Keeping War: Stale-mate on a ‘Durable Disorder’

Sudeep Chakravarti, Highway 39: Journeys Through a Fractured Land, Fourth Estate, 2012, Rs 450, pp. 388

Highway 39 snakes its way through three states –Assam, Nagaland and Manipur, its winding path could be a metaphor for a river though it is literally a slush in the monsoons especially the part of the highway that fall within the territory of  Manipur. The title of the book, Highway 39, gives the picture of a road trip. However, the book is refreshingly nuanced unlike other recent books on the still persistent idea of the ‘northeast’, many of which for various political reasons juxtapose the two states –Nagaland and Manipur as two antagonistic entities. It was another book reviewed in the same paper ‘Che in Paona Bazaar’ that led me to look at the books published in the past few years on what one might provisionally call ‘the same terrain’.

 Highway 39 is not disappointing, and unlike the former it is non voyeuristic in its gaze. One may find the writer’s views critical but he gives convincing arguments and anecdotes in support of his criticism. Rather than brush aside the responsibility of the state and its complicity in what ails the region and many other regions in periphery/ies, Chakravarti is clear on the role of the government and the mechanism of governance.  In the introduction of the book he says ‘Governance plummets if the place is both far enough from New Delhi and lacks the heft of population to contribute sufficient numbers to the equation of government formation in New Delhi’ (ix). The idea of refusing to engage with some of the most pressing problems that the region faces, most important among which is governance; and insurgency being propped up as an easy answer to all that ills the region is part of many writings both academic and other non-fiction accounts. To link both –governance and insurgency, the former leading to the latter and the latter as both encouraged and fragmented by a certain investment in it as part of governance strategy is alluded to by him. What marks the two books as starkly different is that ‘Che in Paona Bazaar’ is a book that seems to make a passing casual remark at issues that should be dealt with more seriously, for instance insurgency is callously referred to by Bhattacharjee as ‘Insurgency is complex, at the same time boring to elaborate’.

I am afraid that there is no escaping the comparison of the two books published just a year apart as they more or less describe the same region but in ways which are starkly different, not to mention that some of the informants are common to both the writers. The latter fact perhaps points to larger issues of using the same laid out routes and there being a set pattern in understanding an issue. However, this also points to the fact that the same event may not necessarily convey the same to different people; the ‘ways of seeing’ is definitely different. Chakravarti does not use any protagonist, fictional or otherwise, running through the book, it is him and the people he encounters and yet he offers more than an insight at each experience of meeting people or being there where truth collides with lies and conspiracies – ‘Travel here means confronting the truths, lies and bloodshed that have shaped modern India. It means confronting the reality that people whom I was instructed to revere since my childhood, names we as Indians read as streets, stadia and institutes of learning, faces we saw in history books and on increasingly rare postage stamps, treated other citizens –with brutality that rivalled any other in these modern times’ (p.4).

The book also raises pertinent questions of the reconciliation and peace processes; the inter-linking of faith (in one particular religion) and enmeshing it with identity especially on the Nagaland-Nagalim questions that perhaps those involved need to ask of themselves. This and the intrigues played out by the state had been largely ignored by Bhattacharjee. Chakravarti says this and most people would endorse that ‘It is indeed no secret that India’s intelligence services and the home ministry play the game every which way with each faction, and try to tap into separate points of leverage within each faction by using those with political ambition’ (p. 61). Many other such facts that characterise what is called ‘the economy of conflict’, politics of doling out ‘package’ has been discussed at length.

The book is in parts a juxtaposition of different events that lend an unmistakable air of irony – a billboard of a Manipuri film –Bomb Blast in Imphal; Mohandas Gandhi on a truck that reads ‘Sanitation is more important than independence’ brings to mind a statement by the C.M. of Manipur who once in an interview with Tehelka magazine said 'Education is more important than right to life' or the most poignant irony of the pomp of building a martyrs’ memorial on the one hand and Luingamla’s grave ( a young girl killed for resisting attempts to rape in 1986,  a story which the writer followed to and fro –from official gazettes to different villages) unkempt and without a marker just as the official gazettes hovered between life imprisonment and acquittal and finally the gazette itself abruptly ended without a closure. 

Lazy Stereotypes of an Uninspired Mind

A review of Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Che in Paona Bazaar, Macmillan, 2013, Rs 399, pp. 241

Paona Bazaar lies in the heart of Imphal, Manipur. One can describe this place by its proximity to Bir Tikendrajit Road which had seen the infamous fake encounter case in July 2009. In fact many of the landmarks of the town would tell a story of it being part of a constellation of political violence. Che, I would presume, needs no introduction here. The attempt here is to understand this curious juxtaposition of ‘Che’ and ‘Paona Bazaar’ as seen through the lens of a media practitioner. The book ‘Che in Paona Bazaar’ largely discusses (but not exclusively) two states –Manipur and Nagaland - of what is unproblematically called the North-east. These two states are not only connected by a common border but also by it falling in the category of ‘disturbed area’. The infamous Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958 has been in place in these states, it is often argued that the enactment of this act is partly related to the peculiar and coerced manner in which these states become a part of the Indian Union. One would therefore expect some amount of nuanced understanding which captures the complexities from a book that claims to deal with the region.

