When the Bubble Bursts

When cadres start training their guns on each other, it is a clear sign that militancy in the
Northeast has reached a saturation point

Patricia Mukhim Shillong

Jose Ortega y' Gasset in Revolt of the Masses says, "A revolution only lasts 15 years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation." This statement seems to ring true of the insurgent movements of the Northeast. Some of the leading insurgent outfits of the region, namely the NSCN and ULFA, are no longer pursuing an ideology. They have become self-serving movements destroying in their wake the fledgling economy of the region. The Naga insurgency no longer resonates with the common people as it did two decades ago. Now it is associated with a brotherhood of bloodshed. What else do you call a fratricidal war? In Assam the ULFA is just one year short of its third decade. Is this why some of its critical mass are opting out and seeking to smoke the peace pipe?

Insurgencies are actually modeled on revolutions that in real terms are assertions against perceived or real injustices in economic and social orders. Going by what Gasset says, every revolution, (in our case, armed conflict) has its own gestation period beyond which point it is no longer sustainable. William Ralph Inge in his book Our Present Discontents makes an interesting observation. He says, "If there is one safe generalisation in human affairs, it is that revolutions always destroy themselves."

Jean Paul Sartre's critique on revolutions and revolutionaries is very enlightening. Sartre avers that every revolutionary wants to change the world; he transcends it and moves towards the future, towards an order of values which he himself invents. He further observes that the rebel is careful to preserve the abuses he suffers so that he can go on rebelling against them. Does this sound familiar to us in the Northeast? How many times have we heard litanies of army atrocities, of step-motherly treatment by "India", of the Indian State as the new coloniser of Northeast India, and so on? If we take away some of the above plaints there would be very little left to carp about the demonic Indian State. And then the searchlights might fall on our own culpability and our own roles in adding our bit of poison to the entire mess. 

Self-introspection is a discomfiting thought. It takes away our armoury of abuses against the Indian State. So neither the revolutionaries (militants/insurgents) nor the heads of governments of the Northeastern states will allow that to happen. Everything is so enmeshed - the revolution - the revolutionary- the political decision-makers - the security forces - the small players who live off serving extortion notes et al. You cannot even begin to disentangle this mass without getting hurt. Too many people have too much at stake, first in creating revolutions and later in pretending to stop them. Only those who run governments in Nagaland, Assam and Manipur know the symbiotic relation they have with militants. It is the common man who is the unwitting victim of this highly obnoxious, predatory, ego-centric mind game.  

Inge's observation that revolutions invariably destroy themselves is also an apposite point if we focus on our own backyards. When cadres begin to train the gun at one another instead of at the object of their disenchantment, then the revolution has indeed begun to consume itself. It is only a matter of time before the process of self destruction completes its work. History is replete with examples of revolutions going awry and revolutionaries themselves becoming the worst oppressors of human rights and liberty. Albert Camus, writing way back in 1951, says, "Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic." Is this not a classic example of our own situation? Why else would we all fear for our lives in insurgency hit areas? Aren't insurgents supposed to protect our lives and liberties against the oppression of the State? Ironically the situation has turned a full circle. We need more and more state forces to protect us from revolutionaries.

Today almost all of the Northeastern states are unable to uphold the rule of law. Arunachal Pradesh's Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu has proposed that the Centre immediately adopt the unified command model where the army, para-military and state police forces will converge and provide security to the common man. The alibi of course is that the NSCN, NDFB and a plethora of armed insurgents operating in the region are using that state as a corridor to Myanmar and China. While high level diplomacy is necessary to ensure that militant groups from this country do not get their continued dose of oxygen from China and Myanmar, India's failure to seal the borders and to get the compliance of neighbours in this is bewildering.

Considering that India is now planning to invest in hydro electric projects in Myanmar in the manner it has done in Nepal and Bhutan we would expect a minimum of reciprocal goodwill from that country. But the news that the ULFA is also proposing to generate wind and hydel energy along the Myanmar border is equally baffling. There is of course so much that is befuddling about the convoluted processes of international diplomacy. God alone knows how many insurgent outfits that have the calibre to destruct our neighbours, we ourselves are promoting, training and providing weaponry to, on our soil.

Let me now come to the surrender of the A and C companies of the 28th battalion of the ULFA. The battle-scarred cadres of the two companies that had created unprecedented terror during their time are now a spent force. It does not serve their purpose to continue to rebel without a cause because the ‘cause' itself no longer has a popular mandate. In the 1980s and 1990s the ‘cause' fired the imagination not just of the youth and the intelligentsia but more so of the oppressed classes. Today, after 29 years, people realise that the cause they supported has boomeranged. Militancy is today the prime reason for the siege mentality within Assam.

Erich Fromm, who wrote Escape from Freedom back in 1941 and was probably a keen observer of the two world wars, says "The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal." We have to analyse whether our revolutions have spawned statesmen or criminals. Apart from AZ Phizo, who spearheaded the Naga national movement in his time and drew much support from those in the West who believed that revolutionaries must necessarily be nurtured to bring about a just social order, one cannot think of a revolutionary turned statesman in our times. Can we boast of a Gandhi or Nelson Mandela who sacrificed everything for the cause?

It is our plight that our home grown revolutionaries have all turned mercenaries. Today, money is the
driving force behind every movement. Even the fratricidal killings are the result of turf wars for control of incomes from extortion.

Let me conclude with a quote from Nikita S Khrushchev. He once said, "If you feed the people only with revolutionary slogans they will listen today, they will listen tomorrow, they will listen the day after tomorrow, but on the fourth day they will say, ‘To hell with you'." The insurgent outfits in our region are fortunate that we are a decent, self-respecting people who will never say "To hell with you". But they should read our body language to understand our non-verbal cues.    

Northeast India is today poised to become the critical link between the rest of India and South East Asia. The region is resource-rich, with coal, limestone and oil forming the major mineral resources. In terms of forests, the region supports 63 per cent of the country's green cover. In a world moving towards clean development mechanisms (CDM), the Northeast could earn substantial carbon ratings for protecting the country's bio-diversity. Here is a paradise of medicinal herbs that have served the indigenous communities well for centuries.

Our growth rate today is nothing to write home about. Only Assam has some claim to a robust economic growth courtesy its tea and oil industries and their ancillary units, but once the export links are built through Chittagong in Bangladesh and through Myanmar and Thailand, these resources after due value addition will become the backbone of our economic resurgence.

For several precious decades, the focus has been on how to create a climate of security for investors. Our idea of security has been to reinforce the strength of the armed forces. This default in thinking is either intentional or simply a mindless pursuit of unclear objectives. Once insurgencies taper off there will be a sense of renewed vigour in people to push for growth and to be meaningfully involved in economic pursuits. It is difficult to predict just what would happen to the large contingents of security forces deployed in the Northeast, but I guess they will have to look for work elsewhere.

The writer is Editor of Shillong Times, Meghalaya