(The study of the idea called millitancy)
I am not here to glorify or decry the ULFA and its like and nor am I here to rant about the problems of 'Why?' and 'Why not?' Three reasons. First, too much water has already flown under the bridge and what can possibly be said for either side has probably been already said. Second and most important though is the fact that I, or for that matter anyone, cannot be a detatched or objective judge of such a case simply because our own prejudices reflect on how we decide and hence every time we make a statement about millitancy, it is mostly descriptive of our own values rather than being objectively prescriptive. Third when I stand up to make a judgement on someone's views or actions, I presuppose that my views or ideas are 'superior' to his whom I am judging and more often than not, such a view is highly delusional.
Instead it would be instructive to examine the very idea of millitancy as it relates to Assam from several different viewpoints. In the past few years the term 'millitancy' has become obscured with overuse. Whenever the problem of differentiating between freedom-fighters and terrorists is encountered, then most reactions basically boil down to a "Freedom-fighters are on 'my' side and terrorists are on the other side" kind of stand. Now there is hardly a liberation movement which hasn't used terrorism.The terms 'millitancy' and 'terrorism', due to careless use, has frightening connotations. A little digression: the concept of the 'individual state'.
What is the ideal size of a state? What are the mutual obligations between a state an its constituents?
These are serious questions which force to look back at history and gaze into the future. The whole idea of a federal state is built on a utilitarian idea of sharing. Every state (or almost every state) lacks some things while has surplus of some other things(things here meant to include both material things and intellectual assets). So when such states come togehter for mutual good, a federation is born. In a federation it is imperative that there will be some very rich states and some very poor states; and the ideal utilitarian federation should attempt at incerasing the average prosperity not individual prosperity. Hence the ideal state would be the union of all the states on earth (not very unlike the state, which according to revelations, the Anti-Christ is supposed to rule).
But we donot live in a utopian world; instead in our society, like it or not, the fittest survive and the instinct to take advantage of one's superiority is engrained in man's very blood. In that sense, the state is not very much different than an individual. A state which is a part of a federation, if it more prosperous than the rest will try to take advantage of its prosperity just like a fitter individual will like to take advantage of his fitness. Yes, it sounds perverted but it is often true.
That brings us to the idea of the 'individual state'; the idea that every individual is 'capable' of functioning as a soverign state. In fact he is not only capable, but if he is fit he will go by his instincts and actively try to function outside the rules set by society for common good; a society which forces him to pull a weakling out of a pit.
Such is human nature. And we have to look at the concept of a state without simplifying this principal idea.
Modernity and Post-modernity: varying world-views.
According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices (including art, literature, customs and social views). The first is market capitalism, which occurred in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western Europe, England, and the United States and all their spheres of influence. This first phase is associated with particular technological developments, namely, the steam-driven motor, and with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second phase occurred from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century; this phase, monopoly capitalism, is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with modernism. The third, the phase we're in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and correlated with post modernism. The comparisons between the last two phases are especially interesting. The basic ideas of modernism are almost similar to those of humanism. according to modernism, reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right (etc.). Modernity deals with the need to create order: the need to rationalize chaos. It works on the principle that the more 'rational' a society is, the more ordered will it be and hence more smoothly will it function. More accurately speaking, modern societies actively try to create binary oppositions between 'order' and 'disorder' just so that they can enforce the superiority of 'order'. Anything that can be construed as disorder is led to elimination. But the point that to assert the superiority of order continually one has to continually create 'disorder' is something that is forgotten or rather overlooked. The idea of the 'individual state' is an offshoot of the same and hence is always considered 'the other'. Going back to the problem of millitancy; when examined closely, the government's justification of eliminating millitancy is based on certain premises two of which relate to the concept of the 'individual state'. Let us, as an exercise of intellectual muscle-flexing, examine those premises: first, that 'a federal government is a more NATURAL to humanity than the idea of individual-states and hence superior' (I say more natural because IF governments acceded that anarchy(for a lack of a better term) is a more natural human state, then they wouldnot have tried to ELIMINATE anarchistic elements, rather they would have tried to maintain an equilibrium between government and anarchistic forces and discovered ways not to DOMINATE but to come to an UNDERSTANDING with it.) Now, to think of it, what was the social order before a political system was decided on? It was a dog-eats-dog kind of anarchy. The state is a man-made institution to further common good and since it is man made, it is not natural. This idea that the individual-state is the natural state of humanity, puts into question the very righteousness of the state to eliminate the individual-state completely'.
The Government cannot be defined independently.
Postmodern Anarchy: A 'modern' society's standard reaction to millitancy Calling someone a 'millitant' is defeating him before the war, a psychological exclusion of not only something we are not supposed to like but something we are not 'supposed' to like. Michael Foucault shows that with the spread of modernism, power began operating in a highly insidious way on what he calls a 'micro-political level' through the technology of power called 'discipline'.
We all live in a highly disciplinary society. The primary effect of government policing is not the repression of radical groups but instead, the construction of self-evaluated and self-policed subjects.
Francois Lyotard equates the effort to create stability through order with the idea of "totality," or a totalized system. Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of "grand narratives" or "master narratives," which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. In other words, a metanarrative is an untold story that unifies and totalizes the world, and justifiesa culture's power structures. Metanarratives are not usually told outright, but are reinforced by other more specific narratives told within the culture.Postmodernism on the other hand disassociates itself with the very idea of grand narratives and instead prefers situational, provisional, contigent and temporary "mini-narratives". This results in the virtual deconstruction of the very values that make 'grand-narratives' grand. One of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the "grand narratives" of religious truth. This is perhaps most obvious in islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East which ban postmodernist ideas because they deconstruct such grand narratives.Herein lies the difference between the two: while fundamentalists fight against postmodern influences, millitanta like ULFA fight 'for' them.
Syamanta Saikia, Wichita, Kansas
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