ABSTRACT
Whether inspired by identity politics or by visions of revolutionary change, insurgencies rarely end with a clear-cut victory for either insurgents or governments. In August 2011, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs in New Delhi welcomed seven top leaders of the banned United Liberation Front of Assam. The Indian security hardliner’s view of ULFA as an absolute enemy – a criminal force that should be subjected to punitive action – has almost no resonance in Assam. When ULFA was at the height of its popularity, another governor of Assam had cautioned that ULFA’s influence even stalked the corridors of power in Assam’s capital city. Contentious politics is the result of sustained interaction between authority groups and collective activity in the name of “a populace whose interlocutors declare it to be unjustly suffering harm or threatened with such harm.” One of the consequences of this migration is a significant change in Assam’s religious demography.
