[Assam] on your writing , Letter to the President of India
Manoj Das
dasmk2k at gmail.com
Sat Mar 4 22:32:11 PST 2006
Nagas would like it to be called NAGALIM, Umesh.
On 3/5/06, Barua25 <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> What is wrong with Nagaland?
> RB
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: umesh sharma
> To: assam at assamnet.org
> Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 1:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [Assam] on your writing , Letter to the President of India
>
>
> An intersting bit of info about his life in Nagaland - by Himendra-da. By
> the way some have hangups why Nagaland - isn't called Nagapradesh or
> Nagastan etc --why "land"
>
> Umesh
>
> Barua25 <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> The one and only I think.
> RB
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Chan Mahanta
> To: Ankur Bora ; Himendra Thakur ; assam at assamnet.org
> Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 11:59 AM
> Subject: Re: [Assam] on your writing , Letter to the President of
> India
>
>
> Hi Ankur:
>
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> Was it Mr. Barkatatki who ordered the police firing at Kohima,
> resulting in dozens of civilian deaths that touched off the Naga armed
> rebellion, by any chance?
>
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> c-da
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> At 9:40 AM -0800 3/4/06, Ankur Bora wrote:
> Dear Himendra Thakur ,
>
> It was a pleasure going through your writing. When I was in school ,
> I was an ardent fan of Satyen Barkataki ( pls correct me if I mis-spelled
> ) and Birendra Bhattacharjee. Some of their writings vividly portraited Naga
> life and society. Please let us know if you had interaction with Barkataki (
> He was assistant commissioner in Nagaland) and Bhattacharjee ( His Eyarungam
> was based on Nagaland).
> I am eagerly waiting to read more of your writing.
> Ankur
> Dallas , Texas
>
> Himendra Thakur <hthakur at comcast.net> wrote:
>
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> 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 be! fore 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 regio! n 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 Bhattacharya
> when he went to New Delhi in 1980 to accept his Jnanapith Awa! rd :
> "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 yo! ung, 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 o! f 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
> 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.
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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 e! mployed 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
> emotio! nal 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 na! tion 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 comme!
> nts . . . 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 si! nce "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 t!
> he 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 Northe! ast 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 a! s 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 ba! ttalions 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
> re! gion'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 g! reet 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 slowl! y 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 200! 5. "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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