Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Hapless people in a fluid corridor
Subir Bhaumik, October 2, 2017
In the 1970s, an Indian army brigadier took up the cause of his people suffering human rights violations in his native Mizoram in the country’s northeast. His human rights forum ultimately provided him the launch pad for his Peoples Conference which came to power twice in the 1970-80s. The first Indian chief minister I met and interviewed in my professional career was this retired brigadier Thenpunga Sailo, a conscientious Christian and every inch a Mizo, brave and forthright. Sailo told me he saw India and its northeast as a ‘flower garden’ and this diversity, he said, gave India its beauty and strength.
But that idea of India faces a huge challenge today, though saffronite ministers publicly parrot the ‘unity in diversity’ mantra. The country that sheltered tens of thousands of refugees from Tibet to Sri Lanka to Bangladesh now says it will throw out Rohingya refugees, even those who have been registered by the UNHCR.
Rijjuju fired this salvo just before PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Myanmar in a move seen as much an effort to energise the drooping spirits of the Hindutva brigade as to connect to Buddhist hardliners in the Pagoda Nation, where the RSS is spreading its organisational tentacles and India is seeking ever greater influence to undermine the Chinese clout.
One rather worrying feature about Rijjuju is his insistence that the courts should not interfere with what he saw as executive matter – like his government’s decision to throw out Rohingya refugees without being sure who (Bangladesh or Myanmar or any third country) would take them. As a minister tasked to ensure not just a stable law and order situation but also protect the rule of law, it belies any reasonable India how a minister could challenge one of the key edifices of the country’s polity — the principle of judicial review.
India’s independent judiciary has been the bete noire of many authoritarian administrations like the one headed by late PM Indira Gandhi, but the BJP government is carrying the executive-judiciary conflict to new heights. And no leader wades into this conflict more often than Khiren Rijjuju. Now the politician from Arunachal Pradesh has opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to order the government to grant citizenship to Chakma and Hajong refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
The Chakmas and Hajongs, who were settled in Arunachal Pradesh by the Nehru government after they came to India in 1964-65, now number close to 100,000. The local tribes in Arunachal have furiously oppose grant of citizenship for them, because that would change the power balance in the state. Most local tribes like Adis and Nishis number not more 100,000, and most other tribes much less that.
If all Chakmas and Hajongs become Indian citizens, they will become the second or third most important voting bloc in the state. And that is what the local tribes do not want. This is no surprise in Indian democracy where numbers matter — no dominant caste in Karnataka would like Bengalis or Tamils to become the third or fourth important voting bloc in their state. Rijjuju is a local tribesman from Arunachal and has now emerged as a powerful voice against grant of citizenship to Chakmas and Hajongs. But when he challenges the Supreme Court again and publicly states the court has overlooked local sensitivities and the government should go slow on the issue, he ends up challenging the country’s top court and questions the very principle of judicial review. Courts don’t go by local or political sensitivities — they are expected to go by the law of the land. If Rijjuju thinks he can get the courts to think like him, a politician, it is like expecting an elephant to turn into a man-eating tiger.
His Rohingya statement ahead of Modi’s Myanmar visit may reflect his party’s thinking (or lack of it) on the issue,what with senior leader Varun Gandhi now questioning its wisdom. No Indian would want more refugees to come in from anywhere — we are an over populated country and our resources are limited even after India has become the world’s third largest economy. But what is the wisdom of saying India will throw all Rohingyas who have entered the country over the past two decades! And who will take them! Surely not the fat cats of Middle East who would champion a Muslim cause but only shell out cash and not take responsibility to shelter hapless Rohingyas. How can Bangladesh take anymore of them, though PM Hasina have demonstrated a large Bengali heart when she said “we can feed one million Rohingyas if we can feed 160 million Bengalis.” Myanmar won’t take any of them.
Now are we saying Chakmas and Hajongs should go back to Bangladesh where they came from (though they came when Bangladesh was still East Pakistan)! Is Rijjuju suggesting that the Chakmas and Hajongs should live in a perpetual state of statelessness! It would be a huge anachronism these tribes people who came to India before Sonia Gandhi were to remain non-citizen even as the Italian lady heads one of India’s largest party. Rijjuju may say some other Indian state(s) should take them — but why!
