The Circuit House at Dhubri commands a splendid view of the majestic Brahmaputra as it begins the last of its great bends southwards, plunging like a giant arrow into the heart of the flatlands of Bangladesh. Just outside the main gate to the Circuit House, at the bottom of a gentle slope, is the office of the District Superintendent of Police (SP). After a brief conversation with the then SP, a burly and helpful Ahom officer, Anindita Dasgupta, my researcher for Assam, and I were ushered to the records room. We were permitted to take down notes from any documents, but not to take away any material from there. It was windy and warm, I remember, and Anindita, who is smart as well as pretty, got straight down to the task of noting the number of foreigners held under the Foreigners Act, the number of illegal intrusions over the years, the changing routes for the influx, and some case histories.

We ignored the curious stares of the policemen, the whispered comments of officers wondering what two ‘civilians’, especially a young woman, was doing in their office. Over the next days and months, Anindita painstakingly noted down material from dusty offices in Dhubri and other parts of the state, as well as neighbouring Meghalaya, culled out important information, and interviewed villagers, policemen, bureaucrats and politicians, professionals—lawyers and journalists as well as NGO groups.

Our fieldwork took us to different parts of Assam, from Guwahati to Nogaon, to Dhubri and villages on the Indo-Bangladesh border, and Meghalaya.

Dhubri is near Bangladesh; Guwahati is about 400 kilometres north-east of it and Nogaon is another 120 kilometres further away, about three to four hours drive on a pleasant and surprisingly smooth road from Guwahati.

Dhubri is a small, sleepy, dirty town of tiny lanes and bylanes which was built on the banks of the Brahmaputra and then moved inland. The commercial hub of the region is Guwahati, a busy, bustling, overcrowded, noisy city, flooded with rickshaws, autorickshaws, people, cars and fume-belching buses and trucks. It is a city of temples, the most famous being the Kamakhya which is especially sacred because an unmentionable part of Padmini, Siva’s consort, fell there when Krishna was busy cutting her body into little pieces. This extreme act, according to legend, was forced by Padmini’s death and the acts of her grieving swami who carried her across the world, dancing the tandava and destroying it without realizing what he was doing.

Nogaon is a sleepy town in Central Assam where nothing seemingly happens—but even in this laidback place, where summer’s blistering heat and dripping humidity scorch the plains, the ULFA has had a major presence. It is also a district that attracted large numbers of immigrants, right from the years preceding independence.