India: Public rally over unemployment turns violent in Shillong, raises bogey of ‘outsiders’ again | Angana Chakrabarti (28 October, 2022)

Public rally over unemployment turns violent in Shillong, raises bogey of ‘outsiders’ again

Led by Federation of Khasi-Jaintia and Garo People, hundreds of youths started their rally from Motphran. Videos show protesters attacking bystanders & motorists.

Angana Chakrabarti

28 October, 2022

[ . . . ]

https://theprint.in/india/public-rally-over-unemployment-turns-violent-in-shillong-raises-bogey-of-outsiders-again/1186009/

India: Middle class xenophobia rules - Aam Admi Party and BJP wont allow any resettlement of Rohingya refugees

 https://www.livemint.com/news/india/rohingyas-cannot-settle-in-delhi-won-t-let-this-happen-aap-lashes-out-at-bjp-11660734677528.html

How India's Right-Wing TV Networks Attacked the Celebrated Singer Rihanna After She Expressed Solidarity With India's Farmers | Feb 2021

Rihanna and #IndiaAgainstPropaganda​ lobby | TV Newsance Episode 120 https://youtu.be/d6jOiOTQVr0

India: A Hate spewing TV network in news for its show on so-called 'penetration of minority community in the administration'; the newtork sponsors include AMUL and the Yogi led UP govtt

Bloodlust TV

Powered by Amul and UP government, Suresh Chavhanke asks if 40 crore Muslims got scared of a 30-sec promo

Sudarshan News aired a show about how they were stopped from airing a show, with the usual ‘Hindu good, Muslim bad’, nudge nudge, wink wink messaging.

By Meghnad S

Published on :

Aug 29, 2020

Read the news report here : https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/08/29/powered-by-amul-and-up-government-suresh-chavhanke-asks-if-40-crore-muslims-got-scared-of-a-30-sec-promo

Migrants under suspicion and attack in India - Cartoon in the Times of India, 10 October 2018 | Sandeep Adhwaryu

Cartoon in the Times of India, 10 October 2018 | Sandeep Adhwaryu

India: UP under Adityanath - Hoardings asking Kashmiris to leave UP appear in Meerut (ANI)

SEE: http://www.catchnews.com/national-news/hoardings-asking-kashmiris-to-leave-up-appear-in-meerut-58392.html

Ngaire Woods on The New Xenophobia

The New Xenophobia

by Ngaire Woods on 16 January 2017

Democratic governments in the West are increasingly losing their bearings. From the shift toward illiberalism in Poland and Hungary to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election, a particularly lethal strain of populism is infecting societies – and it is spreading.

The appeal of populism is straightforward. Faced with stagnant wages and a declining quality of life, people feel frustrated – all the more so when their leaders keep telling them that things are getting better. Then the populist appears and promises to shake things up, to defend the interests of the “people” (though really only some of them), and offers something arguably more attractive than feasible solutions: scapegoats.

At the top of the list of scapegoats are the “elites” – established political parties and corporate leaders. Rather than protecting the “people” from economic pressure and insecurity, this group, the populist declares, thrives on the people’s pain. By advancing globalization – by forcing ever-more openness down the people’s throat – they have accumulated massive wealth, which they then protect through tax avoidance, offshoring, and other schemes.

But it is not just the elites who are blamed. Yes, they have betrayed the people. But one way they do so is by foisting upon the people equal rights and opportunities for minorities, immigrants, and foreigners, who “steal” jobs, threaten national security, and undermine traditional ways of life.

Trump won the US presidency partly because of his pledges to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and ban Muslims from entering the country. The Brexiteers promised to end free immigration from the European Union. After the vote, Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd suggested that firms hiring foreigners should be named and shamed.

Today’s populism advances a toxic new xenophobia, one that threatens to fracture our societies. For politicians, it offers an easy means of quickly transforming people’s fear and powerlessness into an intoxicating mix of anger and authority. It persuades intimidated (often elderly) voters that, in the parlance of the Brexiteers, they can “take back control” of their lives and their countries, primarily by rejecting foreigners.

Demography makes the new xenophobia particularly dangerous. In much of the West, societies are becoming increasingly diverse. Hispanics now account for 17.6% of the US population. One-third of Londoners were born outside the UK. In France, an estimated 10% of the population is Muslim. And an estimated 20% of Germany’s population have some immigrant background.

In this context, when politicians campaign for votes by advancing antagonistic and divisive identity politics, they sow the seeds of animosity, mistrust, and violence within their own societies. When candidates repeatedly call Muslims dangerous, for example, no one should be surprised by a surge in anti-Muslim hate crimes, as has occurred in the wake of both the Brexit vote and Trump’s victory. Such divided societies require a rising level of coercion and force to control.

Diversity should be a strength, one that helps societies to flourish. That is why it is so important to combat the new xenophobia. One way is by encouraging and enabling social mixing, interaction, and deliberation among diverse groups. Extensive psychological research shows that intergroup contact reduces people’s sense of threat, heightening the possibilities for building trust across society.

If community centers, schools, and public locations are places where people of different religions, cultures, and race meet, xenophobia is less likely to take root. Even living in an area where others mix can help. This is why the new xenophobia has largely been resisted in Europe’s most diverse cities.

A second way to combat the new xenophobia is to reinforce the protection of civil liberties. This means upholding the rule of law, even in the face of terrorist threats, and ensuring the independence of judges.

Yet, lately, there have been ominous moves in the opposite direction. Leaders in Hungary and Poland have been dismantling constitutional protections; France has used a lengthy state of emergency to suspend rights; and British and American politicians have publicly denigrated judges. Democracy was toppled by xenophobes in the 1930s not because of the strength of the anti-democratic parties, but because of democratic leaders’ failure to uphold their countries’ constitutions.

A third way to fight the new xenophobia is through innovation. For example, though the Internet is often viewed as a great equalizer, social media are contributing to fragmentation. The content to which people are exposed is filtered, whether through self-selection or algorithms.

The result is echo chambers in which like-minded people reinforce shared convictions, creating increasingly polarized silos. But, if social media platforms were reconfigured in innovative ways, they could have the opposite impact, creating spaces for citizens from diverse backgrounds to interact.

The threat posed by the new xenophobia should not be underestimated. Today, no less than in the past, the rejection of diversity is tantamount to the rejection of democracy. That is why it must be defended, before its opponents gain any more ground.

Copyright: Project Syndicate 2017 The New Xenophobia

India: Fetishisation of the nation - expanded application of the term ‘anti-national’ serves to maintain an environment of perpetual threat

JNU crisis: Has the Centre bungled or was this always part of the plan?

The expanded application of the term ‘anti-national’ serves to maintain an environment of perpetual threat.

Amrita Shah   [27 February 2016]
http://scroll.in/article/804084/jnu-crisis-has-the-centre-bungled-or-was-this-always-part-of-a-plan 

