Read The Hindu Notes of 15th December 2018 for UPSC Civil Service Examination, State Civil Service Examination and other competitive Examination

The Hindu Notes for 15th December 2018
  • Topic Discussed: The Hindu Notes of 15th December 2018

    • The warning signs are loud and clear

    Four years of mismanaged politics have plunged J&K into its worst ever cycle of violence and confusion

  • After remaining in suspended animation for five months, the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly was dissolved by Governor Satya Pal Malik last month. After the November-December 2014 elections to the State Assembly, which produced a fractured mandate, J&K had some years of a Peoples Democratic Party-BJP coalition government, interspersed with a spell of Governor’s rule. In June 2018, the BJP pulled out of this alliance. In November, when the PDP, the Congress and the National Conference had almost reached an understanding to form a government, the Governor decided to dissolve the Assembly.
  • Four years of mismanaged politics have plunged J&K into its worst ever cycle of violence and confusion. Kashmir today is not merely volatile, but is drifting inexorably into anarchy. Violence is the dominant factor. The numbers of militants and security personnel killed dominate newspaper headlines. Over the past three years, South Kashmir had been the main epicentre of violence, but more recently, North and Central Kashmir have also emerged as violence prone. This year has witnessed some of the highest levels of violence since 1989. Areas such as Srinagar which had previously been declared a ‘militancy free zone’ have again witnessed a series of militant attacks.

    • Growing divide

  • In addition to escalating violence, a distinct feature of the situation in Kashmir today is the divide between the administration and the populace, which is possibly at its widest today. The turnout in local body elections in urban areas dropped is a negligible percentage. Retrieving the situation in J&K would thus prove extremely difficult. J&K appears to be at a tipping point and needs to be handled with extreme care.
  • A series of miscalculations by governments in both J&K and at the Centre have led to the present impasse. The first was Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s belief that his brand of ‘sleight-of-hand’ politics (which he used to practise with the Congress) could be replicated with the BJP, and hope thereby to sustain his legacy as a consummate politician. The hope, however, proved short-lived. After his death in January 2016, daughter Mehbooba Mufti had to be persuaded to continue with the arrangement, but increasing levels of violence after her takeover witnessed the coalition partners viewing the situation from very different angles.
  • In the wake of the growing political dissonance, other miscalculations have also occurred. One was a misplaced belief in the virtues of an ‘unilateral ceasefire’ during Ramzan 2018, replicating the Ramzan ceasefire during the period of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Atavistic reasoning is, however, no substitute for a carefully constructed and calibrated ceasefire. Militants used the ceasefire to regroup, just when the security forces seemed to gain the upper hand. Pakistan also acted as a spoiler, carrying out a series of border attacks during this same period.
  • Compounding this situation was the controversy generated over Article 35A of the Constitution, accompanied by demands that it should be revoked. It led to widespread apprehension that the Centre was trying to undermine the special concessions granted to J&K which were embedded in the Constitution. A crisis of confidence in Delhi’s intentions followed, precisely when the State was reeling under a wave of militant protests.
  • The gravest miscalculation arose on how best to deal with the rising crescendo of violence engulfing the Valley. Absence of political guidance, belief in the virtues of a ‘muscular policy’ to stamp out militancy, eschewing of all softer options, and an irrevocable breakdown in communications led to a widening chasm between the people of Kashmir and the administration. Once the PDP-BJP coalition collapsed under the weight of its inherent contradictions, reintroduction of Governor’s rule (that is, rule by the Centre) turned out to be a case of the remedy being worse than the disease.

