[Assam] Letter to the President of India

[Ram Sarangapani]

Dear Himen da,

That was very interesting. Did they get married in the end? You didn't
finish up the story.

--Ram


On 3/4/06, Himendra Thakur <hthakur at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Netters,
>
>
>
> *After * Mr. Chandan Mahanta accused me on December 27, 2005 for posting a
> "personal experience" with Mr. JM Lyngdoh as *"the anecdote you cite here
> --- merely points to your importance, as demonstrated by the courtesy you
> received from him … with the hour long interview" …. * I carefully avoided
> posting of any autobiographical note in the assam-net.
>
>
>
> However, since Mr. Chandan Mahanta *himself* is now posting
> autobiographical notes and anecdotes as *"Let me share one of my own
> experiences here"* --- I am gathering some courage to post my "experience
> here" … some of these stories maybe quite a funny relief for the netters!
>
>
>
> Mr. Chandan Mahanta writes that *"My nick-name at IIT KGP was 'Naga'*"
>
>
>
> Well, I was also called a "Naga" --- not in IIT Kharagpur, but right
> inside Nagaland where I served as an Executive Engineer during the stringent
> days before the "Peace Agreement" was initiated by the Peace Commission of
> the late Jai Prakash Narayan, Bimala Prasad Chaliha and Reverend Scott in
> 1965.
>
>
>
> At that time, Executive Engineers were frequently shot dead by the
> underground rebels. Every morning when I went out to work, citing the story
> of Field Marshall Rommel of the Second World War, I used to tell my wife
> that I might not come back in the evening … rather, they might bring me in a
> stretcher or inside a box. My wife used to cry at the beginning, but very
> soon she got used to it … "No matter how much he brags, this guy always
> comes back every evening, anyway," she must have thought!!
>
>
>
> There were some narrow escapes, after which I made a public announcement
> that I never carried any weapon in my jeep. Scrapping the green-blue
> camouflage painting of my army jeep, I got my jeep painted absolutely white
> so that anybody could spot it from distance. If they were interested, they
> were free to shoot, I announced publicly. Later,  when the Peace
> Commission came, we painted all the Peace Commission vehicles white.
>
>
>
> I went from village to village fixing their water supply, schools,
> dispensaries, hospitals. Being an Executive Engineer, working against the
> vested interest of many, I had to fight tooth and nail to get the work done,
> … and they liked it, because Nagas were born fighters, they thought I was
> one of them. One fantastic point in their land was that all agreements were
> verbal … nobody would go back on what they said … they were used to take
> full responsibility of what they said. One day, two Gaonburhas started a
> fight right in front of me during my visit to a village border, because one
> Gaonbura accused the other Gaonburha that he was working in his land (every
> village is an exclusive territory in Nagaland, like the City States of
> ancient Greece) --- I quickly placed myself in between the two Gaonburhas
> and told them that they would have to kill me because it was my fault, I
> gave the wrong assignment by mistake. They cooled down, and I assigned
> another contract to the losing Gaonburha --- who christened me as an
> "Asomiya Naga"!! I have a number of interesting episodes in Nagaland, which
> I'll share with netters if they want.
>
>
>
> As for the being called a "Naga", it is very important to know the answer
> to the question: who is a Naga? There are some fourteen tribes in the
> mountainous region that is known as Nagaland. Each one of the tribes has
> their own language, customs, and name … they don't call themselves Naga …
> they are Ao, Angami, Sema, Lotha, etc. They do not understand each other's
> language. They communicate with a lingua franca known as Nagamese, which is
> a form of broken Assamese.
>
>
>
> I was serving mostly in Mokakchung, which is essentially an Ao area.
> Greeting me with a joke "Amikhan Ao Naga achey, tumikhan Asomiya Naga Achey"
> --- they would burst out laughing!! We were all Ao Naga, Sema Naga, Asomiya
> Naga, Lotha Naga, Angami Naga, Koniak Naga … and so on.
>
>
>
> Joining in their free laughter, I used to argue with them about Bengali
> Indian, Bihari Indian, Assamese Indian, Naga Indian, Punjabi Indian ---
> their response to such an argument was: "sahabto bar budhiyak achey dei !"
