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09/05/2009: "Swu suffers heart attack, but stable OUR CORRESPONDENT The Telegraph"

Swu suffers heart attack, but stable OUR CORRESPONDENT The Telegraph

Kohima, Sept. 4: The chairman of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), Isak Chishi Swu, was recently admitted to a hospital in Bangkok following a cardiac arrest.
The outfit said Swu, who is nearly 80, was rushed to a hospital but did not disclose the date. Sources here, however, said the NSCN (I-M) chairman was admitted to a hospital “just recently”.
According to the outfit’s functionaries here, Swu’s condition is “absolutely stable”.
“I heard it was only a minor cardiac arrest,” a top functionary of NSCN (I-M) told this correspondent over phone on condition of anonymity.
“Our chairman is well and fit. There is nothing to worry about.”
He did not rule out “mischievous propaganda” by some people.
Swu, currently in Bangkok, has not been keeping well for some time.
The Missing Dimension: Naga Women in Decision-Making Morung Express News
Dimapur | September 4 : India has taken a major step to empower women. On August 27, the Indian government announced that it has approved 50% reservation for women in Panchayats across the country. The path-breaking step towards making women’s role in public more visible also means that women will occupy 1.4 million of the close to three million Panchayat seats in the country. States such as Bihar, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have already implemented 50% reservation for women in the Panchayati Raj institutions, while Rajasthan is likely to follow suit.
India empowers women with 50% quota
But in a state such as Nagaland, which has already seen vehement opposition against reservation for women in municipal bodies, the landmark decision of the Cabinet appears a distant reality. The government’s decision to provide women reservation in the 2008 Mokokchung Municipal Council election was met with stiff opposition from the ‘members.’ The opposition gained support from various other corners, thus, making the possibility of women reservation bleak.
Even apex tribal bodies and student bodies claimed that “Nagaland does not need reservation.” Panchayati Raj in India brings million of people into the functioning of their representative government at the grass-root level. But women representatives at the grass-root level in Nagaland are almost non-existent.
In Nagaland, a majority of nominated women representatives in the village development boards are not given their due and are left out in the decision-making process. They are active in mass-based activities but their presence is not felt in the decision-making process. “We have to first strengthen our grass-root representatives,” Tokheli Kikon, the state’s first woman village council chairperson says. Most women land up with the label of being VDB members, not understanding the importance of their role in decision-making.
V Ate Kevichusa, a nominated member in the Kohima Municipal Council believes that as much as reservation is important, there must be visionaries at the Panchayat level. “Reservation is an impetus to propel women to go further,” she says and adds that she doesn’t think Naga women are voiceless but have been conditioned to believe that they are mere props; made to feel that they cannot be leaders.
Although many Naga women have made considerable progress in areas of education and employment, they continue to be bogged down by the patriarchic attitudes of the Naga society. Ate believes that being economically empowered should be on the top of every woman’s priority list and the rest can follow. “Naga women sit at home and exchange a lot of ideas and they are fantastic ideas. All they have to do is take it to a public platform. At the end of the day, no one can compete with a really good idea,” Ate says.
Rebel Pause TERESA REHMAN Tehelka
THE NAGA COVENANT
The Naga factions have signed a covenant to forgive each other
Seventeen months ago, the Naga factions and 42 civil society groups forged a forum called the FNR
The signatories have formed a Joint Working Group of top leaders
The factions have agreed to desist from attacking each other
FNR is organising public meetings, reconciliation football matches and a United Naga Singing Choir
The Centre is now planning direct talks with Naga insurgents. But the factions have begun their own peace process, reports
KNOWN AS the “mother of all insurgencies”, the armed Naga movement, which can be traced back to the 1940s, is witnessing new contours now. The protracted peace talks for the past 12 years, with the one-man interlocutor K Padmanabhaiah alone interacting with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland - Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) for 10 long years, is now coming to an end.
The Centre has decided to wind up the term of the former home secretary, who was first appointed as interlocutor on July 28, 1999 and kept getting oneyear extensions. The Centre now wants to hold direct talks with the Naga rebel group, giving a new dimension to the peace process which was initiated in 1997 and has been going on without any political breakthrough. The peace talks have faltered on two key issues – of territorial integration of all Naga-inhabited areas of the region, including neighbouring Myanmar, and on the issue of a resolution under the ambit of the Indian Constitution.