    • A difficult year

  • Even as 2018 turned out to be highly violence prone, militants adopted a variety of new tactics to create fear. They targeted the families of policemen, in addition to concentrating on off-duty policemen, especially when they went home on leave. This led to a fear psychosis. The year has turned out to be the worst for the J&K police, with nearly 50 policemen being killed.
  • In many respects, the killing of militant Burhan Wani in mid-2016 has been a watershed in the troubled security situation in J&K. Additions to militant ranks went up, and 2018 has possibly seen the largest accretion of local youth into militant ranks. According to one estimate, every third day a youth took up arms in Kashmir. The profile of those joining the ranks of the militants is also changing, with many more educated Kashmiri youth (including engineering and other graduates) signing up.
  • Kashmir thus stands today at the cusp of a new and dangerous phase. Opinions in J&K have become further inflamed following the Governor’s decision to dissolve the J&K Assembly, without giving an opportunity to any of the claimants to form a government. The Governor’s reasoning that a government formed by parties with ‘opposing political ideologies’ would not be stable has been widely assailed as being tendentious.
  • It is too early to surmise when elections will be held. Attitudes are meanwhile hardening. The Pro-Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, has been anointed with a new leader, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai (a Pakistan acolyte and even more of a hardliner than Syed Ali Shah Geelani who stepped down recently).
  • The Pakistan-based terror outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammad, has made a comeback in J&K after a gap of several years, and is poised to revive its terror attacks. The Hizbul Mujahideen has become stronger during the past year, and its ‘supreme commander’ based in Pakistan, Syed Salahuddin, appears confident of being able to revive the momentum of the struggle to the level that existed in the late 1980s and 1990s.
  • The profile of militancy in J&K is meanwhile undergoing a drastic change, with recruits to militant ranks increasingly being young educated locals. The approach of the latter to the Kashmir question is vastly different from those of the past. It would not be surprising if some among them are inspired by the ‘Arab Spring’ fervour that rocked West Asia a few years back.
  • The new generation of militants appears far more religiously inclined. This makes them easy fodder for ideologies propounded by terror groups such as the Islamic State (IS). Syria and Iraq witnessed young jihadis being attracted to the IS, since it was not a mere jihadi movement, but also encompassed the vision of a Caliphate. The educated and religiously inclined Kashmiri militant of today could well follow suit. As it is, the IS has made some inroads into Kashmir. Not to be lost sight of is that the map of Islamic State of Khorasan includes Kashmir and some other parts of India.

    • More research needed

  • The earlier there is recognition that Kashmir militancy is beginning to resemble a ‘black hole’ that is attracting more and more young militants, the better the chances of retrieving the situation. Not enough research has been done as to why the Burhan Wani killing in July 2016 became a turning point in the history of militancy in J&K. Similarly, a more detailed analysis is required as to why Operation All Out – an offshoot of the muscular offensive adopted in 2017 – altered the character of the insurgency in Kashmir.
  • Intelligence agencies also need to ferret out more details of what Pakistan is planning in J&K, even while talking of peace in Kartarpur and elsewhere. There are many stray indications that official agencies and jihadi organisations in Pakistan are collaborating in training recruits to be sent into Kashmir. The training curriculum includes: weapons training, survival techniques, high altitude acclimatisation, combat training and the like. India cannot afford to be caught off-guard with another 26/11 situation, which was the outcome of a similar combined effort.
  • M.K. Narayanan is a former National Security Adviser and a former Governor of West Bengal

