Mamoni Raisom Goswami

 

 

This lady just won’t give up. Called an unrealistic peacenik by some, and an “ULFA agent” by most others, Mamoni Raisom Goswami refuses to give up trying to get Assam’s rebels, the United Liberation Front of Asom, to sit and talk peace with the Central Government.

The mediation, though, has been a tough business, with the process grinding to a standstill after the government asked for a written commitment from the ULFA that its Chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and ‘Commander in Chief’ Paresh Barua would be a part of the negotiating process. Currently, the bomb blasts and attacks continue as do the operations of the army in a conflict that has cost the lives of 10,000 people.

Badgered by organisations such as the Assam Public Works (APW), an organisation of families of those killed by the ULFA, Goswami, however, has the confidence of both Paresh Barua and the Union Government. “My biggest achievement is that I have been able to convince the ULFA that they should talk to the government,” says Goswami, a former Delhi University teacher, writer and Ramayana scholar.

As for the options, they are simple: should Goswami succeed, it could bring to an end 28 years of strife in the state; if not, the killing and the bloodshed can only continue. And neutral mediator or ULFA agent, she appears to be the only chance that Assam seems to have at the moment for peace. “I am an eternal optimist,” she says.