Lal Thanhawla doesn't need security to feel secure. The only security visible at the residence of the Mizoram chief minister is a paramilitary jawan who opens the gate to his bungalow atop a hillock in Aizawl, the capital of the northeastern state bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar. There is no one else to frisk a visitor or his bag. Neither is there a CCTV watching you.
Even the dog that stands guard at the door to his living room with a golden chain around its neck doesn't move or bark. Lal Thanhawla says he picked up the clay dog at a Mumbai shop a few years ago because 'it resembled a real dog'. He has a 'real' dog too, a cocker spaniel wrapped up in a woollen cloth against the freezing Mizoram cold.
But dogs or not, in a way, Lal Thanhawla's home, with its scant security, mirrors what Mizoram is today. Once a hotbed of insurgency, it is now perhaps the most peaceful state in a region still beset with militancy.
And the man who made it possible is none other than Lal Thanhawla. The main architect of the 1986 peace accord signed by the then outlawed Mizo National Front (MNF) and the Rajiv Gandhi government, he has just returned to power for a record fifth time as chief minister.
'My people are my security,' says the 71-year-old, barrel-chested Congress leader, wearing a grey tweed jacket with matching grey trousers, his shiny black boots tapping on the wooden floor as he makes his point.
In fact, Mizoram is the only state where the Congress has been able to retain power in the recent Assembly elections, with the party losing both Delhi and Rajasthan to the Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, respectively.
Evidently, the heat of incumbency has not singed the Congress government in Mizoram in 2013. Indeed, the main campaign issue against him was not how his government had performed but why he had 'participated in' the Durga Pujas in Calcutta last October.
The chief minister says the Opposition played the religion card because they did not have 'any real issues' to champion. 'It only showed their political bankruptcy but people rejected that by returning me to power,' he says.
There was no corruption charge against his government either, he says. 'I don't make money as chief minister. I have enough inheritance to live on. So they could not accuse me of being corrupt.'
He credits the Congress victory to the 'pro-farmer' policies of his government. His 'new land use' policy especially was a hit with the farmers who make up more than 60 per cent of Mizoram's population. It allowed the peasants to move away from jhum (slash and burn) cultivation by providing them training and an annual aid of Rs 1 lakh.
It was also Lal Thanhawla who helped bring about the state's 'enduring peace' nearly 28 years ago. Militants laid down arms following the accord and the MNF is today the state's main Opposition party, winning five seats against the Congress's 34 in the 40-member Mizoram Assembly.
Clearly, Lal Thanhawla — once charged with sedition and jailed for one and a half years — has come a long way from his days as a sympathiser of the militant movement that wracked the northeastern state for more than two decades.
He says he was having dinner with his family in Aizawl when he was arrested on March 11, 1966. He was hauled off to a police lock-up in Aizawl and later shifted to an army camp near Assam's Silchar where he says he was treated like 'a prisoner of war'.
He insists he had never joined the MNF. 'I had only helped them since they had sought my help,' says the leader.
When he came out of Silchar jail, where he was finally lodged, in October 1967, he realised the need for peace in Mizoram and joined the Congress.
'I was angry and disillusioned (with the Indian government) for the way it treated its own citizens in the army camp. But I knew that only dialogue with the rebels could bring peace and development to Mizoram,' says the leader.
He resigned as chief minister in 1986 so the late rebel leader Laldenga could take over as chief minister, the main condition of the peace accord. 'I made the supreme sacrifice for the sake of my state and my people,' he says.
But as luck would have it, Laldenga's government was short-lived and Lal Thanhawla returned as the chief minister in the next election.
But militancy — or its end — is not what defines the Mizo leader entirely. Lal Thanhawla is many things to many people — an ace footballer, hockey player, a boxer, a journalist, a generous leader and an able administrator.
The son of a forest official with the Assam government — Mizoram was a district of Assam until it was made into a Union Territory in 1972 and then into a state in 1987 — Lal Thanhawla studied in a Bengali-medium primary school in Silchar.
He says he was always good at sports and got his first job in the Mizo district administration on a sports quota while finishing his BA from Aizawl College in 1964. 'I played against Mohun Bagan, against Chuni Goswami,' says the former striker proudly.
After college, he edited a Mizo paper while working for an English daily from Assam as a stringer. Those were the days when the Army was carrying out operations against insurgents in Mizoram. And Lal Thanhawla says he often found himself caught in the crossfire. 'Both sides threatened action against me,' he says, adding that he was the founder-president of the Mizoram Journalists' Association.
Though his supporters praise him for improving the lot of the Mizos over the past two decades or so, his detractors accuse him of doing precious little in terms of development. 'We have no industry and few roads are passable in the state once you venture out of Aizawl,' says an MNF leader.
The chief minister says mountainous Mizoram, located in a remote corner of the country, has geographical disadvantages. But still, he has built all-weather roads to connect the state to neighbouring Manipur and Tripura. 'The road to Manipur came in handy to ship emergency supplies during the Naga blockade of roads in Manipur last year,' he says.
Lal Thanhawla says his government has been building roads and other infrastructure to kick-start trade with Myanmar and Bangladesh as part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Look East policy.
He has also asked ONGC to prospect for petroleum and natural gas in Mizoram. He believes the state has these natural resources. 'They have to be here since we are surrounded by oil producing Assam and Myanmar,' he says.
The chief minister also reels off a number of hydroelectricity projects that he has lined up in Mizoram. 'We will go from a power-deficit state to a power-surplus state once these projects are in operation,' he adds.
Mizoram is a Christian-dominated state, with the Church playing a crucial role in people's lives. 'I am a practising Christian but I am not anti-Hindu, anti-Buddhist or anti-Muslim,' he says. Which is why, says Lal Thanhawla, he had gone to Calcutta to inaugurate some Pujas in Salt Lake and elsewhere. 'I will do this again if invited. I am a secular leader in a secular country,' he says.
All the photographs on the walls of his living room show him with his wife Lal Riliani, an anti-smoking crusader in Mizoram where the rampant use of tobacco has long been a threat to public health. Lal Thanhawla clearly draws his strength as much from the people as from his wife. 'She is a great source of strength for me,' he says of his wife. 'She goes everywhere with me and helps me keep my feet firmly on the ground.' He says she is also his biggest critic 'whenever she doesn't approve of my actions, which is, of course, very rare.'
Lal Thanhawla sees himself as an 'ordinary' man who stays in touch with ordinary people. He says he makes it a point to visit his constituency at least once in three months and attend marriages and funerals there whenever possible. No wonder they call him the CGM (chief guest minister) in Mizoram.
His only son died some years ago and none of his three daughters and the daughter-in-law and his grandchildren has any interest in politics. 'They feel one politician is enough in a family in terms of the trouble it causes the family,' he says, with a chuckle.
He has no national aspirations, either, he says. In fact, he was 'very unhappy' when he was made a member of the 9th Finance Commission by Rajiv Gandhi. 'I had to stay in Delhi and I did not enjoy it at all,' he says. 'I am a Mizo and I want to be in Mizoram.'
What hurts him most, he says, is the way some national leaders of different political parties look at people from the Northeast. 'It is as if they don't want to see a unified India. We have as much rights and privileges as any other Indian. So, why look down upon us,' he asks.
For the Mizo leader, national integration means not just 'territorial integration but emotional integration of our people'.
Indeed, as one who has done his bit to bring peace to Mizoram, the least he can expect from the rest of India is that it should treat the state not as a piece of distant irrelevance but as an integral and valued part of the country.
