Officers and scoundrels
Two drunk schmucks get horny in a bar, and try to fiddle around with a woman. (Commonplace behaviour, we might say, in a bar at least.) When they are asked to behave themselves, they turn violent. (Just as commonplace, we might agree too.) They are, thankfully, apprehended and detained at a nearby police station. And after a while, all hell breaks loose. For, a gang of their armed, pillaging, comrades land up at the police station and thrash the policemen black and blue.
The script might sound all-too-familiar; only that it isn’t from a sleazy Bollywood potboiler. This happened for real, and the schmucks in question are squeaky clean officers of the venerable Indian Army. Hmmm. Why am I not surprised?
Muivah on the Naga Issue – An Unpublished Interview: III
Subir Ghosh: The Kuki-Naga clash will never end it seems. What do you think your role is in this context? What is your assessment of this issue?
Thuingaleng Muivah: The so-called Kuki-Naga clash is a pure and simple creation of the Indian government. It is an utterly miscalculated venture since the sole motive behind it is to make the Kukis fight against the Nagas. What a proxy war! But, expecting what? And, from whom? However, most of the Indian Press took sides with the Kukis and ran unprofessional and biased accounts of the conflict against the Nagas. Yet, in spite of this scheme of the Indian government, the NSCN never encouraged the Naga people to kill the Kukis. Were it not for the Indian government policy, Nagas and Kukis would have lived together in peace and tranquility. Now, the solution to the issue hinges on the Indian government.
This is one of India's most blacked-out stories
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It ought to be counted as one of India’s most downplayed stories of the day. It is about the struggle to save an ecosystem called Niyamgiri in Orissa from mining, deforestation and devastation. It is about indigenous people and the rights over their land.
Vedanta Resources, a stinking rich British company owned by NRI Anil Agarwal, intends to dig an open-pit bauxite mine in Niyamgiri. This mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area. The Supreme Court has given the go ahead for the project, but the battle rages on. Albeit silently. This project, by the way, will also see the death of the centuries-old sacred groves of these people. The Dongria Kondh do not live anywhere else and there are just 8,000 of them left.
Utterly bitterly malicious
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We have a new national pastime these days – humiliating our heroes, degrading the very people who have done our nation proud. If the jeering of Sachin Tendulkar by the lumpen scoundrels of Mumbai masquerading as cricket fans wasn't enough, the takeover mafia of Gujarat has done a moo de grace by hounding out Verghese Kurien.
It is all fine, some might say. The old order must certainly changeth. And it must just as certainly yield place to the new. You cannot fault the contention – it is the law of nature. But you can drill holes in this contentious argument when it becomes a ruse – when you seek refuge in the laws of nature to serve your pernicious wishes. Subterfuge it was the way the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation debased the very person who made it the biggest cooperative marketing success story in the world. It is fine, the old-fogey order must change. Pal, we are a nation of young people aren't we?