> --- followed by more laughter!!
>
>
>
> Stereotyping people by their birth is a sign of gross ignorance, which is
> displayed not only by the witless Army/Navy Guards (Utpal Brahma's posting),
> but by very intelligent people as pointed out by Mr. Sanjib Barua in his
> article. In the assam-net, Mr. Mukul Mahanta stereotyped Mr. Lyngdo as
> "Khasi Christian".  Stereotyping is a sign of gross stupidity like what
> one top India leader remarked about the late Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyawhen he went to New Delhi in 1980 to accept his Jnanapith Award :
> "Although Mr. Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya lives in Assam and writes in
> Assamese, we consider him as an Indian writer." This was from a top Indian
> leader, absolutely degenerated into such a low level that even a
> rickshaw-puller would be ashamed of.
>
>
>
> Inter-caste, inter-ethnic marriages across all the barriers of language,
> religion, nationality, etc., will be a very powerful tool to stop the stupid
> stereotyping of people. Stupid stereotyping of people is the theme of my
> drama "Baagh" (1969) &/or "Bindu" (1993).
>
>
>
> When I was in Nagaland, a young, educated, "first-generation Christian" Ao
> woman fell in love with an Assamese Hindu young man. They disclosed their
> quandary to my wife, who told me that I must help them. The bride told me
> that she had a very powerful aunt in the underground, might be next to Phizo
> in the Ao area.
>
>
>
> "What did your aunt say?" I asked the bride.
>
> "My Aunt asked for two tablets of Novalgin."
>
>
>
> Novalgin was a kind of a powerful head-ache medicine in those days! If a
> powerful underground lady wanted two tablets of a very powerful headache
> medicine, the problem must be very hard for an "Asomiya Naga" like me!!
> However, I did not give up. "Did you tell your father?" was my next
> question.
>
> "Yes, I did."
>
> "What did he say?"
>
> "He asked me "What will happen to your religion?""
>
> Now this was an interesting turning point. Holding my breadth, I asked,
> "What did you say?"
>
> "I told him that I would go back to my grandfather's religion", the bride
> replied.
>
> Sensing some danger, I blurted out my next question" What did he say?"
>
> "He did not say anything. Instead, he gave me a such a slap that I fell
> down three feet away" was her sad reply.
>
>
>
> I could now see the gravity of the problem. It took me overnight thinking
> to find the solution. Next day, I called the groom privately to my room and
> told him that we would write a letter to the President of India.
>
>
>
> "What ???" the groom almost jumped off his chair.
>
>
>
> "Yes. The President of India. Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. I'll draft the
> letter on your behalf and get it typed. You just sign it and mail it to him.
> It is his job, not mine---" was my cool answer.
>
>
>
> My draft of the letter from the groom to the President of India ran like
> something this: "Respected Dr. Radhakrishnan, …. My mother passed away many
> years ago, my father died last year, I am an orphan now, and I don't have
> anybody to advice me what to do. You are the Father of the Nation, I beg you
> to show me the path …"   so on.
>
>
>
> It was just a one-page letter from the groom, wondering how he and his
> bride could get married, seeking the advice from Dr. Sarvepalli
> Radhakrishnan, President of India from 1962 to 1967 ---- 40 odd years ago!!
>
>
>
> This posting is already getting too long. Let me stop here. If the netters
> want to hear the rest of the story, I'll write later. In the mean time, let
> me try to contact the bride and the groom and ask them if I could divulge
> their names and dig up the original letters!!
>
>
>
> With love to everybody,
>
> Himendra
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Chan Mahanta <cmahanta at charter.net>
> *To:* assam at assamnet.org
> *Cc:* baruah at bard.edu
> *Sent:* Friday, March 03, 2006 11:10 AM
> *Subject:* [Assam] A new politics of race: India and its Northeast
>
>
>
>
> Dear Netters:
>
>
> The following is a very interesting and enlightening article by Sanjib
> Baruah. He was hesitant to post it to assamnet because of its length. But I
> felt it something we cannot afford to miss.So here it comes.
