Commentary/Dilip D'Souza

For The Release Of Sanjoy Ghose

It was on May 30 that I first got a hint of the trouble. A short email message arrived that day from AVARD-NE. "We have been under threat from ULFA for the last month or so," it began. One of their local volunteers had received a death threat. After that, there had been anonymous posters which accused them of "cultural imperialism", of "promoting corporate interests" and of being "enemies of Assamese nationalist aspirations." Over the previous few weeks, more AVARD-NE workers had been threatened by ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom)...

AVARD-NE (Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development -- North East), a kind of collective of NGOs, is based on Majuli island on the river Brahmaputra in Assam.

Majuli, some say, 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 certainly 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. Just since 1991, half of Majuli has been washed away.

For well over a year, AVARD-NE has been pursuing different projects on Majuli, ranging from training health workers to erosion control schemes. They began by researching how people actually live on the island, in the hope that that study, rather than answers that might have worked elsewhere, would provide answers to Majuli's urgent problems. Their monthly magazine, Dweep-ALok, regularly details various government development programmes, including the rupee amounts and the people involved.

In 1996, severe flooding threw AVARD-NE into flood relief work. They also organised a massive erosion prevention project in Pohardia village on the island. The thousands of people who volunteered then indicated just how popular AVARD-NE has become among the island's residents.

That popularity upset various people and groups. ULFA, which in the past has worked on similar programmes, which has claimed it stands for all the people of the state, which is now seeing many of its members turn to extortion and violence, is one of those upset. The message I got on May 30 spoke of others: "... there 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 email went on, they were going to hold a public meeting and let the people of the island express their feelings about the organisation. That meeting turned out to be 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 abducted Sanjoy Ghose, the 38-year-old secretary of AVARD-NE...

Sanjoy is one of the first graduates of the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, Gujarat. He cut his professional teeth with the Uttar Rajasthan Milk Union Limited Trust in Lunkaransar, near Bikaner. Starting in 1986 with health and education programmes, Sanjoy spent nearly a decade with URMUL. In those years, URMUL tackled women's issues, water issues -- including a detailed examination of the Indira Gandhi canal that cuts through the area -- and much else. URMUL showed the poor residents of those districts of western Rajasthan that they could take steps to solve their own problems.

In 1995, Sanjoy left URMUL to steer AVARD's work in Assam. 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. Battling all that, in the shadow of a growing militancy too, was a unique challenge for Sanjoy and his AVARD-NE team.

But the success they made of it meant that the people of Majuli were beginning to ask some truly uncomfortable questions. Of a government that has failed its people just as other governments have across the country, yes; also of those who have promised deliverance from those failures but are today little more than peddlers of a dark gun culture. AVARD-NE had become a threat to ULFA's already-weakening hold on the people in Majuli.

ULFA must have decided that abducting Sanjoy was a good way to counter that threat. That's just what they did. He was "arrested", they said, because he was a "government informer" and a "RAW agent."

There was no news of Sanjoy Ghose for two weeks. A local politician called Dulal Baruah then announced he had been in touch with ULFA, who had promised to release Sanjoy in a "few days." After that, somebody issued a release in the name of ULFA on July 23. Trying to escape the "army dragnet" four days after the abduction, the release said, Sanjoy's captors bundled him into a boat and were crossing the swollen Brahmaputra. The boat capsized, drowning him and some of his captors as well.

As you can imagine, this news devastated the AVARD-NE team and Sanjoy's family. But the next day, ULFA issued another release denying the first, pointing out that their statements are always in Assamese while the July 23 one was in English. In any case, said this new release, Sanjoy was safe, in good health and would be released "after negotiations." What these negotiations are, nobody knows. There have been no demands for ransom, no conditions spelled out for his release.

That's where this roller-coaster episode stands today. Despite appeals from his family, ULFA has not offered definite proof that Sanjoy is safe: no phone calls, no photographs. There seems little option but to wait and hope that he will return.

And while we do that, we might reflect on the complex tangle of issues that form the backdrop to his abduction.

First of all, it is a continuing tragedy that we have let Assam in particular and the North-East in general drift so far from our national horizons. So alienated are the people from the rest of the country, so utterly have we failed to address their long-time aspirations, that nearly every ethnic group in the area is now 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.

Now that that is happening, we are far too willing to accept the government line that these demands are just another law and order problem. We don't mind if the government enacts various special laws that the military then uses to bash people on their heads. Off and on since 1958, Assam has been living under something 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?

Second, 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."

No, these are not words from some State-sponsored report. They are in "Where 'Peacekeepers' Have Declared War", a report by the National Campaign Committee Against Militarisation and Repeal of Armed Powers (Special Powers) Act. Its subtitle tells us that this is a "report on violations of democratic rights by security forces ... in the North-East": that is, one whose thrust is critical of the State.

Caught in between a deaf, heavy-handed State and so-called "peoples' movements" gone sour are the people in places like Majuli, facing immediate, critical problems.

But nobody has listened. Especially not you and I.

Sanjoy Ghose is a friend. Over the last few weeks, I have agonised over what I can do to help get him released. I feel utterly impotent: this column is all I can manage. I hope, all the time, that ULFA will see reason and humanity soon and return Sanjoy to his family.

I also hope, in this year saddled with too much significance already, more of us see reason and humanity too.

Please send appeals for Sanjoy Ghose's release to newspapers in India and to AVARD-NE, P. O. Box 91, Jorhat 785001, Assam, India. Telephone/fax: 91-376-325528. email: sanjoy@avard.unv.ernet.in

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