Arunachal is a huge state and the reason Nehru’s top minister Biju Patnaik took the initiative to settle them in Arunachal was because he felt the need to have a very loyal tribe like the Chakmas there which could be armed and trained for behind-the-lines partisan warfare to bleed the Chinese if they swept into Arunachal again a la 1962. This is not to suggest other Arunachali tribes are not loyal to India. They are and to Modi’s delight they speak fluent Hindi. But the Chakmas have a history of resistance and can be more easily mobilised to fight for India is what Patnaik felt. Now how can India go back on its own decision! India backed the Chakma insurgency in Chittagong Hill Tracts after Bangladesh lost its founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in a coup.
The Chakmas were unhappy with Bangabandhu who told their leader the late M N Larma to ‘go home and become Bangali”. But so long as Bangladesh remained a democracy, the predominantly Buddhist Chakmas had hope that democracy will ensure they would finally a semblance of self rule. Military rulers Zia and Ershad justified the Chakma resistance when they started a demographic operation involved settlement of tens of thousands land hungry Bengali landless peasants in the CHT. Now the tribes people have a very thin majority which they are destined to lose, like the Tibetans have in their homeland, victim of a similar demographic operation.
The Shanti Bahini and PCJSS came back to normal life after the 1997 CHT accord after Hasina came back to power in 1996. But the accord has not been implemented and the Buddhist tribes people are fleeing to India in droves.
I can see Chakma settlements coming up around New Town Rajarhat on the outskirts of British Calcutta — Bimal Thisya Bhikkhu has done an admirable job with his Sishu Karuna Sangha and its school for Chakma children and now plans with support of Buddhist countries to create a huge Buddha so that pilgrims headed for Bodh Gaya from Southeast or East Asia can stop over in Calcutta for a day or two. The Mamata Banerjee government has so far failed to back this project despite the big bucks it can bring for Bengal Tourism. She would prefer Rohingyas to add to her Muslim vote bank which she assiduously cultivates. Her government was willing to take Muslims of East origin rendered homeless during the 2012 riots in Western Assam but her Trinamul Congress has taken no stance on the Chakma issue as it has on the Rohingya issue.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/10/02/hapless-people-fluid-corridor/
Subir Bhaumik, October 2, 2017
In the 1970s, an Indian army brigadier took up the cause of his people suffering human rights violations in his native Mizoram in the country’s northeast. His human rights forum ultimately provided him the launch pad for his Peoples Conference which came to power twice in the 1970-80s. The first Indian chief minister I met and interviewed in my professional career was this retired brigadier Thenpunga Sailo, a conscientious Christian and every inch a Mizo, brave and forthright. Sailo told me he saw India and its northeast as a ‘flower garden’ and this diversity, he said, gave India its beauty and strength.
But that idea of India faces a huge challenge today, though saffronite ministers publicly parrot the ‘unity in diversity’ mantra. The country that sheltered tens of thousands of refugees from Tibet to Sri Lanka to Bangladesh now says it will throw out Rohingya refugees, even those who have been registered by the UNHCR.
Rijjuju fired this salvo just before PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Myanmar in a move seen as much an effort to energise the drooping spirits of the Hindutva brigade as to connect to Buddhist hardliners in the Pagoda Nation, where the RSS is spreading its organisational tentacles and India is seeking ever greater influence to undermine the Chinese clout.
One rather worrying feature about Rijjuju is his insistence that the courts should not interfere with what he saw as executive matter – like his government’s decision to throw out Rohingya refugees without being sure who (Bangladesh or Myanmar or any third country) would take them. As a minister tasked to ensure not just a stable law and order situation but also protect the rule of law, it belies any reasonable India how a minister could challenge one of the key edifices of the country’s polity — the principle of judicial review.
India’s independent judiciary has been the bete noire of many authoritarian administrations like the one headed by late PM Indira Gandhi, but the BJP government is carrying the executive-judiciary conflict to new heights. And no leader wades into this conflict more often than Khiren Rijjuju. Now the politician from Arunachal Pradesh has opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to order the government to grant citizenship to Chakma and Hajong refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
The Chakmas and Hajongs, who were settled in Arunachal Pradesh by the Nehru government after they came to India in 1964-65, now number close to 100,000. The local tribes in Arunachal have furiously oppose grant of citizenship for them, because that would change the power balance in the state. Most local tribes like Adis and Nishis number not more 100,000, and most other tribes much less that.