>
>
> The emphasis on* bell hooks'* name is mine, so people don't miss it. I
> did.
>
>
> cm
>
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>
> IIC Quarterly (New Delhi: India International Centre)
> Vol. 32 (2& 3) Winter, 2005) pp. 165-76
> A new politics of race: India and its Northeast
> Sanjib Baruah
> There was a time when peoples of Northeast India were described as
> belonging to the Mongoloid race.  Today Mongoloid and other racial
> categories such as Negroid or Caucasoid -- and indeed, the very idea of race
> as a biological category -- have no standing in scientific circles. For
> there is more diversity of gene types within what was once thought of as a
> single 'race' than between 'races.'
>
> But while race may no longer be accepted as a scientific category, it does
> not mean that human beings would stop making distinctions based on
> stereotypical phenotypes or skin colour. Arunachalis, Assamese, Garos,
> Khasis, Manipuris, Mizos, Nagas and Tripuris may indeed have some
> phenotypical similarities related to genetics. Thus one may be able to say
> that someone is from Northeast India based on looks, though he or she may
> not always get it right. For "human populations . . . possess a wide genetic
> potential which increases in variation through chance mutations or new
> generic combinations in each generation. . . . Completely stabilized
> breeding isolates. . . are exceedingly rare"  (Bowles 1977, cited in Keyes,
> 2002: 1166).  And of course, most of us realise that what we think of as the
> 'Northeastern looks' are not unique to peoples from the region.  For
> instance, peoples from the western Himalayas -- those from Nepal or the
> Uttaranchal -- might share features similar to those found among peoples in
> the eastern Himalayas.
>
> Race as a social category is the product of practices. There are visual
> regimes of labeling, and individuals encountering those labels from
> childhood may internalise characteristics associated with those labels and
> learn to adapt to the socially constructed racial order.
>
> African American intellectuals have long recognised the role of visuality
> in the politics of race. The writer* bell hooks* -- even her way of
> writing her name without capital letters is an intervention in the regime of
> visuality -- describes her project as one of 'resisting representation' and
> of constructing an 'oppositional gaze.' "We experience our collective crisis
> as African-American people," she writes, "within the realm of the image"
> (hooks, 1992).  The project of black liberation, for her, is thus a battle
> over images.
> The Indian image of the troubled Northeast is increasingly mediated by a
> visual regime constructed by popular films, television, pictures in
> magazines and newspapers, and limited contacts with people from the region.
> Thanks to improved communications, Indians today are quite mobile, and
> Northeasterners travel to other parts of the country more than ever before.
> There are a large number of students from the region in Delhi, Bangalore,
> Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and other cities.  They are now a 'visible minority'
> in a number of university campuses.  A disturbingly large number of them
> tell stories about their experiences of being racially labeled as 'Chapta'
> (flat nosed), 'Oriental' or 'Chinky'.
> A large number of Northeast Indian young women are employed in upscale
> restaurants and shops in Delhi - their 'Oriental' looks and English language
> skills being considered desirable for those positions.  Many of them live in
> ethnic ghettos, for instance, renting rooms and apartments in 'lal dora'
> areas: the urban villages of Delhi. Apart from rents being affordable, they
> feel physically safer than in upscale neighbourhoods. Compared to landlords
> in elite neighbourhoods, these landlords of more modest means are tolerant
> of Northeast Indian eating habits -- fermented dry fish, beef chutney and
> pork -- and less inclined to impose restrictions on the lifestyles of their
> tenants. However, racially marked niches in the labour market or in
> settlement patterns have the danger of reinforcing racial thinking.
> Incidents of violence against Northeast Indian women in the country's
> capital may partly reflect the racialisation of the divide between the
> mainland and the Northeast.
> While many Northeasterners travel to the mainland, thousands of Indian
> soldiers and members of the various paramilitary organisations make the
> reverse journey to the region to fight external threats as well as on
> counter-insurgency duties.  In the streets and paddy fields of the region
> security forces stop and interrogate Northeasterners every day.  The soldier
> himself faces an unenviable situation: the most peaceful of surroundings can
> quickly turn hostile and he has to be alert against possible offensives by
> militants.  Some sort of racial profiling becomes inevitable under these
> conditions, especially since we have no laws prohibiting it.  As Indian
> soldiers return home, their stories of 'treacherous' rebels hiding behind
> bamboo groves and jungles spread through friends and relatives. The shared
> visual regime provides ways of putting those stories and faces together.
