Majority of Assam's 26 million people were shocked at the Independence Day blast in Dhemaji that killed 13 people, including six schoolchildren. The ULFA, accused of carrying out the explosion, responded to the public outcry by carrying out nine more attacks between 25 and 26 August, killing five people and injuring more than 80 others in different parts of the State.

Rajkhowa, the ULFA leader, said that the Assam Government was "using children as tools" and had used them to"'achieve its political goal" despite a call by his group to boycott the Independence Day celebrations. ULFA's elusive commander-in-chief, Paresh Baruah, later denied his group was behind the Dhemaji blast and claimed that Rajkhowa's statement was 'misinterpreted by the media.' The ULFA C-in-C also made a significant claim saying "people who believe in our cause" could have been involved in the Independence Day blast.

The contradictory statements by the top ULFA duo only reflect the predicament the group is in following the killing of innocent children and women. But, what the ULFA may not have expected was influential groups as the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) and the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) joining the tirade against the rebel outfit. In fact, ever since its formation on 7 April 1979 to push for a 'sovereign, socialist Assam,' groups like the AASU has not really come down on the ULFA in such strong terms.

This public response could in fact be the turning point in the ULFA movement, with people openly coming out against the mindless violence and terror acts in the State. More significantly, the AASU's charge that the ULFA has "failed to realize the core problems facing Assam, arising out of the illegal influx of people from neighbouring Bangladesh" has lent a new twist to the entire upsurge against the ULFA activities. The AASU, which had led the six-year-long anti-foreigner (read anti-Bangladeshi) uprising in the State (1979-1985), has accused the ULFA of being silent on the issue of Bangladeshi influx into Assam for fear that the rebel group might lose its bases in Bangladesh.

The war of words between the ULFA and the AASU was never before witnessed to this extent. Paresh Baruah accused the AASU of having begun the 'cult of violence' in Assam with its involvement in the massacre of hundreds at Nellie, near Guwahati, in 1983 and another massacre around the time, during the peak of the anti-foreigner stir. The AASU reacted by saying that no investigating agencies that had gone into these killings had indicted the AASU. In what looked like a desperate bid to wriggle out of its pro-Bangladeshi stand, as projected by the AASU vis-?-vis its silence on the issue of influx, Paresh Barua came up with an unheard of stance saying that "any person, except those from the Northeast, who had entered Assam after 1947 should be regarded as a foreigner." AASU leaders were not impressed with this 1947 cut-off that the ULFA has suddenly come up with. The AASU has said that the 1971 cut-off year for detection and expulsion of illegal Bangladeshi migrants was reached after consultations with a cross-section of the Assamese society before the Assam Accord was signed in 1985, which ended the anti-foreigner agitation.

Apart from being suddenly dragged into the murky 'politics of citizenship,' that the Bangladeshi migration issue has thrown up in the State since the eighties, ULFA's Independence Day blast has come to be condemned on the streets of Assam by groups otherwise considered close to the militant group. For instance, activists of the Manav Adhikar Sangram Samity (MASS) paraded the streets in Guwahati on 24 August, condemning the explosion at Dhemaji. The MASS, however, balanced its outcry by seeking an immediate withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers Act, 1958, from Assam.

The MASS may have sought lifting the AFSPA, but the fact that its cadres had to openly condemn the Independence Day blast indicates the realization within the group that it had to swim with the tide of popular public opinion in Assam if it was to be taken seriously as a human rights group by the people. Interestingly, the Ministry of Home Affairs has listed MASS, along with four other non-governmental organizations in the Northeast, as having links with militant outfits. Despite this massive public outcry, the ULFA has refused to hold possible peace talks with the Government unless the discussions revolved around its core issue of sovereignty. How long the ULFA manages to hold on to this position remains to be seen.

ULFA's reaction to the peaceful democratic protest by people disgusted with violence was seen as indicating that the group wanted to stifle the mass upsurge against its activities. As Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said: "The ULFA is indulging in acts of plain terrorism by targeting innocent bus passengers, schoolchildren and people outside cinema halls." It appears that security forces or other symbols of governmental authority are no longer the ULFA's sole target.