write2kill on Facebook
"Nagalim has never been a part of India"
Subir Ghosh: There is a perceptible difference between the talks of the Sixties and that of the Nineties. What lessons did you learn from the previous discussions so that the current negotiations are not abortive once again?
Thuingaleng Muivah: I would rather say that to quite an extent our approach last time had not been genuine. It was not, objectively speaking, to the point.
SG: Except the NSCN chairman Isak Chishi Swu - the factor common to the two rounds of talks - everything else is different.
TM: The general feeling of the people too is different this time. On has to, many a time, follow the wishes of the times. This time the feeling was that we should also try to understand the difficulties of the Indian government. So we are also trying to understand their problems when it comes to our relations with them.
SG: You outright rejected the idea of a Bhutan-type protectorate arrangement. Why?
Utterly bitterly malicious
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?
Journalists are the most powerful people: Gautier
• Sections:
One had certainly heard of Francois Gautier, the French Indophile journalist. [Gautier is the South Asia correspondent for French magazine Marianne, and editor of La Revue de l'Inde, a Paris-based magazine solely devoted to India.] And one also knew him as an advocate of the Hindu school of thought. Nothing wrong with that, definitely. One may disagree with all his contentions, but still one did not quite ever wonder what is wrong with him. Till, of course, one happened to see a flurry of emails from him on different email lists. The text was virtually the same, except for a few customisations obviously for the different audiences he was addressing.
Gautier started off saying:
As you know one of the biggest problems today is that Indian journalists are not always proud of their own culture and roots and as result tend to have a very negative outlook on India, which in turn influences western correspondents posted in India.
