Activists of All Assam Students Union at a demonstration to protest against Saturday’s bomb blast in Guwahati on Sunday. (AP)

When freedom is lost

Documentary filmmaker and activist Sanjay Kak screened his latest film, Jashn-e-Azadi, in Shillong recently. The film, a snapshot of the Kashmir conflict, is juxtaposed against the annual official Independence Day celebration of August 15, which has more or less become a rigmarole, the only enthusiasts in the celebration being uniformed personnel. Kak provides graphic details of the saga of torture, encounter deaths, missing young men whose skeletons are later discovered as burnt remnants, traumatic young kids and widows looking for medical and psychological help.

Kak, himself a Kashmiri Pandit, is obviously providing a microphone to the Kashmiris who by their own articulation want a solid platform to declare that Kashmir belongs neither to India nor Pakistan but to the people of Kashmir. Hence, his portrayal of their struggle as legitimate and not a secessionist movement.

Vividly captured in the film are heart-rending verses of hopelessness and dismay from some of the finest poets of Kashmir. Encrusted alongside those poignant verses are the strident rhetoric of Kashmir’s leading ideologues, Yasin Malik, Ahmed Shah Geelani et al. Interestingly, Arundhati Roy, the author of The God of Small Things, was present on the occasion. She autographed her latest book, which narrates the seamy side of the December 13, 2003, attack on Parliament.

Political lenses

Documentaries on armed struggles are never neutral. They have their own politics and political lenses. How does such a film play out in a volatile region like the Northeast? Is it an endorsement of the armed struggles that are now taking the shape of monsters which blow up body parts and streak the highways with blood and gore? Kak says he is showing the movie everywhere; so there is no question of provoking anti-India sentiments. Indeed, the film was screened for a select, albeit free thinking, audience comprising academics, the intelligentsia, media persons and activists. Hopefully this group enjoys a fairly high degree of libertarian mindset and is well able to sift realism from rhetoric. In the hands of a fanatic group like Ulfa, which is bereft of ethics and idealism, the film could ignite dangerous passions and provide fodder for their evil intent.

There is indeed a thin line between freedom and bondage in the context of the Northeast.

Assam has only recently crossed the threshold of state belligerence where suspects are conveniently bumped off. When confronted with bold facts, which prove that the person killed was no militant, the army simply claims that it was a case of mistaken identity and offers to compensate the family of the deceased. What started off as a movement for Swadhin Asom is now a narrative of atrocities.

Last Saturday, a television channel zeroed in on the decapitated remains of a victim of the bomb blast at Athgaon in the heart of Guwahati. It was a ghastly sight and one that is not easily forgotten. A hurriedly assembled mob took out a procession condemning terrorism, not Ulfa. They also derided the People’s Consultative Group, which had brokered peace between Ulfa and the Centre.

Ulfa has specific targets and is going about its business of eliminating them with cool precision. All talks of police reshuffle in the higher rungs seem to have yielded very little in terms of intelligence gathering. Ulfa is getting away with murder and Assam is becoming a failed state insofar as handling of the current crisis is concerned. Yet, because the killings have a communal tinge, it would appear that Assamese civil society is still hesiatant about openly declaring war on terrorism and the perpetrators of that terror — the Ulfa. But how long can this cleverly devised mechanism of dividing those who are condemned to die from those who are fortunate enough to be spared the death sentence really work? Is the average Assamese sure that she or he will not become the next target before long?

‘Action’ plan

Terrorism follows a definite action plan. It is a Machiavellian game where people are mere objects. Who they are, what they say or do not say and what the collateral damage is in the ruthless elimination of the innocent are immaterial. In dealing with terrorists, the state behaves in pretty much the same way. It is the Old Testament’s tooth-for-a-tooth axiom that is shamelessly adopted by both sides. And whether it is the state or non-state actors who are carrying out their respective game plans, it is the ordinary citizen who pays the price, often with his life.

The situation in Assam has certainly passed the era of dialogue. How do you hold talks with a sinister, mean machine? When the killer is so devoid of any human attributes how do you humanise him, give him a name and a face and talk sense and human compassion to him? Primarily, any kind of training in insurgency begins with dehumanising the trainee herself or himself to become utterly ruthless. When you dehumanise a human what you get is a bloody monster, for whom carrying out acts of terror is a feat of sorts. It is nothing to be apologetic or sad about. The kind of training that the Islamic insurgents of Bangladesh have provided to the Ulfa cadre is precisely of that calibre.

As I had stated earlier the state has not even begun to unleash its brand of terror yet. But if the gruesome killings continue unabated and the state police fail to rein in the killers it will not be long before a full fledged, counter insurgency operation with a new slogan and a brand name is set in motion. We may well witness a repeat of what has happened at Kakopathar but this time the civic reaction to army atrocities will be muted since they will have to choose between two evils and opt for what is being packaged as the lesser evil.

Bid to win hearts

These days army operations are softened by their social service wing. It’s a clever ploy to win hearts and to be given a laissez faire operating space. Not that Assam is not used to this kind of state intervention in the past. Only this time the killings by the Ulfa have far surpassed those in the past and are happening with closer frequency.

The tragedy with Assam is that it has never had a civil rights movement that is unattached this way or that. So-called peace groups or committees, be it the PCG or others with longer acronyms, have for whatever reasons, been seen to be Ulfa sympathisers. Not a single independent collective has emerged which could objectively represent peoples’ views and provide them a platform for baring their souls.

At this moment Assam is deeply fractured and hurt, but, the space for articulating that hurt and pain and also “other” ideas from those who hold no brief for any of the parties in conflict has not emerged. Why is this so? What is hampering the emergence of a liberal, democratic space where those who do not subscribe to any form of terror, state and non-state can have their say? Such a group would definitely need to transcend community, caste and creed if it is to have the legitimacy and indeed the formula to create the modern alchemy for peace. All others have lost their authenticity to represent the voice of the victimised.

Kak’s film is contextual in that it is a study of the Kashmir saga encapsulating a peoples’ fight for freedom. In Assam and elsewhere in the Northeast people seem to have lost the verve to assert their sovereignty because they have already paid a heavy price. Today, they are struggling to remain alive and to avoid those spaces where they might be bombed to death. These are two very different narratives.

(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)