Quieter guns A Naga militant in a jungle camp
Photo: UB PHOTOS
The long years of protracted conflict with gross human rights violations has taken its toll on this small state of over two million people. For the ordinary Naga, it has meant bloodshed, trauma, poverty, a corrupt system, drug-abuse and HIV-AIDS. Nagaland remains an agrobased economy with no industry. The conflict has also led to further militarisation and the emergence of even more deadly armed movements in the region. The various factions of the Naga rebel groups themselves have been involved in fratricidal clashes.
The withdrawal of the interlocutor might hasten the peace process. But rebel factions feel that it is always better to have a mediator in any conflict dialogue as one group might attempt to impose its will on the other, thereby derailing entire process. General Vushum Atem, emissary to the Collective Leadership of the NSCN, told TEHELKA, “We are against the idea of removing the interlocutor, even though we have been having direct talks with the Government of India through the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). But the Prime Minister may not be available every time we talk. This is where the interlocutor becomes important.”
However, Wasbir Hussain, Director, Centre for Peace and Development Studies, Guwahati, feels that it will not make much of a difference as the interlocutor was never an independent third-party mediator. He was a representative of the Government of India. “I don’t think it will be a setback. Rather, I feel direct talks would speed up the process,” he says.
It is also being said that the Centre has come up with a proposal to amend Article 371A of the Constitution to ensure financial powers, including greater rights over natural resources, to the Nagas. The state already enjoys special status under Article 371A, which ensures that “no Act of Parliament shall apply to Nagaland in relation to religious or social practices of the Nagas, Naga customary law and procedure, administration of civil and criminal justice involving decisions according to the Naga customary law and ownership and transfer of land and its resources”. But the rebel leaders deny any knowledge of this.
In recent times, there have been notable developments in the reconciliation process in Nagaland. The different Naga factions — the NSCN-IM, NSCN-K (Khaplang) and the FGN (Federal Government of Nagaland), along with 42 civil society organisations — have forged a Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) and last month even signed a Covenant of Reconciliation to ‘forgive’ each other. The Covenant, titled Naga Reconciliation: A Journey of Common Hope, was signed by the NSCN-IM, the NSCN-K and the FGN.
After the inter-Naga reconciliation process started, the killings have declined steadily
The signatories agreed to maintain peace, urge the Naga political parties to be vigilant against anti-social elements in the Naga society, reciprocate one another by releasing all ‘political prisoners’ and their belongings and desist from giving provocative statements in the media. The signatories have formed a Joint Working Group (JWG) to facilitate the meeting of top Naga ‘political’ leaders at the earliest and decide the meeting place.


Disarming with hope Th Muivah and Isak Chishi Swu, leaders of the NSCN-IM
Photo: UB PHOTOS
The FNR, which is 17 months old, has come a long way in trying to reconcile on the basis of the history and political rights of the Naga people. As part of the process, the FNR has also organised public meetings, reconciliation football matches and even a United Naga Singing Choir in the Church. Rev Wati Aier, Convenor of the FNR told TEHELKA, “The signatories of the Covenant are committed to sort out their political issues.”
But the division along tribal lines is deep-rooted in Naga society. Moreover, there is an internal power struggle between the rebel groups which might be difficult to reconcile. Lanu Longkumer, an academic at Nagaland University feels that the peace process is both a journey with the Government of India and a journey with the people of Nagaland. Longkumer says, “These are superficial differences created by the state agencies. Reconciliation has to be between different armed groups, civil society and even the different tribes. There may also be attempts to sabotage the reconciliation process.”
The factions have signed a Covenant of Reconciliation to forgive each other
HOWEVER, THE reconciliation process has created a space for tribal organisations like the Naga Hoho and the Eastern Naga Peoples Organisation (ENPO to come together. The Naga Hoho is a confederation of 30-odd tribes from Nagaland, Manipur and Assam while the ENPO comprises some tribes of eastern Nagaland, including Myanmar.
Most importantly, after the reconciliation process started, the fratricidal killings among the two main insurgent groups has seen a steady decline in recent months. Neingulo Krome, former general secretary of the Naga Hoho, feels that the reconciliation process is going on smoothly. “It’s not only factional differences but also community and tribal differences also have been addressed. For several months now there has been no killing and warring groups have agreed to sit across the table and negotiate,” he adds.
The next step would be for the major leaders to meet and hold discussions at the top level. A member of the Forum told TEHELKA, “Even if the Nagas reconcile, the solution does not lie just with the Nagas. We have a substantial Naga population in Myanmar. We need equal partnership of the Indian as well as Myanmar Government.”
The Forum has been instrumental in laying the groundwork for the emergence of lasting peace in the region. Its only worry is that any kind of differences among the top leadership might derail the peace process itself.
