ASUK, NLFT call total shutdown on Oct 15
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, October 12 2019:
The Alliance for Socialist Unity, Kangleipak (ASUK) and the National Liberation Front of Twipra (NLFT) have called total shutdown in the States of Manipur and Tripura from 5 am to 5 pm of October 15.Religious activities and emergency services would be exempted from the total shutdown, according to a joint statement issued by ASUK and NLFT.
India has been allegedly occupying Kangleipak (Manipur) and Twipra (Tripura) since the 15th October, 1949 after the two infamous 'Merger Agreements' of 1949.The said merger agreements were signed under duress by two incompetent authorities of the two kingdoms, in case of Manipur, the king, who had already been reduced to the stature of a mere figurehead of the kingdom after the installation of a popularly elected legislature and Government, and in case of Tripura, the queen regent, whose legitimacy had become questionable after the unilateral dissolution of the council of regency, it said.
"After 70 years, Indian rule has proved to be a noose around our neck which is tightening ceaselessly.
We have become demographically outnumbered or nearly outnum- bered, politically margina-lized and disintegrated, economically dependent and pauperized, socially disorganized and splintered, morally degenerated, bastardized and treacherous, and psychologically diffident and vacillating.
Nation- al doom is staring at us viciously.
Merger with India is the root-cause of all these national maladies", it alleged.
"We face a gigantic challenge of alleged Indian colonialism, of which the ultimate objective is to create a harmonious Aryan Hindu Nation out of the present mosaic of diverse nationalities and communities through cultural and ethnic assimilation of the minority communities by the majority Hindi speaking and Hindi knowing heartland Indians.
This is nothing short of a bloodless genocide of the peripheral minority communities", reads the statement.
"Our response to this alleged Indian colonial challenge is armed struggle for total national independence.
But our armed struggle cannot make progress due to a number of reasons: the primary reasons are the mistakes committed by us and the secondary reasons are factors which are beyond our control.
One of the big mistakes on our part is our obsession with our glorious histories and subsequent failure to do a down-to-earth approach towards our movement", it continued.
"Being enamoured of our separate identities and uniqueness, we failed to chalk out a comprehensive strategy, political and military, of the entire WESEA region.
We did nothing much more than paying lip service to the logical proposition of building up a holistic liberation movement of the entire region".
"Seventy years old history of freedom movements of WESEA region taught us a true lesson that a divided movement is a futile exercise.
We believe that a united and consolidated movement can do miracles in pushing the movement forward.
There is no realistic and pragmatic reason for us to achieve success by going separately" said the joint statement signed by ASUK Chairman N Oken and NLFT president H Uastwng Borok.