Photo Credit: Mayank Jain

There are many reasons why the Hindu Right abhors the Left. There are ideological differences which pit them on opposite sides of various issues, chiefly economics and secularism. There is the old grouse of the Hindu nationalist lobby about communists, like Muslims and Christians, having transnational loyalties. (How this complaint would stand up in a globalised world, and with the Hindutva support base fanning out across continents, is a moot question.) But arguably the factor most significant in contributing to the former’s hostility is the Left’s immense influence in the country.
This influence, less political than intellectual, the assumption that progressive thought leans necessarily to the Left, for example, poses a substantial hindrance to the rightwing nationalist lobby’s aspirations to dominate India.
Given this fact, and the swift moves by the current BJP government to make inroads into various cultural and educational institutions including the Indian Council for Historical Research, an attempt to exert some form of control over Jawaharlal Nehru University – a perceived bastion of leftist thought – was probably a longstanding intention.
Larger plan
Then why does it appear to have botched it up so badly? Why has it sent police to the campus to arrest a popular student leader provoking criticism of overreach from even some of its sympathetic opinion makers? Why has it allowed lawyers to publicly beat up journalists, provoking a media outcry? Why has it based the whole campaign on assertions, video footage and evidence which has so easily been demonstrated to be false? Why are its leaders making deliberately ludicrous claims about nude dancing and condoms on the campus?
Observers in the media would like to believe that the government has bungled or miscalculated, or that its extremist fringe is out of control. And they may well be right. But there is another possible interpretation – that the heavy-handedness and loutish violence marking the episode is deliberate, the crudity and outlandish claims are considered, and above all, that the aim is not as one would think so much to intimidate opponents, but primarily to shore up its own support base.
Fighting the ‘other’
To understand how this works, one has to remember that the entity in question is both a political party in the conventional sense, and also part of a larger enterprise to re-envisage India. The core follower then is partly in the realm of realpolitik and partly in the realm of a nation defined by a part-imagined history, religion and a relentless hostility of the other. This world – part reality, part myth – becomes the narrative within which he or she exists. Interestingly contemporary advertisers and political marketers rely heavily on storytelling as a marketing tool, and one saw that in the 2014 campaign where Narendra Modi’s visage alone became shorthand for a developmental success story that was equally thin on detail.
The narrative, however, needs to be sustained through constant repetition. Belonging requires a repeated opportunity for battling the “other”. The fetishisation of the nation focuses loyalty, and the expanded application of the term “anti-national” serves both to discredit the government’s potential opponents (note how the ambit has grown, over the years, to include minorities, secularists, NGOs, free-thinking students and journalists) but also to maintain the environment of perpetual threat. In the part mythologised world within which this takes place (also a world of social media and photoshop) notions of evidence and proof become less and less important in the face of narrative.
The unfolding saga at Jawaharlal Nehru University has provoked a show of strength in support of free speech with crowds marching on the streets and endorsements from a range of academic institutions. It has to be kept in mind, however, that there is a repetitious nature to these face-offs, each also serving to harden a conservatism that will keep the narrative alive.

Talk of cosmopolitan of Bangalore is no more than a mythicised past (Janaki Nair)

The Hindu, February 9, 2016

Being cosmopolitan in India
by Janaki Nair


Bengaluru’s much-touted cosmopolitanism is no more than a mythicised past. We must urgently and consciously develop a new ethics that respects, and responds humanely to, the strangers in our cities

Once more, following the recent attack on the Tanzanian woman in Bengaluru, as has happened in each instance when order breaks down, the city’s alleged “cosmopolitanism” has been called to account. In August 2012, when thousands of people from the North-eastern States responded in panic to threats on social media and fled the city, a similar anxiety about disappearing “cosmopolitanism” was raised. There is something vaguely reassuring in the collective clicking of tongues and wringing of hands over a remembered, indeed mythicised past.

To begin with, let us ask whether such an appellation, assuming it has only positive connotations, was ever deserved in a city like Bengaluru. At the risk of earning the well-shaped wrath of fellow Bengalureans, let me explain that nostalgia for a “peaceful” past apart, it would be difficult to assert that “Asia’s Silicon Valley” had even a history of toleration of difference. If it was, to be fair, a town that showed high levels of social peace in the early post-Independence decades, it was less because its citizens were “cosmopolitan” and more because the stresses and strains of becoming a metropolis, a democracy, and of being claimed as a regional capital had barely begun. In other words, while Bengaluru may not have seen the same organised and institutionalised xenophobic violence against a wide range of migrants and “outsiders” as Mumbai did since the 1960s, it has not been immune to explosions against different social groups.

A divided city

Bengaluru’s status as a “divided city” — a British-ruled civil and military station and an old city which came under the Mysore state — came to an end only in 1949 when the two sides were conjoined in one municipality. By the 1950s, as more intra-State migration into the city began, a gradual demand began to be made for privileging those of the linguistic region of Karnataka over outsiders, notably Tamils. If most of the city was not riven by the divides that were nurtured, sometimes by managements themselves, in Bengaluru’s prestigious public sector units, it was because they were somewhat segregated from the rest of the city. But soon, battles over language, but also land and water, began to be staged in the State capital, culminating in the exodus of Tamils in 1991, and not much later, virulent attacks on Muslims in 1994. These tears in the urban fabric have not been easy to repair.

Bengaluru remained a divided city despite the spatial and municipal integration: as U.R. Ananthamurthy’s anguished essay in 2006, following the resistance to renaming the city, had it, the gulf between the English- and Kannada-speaking cities of Bengaluru had reached planetary proportions! He hoped that the name change would become a step towards Kannadisation, which he defined as the “ability to belong to the world at large even as one is rooted in one’s Kannadaness”. No one can deny that Ananthamurthy belonged to the world at large, as much as the world was made his own. Yet his was a lonely voice among those who did not want to see the Sensex fall, or call centres shut shop and leave the city which had opened its arms to information-rich technologies and the employability it brought in its wake.

Language and exclusion

This brings me to the second point: why then has there been a persistent yoking of the term cosmopolitan with the city of Bengaluru? No marks here for realising that it has only meant that migrants and even long-time residents, especially of the former Cantonment, are not obliged to speak the local language! For some time, it was, for historical reasons, the space which was uniquely self-sufficient in English. Unlike many other parts of India, as erstwhile residents of the Cantonment knew only too well, even dhobis and autorickshaw drivers were conversant in English, making the new entrant comfortable in the extreme. Provided that the new entrant also spoke English. With the hordes of Hindi-speaking techies and workers who flooded the city, a new lingua franca was coursing the streets of Bengaluru, but it was still not Kannada. Kannada’s dominated status has continued, despite its many foot soldiers and the name change.

Still, there were hordes of foreign students in the 1970s and early 1980s: Bengaluru was the favoured destination of Malaysians, Ethiopians, Nigerians and Kenyans, and most of all Iranians, who trained in engineering, dentistry or agricultural sciences, and were tolerated, if only for the money they pumped into the local economy. The foreign student profile has changed a good deal now, and this may have to do with the political fortunes and new institutional structures of their own countries.

Apart from these peculiarities, there are changes that are sweeping over urban life in India to which Bengaluru is not immune. Those of us who are leading increasingly securitised lives know that we are being seen, documented and possibly controlled by technologies and powers over which we have little control. The ecology of fear has been enhanced by the multiplication of unnamed terrors. If we earlier feared the occasional pickpocket and harasser of women, we are now enjoined, by disembodied and jarring interruptions to our shopping pleasures, fond farewells at railway stations, and in public places, to be wary of strangers, unidentified objects and suspicious movements. It is patriotic now to be vigilantly suspicious and even more so to report suspicious activity, not just of strangers but of neighbours and tenants alike.

All this does not bode well for even the loosest definitions of cosmopolitanism. A city by definition is a space, as innumerable historians and sociologists have already told us, which ideally privileges and nurtures the unexpected encounter, and calls on its citizens to be able to respond humanely even to those who are not linked to us in familial, ethnic, nationalist or caste affiliations. But the preferred mode of governance in Indian cities, especially but not only in the colonial period, was via community heads, local dadas, caste groupings and so on which even the most robust resident welfare associational practices have found difficult to dislodge or replace. If even Bengaluru does not conform to any definition of cosmopolitanism, can any city qualify?

The Kochi example

In an investigation that he undertook some years ago, Ashis Nandy explores an aspect of city life that thrives in a place like Kochi/Cochin, and is seriously threatened in most other regions of India. It is a place that nurtures, though perhaps quite unself-consciously, “precolonial traditions of cultural pluralism”. It has a long history of accommodating peoples of different regions both from the hinterland and across the seas. There is a commingling of several religions, including, unusually, Judaism. Its capacity to absorb “the outsiders”, all of whom learn to speak the language (Malayalam) and join its plural alimentary pursuits (including, as his example shows, the Bharatiya Janata Party functionaries who tuck into a beef-and-rum lunch) set it apart from other equally large cities. As the lively and well-attended Kochi Biennale, which has been running since 2012, also shows, it is possible for such spaces to nurture not just creativity on a spectacular scale but a more unified public presence than at many comparable citywide festivals.

These are qualities to be prized since the majority of Indian cities are disfigured by combats over indigeneity, language nationalism, communal antagonism and fierce battles over who may be defined as “sons of the soil”. And of course tensions about race and gender. They make the “alternative cosmopolitanism” of Cochin an impossibility. For how long will such exceptionalism continue? One wonders whether the ineffable essence, or as Mr. Nandy puts it, “a culturally embedded entity”, will succumb to the pressures that find easy targets elsewhere. Despite the fact that workers from the Hindi heartland arriving in the near past have shown no obligation to learn the language, Kochi’s ability to assimilate immigrants into its linguistic cosmos is in sharp contrast to that other city of the south that is undeservedly called “cosmopolitan”.

