Demobilised, Dispossessed…Disappeared? In Search of Women Rebels of ULFA in India's Northeast

<strong>Centre for the Study of Social Systems School of Social Sciences</strong> <strong>CSSS Colloquium</strong> <strong>Dr. Rakhee Kalita Moral</strong> (Cotton College (State University), Guwahati) Will be presenting a paper on <strong>Demobilised, Dispossessed…Disappeared? In Search of Women Rebels of ULFA in India's Northeast</strong> Date :<strong> February 9, 2016 (Tuesday)</strong> <strong>Abstract: </strong>This paper is developed from research on the female members of one of the prominent insurgencies of Northeast India, the ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom), who in the time of peacemaking have been rendered not simply marginal but even inimical to 'post-conflict' prospects that the rebel group hopes for. Women across most rebel outfits and organisations in South Asia, or for that matter elsewhere in the world, have been quantified and viewed as victims or vulnerable actors without often registering their many acts of empowerment through such non-state mobilisations. I argue that the invisibilty of women combatants in the case of ULFA which is now in a critical stage of peace-brokering with the government of India, after more than three decades of militarisation and violence, underpins a phenomenon that has been largely unstudied and left unfactored in understanding the behavior of multitudes in conflict societies. ULFA's women rebels I argue are, curiously, in various states of agency and empowerment as they renegotiate their way through social and political structures that typically do not accommodate their interests or aspirations in what may be seen as an important transitional moment in the contemporary history of the region. This discussion will attempt to locate these crucial moments of conflict transformation through testimonies and accounts from the field, demonstrating how former female rebels defy and often defeat the easy constructs that such women are boxed into as they emerge as new political subjects and turn the narrative around with acts of collective resistance. <strong>Bio : </strong>Dr Rakhee Kalita Moral teaches at Cotton College ( State University), Guwahati and has most recently been a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti( 2013-2015). Beginning with literary concerns , her Phd being on the sociology of T.S.Eliot's divided lineage, British and American, she moved into postcolonial studies and thus, via the politics of place and region into northeast India studies. Her research focus for sometime now has been the culture of resistance in the region with her ethnographic study of the women combatants of the United Liberation Front of Assam, a prominent NE insurgent outfit, soon to be published as a book (Routledge). She has at the same time just written an introduction to ULFA (OISI, OUP) which is forthcoming. She has, apart from these forthcoming titles, and a few edited works, several papers and articles in national and international journals.