    • Farming in a warming world

    Efforts to make agriculture climate-resilient must be scaled up and consolidated

  • The pervasiveness of climatic aberrations and the associated socio-economic vulnerability are now widely recognised and experienced across the globe. The Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on “Global Warming at 1.5°C” distinctly propagates the need to strengthen and enhance existing coping capacity and to remain committed to the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
    • Farming in a warming world
  • The report establishes that the world has become 1°C warmer because of human activities, causing greater frequency of extremes and obstruction to the normal functioning of ecosystems. Climate-induced risks are projected to be higher for global warming of 1.5°C than at present, but lower than at 2°C (a catastrophic situation). However, the magnitude of such projections depends on in-situ attributes and the level of developments. Moreover, for such a change in global warming, indigenous populations and local communities dependent on agricultural or coastal livelihoods are very vulnerable to the climate impacts.
  • India, with its diverse agro-climatic settings, is one of the most vulnerable countries. Its agriculture ecosystem, distinguished by high monsoon dependence, and with 85% small and marginal landholdings, is highly sensitive to weather abnormalities. There has been less than normal rainfall during the last four years, with 2014 and 2015 declared as drought years. Even the recent monsoon season (June-September) ended with a rainfall deficit of 9%, which was just short of drought conditions. Research is also confirming an escalation in heat waves, in turn affecting crops, aquatic systems and livestock. The Economic Survey 2017-18 has estimated farm income losses between 15% and 18% on average, which could rise to 20%-25% for unirrigated areas without any policy interventions. These projections underline the need for strategic change in dealing with climate change in agriculture.

    • Steps needed

  • There is a need to foster the process of climate adaptation in agriculture, which involves reshaping responses across both the micro- and macro-level decision-making culture. At the micro-level, traditional wisdom, religious epics and various age-old notions about weather variations still guide farmers’ responses, which could be less effective. Corroborating these with climate assessments and effective extension and promoting climate resilient technologies will enhance their pragmatism. Climate exposure can be reduced through agronomic management practices such as inter and multiple cropping and crop-rotation; shift to non-farm activities; insurance covers; up-scaling techniques such as solar pumps, drip irrigation and sprinklers. Several studies indicate increasing perceptions of the magnitude of climate change and the need for farmers to adapt, but the process remains slow. For instance, the NSS 70th round indicates that a very small segment of agricultural households utilised crop insurance due to a lack of sufficient awareness and knowledge. Hence there is an urgent need to educate farmers, reorient Krishi Vigyan Kendras and other grass-root organisations with specific and more funds about climate change and risk-coping measures.
  • Climate adaptation actions in agriculture are closely intertwined with rural developmental interventions, calling for a holistic new paradigm. At the macro-level, climate adaptations are to be mainstreamed in the current developmental framework (which is still at a nascent stage, as acknowledged in the Economic Survey 2017-18). Though programmes of the government document the likely consequences of climate change, they lack systematic adaptation planning and resource conservation practices. Mainstreaming adaptation into the policy apparatus has the potential to improve the resilience of several development outcomes. The approach demands coherence across multiple policy scales as required for developing possible synergy between micro-macro levels and addressing several cross-cutting issues. Moreover, this enables identification of several barriers that prevent up-scaling efforts and adaptation by farmers.

    • Key interventions

  • Expansion of extension facilities, improving irrigation efficiency, promotion of satellite-enabled agriculture risk management, creating micro-level agro-advisories, providing customised real time data, and capacity building of stakeholders are some initiatives towards building greater resilience in agriculture. Interventions such as the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Soil Heath Card, Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana, National Agriculture Market, or e-NAM, and other rural development programmes are positive interventions that can address the vulnerability of farmers and rural households. There are also exclusive climate and adaptation schemes being operationalised, such as the National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), the National Adaptation Fund, and the State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC). It is desirable to have a cultural change wherein some of the components under these schemes can be converged with major rural developmental programmes, which will further enhance their effectiveness at the grass-root level. A study by the Centre for Science and Environment provides insights into the development of SAPCCs across selected States.
  • The SAPCC is an important platform for adaptation planning but it needs to evolve further in terms of climate-oriented regional analysis to capture micro-level sensitivity and constraints. Moreover, convergence of climate actions with ongoing efforts and several Central schemes with similar mandates is a must. Greater expertise and consultations are required for a systematic prioritisation of actions and fiscal prudence for building climate resilient agriculture.
  • Naveen P. Singh and Bhawna Anand are with the ICAR-National Institute of Agricultural Economics & Policy Research, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal

    • End Sri Lanka’s crisis

    Rajapaksa’s resignation is the first step, but the President must reinstate Wickremesinghe