We need not place on ourselves the unbearable burden of loving each other in order to nurture true cosmopolitanism. But neither can we rely on the ineffable essence that Mr. Nandy identifies for Kochi. Instead, as the attacks on the Tanzanian woman and others in Bengaluru reveal to us, we must urgently and consciously develop a new ethics that respects, and responds humanely to, the strangers in our cities. But for now, suspicion, fear and envy are our principal public feelings, even in Bengaluru.

(Janaki Nair is Professor of History at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.)

India: Manipuri's xenophobic demand for ‘Inner Line Permit’ in the state to regulate migrants

[Followed by a news report is an online petition that is being circulated by the manipuris]

(Business Standard - July 13, 2015)

7 things you must know about the ongoing protests in Manipur
Nitin Sethi

Nitin Sethi explains what has stirred up the land of the jewels

1) What led to the protests?

A few groups in Imphal, the capital of Manipur, have for long been demanding an imposition of ‘Inner Line Permit’ in the state. They have also been demanding the withdrawal of the Manipur Visitors, Tenants and Migrant Workers Bill, 2015. Recently, protests and rallies escalated on the streets of Imphal and spread to all four districts in the plains.

The police tackled the protests with a rough hand. A 16-year-old schoolboy, Sapam Robinhood, dies after being hit by tear gas shells on July 8. The Congress government in the state immediately imposed an indefinite curfew in the Greater Imphal area, comprising two districts of Imphal West and Imphal East.

In reaction, the protesting groups imposed a general strike. Since then, violence has escalated as people continue to protest on the streets, fighting pitched battles with the police. Due to this, more citizens have been injured, some critically. Several policemen have been injured too.

2) Was the violence avoidable?

Some observers suggest it was possible if the state government had reacted better, and more urgently. There is also a history of armed state forces using violent tactics with greater impunity than they would in, say, Delhi. There is no proof that the Centre intervened in time to control the protests. The crisis in Imphal also fell on the blind spot of the mainstream Delhi-based media for days and then found a footnote mention in some outlets.

3) What is the Inner Line Permit?

The Inner Line Permit regulates the entry of non-domicile citizens into a restricted region. The British used this to safeguard their revenue-generating regions in the Northeast against raiding tribal communities from the hills. Today, ILP is seen as a way to protect the demographic, cultural, political and social integrity of the small tribal populations in the hill states. At present, it is imposed in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. Arunachal Pradesh recently tightened its ILP system. Of about 2.7 million people in Manipur, about 700,000 are of non-Manipur origins.

4) What is the Manipur Visitors, Tenants and Migrant Workers Bill, 2015?

The Manipur state assembly passed the Bill claiming it addressed issues that the demand for ILP had raised. But the governor has not given ascent to the Bill and the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of groups demanding ILP has deemed it ineffective. The state government has now promised to withdraw it through a special session of the state Assembly.

5) Will this bring the protests and curfew to an end?

The JAC has said it will continue protests till the Assembly session to withdraw the Bill is held and a proper timeline for ILP is decided. The curfew imposed on July 8 continues to be in place, though it has now been lifted for some parts of the day. The JAC has called for a general strike in Manipur on Tuesday.

6) Is the demand for restricting free movement of Indian citizens in Manipur xenophobic?

There is a palpable fear of small communities being inundated by outsiders. This has previously happened in Sikkim and Tripura. In the latter, tribal people now account for a small minority and have politically lost control of the state. There also are streaks of xenophobia that play in to the demand, but there are progressive voices in the state that look at ILP and such demands as symptoms of real issues surrounding possible tribal marginalisation.

7) Many photographs show women in similar traditional dresses protesting along with students and youth. Who are they?

In the Meitei community that dominates the valley region of the state, they are called the Meira Peibi — literally, women with torches. It is a traditional network comprising almost the entire adult woman population in the Meitei community, known for being leaders as human rights defenders in the valleys of Manipur. Their clanging of electric poles in a locality is taken as a warning of trouble and call to all. They can always be trusted to be at the forefront of any protest against state-sponsored violation of rights.

=======

To,
Okram Ibobi Singh
Honourable Chief Minister of Manipur

Copy to:

1. General Secretary of United Nations
2. Indigenous Peoples Organizations
3. Prime Minister, Republic of India
4. Home Minister, Republic of India
5. Deputy Chief Minister, Manipur
6. Governor of Manipur
s

Subject:

1) Ensure Justice to Sapam Robinhood Singh by making over haul changes to the Manipur police system and holding the police officer involved accountable for their crime.

2) Ensure Rights of Indigenous Peoples by stopping the present policy of mass radical immigration to cause cultural, traditions, identity and demographic genocide of Manipur by Re-Implementing Inner Line Permit System.

We the undersigned would like to bring your utmost attention to the very important and serious issues of immigration that is affecting the indigenous peoples of tiny state like Manipur and which if timely appropriate actions aren’t taken urgently, can lead to many more serious incidences including further loss of lives and disrupting social cohesion and threatening communal harmony.

Sir, the inner line permit is an official permit that is given by the government of India when other Indian citizens wish to travel to the state of Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. This is to regulate movement in this area which has become an important legislation to protect or safeguard these regions and the indigenous population.

When Manipur became an independent nation from the British colonial empire in 1947, it has started its own system of issuing permit / passports to visitor to the place. This was though abolished by the then Indian government in 1950 terming as discriminatory once the former kingdom was 'merged' into India.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/I_Support_ILP/

India: Xenophobic Poster in Assam Against Bangladeshis and a Counter Poster

A poster against Bangladeshi's photographed in Kokrakhar, Assam in Septenmber 2012. It is posted here strictly with the intent to document hateful material that is promoted and published by extreme nationalist groups involved in fear mongering and enemy making against migrants in North east and elsewhere in india  

here is counter poster made in 2015

India : Dimapur Lynch Mob and Hurt sentiments - a Statement by PADS (18 Match 2015)

People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS)
Email: info-pads@lycos.com
Telephone contact: Srinivas Rao 09393875195

Communities Against Democracy: Lynching Mobs and the Violence of Hurt Sentiments¶
( A statement by People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism against the Dimapur lynching and other attacks on citizens’ rights)

[see original the version in formatted pdf]

On 5th March a man was dragged out of the Central Prison in Dimapur in Nagaland by a mob. He was paraded naked on the streets of the town for hours while the crowd beat him up, took pictures and uploaded them on the internet. After seven kilometers of public torture he was tied to the City Clock Tower in the center of the town and beaten to death. Nine days ago, the man was accused of raping a Naga college student, and was arrested for that. The crime became the news of the town a week later. A demonstration by Naga Students’ Federation was held on 4th March against the rape. In public discourse the man, actually a Bengali speaking Assamese Muslim from the Cachhar region, became an IBI (illegal Bangladeshi immigrant) because of his religion and language. One prominent newspaper headlined the news with ’IBI rapes woman in DMU’ on its front page. Naga civil society organisations brought out statements calling for justice, but also detailing the menace of IBIs in the state, and how they would take over Nagaland if Nagas do not stand up against the crime. Demands were made to hand over the man to the community to be tried under customary Naga laws. Photocopies of the man’s picture were widely distributed. Blogs were filled with aggressive comments. When the moderator of one blog stopped putting up angry comments, another one by the name Naga Spears came along to keep the cyber fire burning.

It is not for the first time in the Indian sub-continent that crowds of citizens, otherwise ordinary in every sense, have brutally killed unarmed human beings. Communal riots of 1947 were perhaps the worst in human history. In independent India instances of unimaginable savagery abound as in Nellie 1983, Delhi 1984 and Gujarat 2002. The immediate context of these killings were different from each other, but they were all done in the name of some community interest, or its corollary, for teaching a community a lesson.

