Month: August 2014

By: Soibam Haripriya

“We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families”, Philip Gourevitch’s writing on Rwanda so titled is an anatomy of the genocide in the republic of Rwanda (a small African country in central Africa, flanked by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Gourevitch in his writing and dissection of the genocide illustrates for us what a compelling work of journalism actually is. The title of the book is from a letter written to a Hutu Church Pastor from his congregation, a group of Tutsis asking for his intervention. His response: “Your problem has already found a solution. You must die”. The fetishisation of the difference between the Hutus and the Tutsis (the majority and minority) ethnic group of Rwanda is not too old, an insertion into their history.

The point of the need to recount this genocide for us today is this. Convention holds that the Hutus come from south and west of Rwanda; the Tutsis from the north and east, both with time lived together, intermarried, intermingled, spoke the same language. One could become another and therefore cannot ‘scientifically’ be called as distinct ethnic groups. This remains true for most ethnicities elsewhere and here too. The Tutsi minority became the ruler and the majority Hutus the ruled. There is not much in their pre-colonial history to dwell on ‘origins’. Much of the differences between them were written about after colonisation, and an impact of the “race science” of Europe of those days. The catastrophe that the amalgamation of “race science” and myths that created the idea of a superior and an inferior ethnicity is not something that the colonials will accept as of their doing. While many of the world’s greatest nations looked appalled at the genocide of Rwanda of the 1990s, the cleavage being drawn into the two groups leading to such a tragedy is something that no one till date from among the formers rulers would claim responsibility for. The point of the need to recount this is that one should not buy in the notion of superiority or inferiority of an ethnicity. Certain cultural practices are not superior to certain others; that choice of food or religion is not better than others and as Gourevitch writes about (Rwandan) history is worth a thought for us “So Rwandan history is dangerous. Like all of history, it is a record of successive struggles for power, and to a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality…” The fetishisation of a history as being “unique” and therefore different from all others is a tall claim so is a claim for a certain “civilisation” of purportedly many thousands of years that is superior because of practices of oppression, because one group had oppressed another. To try and learn from such a catastrophe seems appalling. Learning from history however is a resistance to such occurrences, to resist the script given to us by powers that try to drive in a cleavage into communities and people.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/08/a-breach-past-and-present/

By: Tinky Ningombam

There are a lot of good things that post-modernism has brought into our lives. Human endeavor has brought about many reforms in our lives, from tech, trade to toys. But somehow, somewhere, we still have to pay back for a lot of the things that we enjoy for granted.

Many a times, we have been guinea pigs to a lot of human experiments even without us knowing it. We need not look further than our increasing similar aspiration of a wealthy lifestyle. 8 out of ten teenagers picks a flat screen TV to a year’s supply of books. Our modern lifestyle is not only highly dependent on modern man-made possessions but it also entails a mimicry of unfounded glories that developed societies have showcased.

And in this light, while people in the developing countries are still aspiring to skyscrape every single piece of land, people in developed countries are trying to allow nature back into their city lives. But it is true that more and more people have come to discover that humans are indeed the most thriving when they are connected to their basic nature and ancient roots.

We normally covet things that looks lucrative. And we always forget that all that glitters is not always gold. It is human nature to stop seeing beauty in something that we see every day and desire new things that we do not own. Most of the time, succumbing to what we can deem as an inevitable upgrade of our lifestyle.

In all my travels to small towns, I have noticed one thing that is changing every day, day by day inching us closer to a uniform landmass with identical landscape. Whether I go to Jaipur or Musoorie, from Guwahati to West Bengal, to Bangalore or Mumbai, every city is turning into similar landscapes. Similar concrete buildings, similar roadside hoardings, similar malls. And year after year, I struggled to get away from the concrete cages to reach nature, to find traditional cottages, to local bed and breakfasts, things that still had the essence of the place, architecture that is their own, landscapes that was moulded for their clime. And every year such places are shrinking.

Then I come back to Imphal. In each visit, I see a new concrete building, a new shop with a hoarding. But what can we do? Our architecture cannot accommodate modern demands. For instance, our Meetei yumjaos were not smart enough. Besides the present dis-regard for a bamboo and thatched house, it cannot accommodate multiple floors or attached bathrooms or a modular kitchen besides other luxuries that we demand in our living quarters. But can anything else beat the aesthetic of a traditional house? Perhaps nothing will. In a hundred years, will we still be able to differentiate between a brick and mortar dwelling of a metropolitan city and the charm of a traditional cottage?

A lot can be related to our modern pragmatism. Increasingly a modern contemporary house will ignore the aesthetics of a traditional architecture or landscape because it is more practical to design according to convenience. Starting from sourcing longer lasting iron instead of using wood. Why spend a thousand rupees more in adding a traditional wooden carving window when I can buy an identical looking assembly line attachment much cheaper in the market? Day by day we destroy one old home and replace them with stacked up brick boxes fenced up asymmetrical walls because it is more convenient and it will last them years even though it may look only like a box. But a house alone, does not a home make.

