ABSTRACT
If perceptions about violence in Assam in the last few decades are to serve as any measure, the author would perhaps do well to consider some of the categories through which such narratives bear effect. The United Liberation Front of Assam is officially understood to be the perpetrator of act of violence, which primarily orchestrated it as a display of power against the 'Indian State'. On the one hand, there is a deliberate on-the people-face rhetoric which the militant organizations seek to promote through such acts; at the same time, it also serves as a display-device through which their prowess and the corresponding helplessness of the administration are highlighted. The reference to an instrument of violence in the title incorporates not just the question of the capability of the militants, it simultaneously brings into focus the inadequacies in the governmental machinery. .