The allegation of rape was only a trigger for the lynching in Dimapur. Gnawing divides along community boundaries are a regular source of suspicion and every day forms of violence all over the North-East. Illegal Bangladeshi immigrant is a convenient label used against Bengali speaking Muslims, most of whom had actually migrated before independence to riverine areas, and are as much of Indian citizens as anyone else. Along with Adivasi Tea Tribes they are among the poorest in the North East. From Bodo areas in the lower Assam to the international border with Myanmar they are a regular target of xenophobic and communal politics. During an election rally for the current Lok Sabha Mr Modi had famously declared that all illegal migrants from Bangladesh will be sent back as soon as BJP government is formed. In other parts of India too the bogey of illegal Bangladeshi immigrant is a convenient ploy for communalism and xenophobia. Apparently, during the time of BJP government in Delhi, police stations in the city were given monthly quotas to ’catch’ and deport poorer Bengali speaking Muslims who are mostly rag pickers and have valid documents. Even people who may not be communal otherwise, turn ultra nationalist on the issue of supposed migration from Bangladesh. It is not difficult to imagine the reaction in the country if the person killed by the mob in Dimapur had actually been a Bangladeshi.

In many parts of the Norht-East including Nagaland political struggles against the Indian state have been on for more than five decades. The political landscape here is littered with armed ethnic mobilisations which have slid from collective grievances of oppressed communities to random and targeted killings of ’outsiders’. Such mobilisations also act to curtail the democratic rights of those internally oppressed within the community, most commonly women. These struggles may have legitimate reasons, but no one has a right to kill an unarmed human being, irrespective of whether he/she is an accused, or is an illegal immigrant.

Aggressive mobilisations around proclaimed community interests and assault on democratic rights of citizens is common in the so called mainland India too. This type of politics has specially spread along with the rise of Mr Modi in the national politics. The loudest are the Hindutva organisations that claim to represent the interests of the so called Hindu majority. While many thousands of minority citizens have been displaced and killed in riots, and their places of worship attacked, Hindutva forces have attacked the rights of all citizens to read books they like, see movies they wish to see, spend time with persons they like, eat what they like, and discuss and debate issues related to their lives. The latest in the series of attacks is the one on a Tamil TV channel for holding a discussion on the practice of wearing a Thali (Mangalsutra) by married women even if they are abused by their husbands. Staff of the channel were attacked and its offices bombed on 12th March. The erstwhile oppressed caste communities too have taken to this style of politics. The regionally dominant Vellala Gounders of Kongu area in Tamil Nadu have successfully attacked and silenced author Perumal Murugan. Groups claiming to defend Islam have bayed for the blood of editor Shireen Dalvi in Mumbai for printing a Charlie Hebdo cartoon in her newspaper. A common thread running through all these actions is the excuse of hurt sentiments. The state has either stood as a mute spectator, or supported attackers. It is a travesty of justice that the right to a ’sentiment’ has become more valuable than the right to free life, rational thinking, and expression without fear.

People turning public killers and attacking civil rights of others is a challenge to any idea of democracy that seeks justification through the notion of popular sovereignty. Between the people as a general abstraction, who give themselves a Constitution, and rights bearing individual citizens, is the domain of public life in which many Indians identify themselves with their communities. Communities seek allegiance through calls to a shared tradition, a way of life, and a common future. Those who speak in the name of communities seek legitimation by claiming to represent a demand endorsed by most members of the community. Democracy in our country appears to have a dual relationship with communities. On the one hand it has diminished the hold of traditional community leaders. On the other, it permits and encourages an articulation of community based demands and actions in the name of popular interest by a new and competitive breed of leadership.

Many common misunderstandings about democracy facilitate the spread of community based anti-democratic politics. Foremost among these is equating democracy with the majority rule. It makes democracy a game of numbers. Majority in the formal sense is simply a result of counting. It can be an important measure of popular mood and thinking, however it is well understood that certain crucial aspects of public life can not be at the mercy of majority. Even constitutions can not be amended by a simple majority. The people at the base of popular sovereignty are not passive members of a collection, significant only for counting. The people becomes a justified political basis of rule because humans constituting it are rights bearing citizens. No authority, even while enjoying the support of the overwhelming majority of people can violate these rights of even a single citizen. Whether Mr Khan of Dimapur was guilty, or if guilty what punishment he should have faced, can not be determined on the basis of any majority decision. Along with the devaluation of democracy as majority rule comes the degradation of citizenship. The most common practice in this regard in India is to view citizens only as members of communities. Thus a person who happens to be a Muslim, gets recognised only as a Muslim; as if her caste, gender, language, economic status, political commitments, personal beliefs and achievements are of no consequence. Discussions on secularism have been stymied by a majority-minority framework, which looks at it solely in terms of protection of the so called minority rights.

While community politics creates unbridgeable walls between citizens, the fluidity of opportunities under modernity generates another world outside communities. The man killed by the Naga mob in Dimapur was actually married to a Naga woman. Their girl child, half Naga-half Cachharree Muslim, and hence neither Naga, nor Cachharee Muslim, faces an uncertain future. It depends crucially on the future of democracy in the country whether she spends her life in trauma in the barrenness of no-man’s land between communities, or she grows up to live full life of a citizen without fear, hatred and suspicion.

released in New Delhi

India: Old wounds reopened .. Old hurts return to haunt (Patricia Mukhim on the Dimapur Lynching and more)

Old wounds reopened .. Old hurts return to haunt (The Shillong Times, Friday, March 13th, 2015)

