Understanding Turmoil
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: May 23 2015 -
Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju’s take on the rise of “insurgency” in the Northeast as reported in the media smacks of near total ignorance on the origin of armed movements in the region.
By implicating the Congress for the rise of what had been often termed as low-intensity conflict in the Northeast, the minister has rather given sort of infamous credit to a party rather than projecting the ability to deal with the protracted issue by any Governments irrespective of party politics.
Here, it is worth noting that political assertion at least by the Nagas in the region precede even the idea of “misgovernance, mistreatment and neglect” as understood in modern Indian political parlance.
It has been claimed more than once that the root cause of armed movement in the case of the Nagas was the rejection of the demand for “self-rule” as demonstrated through a plebiscite in 1951.
And how the story has unfolded over the years is a different story.
On a similar tune, most causes of armed conflicts elsewhere in the region have been the result of political assertions rather than reactive response to misgovernance, mistreatment or even neglect.
As the armed conflicts spread, respective State governments led by parties irrespective of ideologies began misgoverning or even neglecting the issues on hand.
By the nineties, almost all the issues got entangled and that is how the mess has been set into motion.
Rijiju should not have attempted to kill two birds with one stone – indulge in cornering a rival party for its non-performance and at the same time attribute the causes to armed insurgency to just one party.
In fact, what the Union Minister of State has done is akin to putting the horses before the carrots.
Even urging the “deviated” youths to return to the mainstream is not new.
Congress led Governments at the Centre over the years had been doing the same.
And time will tell the fecundity of testing the Government led by Rijiju's party while the region continues to reel under turmoil.
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