Tribes Of Neverland SMITA JACOB Tehelka
The National Tribal Policy ‘draft’ is reason enough to celebrate. But what it lacks is the voice of the adivasi who it claims to protect, says SMITA JACOB
WHAT’S RIGHT
India’s first attempt at a comprehensive policy for Scheduled Tribes
Special fast track courts in scheduled areas to deal with land alienation
Innovative measures to encourage development, eg. school text books
Removed derogatory words like ‘primitive’ to address tribes
THERE ARE nearly 500 tribes in India constituting 140 million of us – 80 million Scheduled Tribes on the census record, and 60 million off the record, called the ‘denotified and nomadic tribes’ who have never been counted by India’s census. And yet, since independence, there hasn’t been a single comprehensive policy to cater to their basic needs of survival. Until now. Five years, two elections and many promises later, the National Tribal Policy (NTP), first proposed in 2004 by the NDA government, might finally see the light of day. Five years ago, the first draft was met with much opposition from civil society for adopting an assimilationist approach. It was criticised for trying to include tribal people with mainstream population, thus violating their rights and diluting their distinctiveness. It was also frowned upon for being a stand-alone document, not factoring in other applicable laws like the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act or the Land Acquisition Act and instead loosely speaking about measures like land rights, without any actual commitment.
In 2006, soon after the UPA government came to power, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs drafted a fresh policy. The draft handled the ‘assimilation’ issues that were diluting their unique identity and, instead, used an approach of ‘integration’. For example in Northeast India, over a 100 tribal ethnic minorities are dependent on shifting cultivation. Half of Meghalaya’s populat i o n , the Khasi tribes in particular, practice this method of farming for survival. While the 2004 draft coerced them to give up this ‘primitive’ method, pointing out that the tribes ‘do not seem to have any emotional attachment to land as an asset’, the current draft approaches this issue realistically by acknowledging that it is the only possible farming practice in interior areas that, in fact, promotes collective ownership of natural resources. While the 2004 draft makes vague suggestions like ‘encouraging qualified tribal doctors to serve tribal areas,’ the new draft proposes integrating indigenous and modern medicine for the tribal population. Such changes make the 2006 draft realistically address contemporary tribal issues such as evictions from forests, indebtedness and conflict and unrest, that were earlier never addressed. Yet, the drawback it suffers from the most is the lack of any action points or a timebound strategy to act upon.


PHOTOS: VIJAY PANDEY
The draft was placed before the union cabinet on May 31, 2007 for approval, following which it was referred to a group of ministers (GoM). In the recent Parliament session, Tushar Chaudhary, the Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs, confirmed that the GoM has now forwarded the final draft to the cabinet for approval. A speedy approval now depends on the political commitment of the new UPA government, which apparently scheduled the approval of the NTP as a priority in its postvictory promises.
What then is the significance of a National Tribal Policy in the Indian context? Since independence, the major policy initiatives with regards to tribes have been Nehru’s outlined Panchsheel (a fivepointer guideline to develop a tribal policy) and constitutional provisions protecting Scheduled Tribes (STs). Various laws and schemes regarding different aspects of STs were formulated, each ambiguous and contradicting the other. This has deepened the sense of exclusion and alienation of adivasis in India, which has been manifesting itself in the form of tribal unrest. The emergence of Naxalism in Chhattisgarh and, more recently, in Lalgarh, has been capitalising on this very same tribal discontent. Previous UPA government Tribal Affairs Minister PR Kyndiah observed, “It is a paradox that the poor tribals are living in areas which are rich in minerals, forest resources and other natural bounties. The solution lies in giving rights to the ST communities over natural and financial resources, addressing economic deprivation.”
WHAT’S WRONG
Only 20 days given to adivasi organisations to respond to the policy.
No clear implementing agencies, timelines and operational strategies
No right to self-determination as per UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples
No redressal for STs in non-scheduled areas and denotified tribes
But what has been the space for STs themselves in the process of creating this landmark policy? Adivasi organisations and activists across the country were given 20 days (21 July – 10 August 2006) to provide comments and feedback on the draft policy. VK Srivastav, Professor, University of Delhi, explains why the draft may not give confidence to the tribal people: “The dynamic reality of tribal living is missing in the draft. It lacks the ‘tribal voice’. Throughout the text runs the ‘we-they’ distinction — what ‘we’ think tribes should be given.” To counter this essential shortcoming, a series of national and regional consultations with adivasi organisations and community groups should be sought before its approval.