By Patricia Mukhim

The public lynching of a man alleged to have raped a Naga girl in Dimapur followed by his being hanged from a pole in a public square after being labelled an ‘Illegal Bangladeshi Immigrant’ – a generic term for all Bengali speaking Muslims – has rekindled old memories of the communal carnage in Meghalaya, more specifically Shillong. Social media is rife with comparisons between the Dimapur incident and the horrors of 1979, 1981, 1992 etc. Those who grew up during that traumatic phase have now taken up jobs elsewhere but the memories remain. They cannot delete memories of their homes being set ablaze; of being panic stricken when stones are pelted on their houses by other young people their age, who probably did not even know why they were doing what they did. That too was mob frenzy. To the Khasi youth of the time the non-tribal (Bengali and subsequently Nepali) was the cause of all his predicaments. The political construct then (and this continues) was that the non-tribal is taking away the women, the wealth, the jobs and the business opportunities of the tribal.
About the women, one can only say that since Shillong had a substantial non-tribal population, the regular social interface was bound to turn into romance and marriage. If the union between a non-tribal man and tribal woman turned sour and the man left to marry one of his own ethnicity it was no different if the union was between a tribal man and woman. Abandonment is endemic, and equally, even among those who were properly married, divorce was and continues to be high. There is no point denying this or pretending that all is well since statistics prove the fact. Meghalaya must have the highest number of female-headed households in the country.
About the job, the wealth and the business opportunities it is debatable if the non-tribals have it easy. Eighty per cent jobs in the State Government are reserved for tribals. Similarly for educational institutions of medicine, engineering and other professional courses! For the non-tribal it has been an opportunity squeeze. He may be a permanent resident of Meghalaya but he could only make the cut as a general candidate which meant that he would have to score very high marks to qualify for the 20% unreserved seats in the general category. Even in central universities, 60% of seats were reserved for tribal students. As far as the wealth is concerned the source of wealth in Meghalaya is nature. There is timber, coal, limestone that has been exploited over the years by human beings both tribals and non-tribals. The latter had to find ways and means to do business to survive economically and that was through the benami route – taking the name of a tribal to avoid the rigmarole of a trading license from the District Councils and also to avoid paying certain taxes. This is an equal game. If someone is willing to sell his name and sit at home and wait for the money to come in while someone does all the hard work, and if no one is objecting to this transaction then it’s a fair game I guess.
In the area of business, the non-tribal was already far ahead of the natives by the time Meghalaya was created. Most of the wholesale trade and stockists for food grains distributed through the fair price shops were run by non-tribals. When Meghalaya became a full- fledged state in 1972 and in the years following that, several tribals also got into this government sponsored trade and contract and supply work. It is not a state secret that many tribals only lent their names and the non-tribals were actually doing the trading. Most of the rice, wheat, sugar etc that came in for supplying to the ration card holders in Meghalaya were sold in the open markets of Assam and Meghalaya and the profits were shared through a system of mutual benefit. It was not possible for a tribal to have the reach in the markets outside their state. The modus-operandi was well-oiled. No one objected. Of course it was benami but unless the Government took suo-moto action no one was going to squeak. The passive tribal business partners became very wealthy and so too the non-tribal collaborators. But this trade/contract could only benefit a few people. Wealth begets wealth. From fair price shop owners, stockists and wholesalers the tribals diverted their interests to other wealth creation activities.
Those who did not have the wherewithal to join the bandwagon of trade and commerce, but who wanted to get rich quick, turned to politics. It was the surest way to wealth through the carpet-bagging route. The politician arm-twisted every contractor for a cut and a deal for every contract work issued by his department and made money just by using his pen. This rip-off continues. Meanwhile the number of poor people has increased because no opportunities were created for them. Governments only gave audience to mercenaries and collaborators in their wealth creation ventures.
The 1979 communal flare-up has nothing to do with the economics and the anguish of the poor who fell through the cracks in the system, although they were promised so much while fighting for a separate state. That was orchestrated by politicians who wanted to upstage the sitting MLAs and ministers and to usurp their spaces. The politicians cleverly used the infamous students’ body – the Khasi Students Union and ignited raw passion in several young men for whom logic did not matter and who knew only the lingo of violence. Like mercenaries gone berserk they launched systematic attacks on the Bengali population and created a fear psychosis never experienced before. Several Bengali teachers, government employees, lawyers, doctors who have served this society had to flee for their lives overnight and take refuge in school buildings which were used as make-shift camps. Their homes had gone up in flames. All their earthly belongings had turned into ashes. Many of them left to settle in Guwahati and Kolkata but I am not sure that they would ever be able to forget or forgive this gross act of inhumanity inflicted on them. There was no government to defend them or take up their cause. It was and still is a government of by and for tribals. The police force was compromised. There were people who were pulled out of buses and massacred or burnt alive. There was Gouri Dey, a pregnant woman from Malki who was lynched by a mob and yes, there were witnesses but the police could never convict a single person. This is a shameful track record for Meghalaya Police although it hardly matters to a force that seems to have taken a vow never to arrest a murderer or to do it so shabbily that the defence lawyers rip apart their charge sheets.
Year after year thereafter, but particularly when the state was heading for an election, tempers would rise and so would the fear psychosis among non-tribals still residing in Shillong. The next bout of violence was faced by the Nepali residents. They too fled into camps and many left the state altogether. What is ironic is that the churches and religious institutions failed miserably to reduce tensions and bring about a climate of mutual trust. Curfews were common and the farmers suffered but no one really bothered. The only people who reaped a rich harvest out of these communal conflicts were politicians.
After 36 years (from 1979-2015) the Dimapur lynching incident has reopened the wounds of those who suffered the humiliation, the hurt, pain and agony of that dark period of Meghalaya’s history. On social media there are people who relive those fearful moments; those curfew-bound hours of uncertainty; the fear of moving around even during the day time and the deep sense of alienation – that of being called an outsider in a place one has always called home – the only home one knows. If home is no longer home then where does one go?
There is as no closure to those terrible moments. Yet there is need for those who have suffered to be able to speak up and bare their hearts. That’s the only way they can move on. For them too forgiveness is important because revenge eats at the human soul and corrodes it. Some are of the view that we must let go off our past. That is easier said by those who have not suffered trauma. That is why we have something called Post-Traumatic-Stress- Disorder (PTSD) and a special branch of medicine to deal with it.
It is important for the tribal community of Meghalaya to provide this platform where those who have suffered can release their pain and move on. We owe them this much as fellow human beings. I know there are some who committed those crimes in 1979-80 who have since confessed publicly because the weight of their sin hung heavy on their souls. But if only they could make that confession in a non-threatening space, where those who suffered would find it in their hearts to forgive and let go of the past, it would be a new beginning for all.

Read more at http://www.theshillongtimes.com/2015/03/13/old-wounds-reopened-old-hurts-return-to-haunt/

India: anti english language nativist from Maharashtra makes silly claims, gets told off by Rushdie

Stung Salman Rushdie lashes out at Jnanpith winner Bhalchandra Nemade

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/stung-salman-rushdie-lashes-out-at-jnanpith-winner-bhalchandra-nemade/article6871171.ece?homepage=true

Writer Salman Rushdie has kicked up a fresh literary storm by lashing out at Jnanpith Award-winning Marathi writer Bhalchandra Nemade and describing him as a “grumpy old b*****d”.

Booker winning Mr. Rushdie's personal attack on Mr. Nemade came in a form of an angry tweet on Saturday in response to Mr. Nemade dismissing his work as lacking in literary merit.

Shortly after being chosen for the prestigious Jnanpith award on Friday, Mr. Nemade had made the remarks at a felicitation on the same evening at a programme organised by Matrubhasha Samvardhan Sabha in Mumbai.

Mr. Nemade had dismissed the work of Mr. Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul as “pandering to the West”. He said Mr. Rushdie's works after Midnight's Children lacked literary merit.

Responding to the criticism, Mr. Rushdie tweeted, “Grumpy old b*****d. Just take your prize and say thank you nicely. I doubt you've even read the work you attack.”

Known to be a proponent of “nativism” endorsing an author writing in native language and a world view that negates globalisation, Mr. Nemade had described English as a “killer language” and said the primary and secondary education should be in mother tongue.

“What is so great about English? There isn't a single epic in the language. We have 10 epics in the Mahabharata itself. Don't make English compulsory, make its elimination compulsory,” he was quoted as saying at the public felicitation. Mr. Nemade himself taught English and comparative language at different universities and retired from the Gurudeo Tagore Chair of English at the Mumbai University.

Mr. Nemade, whose 1963 novel Kosala (cocoon) transformed the form of Marathi novel, is currently working on a sequel of his 2010 tome, Hindu.

Bangladeshis living in India must either leave the country or convert to Hinduism: says Far Right Bajrang Dal

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bangladeshis-must-leave-or-turn-Hindu-Bajrang-Dal/articleshow/45621223.cms

The Times of India

Bangladeshis must leave or turn Hindu: Bajrang Dal

Sandeep Rai, TNN | Dec 23, 2014, 10.27PM IST

2

Commenting on the recent instances of ‘ghar wapsi’ in Uttar Pradesh, Dungar said, “We had been involved in ‘ghar wapsi’ campaigns even during the UPA regime. This is a continuous, ongoing process,” Dungar said.

MEERUT: Balraj Dungar, convenor of the Bajrang Dal for Meerut, said on Tuesday that Bangladeshis living in India must either leave the country or convert to Hinduism. "Our first demand is that they must leave the country, as they are abusing our resources. However, if they wish to live here, they must convert to Hinduism and adapt to the ways of our life," he said.

Commenting on the recent instances of 'ghar wapsi' in Uttar Pradesh, Dungar said, "We had been involved in 'ghar wapsi' campaigns even during the UPA regime. This is a continuous, ongoing process," Dungar said.

Dungar said Bangladeshis have taken refuge in India, and continue to live here even 43 years after the Bangladesh war. "They now need to go back," he said. Told that the illegality of the stay would not change with conversion, Dungar said, "At least they will add to our strength in numbers."

VHP organisational secretary Sudarshan Chakra, however, said he would not agree with the Bajrang Dal leader.


Members of Bajrang Dal take out a bike rally as part of Hindu Samajotsav. (File photo)

"Our organization's agenda does not give any respite to Bangladeshis. As per government statistics, there are around three crore Bangladeshis in India. They must all leave. There is no question of them converting to Hinduism. Because of them, unemployment and crime rates have risen. They indulge in anti-national activities. Despite all that, various governments in the past have been providing them with benefits. They have ration cards and voter IDs. Nothing will legalize their stay in India. They have to go," Chakra said.

Estimates of the number of Bangladeshis in India vary widely. The 2001 Census report, quoted by an online site, estimated that there were 30 lakh Bangladeshis in India. In 2012 Mullappally Ramachandran, then Union minister of state for home, claimed that nearly 14 lakh Bangladeshi migrants had entered India in the last decade alone. In 2007, central government statistics had said there were two crore Bangladeshis living in India illegally.

