The ethnic cleansing campaign unleashed by the majority Dimasa tribe in collusion with the Dimaraji Revival Demand Committee (DRDC) and its armed wing, the Dima Halam Daogah (DHD), against the Hmars and other minority tribes in Cachar and North Cachar Hills of Assam remains unabated. This has been largely sustained by the abuse of ethnicity as a political currency by the Dimasa politicians.

The significant Dimasa population, seen in terms of vote bank and strengthened by the winner-takes-all electoral system has been the tools for mobilizing political support. On the other hand, the biased and one-sided track taken by the Assam Government does much to establish the extent to which ethnicity can be used as a resource. In these situations, the Government of Assam could not acknowledge the responsibility of protecting the Hmars and other minority tribes in the face of forced displacement and gross violations of human rights. This has, to a large extent, negated and deconstructed the democratic, plural and secular establishment as well as the idea of the State as the protector of the rights of citizens. The campaign has, since then, assumed a crisis with the Assam Government as well as the Central Government's failure to emerge with a viable solution.

Taking into confidence the stone-cold attitude of the Assam Government, the Dimasa tribe picked the minority Hmars as an obstacle to the realization of "Dimaraji State" (Homeland for Dimasas). In this process, the indigenous Hmars have been defined out as 'foreigners', 'infiltrators', from Burma, China etc., followed by the forced uprootment and displacement. The visibly soft character of the Assam Government and its expressively one-sided inclination paved the way for communal groups to intervene and take advantage of the vacuum in the face of the State's inactivity.

The entry of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has added more complications to already complex situations. The DHD and the DRDC, in their quest for diverse support, has become a sweet prey to the VHP's communal design. In doing so, the DHD and DRDC faced a new problem of giving a meaningful form and substance to the concept of a "Dimaraji State." Their search for identity is still in process. This was affirmed by their willingness to wed with every actors, thereby making themselves a trifle scapegoat while revealing the hollowness of their political stand. The VHP's pat on their shoulders makes them incumbent to bow to the communal design without much sight and thought.

This was further brought to light by the DHD and DRDC's vision of a "Dimaraji State" with only Dimasa population which wedded perfectly with the VHP's design of a Dimaraji State with only "Dimasas who are 99% Hindus" as told by the VHP's Pant Seva Pramukh Prakriti Ranjan Hajra. It is clear that the DHD and the DRDC are colluding with the VHP for the creation of a "Dimaraji State" with a Dimasa-Hindu dominated population.

In the pursuit of this vision, the VHP is fomenting an elaborate political experiment on communal lines by taking advantage of the ethnic cleansing campaign in the two districts of Assam. Fiddling with facts in such vulnerable times, the VHP's Pant Seva Pramukh Prakriti Ranjan Hajra told the northeasttribune.com on 21st May that "Christian missionaries are supporting the Hmars to block the growing powers of the Dimasas who are 99% Hindus." It was also wrongly reported by the same person that "the conflict was started when a group of Hmar miscreants attacked a Lord Shiva Temple and threw away a bell hanging inside the Temple."

However, the VHP ought not to forget the dozens of Churches that were gutted along with the Hmar villages by the DHD in their macabre campaign. Religion has always been susceptible to political exigencies. With the general election next year, the VHP's utterances are yet another indicator of the election politics to comb its way clear for the coming election. But, such vicious propaganda, punctuated with venom and vitriol, should not be allow to poke the vote bank in such sensitive time.

So far, both the Hmars and the Dimasas were not communal while picking their targets. Despite the heavy loss and suffering, neither of the two communities did not see religion as the driving force in the ongoing deliberated mayhem. The activation of outside communal actors will only aggravate the problem. The VHP is sniffing with its wrong nose when it sensed the Christian missionaries hand in the flare-up. The obvious culprits are those who set the house ablaze with its myopic propaganda of cleansing the Hmars from the two districts for the creation of "Dimaraji State". The scene witness villains multiplying, who mixed lies and half-truths with fiction to settle their ideological or political scores. Gonzo journalists are a part.

The VHP's utterances are an attempt to undermine and substitute the underlying political factors with communal and religious factors. They are a threat to the democratic, secular and plural structure, not only of the Northeast, but also of India as a whole. Such forces tend to have a destructive spillover. They trampled democratic institutions and played havoc with democratic norms of secularism and tolerance. The problem in the two districts of Assam, however, ought to be seen in its historical and political perspectives. The Home and Political Commissioner of Assam's concern for political solution should be heard in its right interest. The Central Government should immediately intervene to protect and develop its plural obligations to the people.

The attempt by Hindutva groups to target minorities as objects of hate and exclusion and subjecting them to grave human rights violations often with the connivance of the State agencies should be immediately checked by the Central Government in the larger national interest.

As Indian was the modern identity defined as secular, inherited from a national movement enriched by men and women of every religion and region, and one that had ignored divisions of class, religion and gender, such divisive communal groups should not be allow to gnaw the foundations of national solidarity. However, unfortunately, it is the thinking of such groups that apparently gets translated into policy and eventually takes the form of laws that cannot be, but, repressive.

It is clear from the ongoing carnage that, once the state starts acting on behalf of a particular community, all other institutions, including the entire criminal justice system also tend to fail in discharging their functions without fear or favour. This exclusion from the system means that they are virtually stripped off their citizenship along with all the fundamental rights given to the citizens of India. It appears at the moment that the VHP is seeking to run with the hare and hunt with the hound by covertly aligning with the majority Dimasas. It is understandable that the VHP could not have antagonized the Dimasas. The fact that they are demographically majority supported by the "99 percent Hindus" composition secure their myopic communal and election politics' goal. However the VHP ought to realize that it will come out with more thorns on their heels. Thus, before its policies backfire for the worst the VHP should cease its political experiment by taking advantage of the ethnic cleansing campaign.

The Hmars' dwell in perpetual anarchy has made it mandatory for raising the need for a separate Autonomous District Council to secure their existence. Seeing the forces that threatens their existence, their mindset, their ideology, their instruments, the Hmars are compelled to see this as their last resort. Merely talking about peace in the absence of such negotiating terms and conditions will only negate any efforts towards solving the problem. This becomes true with the number of futile peace initiatives taken by the Church, Students' Associations and other philanthropic organizations. Peace will remain a mute tirade if the core terms and conditions are left out.

Establishing peace will not only mean the absence of violence, but the settlement of bigger issues such as security (socio, economic, political), resettlement of the thousands of internally displaced Hmars who have crossed over to Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram, and freedom from the threat of various actors. Such crucial issues should dominate the agenda at all levels of negotiations. There is the need to fill the wide gap of differences by clearly defining the core issues than merely basking on the blur ambiguities of peace. It will be a blunder if the Central Government only seeks to maximize the Dimasas absolute gains and are indifferent to the gains of the Hmars. The surfacing of such attitude, if it continues, will be the greatest impediment towards the attainment of a long-term solution.

The Dimasas' designs of survival are far from idyllic. The pictures portray a fragmented world of pervasive insecurity, recurring violence, generalized expectations of more bloodshed and force displacement. The picture is, thus, a radical digress from what is humane. The response to the dilemma could only be settled with the creation of Autonomous District Council for the Hmars in Cachar and North Cachar Hills of Assam. Adopting a welfare and developmental approach the Central Government ought to immediately address the Hmars' Quest.