TODAY -
Lessons from the war years
Telegraph India | Carte Blanche - Arup Kumar Dutta | Dec 19, 2011
That the Northeast, particularly Manipur and the Brahmaputra valley of Assam, was a vital component of the allied offensive during World War II has strangely been almost forgotten or ignored by the people of this region. Those stirring times had taken place barely seven decades ago and should have become a segment of the collective memory of the Northeast. They have not been adequately reflected in history books or even fiction, and whatever mention has been there, was invariably related to the freedom movement.
I, for instance, heard of the “war days” from my grandparents and parents as well as elderly raconteurs rather than any text or history books. As for the rest of India, our military strategists had failed miserably to learn from the lessons to be read in the plight of the British when World War II took a dramatic turn.
The sequence of events in that war which rendered the Northeast centric to the military efforts of the free world against the Axis powers brought home a perennial truth — ever since the Yandaboo Treaty of 1826 when undivided Assam and principalities like Manipur lost their freedom and became subservient to the British, the region had been sidelined in the pan-Indian consciousness.
The British, like their successors in Delhi after India attained Independence, had ignored the Northeast as far as infrastructural development was concerned.
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* This Post is uploaded on December 19, 2011
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