> Northeast India's fractured relation with the mainland has been described
> as a cultural gap, an economic gap, a psychological gap and an emotional
> gap. The shared visual regime now carries the danger of this fault-line
> becoming racialised.
> II
> Mani Ratnam's film of 1998 Dil Se is a love story between a woman militant
> from the Northeast and an All India Radio journalist. The male protagonist
> Amar, played by Shah Rukh Khan, travels to the Northeast to speak to fellow
> citizens for a radio programme to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of
> India's independence.  He develops a relationship with a local woman Meghna,
> played by the Nepalese-born Manisha Koirala.
> If Bollywood gossip is to be believed, Manisha Koirala was chosen for the
> role partly because of her 'small eyes.' Director Mani Ratnam, according to
> Aishwarya Rai, "definitely wanted a small-eyed girl in Dil Se. She had to
> have that kind of physical features as she was supposed to be from Assam"
> (Rai, 2000).  The caste of Dil Se also included a number of Assamese actors,
> among them filmmaker Gautam Bora, who played the role of the chief of a
> militant group.
> The film's story  unfolds between the fiftieth anniversary in of Indian
> independence on August 15th 1997 and the Republic Day on January 26th.
> While All India Radio reporter Amar embodies the Indian nation, Meghna
> represents the horrors of life in the Northeast torn apart by insurgencies
> and counter-insurgency operations.  Amar defends the nation against rebels
> bent on tearing it apart.
> The Northeast of Dil Se is a dangerous place where women are raped and
> families are destroyed. Life in Delhi could not be more different: the film
> portrays it as a middle class city where tranquil family life and
> traditional family values prevail.  Meghna in the nation's capital is a
> danger to both nation and family.  She is on a suicide mission to blow
> herself up at the Republic day parade.  As a guest at Amar's home she is an
> awkward presence at a time when the family prepares for his arranged
> marriage.  "Had it not been for the army, the nation would have been torn to
> shreds," says Amar to Meghna. It is "your nation, not mine," says Meghna in
> defiance.
> III
> Am I making too much out of a film? Perhaps. But what if we are beginning
> to look at people from the Northeast through the prism of a visual regime
> exemplified by films like Dil Se? What if after nearly half a century of
> counter-insurgency, the counter-insurgent gaze is framing our way of seeing
> peoples from the Northeast?
> Films like Dil Se and pictures in newspapers and magazines enable people
> to put together a mental picture of the Northeast and its people.  The gaze
> of the Indian army patrol, reinforced by films like Dil Se, gives meaning to
> what is fast becoming a racial divide.
> There are signs that we are slowly beginning to recognise this new
> politics of race, though we seem to be as yet unsure whether to use the 'r'
> word.  A Manipuri journalist wrote in a national daily that, "physically the
> people of the North-east are closer to Southeast Asia and China." However,
> "this racial divide," he said, is not appreciated "in a sensitive manner"
> (Singh, 2004). The journalist told me that the 'r' word was edited out at
> one place in the printed version. He had actually written, "racially the
> people of the Northeast are closer to South-east Asia and China." Apparently
> the editors substituted the term 'physical' for 'racial.'  However, his
> second usage of the 'r' word -- in racial divide - remained in the published
> text.
