Parliament and of the Naga legislature.
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