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While the rest of the nation celebrated 26 January as Republic Day, the people of Assam’s Dima Hasao district observed it as a ‘Black Day’. The death of two protesters in Maibang area of Dima Hasao on 25 January followed the release of a proposed draft settlement for the long-pending Naga problem by a senior RSS pracharak Jagdamba Mal.
But at what cost? Mal’s ‘draft agreement’ suggests “separate development authorities to be constituted for a period of ten years to execute the development programmes in seven Naga-inhabited districts of Manipur”, namely Senapati, Tamenglong, Ukhrul, Chandel, Noney, Kamjong and Tengnoupal; “two Naga-inhabited districts of Arunachal Pradesh, Changlang and Tirap” and “one in Assam, the Dima Hasao (North Cachar Hills district).”
Since 3 August 2015, those states bordering Nagaland have been living on tenterhooks, wondering if parts of their territories would be carved out in order to give shape to the demands of the NSCN(IM) for a ‘Nagalim’ or ‘Greater Nagaland’.
Jagdamba Mal’s ‘aspiration’ to firmly plant the seeds of RSS ideology in Nagaland and the entire region can be seen through his frequent missives to the media on a host of issues and the RSS’s considered views on them – especially on the Naga conundrum.
It is also important to probe deeper to understand if Jagdamba Mal is speaking from a position of authority as an appointed ‘unofficial interlocutor’ who is ‘preparing the ground’ before the final settlement – or if the document was some kind of ruse which has the sanction of the Indian government, which wants to test the waters and gauge the reactions of Nagaland’s neighbours if the final agreement were to be laid bare.
The protest in Dima Hasao has had a cascading effect. Over a thousand train passengers were stranded for over 48 hours at the New Haflong railway station in Dima Hasao after the tracks were damaged on Friday, 26 January. They had a harrowing time, buffeted by the cold and uncertainty.
Further, they said that trains should not have been allowed to pass through the district since they had called a bandh. The question is: Can the state accede to a request to disrupt normal life? Clearly, things are getting out of hand in this troubled district yet again.
On 21 January, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat addressed a conclave of about 50,000 RSS workers from the region at Guwahati ahead of the elections in Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland.
According to Bhagwat, it is Hindutva that has “united India despite diversity of language, religion, lifestyle and custom”. Bhagwat reiterated, “Hindutva accepts diversity, not divisions. That is why India is a Hindu rashtra.”
In states like Meghalaya, the RSS, through its pracharak Sunil Deodhar who is now promoted as the BJP-in-charge of Tripura elections, has been working silently for over two decades especially in the Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya where a substantial chunk of people still follow the indigenous faith.
Deodhar speaks Khasi better than some locals. Through him, the RSS has facilitated the education of many youths from Khasi-Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya. These youth live with families in different regions of Maharashtra. The Quint had met a few of them and they seemed happy.
What the people of the Northeast fear is the unstated or understated ideology of the RSS, which is evident in their tacit support of gau rakshaks and the killing of people who are found carrying or eating beef even in the neighbouring state of Assam.
Having spent decades understanding the culture and politics of the region, the RSS now feels it is ready to claim its space here. Jagdamba Mal, for instance, has worked for several decades in Nagaland and knows the inside story of every organisation, every pressure group and every church group there.
In many an article, he has exposed the inconsistencies between what these groups profess and what they actually are.
Atal Behari Vajpayee never gave the RSS the kind of clout it enjoys today. As a result, the BJP lost the 2004 elections. The RSS knows what it’s like to be out in the cold, and today, it is flexing its muscles everywhere like a ‘vote-catching juggernaut’ while also planting the Hindutva ideology across the length and breadth of this region.
The rise of the RSS and its attempts to push over the BJP post 2014 and to take centre-stage in the politics of our times is causing consternation among the minorities of this country.
In the Northeast, at the best of times, people feel alienated from the idea of India; where nationalism, as espoused by the BJP-RSS has caused much unease. The people of this region became part of India after 1947.
In this political conundrum, where demands for ethnic homelands have led to violent insurgencies, we now have the RSS spreading its wings and trying to claim the region as its own via organisations like ‘My Home India’, whose founder Sunil Deodhar says he wants to promote the idea that all Indians including the people of the Northeast are one.
But how likely these small tribes are to succeed in holding their own against this RSS onslaught is a question we need to grapple with.
(The writer is the Editor of The Shillong Times and former member of NSAB. She can be reached @meipat. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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