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10/12/2009: "Naga couple identify drunk men, cops who harassed them in Delhi IANS"

Naga couple identify drunk men, cops who harassed them in Delhi IANS

New Delhi, Oct 12 (IANS) A couple from Nagaland who alleged they were abused by a group of drunk men and subsequently the “callous police”, were able to file a complaint with the cops almost 20 hours after the incident and identified the perpetrators Monday.
The couple — Shimray Yangya and his wife Ton — were allegedly abused by a group of drunk men in south Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave area.
The two are residents of southwest Delhi’s Dwarka area and were visiting their cousins late Saturday when they were confronted by the drunk men in a car park.
“They first passed lewd comments at my wife and made very embarrassing racial comments too,” Yangya told IANS.
According to Yangya, he had parked his car outside his cousin’s residence. Later when he went out to check the car, he found that the tyres were deflated. He said that when he protested, the men beat up his cousin and him. “They snatched our phones and money and took the shirt I was wearing too.”
His travails didn’t end there. After calling the cops thrice, five police vans showed up at around 2 or 3 a.m. by which time a crowd of about 30 people had gathered.
“The cops flatly refused to arrest the culprits and instead tried shoving my wife and other women from my family into the vans. There were no policewomen there. After a whole night at the police station and after building pressure with the help of student union leaders and human rights activists the police finally registered a case 20 hours later,” Yangya said.
While the couple has already identified the men, they will also identify the cops later Monday.
Police meanwhile said it was a fight between neighbours and two cases have been registered in connection with the incident.
Endemic Boundary Disputes Source: IMPHAL FREE PRESS

The boundary dispute at Jessami village over a rest house allegedly built by the Nagaland government and occupied by the Nagaland Armed Police, NAP, on territory which falls on the Manipur side of the border is unfortunate. However as events in the past have proven, this issue is endemic as well. Similar boundary disputes exist along the Nagaland Manipur border at many other points, the most high profile of which are at Dzuko Valley and Tungjoy village. In many ways, these disputes are inevitable. They are in many ways the birth pangs of the transition from the traditional to the modern. From this perspective, we would even venture to call these as not so much boundary disputes, but disputes of the notions of boundary. About one hundred years ago, or even less, the notion of boundary and territory would have been very different in these areas. It definitely would not have been the precise lines, with perhaps a corridor of mutually agreed upon no-man’s land in the case of international boundaries, demarcated by boundary pillars and guarded zealously by border police or army as the case may be. They would have been more in the nature of happy hunting grounds – certain stretch of a river where a particular village could fish, another expanse of forest deemed as the territory of another village etc. The water tight boundary lines which bear definite pedigree of the modern Western State is as recent as the arrival of the British administration in these areas. The transition understandably would be painful, for the application of modern paradigms of boundary drawing would upset traditional understandings and notions of neighbourliness. The 1947 Partition of India and the unparalleled mayhem it caused, is in many similar ways a manifestation of this extreme trauma.
But the modern State is today a necessary condition of modern life. These boundaries had been demarcated and the usual modern cartographical resort of using watersheds and mountain ridges or mountain base lines had been used. Since these had been done, and the boundaries thus drawn have been in existence for close to a century now, the best course would be to respect them. If at all adjustments become essential, as probably they would from time to time, these must be through mutually agreeable terms of the neighbouring villages in the area as well as the state governments they belong to. From this standpoint at least, the constructions that the Nagaland government made recently, is in Manipur territory and the Nagaland government must relent. This must be acknowledged first, and from then on whatever negotiations necessary can take off. The Nagaland chief secretary, Lalthara in a reply to a query by his Manipur counterpart, DC Poonia did indicate this underlying tension between the recognized interstate boundary and the traditional land ownership and landholding still held by various Naga tribes. Hence, according to him, some members of the Chakhesang and Pochury tribes continue cultivation of their ancestral landholdings across the river which is the boundary between the states for the last many decades undisturbed.
While this point of view needs a sympathetic hearing, it must however be pointed out to the Nagaland chief secretary that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander too. One standard must hence apply to all boundary dispute situations, and it must not reduce to one side trying to have the best of both arguments in different situations. Moreover, if at the village level, tradition of a past land holding system lingers on without contestations, this cannot be also the philosophy of interstate boundary as well. Surely the Nagaland chief secretary does not think building a barrack for the NAP has anything to do with anybody’s ancestral tradition, just as a Manipur Rifles post in Nagaland territory would not be. Surely again the Nagaland chief secretary does not want us to believe the NAP are ancient warriors just released from a time warp and must be understood from the standpoint of ancient laws and norms. There must have to be a differentiation between interstate relations and intercommunity relations. Modern norms work in the former relations and the traditional often (but not always) in the later. For indeed even at the community level, modern outlooks to life and administration have virtually taken over even in the most remote corners of the region.

Respect social organisations: AMUCO to Govt The Sangai Express
Imphal, October 11 2009: If the Government is committed to bring a solution to the current impasse, the Government need to understand the people's movement and respect social organisations, said the All Manipur United Clubs' Organisation (AMUCO) in a press release.

Exercising state power to harass and threaten people would not bring any positive result.

Crimes committed by ruling political leaders caused more hardships to the people than those social activists being detained under National Security Act (NSA), AMUCO asserted.

The general observation that social organisations should have contact with both insurgents and Government and act as mediators towards conflict resolution seemed to have thrown out of the knowledge of those Manipur Government officers on reaching Manipur who went for conflict resolution at the United Nations.

