Journalists take out a rally condemning the abduction of six editors by the Kangleipak Communist Party on April 18. Picture by Eastern Projections

Confronting concerns

Once again the media in Manipur is at the receiving end of militant ire. However, this is no longer news. Mediapersons in that state seem to have learnt to live in an atmosphere of threat and claustrophobia. If freedom of thought and expression were compared to oxygen then there is not enough oxygen to breathe in for a healthy democracy.

Journalists are compelled to inhale the polluted ideas spouted by sundry rebel groups, each with an agenda of their own and each one vying for prominent media space. Hemmed in by radical ideas, can journalists maintain their objectivity and sanity? It is inevitable that mediapersons, too, imbibe some of the drastic positions taken by rebel groups of different persuasions; more so, when it touches upon the territorial integrity of the state they belong to.

The concept of ?statehood? is a byproduct of the ambiguities of the nation-state. From an undefined living space occupied by different tribes migrating from various parts of South East Asia, Manipur, and every other state of the area called Northeast India, is now claimed by each ethnic group settling there for some length of time, to be their own geographically bounded space.

Claims overlap and conflicts originate when more than one ethnic group settles in a particular state and assert exclusive rights to that state.

Or, when an ethnic group revisits history and goes back to the pre-modern period prior to the emergence of the nation state with its written Constitution and its clearly demarcated boundaries, which, unfortunately, are based on linguistic considerations.

If we look at the manner in which the northeastern states have been demarcated, we find no racial or linguistic homogeneity. Rather, there are vast areas of heterogeneity. Assam has at least a dozen ethnic groups, each speaking their own language or dialect. As the groups gain educational and political ascendancy, they assert their right to a separate state, where, they claim, their interests will be better looked after.

Although these assertions are inherently flawed if looked at from the spectrum of economic viability, the groups are able to legitimise their claims by pointing at the poor human development index in their areas. This pathetic picture, they say, is a result of arrogance of the majority and dominance in the political hierarchy which ignores the needs of smaller minority groups.

Majority claims

Such claims are usually ignored by stakeholders of political power because they perceive the minority groups as powerless and voiceless. But the groups do not remain powerless forever. They learn to empower themselves. At least the leaders in the group do. Very soon the imagination of the ordinary citizen is fired and he, too, seeks to empower those who he sees as leaders capable of improving his lot. A revolution is conceived. The state diagnoses this revolution and sees it as a law and order problem because the nation-state does not provide room or negotiating space for such eventualities.

Assertions for greater autonomy or for a separate state and even genuine claims to independence from the nation state which co-opted much of the living space of free and independent groups of people before they were conscious of what was actually happening, are conveniently termed ?secessionism?.

Once the revolutionaries are labelled secessionists, the state gains legitimacy to suppress the revolution with all its might by using extraordinary instruments of repression such as the Disturbed Areas Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Western import

Once these repressive instruments are applied, state violence is legitimised. If the state which is a legal entity violates the sanctity of human life and mows down everyone and everything that comes in its way, how can it point accusing fingers at the similar kind of violence unleashed by non-state actors which is the ?word? used to describe all revolutionaries? Our problem is we have not only applied but also adopted the Western definition of the nation-state and all its implications, in a situation that does not match the Western concept. India is not a country of one racial or cultural group. There is no such thing as a mainstream culture or civilisation. What has been mainstreamed are education and economics. Educated people and those who have reached a certain economic standard fit very well into that mould of ?Indianness? and have no problems about being defined as Indians. Such people would in any case fit into the framework of any advanced society or nation. They belong to whatever and whichever country provides them the opportunities for economic and educational advancements. In other words, they are citizens of the world. But things are not always so simple. So-called citizens of the world form a microscopic minority of the Indian population. The rest are living in a time warp looking back all the time at a glorious past because the future is too frightening. They are tied to their cultural heritage and are reluctant to give that up for a ?unipolar global culture which is what the present globalised world demands. We cannot blame these groups for their closed mindsets. Rather, we should blame the nation-state, which intentionally or otherwise isolated them from the economic revolutions that the rest of the nation has been able to lay claim on.

Alienation

Education in Northeast India has never been a priority of the nation-state. This region was alienated from the educational, economic and political upsurge that benefited the rest of India since 1947. It would be difficult to imagine what would have happened to people in this part of the globe had it not been for the pioneering efforts of Christian missionaries who created the best educational institutions and health infrastructure and gave the people their first experience of Western education and the advantages that come along with it. Today, Hindu fundamentalists of this same nation-state blame Christian missionaries for the unrest in the region. Indeed, without education the citizens of this extremity would not know what they have missed.

Now that this periphery is striking back and reclaiming its lost space, the nation-state is offended. It is true that there are shades and shades of revolutionaries. Some have genuine ideologies others are political opportunists and still others have developed criminal mindsets. But the bottom line is that the nation-state has failed to understand its own neglected periphery. What it is doing now, which is pumping in money for so-called development and armed forces to suppress dissent, are only compounding the problem.

There is need for an altogether different policy for dealing with India?s Northeast. I am afraid that the creation of a ministry for the Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) is another knee jerk reaction from the nation-state. It is doomed to fail. Merely citing statistics of how much money is being pumped in to the region creates more heartburn and conflicts. It is time to think of better strategies.