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    Stories To and Fro: Highway 39: Journeys Through A Fractured Land by Sudeep

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    ARKA DATTA
    Sudeep Chakravarti's book is an attempt to shed light on the conflict and violence in India's Northeast region through stories gathered from his travels. It addresses troubling questions about Indian democracy and nationhood given the government's violent suppression of demands for sovereignty from indigenous peoples. The book also examines how conflicts can develop their own economics that benefit some, including rebel groups, and discusses the erosion of trust in authorities due to corruption and factionalism among rebel groups. Ultimately, the book argues that peace requires dialogue that shares the realities of the region with the rest of India.

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    Stories To and Fro: Highway 39: Journeys Through A Fractured Land by Sudeep

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    ARKA DATTA
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    Sudeep Chakravarti's book is an attempt to shed light on the conflict and violence in India's Northeast region through stories gathered from his travels. It addresses troubling questions about Indian democracy and nationhood given the government's violent suppression of demands for sovereignty from indigenous peoples. The book also examines how conflicts can develop their own economics that benefit some, including rebel groups, and discusses the erosion of trust in authorities due to corruption and factionalism among rebel groups. Ultimately, the book argues that peace requires dialogue that shares the realities of the region with the rest of India.

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    Sudeep Chakravarti's book is an attempt to shed light on the conflict and violence in India's Northeast region through stories gathered from his travels. It addresses troubling questions about Indian democracy and nationhood given the government's violent suppression of demands for sovereignty from indigenous peoples. The book also examines how conflicts can develop their own economics that benefit some, including rebel groups, and discusses the erosion of trust in authorities due to corruption and factionalism among rebel groups. Ultimately, the book argues that peace requires dialogue that shares the realities of the region with the rest of India.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    42 views2 pages

    Stories To and Fro: Highway 39: Journeys Through A Fractured Land by Sudeep

    Uploaded by

    ARKA DATTA
    Sudeep Chakravarti's book is an attempt to shed light on the conflict and violence in India's Northeast region through stories gathered from his travels. It addresses troubling questions about Indian democracy and nationhood given the government's violent suppression of demands for sovereignty from indigenous peoples. The book also examines how conflicts can develop their own economics that benefit some, including rebel groups, and discusses the erosion of trust in authorities due to corruption and factionalism among rebel groups. Ultimately, the book argues that peace requires dialogue that shares the realities of the region with the rest of India.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
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    STORIES TO AND FRO

    Highway 39: Journeys through a fractured land By Sudeep Chakravarti, Fourth Estate, Rs 450

    Sudeep Chakravartis book is an earnest attempt to focus Indias attention on the strifetorn Northeast. Chakravarti rests his hope in the power of stories tales that he gathers during his journey from Numaligarh in Assam to Moreh near the border with Myanmar in Manipur to force an apathetic democracy change its ways of dealing with dissidence. The stories, gathered from militants, military officers, bureaucrats and activists, echo the chronicles from Kashmir and Chhattisgarh, the two other dots that can be joined to draw a map of Indias fractured lands. A 14-year-old Naga girl shot dead by an army man for resisting rape; an 11-year-old Manipuri girl left traumatized after her abduction by the police; a staged encounter spilling the blood of a woman and her unborn child. Such retellings are crucial to bolster civil movements the Apunba Lup in Manipur, for instance that are fighting to bring justice to Indias forgotten corners. But this book is not merely an examination of the brutal political and military repression of a people demanding self-determination. It addresses some key, and troubling, questions concerning Indian democracy, the idea of nationhood and the factors that have helped sustain the conflict. Indias claim as an upholder of democratic principles is brought under severe strain by the fact that geopolitical compulsions have forced successive prime ministers to violently put down a strident demand for sovereignty by an indigenous people. But the roots of the demand for self-determination in Nagaland stem from cultural and ethnic differences. This problematizes the idea of the nation itself as such a concept may not necessarily be acceptable to communities that derive their identity from a loosely built and intricate network of ethnic affiliations. Chakravartis preferred solution is the Naga people working in tandem with the Indian State to bring about the merger of Naga territories within or outside the ambit of Indias Constitution. But can such an arrangement survive the tensions arising out of the fluid and complicated nature of tribal affiliations? The longevity of the violence, Chakravarti argues, can be attributed to the fact that every conflict brings in its wake its own economics, creating a class of people which benefits

    from it. In 2008, Nagaland received Rs 23 billion in the form of Central aid but a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India unearthed several cases of financial irregularity. Not just bureaucrats and politicians but the rebel groups too profit from the economics of conflict. For instance, protection money is demanded by dominant factions. Chakravarti also recounts an incident in the village of Yikhum in which NSCNIM officials colluded with a corrupt bureaucracy and arrested villagers protesting against the theft of public funds. The pervasive corruption has contributed to the erosion of the peoples faith in elected representatives as well as rebels. The factionalism, encouraged and allegedly engineered by the Indian government, that has plagued the insurrection raises credible questions about the wisdom of waging an armed campaign against the State. But then again, peoples movements that remain sympathetic to the Naga underground but nonetheless prefer democratic means of protest have also suffered because of the lack of leadership. Yet peace and change in the Northeast remain dependent on dialogue that creates the scope for the trickling in of terrible truths to the mainland. Highway 39, metaphorically, is one such conduit for the traffic of tales that India must not be allowed to forget. UDDALAK MUKHERJEE

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