The AMUCO questioned what should be done to those politicians forming ethnic based armed groups to utilise them in electoral politics and officers associating with UG cadres.

Noting that the Government of Manipur never brought any issue to a logical conclusion, AMUCO asserted that the Government waited for the issue to die a natural death or schemed to override the issue with another fabricated issue.

Referring to the reported encroachment in Jessami by Nagaland, the AMUCO conjectured that the State Government might be hoping to quell the current movement by whipping up another issue about the territorial boundary between Manipur and Nagaland.

The UNIDEP (Unity, Development and Peace) Campaign launched in both the hills and valley of Manipur was fairly successful in bringing different communities to a reconciliation process, claimed AMUCO while asserting that it saved the Government from witnessing a possible communal clash.

The arrest of AMUCO members on September 14 and subsequent release of a non-tribal member in a bid to draw a dividing line between tribals and non-tribals within AMUCO and then linking the arrested members with the ongoing movement spearheaded by the Apunba Lup in the Government's attempt to make them don the role of negotiators between the Government and the Apunba Lup all failed to serve the Government's purpose.

Ultimately, the Government slapped NSA against the arrested members exposing the ambiguous attitude of the Government.

Maintaining that such attitude of the Government cannot abolish AMUCO, it accused the State Government of breeding an unproductive sector by making large scale recruitment in armed forces while appointments in other sectors have been banned.

Because of this policy of the incumbent Government, the next Government would be in big trouble.

The State would be bearing negative impacts of this policy for the next 30/40 years.

Even if the Government succeeded in making an understanding on the boundary issue, the people would be caught in hostility in clamouring for land.

Lasting peace can be made only after an understanding has been made between social organisations of Manipur and Nagaland, AMUCO asserted.
The inner frontier Mahesh Rangarajan DNA
There is little doubt now that the most serious insurgencies in this country are not on its rim in the Northeast or for that matter in Kashmir but in its mainland. No less than home minister P Chidambaram has said that one in seven police stations in the country has seen incidences of Maoist extremism.
Yet, there is a contrast between the situation in the hinterland of forests and hills where Maoism today and Naxalism in the late 1960s made its stand and in the regions of the periphery. It is indeed true that a state like Manipur is going though protracted civil protest over atrocities by the security forces.
But it is doubtful if there has been a phase in the last four decades when the semblance of a political process has been at work so steadily in most though not all of frontier India. This emerges most clearly when one looks at the region with the oldest and deepest rooted of the separatist insurgencies: Nagaland.
The peace talks with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) have now entered their 14th year. Though there has been no major breakthrough especially on the issue of a Nagalim that will include parts of several adjacent states, the fact is that neither the talks nor the ceasefire have broken down.
Even more significant and for the first time since the advent of the United Progressive Alliance government in the summer of 2004 is the statement of the Mirwaiz of Kashmir. Umar Farooq has asked his supporters not to be anti Indian and to be ready for dialogue.
As in the case of the veteran Naga leader T Muivah, nobody expects the Hurriyat leader to change his views or surrender his convictions. But the very readiness for dialogue is a positive step.
This passage from a situation of conflict and confrontation to dialogue and bridge-building is always difficult. More so when there are ethnic issues involved and there is a long record of deep alienation of the civil population from the government.
Yet, there is little sign of dialogue with the Maoists who are heirs to the Naxalite legacy that goes back over four decades. It is not just the rising of Naxalbari in north Bengal but also the agenda of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) founded in April 1969 by the late Charu Mazumdar that lies at its root.
Simply put, the idea was that Indian society and polity could only be transformed via an armed revolution. While this strand petered out by the mid and late 1970s, it never did die out and found fresh life over the last decade with the re-unification of several smaller splinter groups and the formation of a united Maoist party.
The contrast with a state like Jammu and Kashmir in this last decade could not be greater. The state now has two regionalist parties each with its own vision of autonomy, one led by the Abdullahs and the other by the Muftis.
Meanwhile in West Bengal, the birthplace of Maoism in India, the parliamentary Left parties are in crisis. At a meta level, such parties or the socialists never struck roots in the vast tribal hinterland that stretches across several states in Middle India. It is here that the last two decades have seen far-reaching economic and social changes, few of which have benefited in any serious way the bulk of the under class.
No one should have any illusions about the respect or human rights on either side. Many human rights groups have catalogued and the courts have also acknowledged the violation of basic rights by Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh.But it is equally important to recall that the recent beheading of a police officer by Maoists was no aberration. In fact a popular slogan o the Naxal movement in the early 1970s was to behead the class enemies.
But as in the case of Kashmir or Nagaland, there is no way a strategy simply based on force will succeed against Maoism. There is no doubt at all that ideologues committed to a path of armed struggle will not give up their beliefs and change their ways easily. But this is no reason to see their potential recruits and followers in the same light.
The previous UPA government brought about major pro-poor policy initiatives and legal enactments. In the Adivasi areas none was as significant as the Forest Rights Act that aimed to defuse discontent over land claims and tensions vis-a-vis the forest department. But the pace of implementation has been uneven. Even worse, the measure, urgent as it was, went a very small way. If the inner frontier is to be peaceful and stable, its inhabitants need urgent public action to ensure they get a share of the fruits of development. The borderlands have shown an India willing to engage even as it refuses to bend.
Can similar statesmanship save the day on the inner frontier? The future is within grasp but only if the leadership reaches out for it. The writer is a commentator on political affairs. Views expressed are personal.