  • Mahinda Rajapaksa’s decision to resign as Prime Minister, an office to which he was controversially installed by President Maithripala Sirisena, is the first sign that the dragging constitutional crisis in Sri Lanka is heading slowly towards a resolution. He had also played a part in the unfolding of the crisis set off by Mr. Sirisena, who made ill-advised moves by invoking his executive powers repeatedly for political and partisan ends. The two leaders had come together against common rival Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was removed as Prime Minister unceremoniously on October 26 to make way for Mr. Rajapaksa. However, they saw little success either in Parliament or before the courts. Despite Mr. Rajapaksa failing to prove his majority in several motions in the House, he had steadfastly remained in office, seeking fresh elections instead of stepping down. Sri Lanka’s politics and economy have been caught in a downward spiral due to a constitutional crisis since Mr. Sirisena appointed Mr. Rajapaksa as Prime Minister. However, Mr. Rajapaksa was unable, or unwilling, to demonstrate the extent of his support in Parliament. At one point the President prorogued Parliament, and later dissolved it. However, the Supreme Court restored the legislature in an interim order. Thereafter, in a series of votes, a majority of the 225-strong House has been voting against Mr. Rajapaksa.
  • Mr. Rajapaksa’s resignation offer has come at a time when several parliamentarians moved the country’s Court of Appeal seeking a writ of quo warranto for Mr. Rajapaksa’s removal. In an interim order, the court restrained him from functioning as Prime Minister. The absence of clarity on whether there was a legitimate government in office placed other countries and multilateral financial institutions in a quandary as to who they should deal with. Mr. Rajapaksa’s resignation may pave the way for the installation of a government that enjoys a majority in Parliament. Meanwhile, the President’s credibility has taken yet another beating after the Supreme Court ruled categorically that his dissolution of Parliament on November 9 was illegal and void. The court has rejected his claim that he had an unfettered right to dissolve Parliament at any time, notwithstanding provisions in the Constitution that barred such action for the first four and a half years of the legislature’s term. The court dismissed his camp’s attempt to stretch and twist the meaning of some constitutional provisions in order to justify his bizarre actions. Although Mr. Sirisena has been obstinately sticking to his position that he will not appoint Mr. Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister “even if all 225 members” were with him, there are indications he may be forced to alter his stand. Nothing short of respecting the current composition of Parliament and reinstating Mr. Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister will solve the current imbroglio.

    • Negative signals

    Falling food prices will intensify rural distress; the solution is meaningful agricultural reform

  • The days when inflation could topple governments appear to be gone. It is now time for the government to worry about falling prices, especially of food. Retail inflation dropped to a 17-month low of 2.33% in November, as compared to 3.31% in October, primarily due to the fall in the prices of various essential food items. Food prices fell by a huge 6.96 percentage points compared to a year ago and, at minus 2.61%, are now in deflationary territory for the second successive month. The fall in inflation is obviously good news for consumers, particularly those in urban India who are happy to pay less for their purchases; also for the Reserve Bank of India, which will now have more room for manoeuvre in the matter of interest rates. But it is bad news for the producers of basic food items who are located in the distress-affected rural parts of the country, with falling farm incomes also impacting landless labour and rural demand. At the heart of this problem is the unpredictability of farm prices, which are known to exhibit extreme levels of volatility owing to various supply-side issues that plague the agricultural sector. Though farmer producer companies have stepped in with help and guidance to farmers to use hedging tools to minimise price risks, they are too few and far between to make a difference. And even when their produce finally commanded impressive prices in the retail market, the cartelised agricultural marketing system has made sure that farmers received little to nothing.
  • Ahead of the general election next year, State governments across the country are likely to resort to short-term relief measures such as farm loan waivers to temporarily relieve farmers of their deep distress. Further, with the issue of rural distress now expected to significantly affect the general election verdict, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress are already engaged in a competitive battle to offer the highest extent of loan waiver to farmers. There will also be pressure to announce higher minimum support prices for various agricultural goods. It is another matter that no government has ever had the wherewithal to deliver on such lofty promises. In fact, the poor implementation of MSPs is one of the reasons for farmers taking to the streets in protest. The Centre may prod the new RBI Governor to adopt a more dovish monetary policy stance in the run-up to the election citing falling inflation figures. But none of these measures will help farmers, who have increasingly taken the protest route of late to make their demands heard, in any meaningful manner in the long run. Real agricultural reform is crucial to enable farmers to freely make their own business decisions without the grabbing hand of the government.