> Let me turn to a small sample of writings by Northeasterners who have been
> students in mainland India, recalling their experience of being seen as
> different and encountering racial labels.  "I did my schooling in a boarding
> school in India," recalls a Manipuri living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He
> was the only student from the Northeast in that school.  He posted the
> following on an email discussion group:
> Being the only minority I was subjected to many racist comments . . . The
> one that I still remember clearly was my being called "Chapta" (flat nose -
> for those fortunate ones that never heard the term) by my Hindi teacher. The
> word "chinki" . . . is peddled around with not even a little thought of
> whether the term could offend someone, by even my closest friends. I came in
> contact with some Mayangs (the Manipuri term for other Indians) here and it
> shocked me that despite my being there amongst them they refer to the other
> Asians as chaptas still with no consideration that I could find it
> offensive. Even on my bringing up the issue they just laughed it off saying
> they saw nothing offensive in it. So I have now resorted to referring them
> as "Pakis" and that really seems to anger them. For those who don't know
> about it, "Pakis" is a racist term used in Britain to refer to people with
> the sub continent features (Pakistan, Indian, Srilankan etc.) So the next
> time you hear any mayang using the word chinki or chapta, call them a
> "Paki". I think once this word gets common usage as a term to refer to them
> by all the people of the north east they will finally realize what it is
> like to be referred by a racist term (Manipur Diaspora, 2004; cited in Ray
> 2005).
> In Kuala Lumpur, he wrote, because of his features he had a hard time
> convincing people that he was an Indian. He got tired of explaining that he
> was from India since he "didn't look like the Indians they knew."  On the
> other hand, he said, he was "able to melt into the crowd and it was easier
> making friends with the Chinese and Malays" (Manipur Diaspora, 2004; cited
> in Ray 2005).
>
> At a seminar in Pune a Naga student joked that after coming to Pune he
> became "half Naga, and half Indian", while he was "a complete Indian"
> before. He elaborated that in Pune, shopkeepers, doctors, teachers and
> government officials, everybody treated him as Japanese or Chinese because
> of his features. He was asked to show his passport when applying for
> admission to college  (cited in Das, 2004). While doing fieldwork in
> Manipur, anthropologist Sohini Ray asked a young student about his first
> visit to Mumbai. He told her that "the first thing he and his companions
> found difficult was that every other person asked them where they were from,
> and stared at them." When they said Manipur, people asked where it was and
> if it was really in India. To avoid such uncomfortable encounters after a
> few days they started saying that they were from Thailand, because "it was
> more convenient" (cited in Ray, 2005).
>
> An Assamese woman describes her first year as a student in Delhi
> University (1996-97), as follows: "I didn't look 'Oriental' - the
> politically correct term they'd devised in lieu of the derogatory sounding
> 'chinky'. So I didn't have to face some of the stupider questions. My friend
> from Mizoram was asked if she needed a passport to come to India." The
> 'Oriental' looking among us," did not have to go through hazing, she
> recalled since "Indians are always nice to foreigners" (Goswami, 2004).
>
> IV
>
> The emergence of a racial label to include all 'indigenous'
> Northeasterners fits nicely with the category 'the Northeast' that since
> 1971, in the words of a retired senior civil servant who played a key role
> in designing this political order, has "emerged as a significant
> administrative concept . . . replacing the hitherto more familiar unit of
> public imagination, Assam" (Singh, 1987a: 8).  In 1971 a number of the new
> states were created (though not all of them were states at the beginning),
> and another piece of legislation gave birth to the North Eastern Council
> (NEC).  These two laws were 'twins born out of a new vision for the
> Northeast' (Singh, 1987a: 117).
>
> Unlike the distinction between tribal and non-tribal that is an important
> part of our vocabulary in discussing the Northeast, the racial label has the
> advantage of including all those who belong to the troubled region, and, is
> perceived as being connected to the troubles.  For instance, a majority of
> the plains people of Manipur and Assam are not "tribal" which, after all, is
> an arbitrary governmental category. However, the Assamese and Manipuri
> insurgencies are among the most potent in the region. Thus the distinction
> between tribal and non-tribal is not very useful when it comes to discussing
> insurgent Northeast India. Since tribal and non-tribal Northeasterners share
> certain stereotypical phenotypes in common, the racial label has become more
> functional.