India: Xenophobia blossoms every where including in trade unions - CINTAA doesn't want foreign artistes in Indian films

CINTAA doesn't want foreign artistes in Indian films, Mukesh Bhatt opposes move

By Bharati Dubey | Posted 11-Oct-2014

To add to the woes of foreign artistes, especially those from Pakistan, the Cine and Television Artistes Association (CINTAA) has asked producers to avoid working with them. We ask producers about the repercussions of this diktat....
Bollywood has been home to several foreign artistes, who have not only made successful careers but have won millions of fans, too. However, the Cine and Television Artistes Association (CINTAA) has recently decided to act tough on foreign imports working in India sans proper work documents. The latest development is that film and television producers, who had been urged to steer clear of such artistes, have mostly agreed to fall in line.

CINTAA had written to all the producers’ bodies stating that all foreign artistes who work in India should have employment visa; those carrying a business visa would not be allowed to be part of showbiz. The letter also clearly states that producers should discourage their members to work with Pakistani artistes as India does not have a cordial cultural relationship with the neighbouring country.
Vikas Mohan, senior vice president of Indian Film and Television Producers Council (IFTPC), agrees with the terms and conditions that CINTAA has laid down for foreign artistes, especially those from Pakistani. “When we go abroad, we follow their laws. Similarly, foreign artistes should abide by our rules. All of them should register with CINTAA. As for hiring Pakistani actors are concerned, we are also not in its favour. We don’t have a cordial relationship with Pakistan. Why should we allow them here when our artistes are not welcome there?’’ argues Mohan. The IFTPC plans to write to its members in this regard.

TP Agarwal, president of Indian Motion Picture Producers Association (IMPPA), too, has endorsed CINTAA’s stand on foreign artistes. He says, “We should avoid foreign artistes as much as possible unless it is compulsory to the story of the film. I am completely in favour of producers not signing up Pakistani artistes. When we have so much of Indian talent why not give them a chance?’’

The Western India Film Producers’ Association, too, has decided to toe the CINTAA order. Its president, Sangram Shirke, says, “We should discourage producers from hiring foreign artistes. All the four producers’ bodies will hold a core committee meeting after which we shall be sending letters to our members informing them of our decision.”

However Mukesh Bhatt, president of Indian Film and Television Producers’ Guild states that he is yet to receive any request from CINTAA asking them to discontinue association with foreign imports. “I have not received any letter as yet but we will not allow this (disbarring foreign artistes from the industry) to happen,” he says. The Bhatts are known to introduce talent from Pakistan in their films.

Visa trouble
CINTAA has decided that it will not allow foreign artistes to take up Indian films and television projects if they have not enrolled with them. Its general secretary, Gajendra Chauhan, says, “Only those who have come to India on an E visa, and not B visa, can enroll with us. Most Pakistani working in our industry of late are on a B visa.”

- See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/cintaa-doesnt-want-foreign-artistes-in-indian-films-mukesh-bhatt-opposes-move/15673152

Xenophobia United in Manipur: House to House search for 'Foreign Bodies' by local Activists of Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit System

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/driver-kidnapped-by-uklf-militants-rescued/article6350526.ece

The Hindu
IMPHAL, August 25, 2014

Manipur: Activists on house-to-house search for 'foreigners'

Correspondent

The demand for the reintroduction of the Inner Line Permit system in Manipur took a new turn on Monday with several activists conducting house-to-house searches. They were checking the identification papers of migrant workers staying in rented rooms. All these days the activists were handing over migrant workers without identification papers to police. However, from Monday the activists are asking such workers to leave Manipur.

Police sources said that there will be police intervention since many of such workers are genuine Indians. However, the activists point out that in the absence of valid identification papers the workers may be foreigners who had sneaked in through West Bengal and Tripura.

Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh has been saying that while the government will extend assistance in detecting the foreigners, police would not remain a silent spectator when genuine Indians are harassed.

Activists of Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit System are joining hands with women vigilantes and members of local youths' clubs in conducting the house-to-house searches.

In the recent past, some of the workers were found to be possessing fake voter cards. Many others did not have any identification papers.

The activists said that some government officials, village chieftains and panchayat representatives who had been issuing domicile certificates to a few outsiders, have been asked to stop such practices.
Markets for women, locals

The women's wing of the Joint Committee has vowed to preserve the exclusive character of all-women markets in Manipur which are known all over the world.

Nganbi Lourembam, the convener of the women's wing, told reporters on Monday that of late migrant workers have intruded the markets. She said non-locals should not sell wares in these markets. She further said that male migrant workers should stop coming to the markets to sell items.

She was talking to reporters during raids on some areas in the Imphal town on Monday. Reports suggested that new migrants in the town were taking shelter in various places of the town. If the persons do not possess valid identification papers like the voter card, they should go back.

She said that the raids are being conducted after prior announcement. Police stayed at a safe distance. She said the raids would continue in other parts of the State.

Meanwhile, there are reports of sit-in protests in some places demanding the reintroduction of the ILP in Manipur.

India: Quit Mizoram Notices - Fear of the Other | N William Singh

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol - XLIX No. 25, June 21, 2014 - Web Exclusive

Quit Mizoram Notices: Fear of the Other

by N William Singh

Considered an island of peace in the conflict-ridden region of north-east India, the discrimination and harassment of the non-Mizos in Mizoram borders on xenophobia. Time and again, quit Mizoram notices have been served by non-state actors to minorities, creating an atmosphere of fear and persecution

On 24 March 2014, five major non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Mizoram staged a rally in Aizawl to protest against the Election Commission of India’s decision to allow the Bru tribals to exercise their franchise through postal ballots in the 2014 parliamentary elections from their relief camps in northern Tripura.

The Young Mizo Association (YMA), Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), Mizoram Students Union (MSU), Mizoram Upa Pawl (Senior Citizens Association) and Mizoram Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm Pawl–Mizo Women’s Organisation (MHIP) broadcasted the following statement on All India Radio Aizawl on 25 March 2014:

We sent a memorandum to the Election Commission of India in our opposition against Bru to cast their vote from relief camps in north Tripura. The joint NGOs demand that Bru should repatriate back to Mizoram before the Lok Sabha poll and those who refuse should be deleted from the electoral roll. The Bru relief camps are breeding grounds for armed goons indulging in series of abduction, kidnapping and extortion to disturb the peaceful nature of Mizoram.

Bru leaders accused these NGOs of attempting to deprive them of their electoral rights and urged the Election Commission of India to ignore their demands.

The Brus and the majority Mizo community have been embroiled in a long standing ethnic conflict. Following ethnic violence in 1997 [i] and then again in 2009,[ii] thousands of Brus fled their homes in Mizoram to the adjoining state of Tripura. Approximately 35,000 Brus continue to languish in six relief camps at Kanchanpur in northern Tripura till this day.[iii]

The Anti Non-Mizo Sentiment

Vai is the terminology used to refer to any non-Mizo residing in Mizoram. The Mizo community has shared a troubled relationship with Vai’s (non-Mizo people). For decades, Vai’s have worked and lived in Mizoram in constant fear due to a series of quit Mizoram notices issued by non-state actors over the last few decades. Quit notices are a common phenomena prevalent among the tribes of north-east India (See Laithangbam: 2012 and Goswami: 2014). Its history can be traced back to Nagaland, where they facilitated extortion through intimidation by Naga militants.

Between 1966 and 2014, several quit Mizoram notices have been issued to tribal minorities and people from other parts of India residing in Mizoram (the author could identify seven during fieldwork); four by the erstwhile militant Mizo National Front (MNF) before they signed the peace accord with India in 1986[iv] and three by NGOs after Mizoram gained statehood in 1987.[v] These notices served as instruments of intimidation and were unconstitutional. The state government’s response to quit Mizoram notices has so far been inadequate, and it has not taken it any steps to stop these xenophobic actions.

In 1958, Pu Laldenga, secretary of the erstwhile Mizo Cultural Society, in several of his public speeches repeatedly stated, “Mizoram is for Mizos only” (Nibedon:1980). He later went on to establish the Mizo National Front in 1961, with the aim of establishing a sovereign independent state for the Mizos. On 28 February 1966, the MNF spearheaded an uprising against the Indian government, and in an operation codenamed Jericho, government offices and security installations were simultaneously attacked. To supress the armed insurrection, the Indian government carried out air strikes in its own territory, and the Indian Air Force fighter planes bombed Aizwal and several villages in Mizo district of Assam.

