By Micheal N Syiem
In the article by Patricia Mukhim “Old wounds re-opened, Old Hurts return to haunt” (ST March 13, 2015), the part where she described the years of 1979-80 as “the dark period of Meghalaya’s history” is more or less a repetition of her earlier comments/writings which appeared in her articles several times in 2010 after which, I would like to remind the writer that I had offered an explanation through an article about the sequence of events that took place during that period when I was President of the KSU. This article of mine was published in this daily on the 05.01.2011 under the headline, “Jaidbynriew on Introspection…….”
Therefore for those who had commented on this article of Patricia Mukhim both in the print and social media and to enable them to know the other side of the story , I would like to briefly give a write-up of what I had written earlier in my article published On Jan 5, 2011.
All of us who were in the Students’ Union in the late 70’s grew up as teenagers during the Hill State movement. We would attend the public meetings where speakers would orate about the problems faced by the indigenous people because we were then controlled/ruled by outsiders, meaning non tribals, and once we achieved our own state, we were told, all these problems would be solved.
As teenagers we were particularly attracted to the public meetings of the then ‘fire brand’ leader. H.S. Lyngdoh, President of the H.S.P.D.P. with his slogan “No Hill State, Direct Action. Against this background, we grew up from our teens with the perception that the non-tribals were the cause of all our problems and once we can drive them out of our State, all our problems would be solved. But even after we had achieved our own State, influx from outside continued unabated. As student activists when we launched the anti foreign national influx movement in 1979 along with AASU and other students’ unions of the North East we started off with the Gandhian form of agitation like satyagraha, office picketing, hartals and hunger strikes.
But the situation took a turn for the worse with the assassination of the then MLA from Garo Hills Mr Manik Das, in Boko, Assam. During that time our volunteers were picketing the Government Press (old site) to prevent the Government from printing ballot papers for the then scheduled M.P. elections, which the Meghalaya Students Union jointly formed by the KSU, JSU and the GSU, had decided to boycott as part of the anti influx agitation. Around this same time the non-tribals too, had taken out a procession in Shillong to protest the murder of Manik Das. Which side started the stone pelting I personally cannot say because I was not present there, but when we reached the IGP point the place had turned into a battle field. We took our injured, some to the KJP Hospital and others to the Civil Hospital where we met some senior members of the non tribal community who were attending to their injured and expressed our regrets over the whole unfortunate incident. But bad blood had been spilled and the situation worsened. The State Government adopted tough measures to deal with the situation and promulgated the Meghalaya Preventive Detention Ordinance and arrested Mr M. N. Majaw, MLA, Dr. B.K. Roy, MLA, Mr Bhaskar Choudhury, MLA, Mr H.S. Shylla, myself and another non- tribal lawyer under this Ordinance.
As student leaders, I will not try to absolve myself or my colleagues of any blame for all that had happened, but when the Government then, had adopted such brutal measures against the students, we also had gone into an overdrive. But the movement had also become a mass movement and there were some incidents that were beyond the Student Unions’ control.
Another point I would like to make is that, unlike today where one can call a Hartal or Bandh from the safety of their homes without having to enforce it to make it successful, calling a Hartal in those days meant sending volunteers to different localities to request people to co-operate. As a result, our members enforcing Hartal in places like Jail Road, Laban, Mawprem, Umpling refugee colony and other non tribal majority areas would often face opposition and confrontation resulting in injuries to many of our members.
But the anti influx movement was not about agitations only. As President of the North East Region Students’ Union (NERSU), a body of all the students union of the NE, I visited different universities in India to address students there, explaining to them about the objective of the movement against the illegal influx of foreign nationals in the region and the dangers these illegal immigrants pose to the security of the country, a threat then, a reality today in India.
After the experiences of student activism, the contacts I made with youths from outside the state and the North East, the interaction with other indigenous people I met in the World Council of Indigenous People’s Conference held in Canberra, Australia and after reading about the negative opinions held by people from outside our state regarding our community and our State, which I often come across in National and International magazines, I began to realize the need for an in-depth introspection into the various problems facing our people, what are their causes and I found that most of the problems faced by us are not because of the non tribals, but because of many loopholes in the customs and traditions that we were and are still following.
Accordingly, after much discussions and deliberations, the MAITSHAPHRANG resolved in the year 1987 to campaign for legislation of the Meghalaya Compulsory Registration of Marriage Act and the Equitable Distribution of Ancestral and Self Acquired Property Act, because we were and are absolutely sure that if these two are made Laws, it will be the starting point to solve most of our problems which will finally help our Jaidbynriew to Come of Age.
With this clarification through this article there were no questions, criticisms or comments from Kong Patricia. In fact at the end of the article she introduced me as “The writer is President Maitshaphrang Movement, the Meghalaya R.T.I. Movement, erstwhile President of the KSU and a thought leader” which she defined as “anyone who thinks and ponders over social issues and works at social transformation is a thought leader”.
Now four years after my clarification her attempt to re-open old wounds and that too by misleading the readers in trying to link the murder of Gouri Dey that happened in the late 1980s with the 1979-80 anti influx movement, can be viewed as an attempt to malign us which is very unfortunate.
Her accusations that “the politicians cleverly used the infamous students body-the Khasi Students Union and ignited raw passion in several young men for whom logic did not matter and who knew only the lingo of violence” is sad because she underestimated her own people’s ability to use reason and intellect, despite my earlier clarification that we were invited by students’ union from a quite a few universities in India including Calcutta to talk and explain about the movement against illegal influx and the dangers they posed to the security of the country. We faced their tough and sometime aggressive questions and yet we used logic and stood our ground.
As an ex-student leader, I will face criticism if I have to, but I will always be ready and open for any further questions and clarifications for that particular period of time from any quarters so that history will not be distorted.