>
> The racial label incorporates meanings that predate the era of insurgency
> and counter-insurgency.  Willem van Schendel, writing mainly with Bangladesh
> and the Chittagong Hill Tracts in mind, comments on the "remarkably stagnant
> view of the hill people" that has prevailed in South Asia.  The classic
> nineteenth century Western assumptions about social evolution from a state
> of savagery to civilisation were superimposed on the ancient South Asian
> distinction between civilised society and nature. The later distinction,
> indicated in the categories grama  (village) and aranya  (forest), implies a
> relationship that is complementary but always unequal. These two traditions,
> writes van Schendel, combined to generate a dominant view that considers the
> tribal peoples as remnants of some "hoary past who have preserved their
> culture unchanged from time immemorial. Backward and childlike, they need to
> be protected, educated and disciplined by those who are more advanced
> socially" (van Schendel, 1995: 128).  The visual label of race that
> transcends the colonial categories of tribal and non-tribal and reaches out
> to pre-colonial categories such as the Kirata people -- used to describe the
> people of the periphery - may now give a new lease of life some old Indian
> prejudices.
>
> Responsible Indian officials have from time to time used the metaphor of
> children to describe the peoples of Northeast India.  In February 2004 the
> Mizoram Governor A.R. Kohli described the entire region as a spoilt child.
> Contrary to the charge that the Northeast is "the most neglected region," he
> said it is "in fact, the most spoilt child in the country." The central
> government, he said, "showers funds and other goodies" liberally on the
> region. But the funds are not properly utilized or they do not reach the
> intended beneficiaries. A news report paraphrased the Governor as comparing
> the region "to a petulant child who is showered with goodies but does not
> know what to do with them" (Telegraph 2004).
>
> Such sentiments are also found in the language used by B.P. Singh - the
> former civil servant who played a key role in the creating the Northeast as
> an administrative category. In an article published in 1987, he concluded:
>
> There is no tangible threat to the national integration ethos in the
> region despite the operation of certain disgruntled elements within the
> region and outside the country. But in the context of a history of limited
> socialization and ethnic conflicts, and rapid modernization after 1947 the
> unruly class-room scenario is likely to continue in the region for years to
> come (Singh, 1987b: 281-82).
>
>  "Unruly class-room" is a telling metaphor.  In the Northeast, Singh seems
> to imply, what is needed is a paternalistic and disciplinarian teacher -
> someone who knows what is good for children and, occasionally uses the stick
> for their own good, the role that he probably sees the coercive apparatus of
> the Indian state playing in the region.
>
> These passages smack of attitudes and habits of mind that long predate the
> politics of counter-insurgency.  But while these prejudices are old, they
> have acquired new meaning in the context of India's failed policies in the
> Northeast. While Singh's metaphor of an "unruly class-room" rationalises the
> coercive response to insurgency, Kohli's description of the region as a
> "spoilt child" expresses the frustration with the failures of a policy of
> nation-building through corruption or what Jairam Ramesh calls "using
> corruption as a mode of cohesion" (Ramesh, 2005: 18).
> V
> What are the some of the consequences of the racialisation of the divide
> between India and its Northeast?
> 1, Motivation for militancy: According to Manipuri intellectual and
> politician Gangmumei Kamei, a major motivation for joining insurgent groups
> in Manipur is the social discrimination that young Manipuris face in
> different parts of India because of their appearance (cited in Ray 2005).
> Race has been a factor in the Meitei religious revival movement of the 1940s
> as well. Some revivalists converted to the newly formed faith "only after
> returning from pilgrimages to Mathura and Brindavan, where their Southeast
> Asian features raised curiosity and animosity among the local population."
> The racial divide, according to anthropologist Sohini Ray, is central to
> understanding the Meitei urge for constructing an alternative history.  A
> constituency for an alternative geneology emerged when "the whole idea of
> sharing a common ancestry with the people who are hostile to them for their
> looks" became unacceptable (Ray 2005).
> 2.  Perpetuating a divide: While official narratives about
> counter-insurgency view each Northeastern insurgency as distinct; the racial
> label disrupts this narrative.  As a result the differences between
> political conditions in different parts of the Northeast have no effect on
> popular perceptions about the 'disturbed' region, since racial thinking do
> not allow for such distinctions. For instance, the Mizo insurgency that
> ended with a peace accord in 1986 is usually portrayed as a success story.