If all Chakmas and Hajongs become Indian citizens, they will become the second or third most important voting bloc in the state. And that is what the local tribes do not want. This is no surprise in Indian democracy where numbers matter — no dominant caste in Karnataka would like Bengalis or Tamils to become the third or fourth important voting bloc in their state. Rijjuju is a local tribesman from Arunachal and has now emerged as a powerful voice against grant of citizenship to Chakmas and Hajongs. But when he challenges the Supreme Court again and publicly states the court has overlooked local sensitivities and the government should go slow on the issue, he ends up challenging the country’s top court and questions the very principle of judicial review. Courts don’t go by local or political sensitivities — they are expected to go by the law of the land. If Rijjuju thinks he can get the courts to think like him, a politician, it is like expecting an elephant to turn into a man-eating tiger.
His Rohingya statement ahead of Modi’s Myanmar visit may reflect his party’s thinking (or lack of it) on the issue,what with senior leader Varun Gandhi now questioning its wisdom. No Indian would want more refugees to come in from anywhere — we are an over populated country and our resources are limited even after India has become the world’s third largest economy. But what is the wisdom of saying India will throw all Rohingyas who have entered the country over the past two decades! And who will take them! Surely not the fat cats of Middle East who would champion a Muslim cause but only shell out cash and not take responsibility to shelter hapless Rohingyas. How can Bangladesh take anymore of them, though PM Hasina have demonstrated a large Bengali heart when she said “we can feed one million Rohingyas if we can feed 160 million Bengalis.” Myanmar won’t take any of them.
Now are we saying Chakmas and Hajongs should go back to Bangladesh where they came from (though they came when Bangladesh was still East Pakistan)! Is Rijjuju suggesting that the Chakmas and Hajongs should live in a perpetual state of statelessness! It would be a huge anachronism these tribes people who came to India before Sonia Gandhi were to remain non-citizen even as the Italian lady heads one of India’s largest party. Rijjuju may say some other Indian state(s) should take them — but why!
Arunachal is a huge state and the reason Nehru’s top minister Biju Patnaik took the initiative to settle them in Arunachal was because he felt the need to have a very loyal tribe like the Chakmas there which could be armed and trained for behind-the-lines partisan warfare to bleed the Chinese if they swept into Arunachal again a la 1962. This is not to suggest other Arunachali tribes are not loyal to India. They are and to Modi’s delight they speak fluent Hindi. But the Chakmas have a history of resistance and can be more easily mobilised to fight for India is what Patnaik felt. Now how can India go back on its own decision! India backed the Chakma insurgency in Chittagong Hill Tracts after Bangladesh lost its founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in a coup.
The Chakmas were unhappy with Bangabandhu who told their leader the late M N Larma to ‘go home and become Bangali”. But so long as Bangladesh remained a democracy, the predominantly Buddhist Chakmas had hope that democracy will ensure they would finally a semblance of self rule. Military rulers Zia and Ershad justified the Chakma resistance when they started a demographic operation involved settlement of tens of thousands land hungry Bengali landless peasants in the CHT. Now the tribes people have a very thin majority which they are destined to lose, like the Tibetans have in their homeland, victim of a similar demographic operation.
The Shanti Bahini and PCJSS came back to normal life after the 1997 CHT accord after Hasina came back to power in 1996. But the accord has not been implemented and the Buddhist tribes people are fleeing to India in droves.
I can see Chakma settlements coming up around New Town Rajarhat on the outskirts of British Calcutta — Bimal Thisya Bhikkhu has done an admirable job with his Sishu Karuna Sangha and its school for Chakma children and now plans with support of Buddhist countries to create a huge Buddha so that pilgrims headed for Bodh Gaya from Southeast or East Asia can stop over in Calcutta for a day or two. The Mamata Banerjee government has so far failed to back this project despite the big bucks it can bring for Bengal Tourism. She would prefer Rohingyas to add to her Muslim vote bank which she assiduously cultivates. Her government was willing to take Muslims of East origin rendered homeless during the 2012 riots in Western Assam but her Trinamul Congress has taken no stance on the Chakma issue as it has on the Rohingya issue.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/10/02/hapless-people-fluid-corridor/