    • Being Bru in Mizoram

    For the first time since fleeing to neighbouring Tripura 21 years ago, the displaced Brus of Mizoram exercised their franchise on home soil during the Assembly polls on November 28. Rahul Karmakar reports on the changing dynamic between the minority Brus and the dominant Mizos and the possibility of greater acceptance of the ‘other’

    Being Bru in Mizoram
  • Lalvungthanga, 67, misses being Nanda Kumar Reang. He also misses his younger brother, Shibajoy, who refused to return with him from a refugee camp in Tripura 20 years ago.
  • Unlike Lalvungthanga, who adopted a name associated with the dominant Mizo community in Mizoram and converted to Christianity 40 years ago, Shibajoy retained Reang, his surname as well as the name of the ethnic group he belongs to. The Reangs of Mizoram prefer to be called Bru.
  • On November 28, the brothers connected in a strange way. They voted almost at the same time in Mizoram, but miles apart. Lalvungthanga cast his vote at a polling centre at Bawngva Government Primary School in Mamit district. Shibajoy voted at a special polling centre for Bru refugees in Kanhmun, a village in the State, 63 km away on the border with Tripura, off National Highway 44A that connects Aizawl to Tripura.
  • The Kahnmun polling centre catered to Brus displaced from nine Assembly constituencies in Mizoram’s Mamit, Kolasib and Lunglei districts. The majority of Brus are from Mamit district, which borders Tripura. “I came to know that he had come from the Narsingpara relief camp (in Tripura) to vote in Mizoram,” says Lalvungthanga.
  • The Tripura government arranged transport for 11,987 Bru voters across six relief camps in Tripura to come and vote in Kanhmun, a village of some 3,000 people on the eastern bank of the Langkaih river flowing along the Tripura-Mizoram border. A 60 m Bailey bridge connects Kanhmun with the other bank in Tripura. Between the nearest relief camp in Tripura, 2 km from the bridge, and the farthest 57 km away, is Narsingpara, Shibajoy’s temporary home since 1997, when thousands of Brus fled to Tripura following a major outbreak of ethnic violence. The Mizo-Bru conflict claimed at least 10 lives and was marked by large-scale arson.
  • Recalls Lalvungthanga: “We ran away too, though no one attacked our village. We got scared when we heard that some of our people in Saipuili village, 8 km from ours, were attacked. But I returned a year later after seeing many people die of starvation and diseases in Tripura. I preferred to die in my homeland rather than elsewhere.”
  • He hopes Shibajoy will be back soon. “Today, he stepped on his own soil to vote. Tomorrow, perhaps, he will find the motivation to leave the relief camp, where life is unbearable,” he says.

