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The Long View: AFSPA's Bitter Roots
New York Times Blog | Samanth Subramanian | November 21, 2011, 1:15 am
The AFSPA arrived into this world swaddled in acrimony and bitterness, and it has failed to divest itself of those qualities ever since. Ironically, the spirit of its provisions derives from an ordinance that was designed to quell the Quit India movement, and that was issued by the Indian viceroy Lord Linlithgow on Aug. 15, 1942.
The Raj did not view Quit India’s theoreticians kindly. That July, the Secretary of State for India, a conservative politician named Leo Amery, had written to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, urging the sort of swift action that was later enshrined in the ordinance:.
That the AFSPA would further polarize the very societies it was supposed to help knit back into India started to become clear very soon; it remains one of the keenest criticisms of the act. Even Nehru realized as much. In a letter dated May 1956, he wrote to B. R. Medhi, the chief minister of Assam, promising to use the army “to the fullest extent possible.”
But, he added, “we have always to remember that the real solution will require a political approach and an attempt to make the Nagas feel that we are friendly to them and that they can be at home in India.”
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* This Post is uploaded on November 21 2011
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