The Mizo insurgency continued over the next two decades. In 1986, the Mizo Peace Accord was signed between the Indian government and the MNF, and the latter became a legitimate political party. The union territory of Mizoram was granted statehood in 1987, and it became the 23rd state of the Indian union, and Laldenga became its first the chief minister in 1988. After becoming a mainstream political party in 1986, the MNF never served quit Mizoram notices again.

However, the deeply entrenched anxiety against non-Mizos and other minority tribes surfaced time and again in the form of quit Mizoram notices, served in the last few years by influential NGOs–YMA, MZP, MHIP, MSU and MUP. Even village councils, which have the powers to exercise power to mandate codes of conduct for areas under their jurisdiction under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian constitution, issued a quit Mizoram notice on November 14, 2010.

Quit Mizoram Notices by MNF

March 1966 -– In March 1966, armed MNF men, in the dead of night, entered houses of non-Mizos in Vairengte (a small township close to the Assam–Mizoram border) and served them a quit Mizoram notice (Chatterjee 1994: 190). Oral threats were issued and pamphlets to quit Mizoram were circulated by the MNF cadres in other parts of Mizo Hills district.

Days before Operation Jericho was launched, many non-Mizos fled from Mizo Hills district to the plains of Assam. A confrontation between the MNF and the Indian military intelligence left sixteen persons (mainly informants and Indian intelligence personnel) wounded.

R V Pillai, a sub divisional officer based in Lunglei, was abducted during Operation Jericho. He was confined by the MNF for few days but was later set free. Pillai was abducted because he was a Vai and a government official. No killings of non-Mizos were recorded in the aftermath of this quit Mizoram notice. (Nunthara:1994).

December 1974 -- On 6 December 1974, the rebel town commander of the MNF distributed handbills in Aizwal asking the non-Mizos to quit the Mizo hills by 31 December 1974. The MNF tried to intimidate non-Mizos and made it clear that those who flout the notice would have to face the consequences (Nibedon: 1980).

The aftermath of 1974 quit Mizoram notice was harsh. On 13 January 1975, a jeep drove straight into the Mizoram Police headquarters, and Captain Lalheia of the MNF along with three other gunmen sprayed bullets inside the conference room. The casualties were none other than three senior police officials–Inspector General of Police G H Arya, Deputy Inspector General of Police L B Sewa, and Superintendent of Police P Panchpagesan. The message that the MNF was trying to convey was that no non-Mizo, however powerful, would be spared.

June 1979 — Another quit Mizoram notice was served by the MNF on 3 June 1979. This was the only notice which was openly challenged by a chief minister of Mizoram. Brigadier (retd.) Thenphunga Sailo, the chief minister, issued a strong warning to the MNF activists in his speech, which was broadcasted by All India Radio Aizwal on 4 June.

Some misguided elements have issued a notice under the caption “Non-Mizo’s” to quit Mizoram before 1st July, 1979; threatening them with dire consequences if they fail to do so. This is politically motivated by self-centred motives and is to prevent peace and prosperity from coming to Mizoram and therefore is not in the interest of Mizoram. I may sound a note of warning to those who either out of mischief or for imaginary political gains indulges in rumour mongering and false propaganda. It is the duty of all right thinking people to ensure the safety of their non-Mizo brethrens. People belonging to Christian faith having true faith in God will not allow such rancour to prevail (Sharma: 2006, 127-128).

Laldenga, who was trying to resolve the Mizo issue peacefully with India at that time, found it extremely difficult to handle the repercussions of the 1979 quit Mizoram notice. In June 1980, Laldenga unequivocally repudiated the terror tactics employed by the MNF, which he felt were counterproductive to the advancement of the Mizo cause (Chatterjee:1994, 298). He disapproved the quit Mizoram notice issued by the MNF, because it disrupted the unity of Mizoram. He went further to suggest that the quit Mizoram idea was a stale and outdated one, borrowed from discredited outfits, and its application was disastrous for the integrity of the Mizo society.

May 1982 — From the MNF headquarters in the Arakan Hills of Burma, a quit notice was issued in May 1982. The order was signed by Zoramthanga,[vi] vice-president of the MNF who a few years later went on to become a minister in the government headed by chief minister Laldenga in Mizoram. In 1998, he became the chief minister of the state himself.

All non-Mizos, including government officials from other parts of India, were advised to leave Mizoram by 21 June 1982. The quit order, however, came with relaxations for the first time. Gorkhalis who were settled and were born prior to 1966 in Mizoram, Christians who went to church and people from the mongoloid race could stay back in Mizoram.

Unlike government employees, non-Mizo teachers, mostly from Assam and Bengal, teaching in far flung villages in the hills had no security and felt very vulnerable when these quit Mizoram notices were served by the MNF. College teachers in Aizwal and Lunglei were also largely non-Mizos. A retired academic (name withheld) once revealed to me the nightmares he experienced when these notices were issued:

When the first quit Mizoram notice was served in 1966, I was not in Mizoram. I came to Aizawl in 1973 as a college lecturer to teach economics. When the subsequent quit notices were served in 1974, 1979 and 1982, I still remember the horrible threats which were issued. At one point in time, I was about to give up my job and leave for Jorhat, Assam. But, our Mizo colleagues stood by us. They invited us to stay and reside in their house during those difficult times.[vii]

Quit Order Notices after Mizoram Attained Statehood

November 2010 — Chin migrants from Myanmar were served a quit Mizoram notice on 14 November 2010 by a joint committee of the village councils of Aizawl South-III assembly constituency following the gruesome rape and murder of a minor Mizo girl by a Chin. The village councils, constituted under the Sixth Schedule, are empowered to make laws based on customary practices benefitting the local community, and these laws have to be approved by the governor of the state. Issuing threats or making laws to intimidate people is against their mandate.

Justifying its order, the committee said that eviction notice was issued to prevent such terrible incidents from occurring in the constituency in the future. Fearing retaliation, many Chins from Myanmar fled the area and few even went back to Myanmar.

The Chins were welcomed in Mizoram after the Burmese army crackdown against Chin militants in 1988. They were seen as ethnic cousins and were given food, shelter and options for livelihood. Currently, the Chin National Front guerrillas are active in eastern flanks of the state. The Chin community, who have sought asylum in Mizoram, is often blamed for smuggling of drugs and alcohol in the state.

Though the Chins do not need a passport[viii] to enter India, they are permitted free movement in Indian territory within 16 kms of the India-Myanmar border.[ix] But most Chins hardly follow this rule, and many of them can be found in Aizawl, which is more than 200 kms from the border. Only a few abide by the law, obtain permits, pay permit fees, and deposit identification cards at border check points.

August 2011 – The YMA, the largest and the most influential NGO in Mizoram, issued a quit Mizoram notice to non-Mizo traders in Mizoram on 11 August 2011. The YMA urged all non-tribal businessmen engaged in illegal trade practices to leave the state by the end of August. In an interview, Central YMA (YMA Headquarter, Aizawl) President Lalbiakzuala said:

There is section of non-Mizo traders who are practising unregistered trade. There are traders indulging in benami transactions, which are illegal on every count. Since the state has not taken any actions against such non-Mizo traders, the YMA took action against them. Further, non-tribal’s doing business with valid permits will not be touched, but illegal traders will not be spared. There are cases where trade is being conducted by non-tribals under Mizo names and that is harmful for the Mizo community and the state of Mizoram. Inner Line Permit (ILP) holders were engaged in businesses which they are not permitted to engage in by Indian law.[x]

April 2013 — The YMA again issued a quit Mizoram notice to Chin settlers in the two villages of Phunchawng and Rangvamual which are on the outskirts of Aizawl on 15 April 2013. 85% of the households in these two villages are inhabited by Chins from Myanmar. Out of the total 884 households in these two villages, 241 households were engaged in brewing liquor, which is illegal in Mizoram.[xi] The YMA set May 15 as the deadline for these illegal brewers to quit Mizoram.

There was outrage against the YMA since it took the law in its own hands. The YMA were criticised for allegedly taking away the livelihood of poor people and migrants from Myanmar. But the YMA asserted that “there are other ways of earning and living”.

