Except when it explodes in violence, Manipur in Northeast India is a state that rarely attracts attention. That is perhaps a misfortune to equal the tragedy of death that perpetually stalks its society, for many changes have taken place in the last many years that a negligent "India" hilnot cared to notice. In late September this year, local newspapers and cable television operators, in Manipur suspended work for two weeks, in protest against "interference". This was an act of protest against the degeneration of once idealistic "freedom movements" into internecine struggles for power and control by proliferating splinter groups. This is the sad reality of India's Northeast. Many of those who today speak on behalf of the region have become increasingly distant from its common people, and Indian policymakers have yet to register the importance of this fact.
Nagaland, which neighbours Manipur, has for the past 50 years been in the throes of one of the most tenacious armed struggles against New Delhi. There is virtually no Naga family that has not been scarred by this movement for independence. In the past two decades, Assam and Tripura too made their way into the roster of insurgency-affected states. These armed struggles have led to one of the saddest blights of the Northeast, the cutting down of youth at the peak of vigour and energy. In all these states, the crushing might of the Indian army is a conspicuous, menacing and oppressive one.
What is unfortunately rather less evident to those who sympathise with the regional movements for autonomy and self-determination is that oppression is equally ruthlessly practised by the local insurgent organisations. This is why the press of the Northeast has begun to protest, and why the common folk are increasingly perturbed by the 'parallel government' run by these organisations. The question that can legitimately be asked is how such organisations can claim to speak on behalf of an entire people in negotiations with the federal government and in international fora, when they silence the public back home at gunpoint and ruthlessly stamp out dissent.
Naga versus Naga