Banya Baruah had fallen in love with her classmate Anirban Choudhury in Dhaka when her father, Golap Baruah, one of the founders of the banned insurgent group, United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa), was lodged in Bangladesh jail.
Both studied in the Mastermind International School in Dhaka. Ulfa insurgency in Assam was at its peak then.
On September 30, Banya and Anirban tied the nuptial knot at Jeraigaon, her father's native village situated at about 40 km from eastern Assam's Dibrugarh town. The marriage happened seven years (2015) after her father was deported from Bangladesh to enable him to take part in the peace talks between Ulfa and the Centre.
"I was not aware of their relationship since I was in jail then. But we have love and regard for people in Bangladesh for the kind of help they provided to us in our revolution. So we did not have any objection to the marriage," Golap Baruah, alias Anup Chetia, the general secretary of Ulfa, told DH on Thursday.
In 1979, Chetia and a few other Assamese youths had decided to take up arms and formed Ulfa with an aim to solve Assam's problem of "illegal migration" from neighbouring Bangladesh. Ulfa said the identity of Assam's indigenous people was at stake due to illegal migration of the Bangladeshis through the porous borders. The Ulfa leaders including Chetia had fled to Bangladesh following army operations in Assam.
Ulfa had set up camps in Bangladesh and carried out insurgency activities from there. Chetia was arrested in Bangladesh in 1997 and was lodged in jail till he was deported in 2015. Chetia is in talks with the Centre and is likely to sign an agreement with the government. "There should be more marriages between boys and girls in Assam and Bangladesh in order to improve people-to-people relations," Chetia said.
Chetia belongs to the Motok community, one of the indigenous communities in Assam. Their marriage was performed as per traditions of the Motok community.
Their official marriage, however, would be performed on November 15 at a temple in Melbourne in Australia, where Anirban works now. The couple would live in Melbourne after the marriage, Chetia said.
The marriage, however, led many to ask questions on social media about what would now be Chetia's stand regarding the issue of illegal migration from Bangladesh and the CAA. "Since the boy is a Bangladeshi Hindu, will Chetia still oppose the CAA? Because the CAA seeks to offer Indian citizenship to the Hindus from Bangladesh too," one posted on Facebook.
A friend of Chetia, however, defended saying that Anirban's family is a resident of Dhanmondi area in Dhaka and they can't be compared with the illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
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