In the wide range of current political debates in India, lies a core question: Who is a ‘Scheduled Tribe’? With the many ambiguities regarding the nature of the term, any comprehensive policy on the STs should have had an authoritative clarification on this term. However, the NTP merely points out the outdated and derogatory nature of criteria used for scheduling tribes so far — “primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact and backwardness”. The policy needs to outline new criteria from the perspective of deprivation and exclusion.
The choice to retain or rebuild their cultural and political identities should be theirs
IN THE transient state of globalisation, the adivasis in the country are faced with new aspirations and problems and so the choice to retain or rebuild their cultural and political identities should be left to them. Sharad Joshi, former member of the Rajya Sabha and leader of the Shetkari Sanghatana, observes: “A National Tribal Policy should be based on the principle of freedom for every tribal society to opt for either the old lifestyle or to go for the modern life, or choose access to both lifestyles.” India, along with 143 member-state nations of the UN, adopted the Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples in September 2007. Article 3 of the Declaration states: “Indigenous peoples have the right to selfdetermination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” And yet, the NTP is far from proposing the right to self-determination to help tribal communities choose their path of development as their fundamental right.
While the policy is a remarkable attempt to capture a holistic view of the contemporary tribal situation in the country, the extreme delay in approving the policy, its inability to fix concrete goals, and the lack of a participatory approach render it inadequate. For the UPA government to live up to its promise of empowering the ‘aam aadmi’, the voice of India’s tribes must be heard loud and clear before it is tabled to reflect a truly national policy.
Singing In The Dark Times PREETI GILL Senior Editor, Zubaan Tehelka Magazine


Illustration: ANAND NAOREM
THE TERM ‘Northeast’ is a form of geographical, linguistic and ethnic stereotyping that clubs together eight disparate, often misunderstood states that happen to lie in the Northeastern periphery of the Indian union. In no local language does such a term exist. To say that the Northeastern states are different from the rest of India in almost every way is to state the obvious, but it is important to recognise that these ‘differences’ have created rifts, giving rise to insurgencies, demands for secession from the Indian state and years of internal conflict and discontent. To the people of the Northeast their world is central to themselves; to ‘mainland India’ it is a borderland. Locating a region by placing oneself at a point one sees as the ‘centre’ is both arrogant and potentially dangerous.
Almost all the eight states have been long besieged by insecurity and violence, death, kidnappings, rape and torture on a daily basis, governmental apathy, corruption, poverty and unemployment. People are caught in the crossfire of insurgents, militants, non-state actors and the government’s counter-insurgency operations. The work of the older generation of writers reflects this strain of violence and death. Indira Goswami’s The Journey, Arupa Patangia Kalita’s powerful novel Felanee and short stories like ‘Someday, Sometime Numoli’, Sebastian Zumvu’s story ‘Son of the Soil’ (about a young boy caught by the army for pretending to be an insurgent in order to extort money), Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories From a War Zone (a vivid depiction of what happened in Nagaland in the 1960s and 1970s), Bimabati Thiyam Ongbi’s story ‘He’s Still Alive’, Dhrubajyoti Bora’s trilogy on the insurgency, Rita Chaudhury’s novel Ei Samay Sei Samay on the Assam agitation, to name but a few, have dealt with these themes in terrifying detail.
Northeastern writing is in an exciting place. Backed by a strong literary tradition, it surges with fresh ideas
Many younger writers continue to grapple with these issues. Having grown up in the shadow of the gun, their desire to analyse the common people’s reaction to insurgency is as strong as ever. A case in point is young author Aruni Kashyap whose soon-to-be-published first novel, The House with a Thousand Novels seeks to understand why so many educated thinking young men took to the gun. (Interestingly, a number of these are now writing novels and memoirs, like Samudra Gogoi’s A Former ULFA Member’s Memoirs.)
MITRA PHUKAN, the well-known Assamese writer, talks of a Northeastern diaspora – young people living in Bangalore and Delhi – writing of a “remembered Assam”. But Aruni, for example, thinks questioning remembered history is crucial to understanding and has set his novel in Assam’s ‘secret killings’ phase of the 1990s. There is a ‘looking back’ to find answers to today’s troubling questions. Younger writers are exploring little-known histories of their own people: the Bodos, the Tiwas. Those who grew up in the Northeast but do not ‘belong’ there like their ethnic peers are especially concerned with identity – the “outsider” looking in (Anjum Hasan’s first novel Lunatic in my Head does this brilliantly).