This work of non-fiction with a fictional protagonist whom the writer claims as ‘not representative of any community or culture’ is named Eshei (Meiteilon word for Song) which is a dead giveaway. She is a typical native informant in the book that reminds the reader of dated anthropological writings. The book is to a large extent a narrative mediated through Eshei. The writer does not shy away from beginning the book with racial stereotypes that abounds in the mainstream Indian imagination of the so-called Northeast. The oldest armed group in Manipur – UNLF – mentioned in the initial pages of the book is referred to as ‘working towards a unification of Mongoloid armed groups’, is just one of many such unabashed stereotypes. Comparing cultures on the basis of exotic curiosities –for example, comparing Manipuri and Korean culture based on the practice of putting family name before given name; comparing Sanamahism to Shamanism. Perhaps meant to be amusing, but rather than being funny it ends up carelessly taking down a language especially as in one sentence the protagonist’s fetish for Moreh bras is strangely morphed into its seeming importance among a whole community. Unbelievable as it might sound; the author states that bra (brassiere) is an important word among the Meiteis due to the interrogative pronoun ‘bra’ suffixed at the end of a query.

Moreh, the border town, described as a Manipuri Malgudi in the book of course is a terribly wrong metaphor. Using the metaphor of Moreh being a Manipuri Malgudi, the writer was not even romanticising the town but describing the dirt, grit, ‘prostitution’ and smuggling of drugs which is typical of many border towns in conflict zones across the globe. The writer takes himself too seriously, if the name of the book ‘Che in Paona Bazaar’ itself is not enough indication of that, sample these sentences – ‘my ‘motorcycle diaries’ brought me to Paona Bazaar’; ‘I was the Pirate of Paona Bazaar’! In the start of the book itself the writer expresses his disdain for one of his native informant as he had to do his own research, he seem to want everything on a platter and does not shy away from expressing this. This is one of the kinder expressions he uses; he describes people scathingly leaving enough hints to identify the people populating his book. Even a superficial analysis of the choice of qualifiers used in the book reveals much. For instance, Manorama Devi (though her name is not given it is impossible to miss out on the clues) is described as an explosives expert but she was allegedly raped. Allegedly raped? What about her real murder? The protests that ensued after the rape and murder of Manorama Devi have been offhandedly described as creating ‘another stereotype of naked protests’. One is at a loss as to what the statement is supposed to mean. Did it lead to a chain of naked protests throughout the country? No. Does the country recognise rape of men and women in peripheral states by the armed forces? No. Or did he mean that yet another stereotype has been added to those currently proliferating on the northeast? A second or a third reading does not make this clear either.

What is worst than this racial stereotype interspersed in the writing is the lack of  any nuanced political understanding of the region from someone who was at the helm of news from the ‘North-east’ as a Resident Editor for a national news channel. In a rather bizarre juxtaposition he narrates two incidents together – the protest by women who stripped themselves outside the headquarters of Assam Rifles; and another incident six months later where a ‘Meitei girl’ ‘made love to a young army officer’ inside the headquarters of the Assam Rifles. The former was a protest by women, now known as ‘nude protest’, against the rape and murder of Manorama Devi by the Assam Rifles: a protest which also demanded the repeal of AFSPA (though mentioned nowhere in the book). It is unsettling to see the two incidents being described in the same paragraph –protest against a rape where the woman was killed and had gun-shot wounds in her vagina and a woman making love to an army officer.

The lack of respect for his subject is clear from statements like –‘Meitei homes have a confusing front and back yard’ or referring to avoidance of eye-contact as a gesture ‘typical of people in Manipur’ or proffering his idea that a dinner shared with two Tangkhul cousins in Ukhrul which consisted of hot pickle is somehow the cause of ‘their violent streak’. Sample this statement ‘In fact, there is a possibility that every detail in this account will be challenged. That is also quintessentially Meitei.’ What this statement attempts to do is refute any possibility of disagreement. Prior to the disagreement being made he already stereotypes it as a trait of a community. The style of writing is reminiscent of dated writings on the lost innocence of the native, the only difference being that according to the writer the natives are to be blamed for the current state of affairs. It is rather strange that a work of non-fiction that discusses so much on the conflict attributes the loss of personal liberty only on civil society and ‘armed nationalist’ and does not extend the same to the police or the army presence.

 

What one would have wanted was honesty with the times the book dealt with. The book covered a series of politically charged events and people involved.  But the intention of the narrative produced about these events seems to be ridicule rather than looking at the everyday travails of the people. For instance, while trying to take a critical stand on the Assam Agitation, the writer could not come up with anything better than dismissing the leadership as an ‘uninspired bunch’ and describing the years spanning this movement as being a time for young couples to have sex in closed-down schools. The gaze of the writer is definitely voyeuristic. Without explaining much, he also gets away with statements like ‘Insurgency is complex, at the same time boring to elaborate’; calls the NSCN-IM as armed Naga guerrillas and later qualifies his statement and calls them organised dacoits which is a notch lower that the colonial misrepresentation of ‘Naga hostiles’. The writer describes human rights organisations as frontal organisations of armed groups who pick ‘up cases of army and police excesses and drumming up public outcry against the state’. This is quite a painful erasure of the fact that police and army excesses still continue with an alarming regularity.

The problem with the book is not just that he sees the community as a collective without individual thought, trait or agency: a narrative which builds upon easily into the many stereotypes he offers on people as a whole, but also the seamless traversing from one state to the other almost playing with the idea of the ‘Northeast’ as a chunk of landmass conjoined like Siamese twins. It is clear whose side he is on especially as he mentions all the players in the field of conflict and yet conveniently refrains from referring to the State as one of the main beneficiaries of the conflict. The reproduction of existing clichés is however not as damaging as the superficial narration of various events that have had far reaching consequences in the politics of the region in the guise of some sort of social narrative.