> Yet that does not mean that Mizo relations with mainland India are any
> different from that with other parts of the Northeast.  Even today Mizos
> such as Laltluangliana Khiangte complain about mainstream India not
> understanding their culture and traditions, and about Mizos being mistaken
> as South-east Asian tourists in the national capital (cited in Singh, 2004).
> After nearly two decades of a peaceful Mizoram, as Manipuri journalist
> Khogen Singh puts it, Mizos "still don't feel fully at home outside the
> North-east" (Singh, 2004).
> 3. Hijacking of counter-insurgency: There is evidence that the racial
> divide sometimes subverts counter-insurgency operations and they get
> hijacked for other purposes. For instance, it was reported that in the Karbi
> Anglong district of Assam, Indian security forces, ostensibly there to deal
> with the security threat posed by insurgencies, became partisans in local
> land conflicts between tribal Karbi and Hindi-speaking settlers.  The
> settlers whom Karbis refer to as Biharis had over time acquired informal
> control over what is formally designated as public lands and had
> consolidated a "considerable amount of economic and political power."  They
> now seek formal change in the status of those lands and formal land titles
> (MASS 2002, 11-13). In Karbi Anglong's ethnic configuration and the growth
> of insurgency, the loss of land by Karbis to "Biharis" is a factor. Many
> Karbi young people have come under the influence of the United People's
> Democratic Solidarity (UPDS).  But in local armed land conflicts, because of
> racial solidarity, "Bihari" settlers have occasionally secured the informal
> backing of Indian security personnel stationed in the area to fight the UPDS
> (MASS, 2002: 21).
> 4. Facilitating militarisation: The racial divide facilitates the
> relentless militarisation of the region.  Consider for instance, the
> recommendation to strengthen Indian military presence in Manipur made by
> E.N. Rammohan -- a senior Indian police official, who was Advisor to the
> Governor of Manipur.  In order to stop the penetration of the government
> departments by militants, Rammohan recommended that battalions of the
> Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) should guard all government offices and
> the residential neighborhoods housing central and state government officials
> in the state.  Furthermore, he recommended that ten battalions of the
> Central Para-Military Force (CPMF) be deployed in the Manipur Valley in a
> "counter-insurgency grid", and six to eight battalions be deployed in each
> hills district, where roads are few, with "helicopter support to effectively
> dominate them" (Rammohan, 2002: 15). Were it not for the racial fault-line
> it is unlikely that such policy options would have been seriously
> considered.
>
> 5. Legitimisation of corruption: The leakage of funds allocated for
> Northeast India's development can be best described as insurgency dividend.
> The figures are staggering. Jairam Ramesh estimates that the annual
> expenditure of the Government of India on the eight states of Northeast
> India, including Sikkim, is about 30, 000 crores a year. With the region's
> population at about 32 million, he estimates that the Government annually
> spends about 10,000 rupees per person in the Northeast.  This money is not
> going for development. In Ramesh's words, it is going to
>
> ensure cohesiveness of this society with the rest of India through a
> series of interlocutors who happen to be politicians, expatriate
> contractors, extortionists, anybody but people working to deliver benefits
> to the people for whom these expenditures are intended.
>
> A surer way of improving the economic conditions of the intended
> beneficiaries, he suggests, might be for the Indian government to open bank
> accounts and deposit an annual cheque of Rs. 10,000 for every poor family in
> the Northeast (Ramesh, 2005: 18-19).
>
> The racial divide facilitates the sharing of the insurgency dividend
> between local political and bureaucratic elites and outside contractors and
> suppliers.  Not unlike western businessmen who justify bribing politicians
> and bureaucrats in the Third World in terms of local norms, the image of the
> Northeast and its people in this new visual regime is that of a modern
> frontier where corruption is just a part of the natural landscape.  Even the
> "chinky" students from the Northeast in Delhi, after all, appear more
> "modern," "westernized" and affluent than many of their mainland peers
> apparently confirming the corruption-friendly image of the region. It is
> hardly surprising that when it comes to doing business in the region 'make a
> fast buck and run' appears to have become accepted practice.  Even today's
> much-lowered levels of inhibition and moral compunctions do not apply to
> India's modern but wild Northeast Frontier.
