The Memorandum submitted by the Mizo Student Union of JNU, to the Prime Minister of India on 1st September 2017 is, to say the least, shocking and banal. It is nothing but a message of ‘hateful propaganda and sensationalism’. It needs to be scrutinised, every word and sentence, because it lacks not only any humanistic and ethical concerns, but even worse, drives home a propaganda and a wrong articulation and presentation of history. The memorandum seems like an extension of the chauvinism of the Assam Movement that they faced, which has entered a new wave in articulating the other as the outsider or their enemies. What we can see from the memorandum is nothing but a case of the rising xenophobia and hitlerism in the state of Mizoram.
The Union is embarrassingly wrong when it writes that the Chakmas do not share any common history, ancestry, customs and traditions with the Mizos. For all we know, both are Jhummis! That’s hell of a cultural sharing, is it not? The Union also seems to assume the existence of Mizoram state, with clear distinctions between the categories of Mizos and non Mizos, and with fixed spatial boundaries as early as the early nineteenth century. Their argument that the recent protest of the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) of some Chakma students entering in a MBBS Programme has to be seen in the light of the fear of the ‘illegal’ and unnatural growth of the Chakmas in the state of Mizoram is unabashedly shameful. On the one hand, they seem to quote articles from the Constitution, at ease, but when it comes to the Chakmas they become a common enemy, with no rights whatsoever. The union appears to be fond of conspiracy theory which determines anti-minority sentiments in other parts of the country. It provocatively suggests that the Chakma Autonomous Council was formed to weaken the Mizo National Front. However, here, they safely ignore the question of rights.
One might ask, do such statements from an organisation claiming to fight for minority rights, seated high up in the ivory towers of the most reputed academic space like JNU, one of its kind? The answer is no. The social in Mizoram is influenced, controlled by many non-state actors–MZP, Young Mizo Association (YMA), Presbyterian Church and so on. They run a parallel government in the state, and this is not an exaggeration. Interestingly enough, the Union echoes the same spirit of these non-state actors in regard to the population figures of 1901 to 1941, which is even denied by the Mizoram government in its response to the National Human Rights Commission in 2014. Such narratives produced by the Union, are in tune with the way these above mentioned Organisations place themselves in the social life in Mizoram. They practice a kind of necropolitics which is borderline violent.
The constant creation of the categories of the insider and the outsider is a typical case in point here. They speak of chauvinism and jingoism that have become normalized in the everyday experience for the Chakmas in Mizoram. If the Union wishes to speak of history, we should also point out to the fact that the Chittagong Hills Tracts(CHT) is an area home to the Chakmas. Part of the CHT is in Mizoram, hence technically, if we were to adhere to that logic of ecological fixity of identity, one has to go back to how the boundaries were drawn. It was done by the British and their cartography, not the Chakmas. The dam that flooded their land in Bangladesh, led to a treaty which is constitutionally approved. Will the Union be willing to take the debate to those quarters?
To return to their notion of legal and illegal immigrants, it is public secret that the MNF harassed and killed many Burmese people belonging to the Mizo-Kuki-Chin group, back in the 80s, to which the Mizos claim their ancestry, history and roots. The YMA appreciated such acts from the sidewalks. Those Burmese, now, forms the backbone of the economy of Aizawl. Most traders who bring back goods from Burma and other parts of Maniland Southeast Asia, are primarily Burmese. However, they are accommodated into the larger Mizo society. Why is the Chakma community forcibly kept outside the larger conglomerate of Mizo society?
Hate produces ‘concrete others’ (Benhabib 1996). ‘Chakmas’ can be categorised as concrete others in contemporary Mizoram. Otherisation and hate is made available, for there are well-defined categories of who are ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ (Hage 2006). In a way, the other make the self more pronounced, even defines the self. As Taylor (2001) defines, how the whole notion of defining oneself is constructed when one knows what is good or bad for oneself. The Chakmas are prevented from experiencing any belonging–cultural and social–in their everyday. Infact, their bodily disposition, mental and material presence is questioned. Their everyday is incomplete without receiving hatred and othering.
Journalist like Sanjoy Hazarika and the whole brigade of son of the soil, khilonjiya academicians of North-east, gave statistical excuses, in creating a fear of minorities growing large. The Union’s point here is not an aberration and is in perfect sync with such chauvinist standpoints on history and politics. We would like to highlight an instance where statistical excuses are exercised in order to justify the actions of chauvinism and jingoism.
A history of a differentiated taxation, levied on the Mizos and Chakmas respectively, is used as a tool to suggest that these two communities in-fact are different from each other. Accordingly, Chakmas are considered as foreigner because they were levied a tax of five rupees by the British, whereas the Mizos and their kin tribes were levied only a sum of two rupees This account is to be found in the letter that the Superindent of Lushai Hills Shri. S. Barkataki, wrote: D.O No. II-7/50/56-8 dated Aijal 11th October 1950 to R.V Subrahmanian, Secretary to the Government of Assam for Tribal Affairs. It is a fact that Mr. Barkataki was neither a historian nor an ethnologist or anthropologist. Hence, such factual errors were corrected by his former officer, Mr. KGR Iyer, IAS, Mizo District, with his report vide No. GP.21/55/56 dated Aijal the 27th October 1955, which was submitted to the Government of Assam. The Mizos conveniently ignores and hides such historical documents and facts, on one hand, and on the other, goes on circulating only the documents such as that incorrect letter, which states different taxes being levied. Infact, Mr. Barkatai himself admitted on a later date that he had no knowledge about the Chakmas being the indigenous people of Mizoram. Even then, how can one drive home the point that one ought to be treated as different, just because the tax levied were different. Is it not a colonial way of discriminating or a kind of divide and rule?
The mistake of Mr. Barkataki was an organised attempt in order to project a community in different light. He acted under the orders of a Mr. A. Macdonald, the Superintendent of Lushai Hills who thought that declaring the Chakmas as indigenous people will lead to losing of income for the government of Assam. He writes that, “If the Chakmas are treated as non-Lushais they will be liable to pay house tax at the rate of Rs 5/- and also other taxes such as Court and Stamp duties which will bring in an additional revenue of over ten thousand annually. I am in favour of adopting this course”. However, it was Mr. A. Macdonald himself who with his Order No. 734-47G of 29 April 1946 had declared that the Chakmas are the natives of the Lushai Hills just like the “Lushais” or Mizos. This makes it clear that the Chakmas were accepted as natives, by 1946, however, in the contemporary frame of politics, in Mizoram and in student spaces such a Mizo Student Union of JNU, a repeated attempt is being made to criminalize them and even suggest that they are the root causes of disharmony in the state.
Hence, the colonial government, with the help of local administrators, managed to create a deliberate categorization and mis-representation of a community and thus aimed at economic gains from so called non-economic areas. Similar accounts are seen, which justifies the Assam Agitation, the political contours of student bodies in Arunachal Pradesh, the Nellie massacre, Bodoland violence, among others, and constantly re-produce statistical exercises and excuses.
Pangsau Collective
References:
Benhabib, S (1996). Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Hage, G (2006). Insiders and Outsiders. In Beilharz and Hogan (eds.), Sociology: Place, Time and Division, Oxford University Press.
PangSau 