North-East's Tryst With Destiny?

- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: August 17, 2012 -

Sixty-five years ago, when the British finally left India and handed over the country to its people, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, in his famous 'Tryst with Destiny' speech to the Indian Constituent Assembly on the midnight of August 14-15, 1947, proclaimed: "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom...." But sixty-five years down the line, the question whether India has really been awaken to life and freedom still haunts the mind of people.

August 15, India's Independence Day, may be observed all over the country with flag-hoisting ceremonies, parades and cultural events, but security concerns over militant attacks, calls for boycotting the celebration by separatist outfits and bomb blasts in the run up or on August 15 have come to be indispensable features of Independence Day celebration over the years.

On the other hand, while people from affluent classes look upon August 15 as a day off from work and go out for family outings; for the poor, it is yet another day of struggle for survival.

Could this be the 'tryst with destiny' that India set out to achieve?

The poser over India' tryst with destiny is even more eloquent in the northeast region.

Apart from its remote location, the people in the region, which is connected to the rest of India by a narrow strip of land known as the Siliguri Corridor, continue to feel neglected, not just in terms of developmental disparity but also in the mental outlook of mainland Indians towards them as second class citizens.

Its indeed an irony that while the impact of the ongoing riots between the ethnic Bodos and the Bengali speaking migrant Muslims has spread to other parts of the country like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, etc, thus affecting large number of Northeasterners, particularly young students and professionals who have been forced to flee, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh smugly maintained, in his address to the nation on the occasion of 66th Indian Independence Day from the ramparts of Lal Qila that 'there has been a reduction in violence in the northeastern states'.

Of course, Dr Manmohan Singh was talking about the violence associated with the decades-old problem of insurgency in the region whose root could be traced back to birth of India as a nation, and it has got nothing do with flames of ugly communal flare up that is spreading like wildfire.

But in the process, Dr Manmohan Singh, a four-time Member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha representing the state of Assam, has revealed the same mindset of other political Netas and Babus who are sitting at Delhi.

For them northeast still is a distant and disturbed region.