‘The Mirage of Dawn’ by Rajeev Bhattacharyya charts the dynamics and motivations of ULFA

Pradip Phanjoubam

Drawing largely from interviews with former as well as active functionaries of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), Rajeev Bhattacharyya’s ‘ULFA: The Mirage of Dawn’ is a virtual autobiography of the secessionist organisation told through someone who knows it, as well as the society which spawned it, intimately.

The author obviously is also familiar with the terrain the militants use as their base, having trekked even the most inaccessible northern Sagaing region of Myanmar. It was here that many insurgent groups from the Northeast found sanctuary under the patronage of the late SS Khaplang, supremo of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland or NSCN(K), and after him his successors.

The range of interviews is wide. Testimonies of ordinary ULFA cadres to its top leaders give an insider view of practically every development of relevance. The readers also get a sense of the inner dynamics and motivations of the organisation.

At its genesis, ULFA very much shared a psychological constituency with many other organisations which had stepped forward to address what the ordinary Assamese in the late 1970s and 1980s saw as the foremost existential threat to their community — immigrant population marginalising them demographically, economically, and in share of state power. From this vantage, the All Assam Students Union (AASU), which led a six-year-long anti-foreigners’ rally ending in 1985, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the regional political party baptised by this agitation, and the ULFA were almost siblings bonded by a common umbilical cord.

The picture that emerges is that the AGP government and ULFA in their initial years were working in partnership. Hence, the 1980s are often described as ULFA’s ‘golden phase’, successfully building up a Robinhood image for itself amongst the masses. In later years, however, the goals and methods became divergent, and when ULFA came to be seen as an alternative to AGP, the two came to be bitterly pitted against each other. This was accentuated by a split in ULFA and the emergence of surrendered ULFA or SULFA, resulting in what is now remembered with horror as the ‘secret killings’ of the 1990s.

Portrayed convincingly and frighteningly is also the familiar phenomenon of the growth of mercenary interest among those fighting insurgency for the continuance of the very insurgency they were fighting, in view of the bounty hunting opportunities provided.

The book also gives an intimate and rare glimpse into the core of the ULFA leadership — their struggles, unity and differences. Paresh Barua remains its backbone, determined even in the face of insurmountable hurdles. Barua was the military person, and hints of tensions between the military and political wings of the organisation became evident from the start, with the military wing tending to overshadow and undermine the political leadership. But their unity held, and from the author’s account, even the emergence of a pro-talk faction seemed more out of compulsions of circumstances than loss of conviction. It is noteworthy that on December 29, 2023, this faction led by Arbindra Rajkhowa signed a peace accord with the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, in New Delhi; it disbanded last week.

When ULFA took birth in 1978, it did not have a constitution. Its leadership was compelled to piece one together to be able to form alliances with other insurgent groups from the Northeast, as well as to establish connections with foreign countries and organisations. The constitution could only be officially adopted in 1990, but enough groundwork was done in the meantime to establish an international support system. Other than Pakistan’s ISI and similar agencies in Bangladesh and China, the ULFA leadership touched base in Romania, Kazakhstan, Spain, Britain, Switzerland and more places, scouting for allies and weapons.

The author’s own perspective is kept to the minimum, sketching only the broad contours of events and then allowing interviews to fill them with substance. This is a powerful way of telling the history of a rebellion. However, there are irritants. A great number of those interviewed are simply identified as ‘ULFA functionary’, often making it difficult to gauge the weight to be given to their claims. But then, these are meant only to fill in details of the larger narrative thread provided by interviews with known leaders of ULFA or counter-insurgency authorities.

For serious readers who wish to read the end notes and references along with the text, there is only a barcode to access the link in the publisher’s website. Many chapters are also apparently an expansion of earlier articles by the author so that events are generally dated with only the month and day, not the year. This works fine in a periodical as the context is current, but can be confusing in a book.