The government of Mizoram has failed on two counts. Firstly, it has failed to counter non-state agencies issuing quit Mizoram notices. Secondly, it has failed to enact and execute laws to curtail illegal activities taking place in Mizoram, forcing NGOs and other non-state actors to take action against what they deem illegal. Until the state adopts a firm stance against intimidatory tactics used by these organisations, the non-Mizos will live in a perpetual state of anxiety and fear.

(N William Singh (williamsnongmaithem06@gmail.com) teaches sociology at the Pachhunga University College in Aizawl, Mizoram.)


Notes:

[i] For Bru crisis in Mizoram, See Indian Human Rights Reports: 2008 (New Delhi: Asian Center for Human Rights).

[ii] Also see Khangchin, Veronica: (2014), “India: Continuing Irritants in Mizoram – Analysis”, Eurasia Review, South Asia Terrorism Portal, available at www.eurasiareview.com/19032014; accessed on 26 March, 2014

[iii] ibid

[iv] Mizoram Peace Accord was signed between the MNF and government of India on June 30, 1986 in New Delhi. It ended 20 years of militancy and killings in Mizoram. The signatories of the Peace Accord were eader Laldenga, the MNF leader, R D Pradhan, home secretary government of India, and Lalkhama, chief secretary, government of Mizoram.

[v] Mizoram became the 23rd state of Indian Union on 20 February, 1987.

[vi] Zoramthanga was the vice-president of the MNF. He was a trusted associate of Laldenga. After the Peace Accord was signed and when Laldenga became the Chief Minister; Zoramthanga served as the finance and education minister. In 1998; Zoramthanga became the fifth chief minister of Mizoram, when the MNF won a landslide victory over the Congress.

[vii] Personal interview given to the author; 23 June, 2012.

[viii] Gazette of India, Part II, Dated 1st July, 1968 stated: “Passport Entry Rules will be exempted to every member of the hill tribes, who is either a citizen of India or a Citizen of the Union of Burma and who is ordinarily resident in any area within 40 Kms on either side of the Indo-Burma frontier entering into India across the said frontier”. (The Mizoram Gazette 2003)

[ix] July 21, 2010 notification by Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India reduced 40 Kms benchmark to 16 Kms. The Gazette of India, Part II laid the following changes: “A permit issued by the Government of India or State government may specify for the purpose and he/she shall not on the basis of that permit move into the area in India which is beyond Sixteen Kms from the aforesaid frontier”. (The Gazette of India 2010)

[x] Personal Interview given to the author; February 14, 2014

[xi] Mizoram Liquor Total Prohibition (MLTP) Act, 1995

References:

Bakshi, P M (2009): The Constitution of India, 9th Edition (Delhi: Universal Law Publishing).

Chatterjee, Suhas (1994): Making of Mizoram: Role of Laldenga, Vol I & II (New Delhi: MD Publishers).

Goswami, Namrata (2014): “Naga Identity - Ideals, Parallels, and Reality”, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, 16 June, available at http://www.thehinducentre.com/the-arena/current-issues/article6114531.ece, accessed on 19 June, 2014.

Hluna, John V & Rini Tochhawng (2012): The Mizo Uprising: Assam Assembly Debates on the Mizo Movement 1966-71 (London: Cambridge Scholars Press).

Indian Human Rights Reports (2008): Bru Crisis in Mizoram (New Delhi: Asian Center for Human Rights).

Khangchin, Veronica (2014): “India: Continuing Irritants in Mizoram – Analysis”, Eurasia Review, South Asia Terrorism Portal, http://www.eurasiareview.com/19032014-india-continuing-irritants-mizoram... www.eurasiareview.com/19032014; accessed on 26 March, 2014.

Laithangbam, Iboyaima (2012): “Rebels’ quit notice to migrants in Manipur”, The Hindu, 6 September, available at http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/rebels-quit-notice-to-migrants-in-manipur/article3865515.ece, accessed on 19 June, 2014.

Manchanda, Rita & Tapan Bose (1997): States, Citizens & Outsiders: The Uprooted peoples of South Asia (Kathmandu: South Asia Forum for Human Rights).

Nibedon, Nirmal (1980): The Daggers Brigade (New Delhi: Lancers Publishers).

Nunthara, C (1996): Mizoram: Society & Polity (New Delhi: Indus Publishers).

Sammadar, Ranabir (2006): Refugee & the State: Practice of Asylum & Care in India (New Delhi: Sage publications).

Sharma, Suresh K (2006): Documents on North-east India: Mizoram (New Delhi: Mittal Publications).

Singh, N William (2014): “Tethered Ethnics: Chins across the borders of Mizoram and Myanmar”, Paper presented in Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), Aizawl.

The Gazette of India (2010): Extraordinary, Part II, No.403, New Delhi.

The Mizoram Gazette (2003): Extraordinary, Vol. 32, Aizawl.

Statement by SAHMAT against Modis communal statement re iniltrators from Bangladesh

http://sacw.net/article8607.html

India: Narendra Modi's threat to deport Bangladeshi immigrants from Bengal is worrying

Daily News and Analysis

dna Edit: Narendra Modi's threat to deport Bangladeshi immigrants from Bengal is worrying
Wednesday, 30 April 2014 | Agency: DNA

Modi’s threats to deport illegal Bangladeshis from Bengal can deepen communal fission in the sensitive state that witnessed several clashes last year

Language is not merely a play of semantics. Especially not when deployed by seasoned politicians eyeing positions of supreme power. Unfortunately, the politicians battling it out in the 2014 elections appear to be indifferent to the ominous portents their words convey to the electorate, particularly the vulnerable among them. The latest example in this genre of unmindful electoral language is provided by Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate.

Modi’s threats to deport Bangladeshi immigrants from Bengal if his government comes to power at the Centre, gives us reason to worry about the political and governance template he has in his mind. At an election meeting last week, charging Mamata Banerjee with pandering to Bangladeshi immigrants, Modi said: “I want to warn from here, brothers and sisters write down, that after May 16, will send these Bangladeshis beyond the border with their bags and baggages.”

To understand the pernicious implications of Modi’s remarks, we have to situate them in the history of Bengal, which occupies an important place in the evolution of the sub-continent’s communal politics. By the turn of the 20th century, Bengal had one of the largest concentrations of Muslims and also one of the worst records of communal violence. In the aftermath of the 1943 Bengal famine, the state witnessed the consolidation of communal ideologies later culminating in the Calcutta riots and the Noakhali violence in 1946-47. Each traumatic historic event — 1947 partition to Bangladesh’s 1971 war of liberation — brought waves of refugees to Bengal’s doorsteps, seeding subterranean communal tension. But such subliminal frictions never came to the surface.

During the Left Front’s hegemonic rule of 34 years, the state remained free from riots even as the rest of the country intermittently battled communal violence. But underneath the peace and the camaraderie simmered latent tension. Such divisive sentiments however — unlike in other parts of the country — could not manifest themselves through organised political platforms.

Is this fragile social/political contract about to be broken? A figure as deeply polarising as Modi — aided by intemperate voices emanating from the various factions of the Sangh Parivar — could well renew communal tension in a state which has experienced the pangs of Hindu/Muslim violence in the past. Media reports seem to suggest that the BJP — riding on Modi’s popularity — has sniffed blood in Bengal, where it is still to find a toehold. With a weak organisation and a 5-6% popular vote share, the BJP has always had a marginal presence in the state. In 1999, its alliance with the Trinamool Congress fetched the BJP two parliamentary seats — a tally not repeated since. Yet, pollsters this time are predicting a 15-16% high popular vote share. If true, that might give the BJP a leg-up in the state, something the party has been eyeing for a while.

The one reason for BJP’s renewed interest in Bengal — besides coalition politics compulsions — could be that communal polarisation seems to be deepening in the state. Police records reveal a spiral in communal clashes last year. Between February and August, there were 42 major incidents of communal clashes, a majority of these occurring in South and North 24 Parganas — both adjacent to Kolkata. The ruling Trinamool Congress has been criticised for playing ‘minority politics’, alongside a mushrooming of Muslim organisations and NGOs.

With his aggressive statements spiked with communal innuendos, Modi appears to be further sharpening these tensions; dangerous temptations that a prime ministerial candidate should surely steer clear of.