> VI
> Things did not have to turn out this way. As an Arunachali minister once
> said at a meeting in Mumbai, "Why can't you think that in a big country like
> ours a few people may even look Chinese? Come to Arunachal Pradesh, he said,
> people in areas bordering China will greet you by saying Jai Hind" (cited in
> Das, 2004).
> In everyday conversations Northeasterners resist mainland India's
> representation of the region. But intellectuals, artists and activists will
> have to develop what bell hooks calls an oppositional gaze. Khasi
> commentator Patricia Mukhim believes that because of its geographical
> location policy makers in Delhi think of the Northeast primarily in terms of
> its "strategic importance."  The region, she suggests, is treated as "enemy
> territory, which needs to be subdued by force."  But "you cannot buy
> allegiance with force," she warns and calls for 'an entirely new approach'
> to the region (Mukhim, 2004).
> A new approach must start with the domain of representation. Our policies
> have an impact on the way the Northeast and its people are represented.  For
> instance, softening our international borders -- opening up the region on
> the east and the north, and encouraging close cross-border interaction  --
> can slowly change perceptions.  The region seen as a gateway to a friendly
> transnational neighbourhood will evoke very different emotions than those of
> a frontier or an "enemy territory"  -- a danger zone where foreign and
> domestic enemies conspire against the Indian nation. Policies could
> transform the Southeast Asia within India into a dynamic gateway to the
> Southeast Asia of world political maps. This could be the foundation for a
> new social contract between India and its Northeast. This could radically
> change what it means to look Northeastern in India. The battle for the
> future of Northeast India is also a battle over images.
> References:
> Bowles, Gordon 1977. The People of Asia. New York: Scribner.
>
> Das, Arup Jyoti.  2004. "The Half-Indians" (Unpublished essay)
> Goswami, Uddipana 2004 "Misrecognition" (Unpublished essay)
> hooks, bell 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Cambridge, MA:
> South End Press
> Keyes, Charles 2002 "Presidential Address: "The Peoples of Asia" - Science
> and Politics in the Classification of Ethnic Groups in Thailand, China and
> Vietnam," Journal of Asian Studies 61 (4) November, pp. 1163-1203.
>
> Leshin, Len  2003 "What's in a name The "Mongol" Debate," Down Syndrome:
> Health Issues (website) http://www.ds-health.com/name.htm (Accessed
> September 16th 2005)
> Manipur Diaspora. 2004. Manipur_Diaspora at yahoo-groups.com Archives, E-mail
> No. 367.
> MASS (Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti). 2002.  And Quiet Flows the Kopili [A
> Fact-finding Report on Human Rights Violation in the Karbi Anglong District
> of Assam] Guwahati:  Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti.
> Mukhim, Patricia.  2004.  "Life under Martial Law," [Shillong Notes]; The
> Telegraph (Guwahati edition) September 21.
>
> Rai, Aishwarya. 2000. 'I've not come here looking for fame,' Interview by
> Kanchana Suggu, http://www.rediff.com/entertai/2000/mar/29ash.htm(Accessed September 16th 2005).
> Ramesh, Jairam 2005. "Northeast India in a New Asia," Seminar (550) June,
> pp. 17-21.
> Rammohan, E.N. 2002. "Manipur: A Degenerated Insurgency," in K.P.S. Gill
> and Ajai Sahni (eds.), Faultlines. Vol. 11, New Delhi: Bulwark Books and the
> Institute of Conflict Management: 1-15.
> Ray, Sohini. 2005. "Boundary blurred? Folklore/Mythology, History and the
> Quest for an Alternative Geneology in Northeast India" (Unpublished
> manuscript).
> Singh, B.P.  (1987a) The Problem of Change: A Study of Northeast India,
> New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
> Singh, B.P.1987b. "North-East India: Demography, Culture and Identity
> Crisis," Modern Asian Studies 21 (2): April: 257-82.
> Singh, M. Khogen. 2004. "As Indian as You and I," Hindustan Times,
> September 10th 2004.
> Telegraph 2004. "Governor Slaps Spoilt-child Tag on Northeast," The
> Telegraph (Guwahati edition) 14 February.
>
>
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