It would not be out of place to call the northeastern tip of our country a mini-India.
 
Nor would it be wrong to suggest that even the weird diversity of the Indian sub-continent often fails to match the variety in lifestyles of the tribals and plain dwellers of the north east; in their characteristic, food habits, likes and dislikes.  

The region essentially comprises Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. Significantly over 200 tribal and non-tribal groups live together; have often fought each other; and very often collectively fought against the Indian Government and the military. Historically, the various ethnic groups in the region have never really been banded together be it by custom, language or camaraderie. Thus, it would not be wrong to take north east India as a unit only as a product of colonial legacy.

Insurgency is the basic and a long lasting complex problem of the region. In the words of Gandhian Natwarbhai Thakkar, who had set up a Gandhi Ashram in remote Chuchuyimlang village of Mokokchung district in the Ao region of Nagaland in the 1960s, the “basic seed” of insurgency and the craze for independence struggles by most tribes in the region “owe their origin to the suspicions” of the plain dwellers and the mainstream Indians. But to be fair, this is not without good historical reason.

Insurgency has multiple implications, but the base is the people’s support irrespective of whether these insurgent outfits are genuine or not.

There is a saying that history usually designates a failed revolution as a rebellion. But all movements without strong ideological base have a limited life span. The root of insurgency in states like Nagaland and Mizoram was political. Though the menace spread like wildfire all across the hills and valleys, most of the insurgency in the north east falls under a different category today. The militants have made an industry out of abduction and often milk their own people.

“Anti-social elements have made inroads into various outfits and militancy for them has become an easy way of life,” says BJP stalwart and former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani.

The spinal cord of insurgency in the north east and other places such as Punjab is ‘local support’. “It’s like the proverbial parrot and demon story. The life of insurgency demon, if it is so, lies in the people’s support. The dwindling support base of the local public is the only way to eradicate the vice,” says former DGP Punjab and super cop KPS Gill.

Many serving military and intelligence officials in Delhi agree with this notion. “All key underground factions openly support political parties and individual candidates from Nagaland to Manipur and from Tripura to Assam. So insurgency is an industry not only for extortionists but also the political class,” says one of them.

In fact, the refrain among the security apparatus in Delhi is that what is happening in Assam vis-à-vis the compulsion for ULFA to come out for talks across the table today is what was witnessed in Mizoram in 1986 and in Punjab later. They cite many instances wherein insurgent groups lost their good will more than the support base and ultimately were left with their backs to the wall.

From a stage when they made strong inroads into people’s psyche with sentiments or the Robinhood style of functioning; today in most cases militancy only means abduction, extortion and gunrunning.

“The hollow nature of the several militant organisations including ULFA has come to light with the passage of time. The unpopularity of ULFA meant common people deciding to galvanize the moral courage and bash up ULFA cadre in the late nineties,” observes a Congress sitting MP from Assam.

Long back, outfits like ULFA, NLFT and ATTF had given up the so called presumed Robinhood style of functioning. In fact, a former Union Home Secretary recalls that in April 1990 in a secret meeting the All Tripura Tribal Force (ATTF) came into being, allegedly with the support of the communists. The founder was a former CPI (M) comrade Ranjit Deb Barma. “In the subsequent period, ATTF was alleged to have helped Marxists wrest power from Congress,” he claims.

The unsaid refrain was to be understood that similarly, Congress had benefited in the 1989 assembly elections.

In mid February, 2012, the former Union Home Secretary G K Pillai pointedly said in Guwahati, “Not enough action has been undertaken to improve the lot of the poorer segment and it is this gap that the Maoists are trying to capitalize on, rather than ideology.” This is essentially a lesson that New Delhi’s ivory tower policy makers and bureaucrats along with the state governments in the region should understand at the earliest.

The 1993 state assembly election in Nagaland was one such episode when NSCN (Khaplang) allegedly helped the S C Jamir group of the Congress. “In that year’s elections, militant influence was so palpable that Jamir’s rivals in Congress, Hokishe Sema and his associate Chingwang Konyak were defeated,” recounts an intelligence officer, who had served in Kohima and Rangapahar divisions. Again, he adds that in circa 2011, “The same onetime towering S C Jamir could not manage an assembly seat for himself in the Ao belt allegedly due to overwhelming role played by Jamir’s long lasting bete noire NSCN (IM) leaders.”

Officials admit that in Assam as well the regional opposition AGP after their defeats in consequent polls in 1999, 2001 and 2006 had attributed these defeats to a newly established Congress-ULFA nexus.

The book, ‘The Talking Guns: North East India’ (Manas Publications) which was penned by a journalist endorses this claim. “As a military uprising, ULFA has suffered a severe jolt, but as a political challenge it is yet to be defeated. As a determinant of politics in Assam, ULFA is truly a shadow in the corridors of power. It is alleged that the defection from the regional camp of AGP in the run up to the May 2001 assembly polls to the Congress camp and Congress winning elections convincingly only makes the case murkier,” says the book.

The complexity of ‘foreigners’ or specially the Bangladeshi influx problem in Assam and other states too should be seen from the prism of “local support.” During a visit to select pockets like Hojai, Nagaon and Silchar-Karimganj stretch in Assam in late 2010, this writer was stunned to find that in these areas, once minorities, the Bangladeshi infiltrators – now well armed with official documents – hold the key to the electoral fortunes of the netas.

I call it a quirk of history and politics that Prafulla Mahanta, who had led the famous Assam movement against infiltrators, had allegedly indulged in gross appeasement of this section of his voters in Nagaon. He had to do this as even ULFA wanted him to go soft on the ‘foreigners issue’ for the obvious reason that the outfit itself took shelter in Bangladesh.

“Insurgency has multiple implications, but the base is the people’s support irrespective of whether these insurgent outfits are genuine or not,” says a military analyst. There is no denying the fact that insurgency in the north east would not have assumed the ominous contour that it has without the support of the local people, both covert and overt.

There is ample evidence and supporting material with the government that from the once notorious American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to ISI of Pakistan; all the agents are directed to study social tension and exploit them for the purpose of destabilising the north east.

None other than Marxist doyen P Ramamurti in 1979 wrote in his booklet, ‘Real Face of the Assam Agitation’ published by CPI –M that “It is well known that western imperialist agencies operate through certain Christian missionaries and missions”.

Both civil and military officials in Delhi assert that the insurgency in the north east can be curbed. But that would be impossible without the people’s greater involvement.

This can happen only when the native sons and daughters of the soil stop harbouring and aiding the militants. “People did it in Punjab and are doing a great deal of it in Assam,” says a key government player involved in the ULFA peace talks.

A former adjutant general in the army headquarters, Lt Gen S S Grewal had said that “Local people must stand up and stop giving shelter to insurgents. When the masses don’t support or back you, the army is unable to achieve its targets.” One can not agree more.

Swati Deb