I am not sure how much we are trying to retain traditional designs with our urban demands. As a matter of fact, I am not sure if there is an effort to revive traditional architecture and landscaping at all except for small artificial parks that keep coming up time and again. But how do we adapt our craft in architecture in our modern landscape? How do we preserve our traditional ponds and vegetable gardens in our households? Why would it not be a good idea to use our old traditions of constructing intricate wooden and bamboo structures without nails? Shouldn’t that be a major state agenda? Because it is not in one’s person’s hand to rebuild their traditional home, it is a neighbourhood effort, a community effort, an entire state’s effort to retain our traditional architectural aesthetics. In the end, it does come down to money, are we wealthy enough to go back to basics? To start from scratch, to undo our misdoing.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/08/back-to-basics-2/

By: Pradip Phanjoubam

Is history bunk as Henry Ford, founder of Ford Automobiles once famously said? Ford incidentally is the iconic entrepreneur credited with introducing the assembly line production system in the automobile industry for the first time in history, greatly increasing production efficiency. The system would come to be the defining standard of the automobile industry the world over in due course, and indeed perfected by the Japanese, a fact that men like Lee Iacocca, another American icon of the automobile industry, would unabashedly fuss about in later days (see his autobiography which has his name “Lee Iacocca” as the title). Quite obviously, Ford did not mean the academic study of the past when he made this statement, but was only reflecting his zeal for breaking free of tradition and investing everything in innovation, an attitude which so many Americans claim as their proprietary virtue at the time, at least until the rise of Japan Inc., which probably explains why men like Lee Iacocca openly reviled and belittled Japanese icons such as the founder of the Sony brand, and his contemporary Akio Morita (see again his autobiography).

But the study of history is not limited to attempts to understand traditions or their values. Among others, it is also about studying the past so as to learn from mistakes of the past. Perhaps this is a reflection of the modern deterministic approach to life, and with it a new existential realisation of its transient nature, all this in the face of an acknowledgment of many meta-phenomena of the universe, such as climate change, cosmic turbulences … against the scale of which the individual, and indeed life itself, become insignificant and vulnerable. In response, the tendency today is for convergence of academic disciplines, especially in the life sciences and liberal arts, not driven by the sole will to appreciate and admire the past in a dispassionate way, but to improve survival chances of peoples and civilisations, in their times ahead. History then is no longer just about knowing what happened in the past and when, but equally about how they happened, and what survival implications they have for the future.

Memory therefore is extremely important in this project, and in fact, the study of history is a method of edifying and preserving collective memory. This being the case, literacy (or the knowledge of writing) is important, for it makes memory more extensive and accurate. However, certain societies, though writing was known to them for a long time, were unable to learn from disastrous events from the past because of the priorities they gave to their knowledge. In a critical remark, Jared Diamond for instance notes that though the Maya people knew writing for a long time, their elite who were privy to this knowledge ended up recording the deeds of their kings and ominous astronomical sightings etc, but failed to take note of such things as the vagaries of the weather. They for instance took little or no notes of a devastating a 3rd Century draught leaving them unprepared for a recurrence of a similar draught in the 9th Century, flagging off the beginning of their civilisation’s downfall. The Greenland Norse similarly knew writing, but they failed to anticipate the 14th Century return of a cold cycle often referred to as the Little Ice Age, which froze all ship lanes in the sea, cutting them off totally from their mother country and lifeline, Norway and Europe, and as archaeological evidences now indicate, in one extended and severe winter, they perished of starvation to the last of them.

History therefore is not bunk. The study of the past is important so that our present and future are secure. Unfortunately, this lesson is far too often taken for granted, and we continue not to learn in any meaningful way from the past. This is true of even comparatively recent past. History, as indeed academics in general, continues to be treated as pursuits of knowledge for its own sake, independent of life’s needs, the most important purpose of which is solely to secure formal degrees that hold promises for jobs the system offers. Knowledge thus comes to exist in a Kafkaesque reality, making meaning only within the absurdly abstract and sterile reality it generates for itself. Such a trend is dangerous, and in the long run can become a threat to the survival of a society, and therefore the need for all to be cautious.

It is against such a context that we must assess all our public policies, be it top down initiatives which come from the government to the people, or a bottom up approach where policy initiatives travel from the grassroots to the government. Both approaches have their own pros and cons. An enlightened leadership can do wonders for a society but a self absorbed one can do it immense harm too. In equal measures, street politics can be redeeming as much as it can descend into a free for all “mobocracy”, the opposite of rule of law in Karl Popper’s words. Manipur needs no further explanations of these scenarios.

It is in this context that I want to place the Inner Line Permit issue and assess it. But before a discussion on the ILP, its history, the compulsions which made the British administration in 1873 think it was necessary etc, it would be extremely prudent to ask the fundamental question of what it is that a great section of the Manipur population wants to achieve by the introduction of this system. Did the British then have the same objective as those agitating for the ILP now think the ILP promises for them? And it is not just Manipur agitating for the ILP. Meghalaya too is in the throes of similar unrests at the moment.

