Playing over the dead body
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: February 05, 2014 -

From Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to Union Minister of Home Affairs Sushilkumar Shinde, from Narendra Modi, the Prime Ministerial candidate of BJP and also the Chief Minister of Gujarat to to Rahul Gandhi, the Vice President of All India Congress Committee (AICC) and scion of Gandhi family, and from Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal to former Army Chief Gen V K Singh, everyone is today giving assurances and talking about the need for ensuring the protection and security of the people from North East region in other parts of the country.

And, from all these talks and assurances, one may get the impression that unfortunate incidents like that of the death of Nido Tania, a 19-year old student from Arunachal Pradesh, after he was thrashed by some shopkeepers in Lajpat Nagar market of South Delhi following a confrontation over the racist remark made by the shopkeepers over the blonde-dyed hair colour of Tania, would not occur again in the future and the people from the Northeast would be safe and secure everywhere they go and live.

But the bitter truth that everyone needs to spit out (not swallow down) is that such assurances for protection or justices have been given as well at the time of the death of Richard Loitam, Reingamphy Awungshi, Dana Sangma and many other such victims of racist attacks in the past, and the plight of the people from the Northeast region in other parts of the country remains same, without any change, not even a bit.

While there is nothing much to look forward to or expect from such assurances given for justice and protection of the people from Northeast like in the past, what is really despicable this time is the manner everyone is rushing in with no real concern about the issue at hand, but with eyes-wide opened for gaining some political mileage out of the tragic death of a young and promising student.

Close behind Narendra Modi making a passionate pitch for integrating the people of northeast into the mainstream and slamming the Centre for the death of Nido Tania while addressing a BJP rally at Meerut; Rahul Gandhi dramatically landed at Jantar Mantar on Monday evening where students from the Northeast were holding candlelight vigil for Nido Tania to tell them, “My spirit and heart is with you. I am 100 percent with you”.

This gave an opportunity to the BJP to attack Rahul, saying that the decision to join those seeking justice for Nido Tania appeared to have been taken only after Narendra Modi had come out with condemnation of the incident.

Thus, the core issue of the matter, which is the inability of the mainland India to look at and consider the people from Northeast as much cultural citizens as they are legal citizens of the country (at least, Constitutionally) has been sidelined and lost in the political squabbles of trying to have a go at each other.

This, we say, is the dirty politics of the lowest kind played over the dead body of a young and promising student, whose life had been nib in the bud.