Dilip D'Souza

I first got a hint of the trouble on May 30. A short note from AVARD-NE arrived that day. "We have been under threat from ULFA for the last month or so," it began. Anonymous posters had accused them of "cultural imperialism", of "promoting corporate interests" and of being "enemies of Assamese nationalist aspirations." Several AVARD-NE volunteers had been threatened, one with death, by ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom).

AVARD-NE (Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development - North East), a kind of collective of NGOs, was based on Majuli island on the River Brahmaputra in Assam. Some say Majuli is the largest river island in the world. Actually, Isla de Marajo, in the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil, is the real holder of that title. But if Marajo is bigger than Majuli, Majuli is home to far more people: about 150,000 of them, on something like 450 sq km. And they face a unique and grave problem: the island is being steadily eroded by the Brahmaputra. A third of Majuli has been washed away in the last 20 years.

AVARD-NE's work there upset various people and groups. ULFA was one of them. The May 30 letter mentioned more: "[T]here are other people involved [in the threats to AVARD-NE] as well -- some contractors, politicians and disgruntled officials. The fury of the reaction has surprised us."

On June 1, AVARD-NE's letter went on, they were going to hold a public meeting to let the people of the island express their feelings about the organization. That meeting was a huge success, a loud endorsement of AVARD-NE's work by people too long forgotten by everyone else. Naturally, this only upset those people and groups some more. On July 4, ULFA "arrested" Sanjoy Ghose, the 38 year old secretary of AVARD-NE. He was, they said, a "Government informer" and a "RAW agent."

Today, he is dead.

Ex-Cathedral School and Elphinstone College, Bombay, Sanjoy was one of the first graduates of the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, Gujarat. He cut his professional teeth with the Uttari Rajasthan Milk Union Limited (URMUL) Trust in Lunkaransar, near Bikaner. Sanjoy spent nearly a decade there. In those years, URMUL tackled women's issues, water issues, health, education and much else. They showed poor residents of western Rajasthan that they could take steps to solve their own problems.

In September 1991, Sanjoy and some of his colleagues went on their "Nahar Yatra" along the Indira Gandhi canal that cuts through Rajasthan. The book that came out of that long journey tells the sorry tale of waterlogging and salination from the canal, as well as the deprivation people along the canal have had to face. It says something about Sanjoy that the entire book, which even contains long extracts from his journal, has not a single photograph of him, not one mention of his name.

Sanjoy left URMUL in 1995 to steer AVARD's work in Assam. AVARD's mission there, as they described it, was to demonstrate how "voluntary action... [could] change the economic and material condition of the lives of people." Majuli was specifically selected because, in addition to all the more routine problems like poverty, health and drinking water, there is the constant spectre of floods and erosion.

On Majuli, AVARD-NE investigated "alternative cropping patterns... looking for ways to reduce the dependence on the kharif crop." They were also working on a satellite-based map of the island, to use in future erosion control schemes. During floods in 1996, AVARD-NE provided some hand tube wells and a simple medical service. A massive erosion prevention project in Pohardia village drew thousands of volunteers, showing just how popular AVARD-NE had become.

This success meant that the people of Majuli began to ask some truly uncomfortable questions. Of a Government that has failed its people, yes; also of those who have promised deliverance from those failures but are today little more than peddlers of a dark gun culture. ULFA had worked in the past on similar programmes, claimed it stood for all the people of the state. But now many of its members are turning to extortion and violence. AVARD-NE became a threat to ULFA's already-weakening hold on the people on Majuli.

Their answer was to murder Sanjoy.

Most of us know so little about these issues because of a continuing tragedy: Assam and the North East in general remain far from our national horizons. So alienated are its people, so utterly have we failed to address their long-time aspirations, so impoverished are those states, that nearly every ethnic group there is demanding some kind of self-determination. Some just want greater autonomy, others are asking for a separate state within the Union, and still others want complete independence.

Faced with all this, we are far too willing to accept the Government line that these demands are just another law and order problem. Off and on since 1958, Assam has been living under a grimy law called the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. It gives the military sweeping repressive powers, along with almost complete immunity from punishment for misuse of those powers. This forty-year travesty of freedom and justice is OK, we think. After all, there's a "threat to national security", isn't there?

But the very groups that claim to speak for the people are themselves sinking into crime, losing both their voice and their legitimacy. Consider just this line I read recently: "The spread [of ULFA's influence] had its own fallout: lumpenisation of its ranks ... carrying out extortions and other activities in the name of the organisation."

These are not words from some State-sponsored report. They are in "Where 'Peacekeepers' Have Declared War", by the National Campaign Committee Against Militarisation and Repeal of Armed Powers (Special Powers) Act. The subtitle says this is a "report on violations of democratic rights by security forces." That is, a report whose thrust is critical of the State.

In an ideal world, Sanjoy would never have been abducted. ULFA, the organization that abducted him, would never have existed. Assam would never have spent the last 40 years under the thumb of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. There would not have been the poverty, the resentment, that has seen groups like ULFA springing up throughout the region. We might have asked questions about all these things.

And Sanjoy would never have died.

But I know. This is not an ideal world. And in this less than ideal world, deaths like Sanjoy's happen. He must have known that.

So in this not quite ideal world I live in, I dearly want to see ULFA lose any legitimacy, any support it might still command among the people of Assam, for this sickening murder. In this today that Sanjoy Ghose will never know, I want to know what fifty years of Independence has meant to a state where a repressive law has ruled for forty of those years. I want my Government to explain why that law is in effect, what it is about Assam and the Northeast that has warranted such a trampling of freedom. Why there are ULFAs by different alphabets operating in every one of them. I want to learn just why they stay so firmly at the periphery of our consciousness.

I may get some answers. None of them will bring Sanjoy Ghose back. None of them will reduce the anger and sadness I feel at this senseless waste of a vital life, far less the desolation his family must feel.

But I think Sanjoy wanted to find those answers too. Fifty years after Independence, it's about time we started getting them.