India must not ignore the Northeast, earthquake or otherwise
This morning as news of termors in Manipur and other parts of northeast India came to light, I couldn't help but think about how we react to crises which affect our near and dear ones.
Even though the evoked reaction was plain sarkari, I was surprised to find people from other reigions still voicing some concerns. This certainly was not the case a few decades ago.
In Mumbai, for instance, people would (and still) routinely distinguish outsiders or non-locals in peculiar ways. All those hailing from northern parts of the country were referred to as "bhaiyyas". For many, all those from the southern part of the country were "Madrasis", and those from the eastern parts Bengalis". Period.
This used to be the simple understanding of the diverse and complex landscape of our great nation. With advances in education in other parts and increased job opportunities in Mumbai and other cities, migration became commonplace, and this opened several windows for a deeper understanding of the nuances of our demography, but not enough.
Sadly what even this large-scale migration could not wipe clean was a complete lack of understanding about the people and provinces of Northeastern India. Till recently, many believe that Manipur is a city like Nagpur or Jabalpur. Several professors who are guiding PhD students of one faculty or the other, even today, refer to Arunachal Pradesh as Arunachalam. And about Mizoram, it is an easy guess that hardly anyone would know the capital city of the tiny, hilly state. Tragically, even today, many of us are ignorant about Northeastern India.
In my opinion, this is mainly because post independence, governments at the Centre have failed to understand the close relationship between recognition of identity and participation in national ethos, geographical distance and psychological distance; and above all, national integration and emotional integration.
It is true that oversimplification cannot be the solution. Still, the fact remains that an all pervading ignorance about the fact that people belonging to several provinces in India have mongoloid features has a potential to create a huge impediment in the evolution of commonality of ethos.
If people in other parts fail to recognise our fellow countrymen from Northeast India, primarily, the former has to be blamed.
A few decades ago, while interacting with a Naga village headman, a group of visitors from other parts had innocently used the term "mainstream" while appealing to the Naga people to join the same.
Pat came the response from the nonagenarian headman, reminding that it is in the hills that the "mainstream" originates. "We are the hill people and who told you that you are the mainstream? Since we live in hills where mainstream originates, we, in fact, are the mainstream!"
Like "inclusive development", "mainstreaming" also is a term that has a condescending overtone.
Similarly, national policymakers and planners would have done a great job had they understood that geographical distance has the potential to cause psychological distance as well.
Till recently, tourists wanting to go to Andamans would ask where one could get a visa. Tsunami in Andaman cannot evoke the same outcry towards sufferings and losses as possibly the floods in Chennai can (that too delayed).
We owe a lot to Atal Bihari Vajpayee for the Golden Quadrilateral to pave the infrastructural way for national integration.
All this went on for years simply because we looked at national integration as a mere sarkari campaign or a programme. More often than not, the celebration of diversity in India is given greater importance as compared to the quintessential unity underlying the diversity.
This has contributed to our collective myopia, causing further neglect of the need to strive in a structured manner for emotional integration, an essential prerequisite of national integration.
Thankfully, way back in 1966, young activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) realised all this when they visited Guwahati and parts of Northeast first. On their journey back to Mumbai, they planned a programme called Students' Experience in Interstate Living or SEIL.
Under SEIL, with Northeast India as its focus, the emphasis remained on bringing national integration to the experiential level. Almost biennially conducted interstate tours with family-stay as its component, SEIL not only added to the Northeast literacy of those in other parts, but also helped lessen the feeling of deprivation among students belonging to Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the Northeast.
From Gegong Apang to Nabam Tuki, many frontline politicians in Arunachal Pradesh today, are ex-SEIL participants. Padmanabh Acharya, governor of Nagaland and Assam; as many may not know, was one of the founding fathers of SEIL.
Thanks to SEIL, several thousand young Northeasterners and almost an equal number of students and youth from other parts of our country have developed a rare bonding with each other.
They have learnt, what no geography or history textbook would have been able to teach them. Among those several factors that have contributed to halting the spread of insurgency and secessionist tendencies in Northeast, voluntary efforts through programmes like SEIL stand out for their uniqueness.
Today, when SEIL is celebrating its golden jubilee, the need for further institutionalisation of the efforts of SEIL cannot be underestimated.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already given an inkling of his dream-scheme for "Ek Bharat-Sreshtha Bharat".
Such schemes and programmes certainly would give further impetus to enhancing the levels of our diversity literacy. However, what is also required is redesigning our pedagogical content to enable students understand the remote border areas more in depth. Also, the concept of area studies in higher education also needs to be brought closer to home.
While students of international relations can and should learn Latin American Studies, all students need to have at least a brush with Northeast Indian studies.
When capitalising and exploiting diversity to add to the balance in political vote-bank accounts has become a practise for some political parties, result-oriented efforts for unifying a diverse society have their own importance.
This is because national integration is not about stitching a map of a province with the other. It's all about linking hearts and uniting minds.