By Obadiah Lamshwa Lamare
It is a tragedy of epic proportions when people have to live timid lives for the sake of the convenience of those with Might. This tragedy becomes graver when it happens in a country that claims to be a Liberal Democracy. Be it the individual cases of closet dwellings for fear of social persecutions or the case of having to lose sleep over forced franchise (The Shillong Times, 16th April 2014), fear has too much claim over our lives, and things become worse when we do not have the power to change the conditions that condition us.
Consider the ‘border dispute’. Many lives have been lost, much has been taken away and fundamental human rights and freedoms have been neglected and breached in the course of the dispute, so much so that even if we try to ignore the ailments of those who reside at the ‘fringes’ of Meghalaya, their tormented lives keep surfacing and echoing for our consideration. Their story is a reminder of the ailments caused by the borders and boundaries we construct. It is an instructive episode on how borders, by design, succeed in to spoiling human relations and creating wedges between friendships that could have been. However, the more dismal fact is that the people who live in the ‘disputed areas’ are people without power, bucolic, far off and deprived. Maybe their plight is too distant a reality compared to that of those who live in Shillong or Guwahati and, therefore, no real attention is given to resolving their problems.
Another dreadful consequence of the entire episode is that these people are transmogrified into issues for the jingoists and the nationalists among us when they justify themselves and their communal, separatist agenda. If we look at things from the right perspective, we will find that the predicament of a Nepali or Assamese farmer or labourer and one from Meghalaya are very much similar, but they have been pitted against each other by those who have much to gain for the manufactured confrontations. It all goes to show how alien those with power are to the common people, when they can so easily construct or deconstruct human relations according to their whims and fancies. In all actuality the residents in the ‘disputed areas’ have more in common with their immediate and supposed foe than with those who claim to represent them and who end up interpreting them on the grounds of ethnic similarities. In the end, the fact remains that the people in the areas are but dispensable pawns, they are only chips on the table for those in power to circulate and manipulate.
Both states have claimed the ‘disputed areas’ as being within their respective boundaries and it seems that things have now taken a more complicated turn and much will be left pending. The matter has also not received attention from the Central Government or even from the mainstream media even though slaughter has already taken place over the entire issue. Maybe all this hints at federalism when convenient, that the matter should be resolved by the two states left to themselves. It is, therefore, in the interest of both the states and especially of the people in the areas that the matter be settled as soon as possible and with proper handling. Keeping the poetic humanist romanticism of living under the same sky aside for a moment, it is high time that both sides really look into the ‘border’ issue boldly so that we can really live under the same sky; keeping in mind one absolute and significant fact, that regardless of other factors at play, the people are first and foremost citizens of the liberal democratic state of India, with rights and liberties. If the two sides are really keen to prove their claim over the ‘areas’ then the rights and liberties of these people should be guaranteed and protected. We cannot have their rights and liberties curtailed by militants; we cannot have the people cowered into surrendering their fundamental liberties to the whims and fancies of degenerate groups. They should be protected by the State. But, if we are to go by the newspaper reports then we will find that the breach becomes more severe, because state officials and police personnels themselves encroach and violate the fundamental rights and liberties of the people in these areas. It appears, therefore, that the people are victims to the policies of both the states: one state with recorded excesses and breaches in the areas, and one state with questionable commitments and inaction; not forgetting that they are at the same time threatened and exploited by militant outfits which seem to roam and roar freely while the idle iron hand of the State hesitates to come to the rescue!
For these reasons and many more the people are hapless and destitute and without help!!
It may be too soon for us to realise the absolute necessity of a world without borders and hate but we should start moving toward making the world a less hostile place to live in. The policy of patronising and appeasing should be abandoned. It is high time that the views of the people in those affected areas be taken, without parties with vested interests interpreting them. It should also be noted that while several discussions and debates and strategies and agreements have been made pertaining to the boundary issue, there stands out an agreement that favours the making of orphans. We find that these areas are being deprived of developmental projects in order to observe some vague idea of a status quo. For instance, in the early months of 2013 and even recently, attempts to bring in electricity to a disputed area by one of the contesting states was opposed by so many. Pending settlements of disputes should never and in no way mean hindering Human development and freedom. Is it not high time that we look for arrangements that permit both state governments, maybe through consensus and joint management, to carry out developmental works and projects in the ‘disputed areas’ until the matter is intelligently resolved? To some the idea may seem farfetched but such an arrangement will definitely be a more rational and positive step forward.
(Obadiah Lamshwa Lamare is a research scholar in the Department of Political Science, NEHU)