Of course, life in the Northeast (as elsewhere) is not all bleak, tragic or violent. There is love and hope in the human spirit. There is the serenity of the region’s mountain streams and the immense silence of its forests. Writers like Esther Syiem, Temsula Ao, Kynpham Nongkynrih and Mamang Dai are moored in their traditions, giving their writings a certain depth. But Ao feels that younger voices from Meghalaya and Nagaland — more urban, cosmopolitan, “westernised” than an earlier generation — have lost touch with their roots. Manipur has a strong tradition of theatre and dramatic writing spanning cities and villages. Many members of an energetic rural Womens’ Writers Group, led by writer Binodini Devi, have published books. In Mizoram, where writers earlier wrote on insurgency, they now write of the Church. There is also a definite desire to go back to a time before Christianity, to discover their roots. First apparent in Mizo music, this is now beginning to be felt in writing as well.
This window into contemporary writing from the Northeast shows what an exciting place it is to be in: backed by a strong, vibrant literary tradition, and surging with fresh ideas. Readership in both English and local languages is growing, regional publishing is strong and awareness of what comprises ‘good’ writing is not in doubt. More good things are to come.
Indigenous and Tribal Source: IMPHAL FREE PRESS

In much of Asia, except in what is generally referred to as South Asia constituting of the countries of the Indian subcontinent, the term tribal is either alien or else deemed as derogatory. Even in South Asia, Nepal does not refer to its various ethnic communities, inhabiting the hills or plains, as tribal. In fact many of the communities in this Himalayan nation would feel insulted to be referred to as tribal. Instead they prefer to be referred to as indigenous communities. Perhaps these two terms mean the same thing. But then, if they do mean the same thing, why are both the terms invoked to mean different ethnic communities in India? The term indigenous community came into vogue relatively recently, having surfaced into the consciousness of most Indians and indeed the world just about two decades ago. In fact, the Indian government’s official stance for a long time has been there are no indigenous communities in the country and that every Indian is indigenous.
This defensive position may of course betray an Aryan anxiety that did they may after all not have belonged to India beyond a certain period in history like many other invading communities, and they too had come to the subcontinent in proto historical period and came to slowly by surely dominate the region. Recall the controversy of a Hindutva scholar caught trying to manipulate the image of a cow found at Harappa (of the Indus Valley Civilisation) to make it look like a horse so as to fit into the Aryan contention that they were the original inhabitants of India. Ancient Aryan literature, such as the Rig Veda, are horse-rich and if Harappa did not have horses, its implications are obvious. The Frontline Magazine ran a series of stories on this controversy in 2000, including one by Michael Witzel, a Harvard University Indologist, and Steve Farmer, a comparative historian, titled “Horseplay in Harappa”. There was another by well known historian Romila Thappar “Hindutva and History: Why do Hindutva ideologues keep flogging a dead horse” (Frontline Volume 17 - Issue 20, Sep. 30 - Oct. 13, 2000).
This official stance notwithstanding, the peculiar thing is, both the categories – “indigenous” as well as “tribal”, have come to stay in India. And because of the incentive structuring in the country, there is already a politics centred around a contest to be included in these categories already. This unhealthy contest (as well as confusion of categories) is most pronounced in Manipur. On the one hand is the lobby which thinks the term “tribal” and “indigenous” should be synonymous and that only those who are already classified as tribal under the Indian constitution should be entitled to come under the nomenclature of “indigenous” as well. There are also others who think the term is neutral of the Indian constitution’s definition of “tribal” and must have other criterion to qualify to come under its fold. In short, in Manipur especially, this movement too is getting to be reduced to the idioms of familiar bitter contest of the hill-valley, tribal-nontribal divide which has plagued and immobilised the state for so long.
Under the circumstance, we are of the opinion that those in the contest should allow themselves the space to step back and think of the wider referral point that the UN has adopted on the issue. This referral point has little to do with the tribal-nontribal debate. The understanding “indigenous people” in this context is more about people whose worldviews predate the evolution of the “state” and organised religion. In a different way, the indigenous movement is fundamentally the assertion of people who have been left out of the “state” system to make the world understand that not everything have to be defined in terms of the “state” and its known attributes. The movement in this sense is very much “non-state” in character although not in the sense that we have come to understand “non-state”. These are people whose notions of territory, religion, law, peoplehood, etc are quite distinct from how the modern “state” defines them. There also can be little dispute about how modern worldview ignores these non-state people. All international as well as national laws, including the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has been about the “state” and its relationship with its subjects. Until very recently, they had little or nothing to say of the non-state indigenous people and their worldview. The international indigenous people’s movement is about bringing about parity in this skewed system and nothing to do with the “tribal-nontribal” binary.