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.