The stated reason for the demand for the ILP is, in the face of the new political and economic order Manipur is in, if immigration into the state is left unchecked, numerically weak indigenous communities in the State could come to be outnumbered by outsiders, and in the current character of electoral democracy where numbers matter above all else, the levers of State power would pass away from their hands into those of immigrants. Judging from the fate of so many indigenous communities all over the world, this is undoubtedly a legitimate fear and it must be addressed.

However, the important consideration which not many seem to be paying heed to is whether the ILP is the only answer to this question. Or put another way, whether the ILP is at all the best answer? Again, if the ILP does answer this question, would there also be adverse fallouts?

As I see it, what the demand for the ILP represents is above all a fear for loss of land and with it identity of the indigenous communities. This is especially true of the Imphal Valley, suffering as it does from a siege mentality. The hills, in this sense are already shielded by other laws though there is no ILP there as well, which probably is the reason why the demand for ILP is largely concentrated in the valley areas.

The fact of the difference in land ownership pattern between the hills and the valley, and how this has made the valley insecure and not the hills, should already be a valuable cue to the answer to our original question. Since the common fear driving the ILP agitation is loss of land, introducing a legislation that would prevent the possibility of such losses, should mitigate the fear considerably if not totally.

My suggestion is for the government to think of a similar legislation which would ensure land in the valley is prohibited from permanent transfers to immigrants. There are other states in India where this objective is achieved without the ILP. Himachal Pradesh, where I spent the last two years, is one of these. There are no restrictions to outsiders entering the State, be they job seekers or tourists, but even the most ardent lover of Himachal who is not originally from the State cannot buy land there. Himachal was formerly a part of the undivided Punjab, but even Panjabis today cannot acquire permanent properties in the State. This takes care of the local Himachalis insecurity about loss of identity, but it also ensures it thriving tourism industry is unhurt. The economy and livelihood infrastructure of Kullu, Manali, Dharamsala and so many other towns and districts which are major destinations not just of domestic tourists, but of international ones as well, are therefore not compromised by Himachal’s need to protect its land from immigrants. The ILP on the other hand probably would be a major obstacle to the nascent tourism industry in Manipur, just as the Protected Area Permit, PAP, in vogue till only a few years ago, was.

The government could immediately set up a committee to probe alternatives which can allay what is certainly a legitimate fear behind the current spate of agitations, without instilling insecurity to non domicile residents of the State. Such a committee could study cases of success stories such as in Himachal Pradesh etc, and evolve a legislation which suits the State and its peculiarities. The point must be to separate and then secure the grains but not the chaffs of the ILP system.

Space constraint will prevent me from going into a more detailed history of the ILP, which incidentally I had written of earlier in these columns, but a few salient points will be of interest. First, it must be remembered that when the British took over rein of Assam in 1826 after the Treaty of Yandaboo, they were represented by a multinational company called the East India Company. As all merchants, the East India Company’s primary outlook here was maximisation of company profits, and not by any means the welfare of any section of the population. It would therefore be wrong to presume that the British were looking to protect the indigenous populations by drawing the Inner Line, as is often stated by observers here. On the other hand, it was a line that divided their profitable revenue districts from the “wild” non-revenue districts.

When the Bengal Inner Line Regulation was promulgated in 1873, the administration in India had come under the British crown following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, but the mercantile ethos of the East India Company was far from abandoned. By then the tea gardens, as well as rubber, timber and ivory speculators were expanding in Assam, and these merchants, especially the tea garden lobby was pressuring the government to extend the Inner Line into the non-revenue districts so that they could expand their gardens there and come under government protection. At the least, they were lobbying the government to place police posts behind the Inner Line.

The British administration did respond to these pressures, and on numerous occasions altered the boundaries of the Inner Line, arbitrarily at the district administration level (a regulation, unlike an Act, is an administrative norm introduced by the executive without going through the tedious process of law making through the legislature, as E.A. Gait explains in “A History of Assam”). When once there was a demand for abolishing the Inner Line at the Naga Hills sector, the British did a revenue survey and came up with the conclusion that tax revenue from these hills will be about Rs. 3,000 annually but the cost of extending its administration into these hills would be over Rs. 15,000 annually, so it declined the tea planters lobby’s request, saying it was best for the planters to keep away from the hills and risk coming into conflicts with the tribes there. It was only much later, when the hill tribes began raiding British subjects in their revenue districts that the British decided to establish their administrative presence in these hills. The subject of these raids from hill tribes had also been mentioned in these columns while discussing a conflict resolution mechanism the Ahoms had evolved in the pre-British days, called Posa.

Among the other fallouts of the Inner Line which even the British did not foresee, is the claim now by China that Arunachal Pradesh never belonged to India. The Inner Line which divided the British administered from the un-administered regions, China now claims was in actuality the international border, and that the British were acknowledging this even though without intending to, by the very fact of their drawing this Line.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/08/tackling-the-ilp-question-past-imperfect-future-tense/