    • Fear of ‘outsiders’

  • In the recent Assembly election, Bru refugees came to Mizoram to vote, unlike in the past when polling officials from Mizoram went to relief camps in Tripura to conduct the elections. Mizoram’s church-backed non-governmental organisation Coordination Committee, a conglomeration of five Mizo social organisations which includes the influential Central Young Mizo Association (CYMA), had demanded an end to the earlier voting arrangement which, it alleged, had allowed “outsiders” to creep into the State’s electoral rolls. There is a perception that many Brus are not original inhabitants of Mizoram and are migrants from Assam, Tripura or Bangladesh.
  • But the process of enrolling Bru voters in the camps in Tripura ran into complications. Allegations of manipulation to include ‘outsiders’ in the list led to the removal of Bhupesh Choudhary as the Deputy Commissioner of Mamit district in September. His counterpart in Kolasib, T. Arun, accused of a similar ‘anti-Mizo’ drive, stayed on, but vociferous protests made the Election Commission replace S.B. Shashank with Ashish Kundra as the State’s Chief Electoral Officer.
  • Apart from allegedly trying to let Brus in through the ‘backdoor’, Shashank had complained against Mizoram’s former Principal Secretary (Home) Lalnunmawia Chuaungo, a Mizo IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre on deputation, for reportedly interfering in the poll process. Chuaungo was moved out of the State.
  • Says Vanlalruata, the CYMA president, “We have nothing against either the non-Mizo officers or the Brus. Had that been the case, there could have been a movement against the Lunglei Deputy Commissioner [Ankita Chakravarty] too. She monitored the enrolment of Bru refugees from Lunglei district, and did a commendable job.”
  • The Shashank episode gave rise to suspicion that non-Mizo officials were either working under pressure or trying to be in the good books of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was said to be nurturing hopes of riding on the support of minority communities for berths in the 40-member Mizoram Assembly. The Brus, spread across nine Assembly seats but concentrated in the three in Mamit district, were in the party’s scheme of things, as were the Buddhist Chakmas in three southern Mizoram constituencies.
  • The suspicion that the BJP has been targeting the Brus for a long time has its origins in former BJP president L.K. Advani’s contention in 1999 that the community was being persecuted because they were primarily Hindus. The Brus had also petitioned the National Human Rights Commission and other rights groups saying that they were being victimised by the majority Christians in Mizoram because of their faith.
  • The conflict between Mizos and Brus began brewing five years before Advani’s remarks. The immediate trigger was the demand of the Bru National Union, a political organisation formed in 1994, for an autonomous district council for the community.
  • Mizo organisations reacted by demanding that the Brus be left out of the State’s electoral rolls as they “are not indigenous to Mizoram”. Clashes between the two communities in Mamit district led to the birth of the extremist Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) in 1996. In October 1997, members of the BNLF allegedly gunned down a Mizo forest guard in Dampa Tiger Reserve in Mamit district.
  • Subsequently, the Brus bore the brunt of a hostile reaction, with a large number of them fleeing to adjoining Tripura. Bru groups claimed that 1,391 Bru houses in 41 villages were burnt down and several women were raped and people killed. According to Mizoram police, 325 houses in 16 villages were torched, but it could not confirm other crimes, including the alleged “destruction of temples”.
  • About 9,000 of the estimated 40,000 who fled in the two waves of violence, in 1997 and in 2009, returned to Mizoram, after eight repatriation attempts since 2010.
  • Former Mizoram Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla acknowledged that a large number of Brus converted to Christianity over the years. But he trashed the ‘Hindu’ claim, maintaining that the Brus were primarily nature-worshippers.
  • Nevertheless, the Tripura-based Bru Hindu Joint Coordination Committee, allegedly propped up by the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, a wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that works among tribal populations, asked the Ministry of Home Affairs in January 2017 to “safeguard the Hindu religion or indigenous faith of the Bru community in Mizoram”. It also said in its letter that many people who had converted to Christianity had “returned to their original religion” in the camps in Tripura.

    • A fair rehabilitation package

  • Lalvungthanga became a Christian four decades ago. But at home, he still prays to the deities his parents worshipped. “This is my mother (pointing to a woman in a laminated photo) dancing the Hojagiri, our traditional dance,” he says, adding that the community has for long been under pressure to “forget” its cultural and religious practices.
  • His parents did not convert. His brother did but is now a Hindu in Tripura. “What else do you call people whose deities are similar to Hindu gods and goddesses?” he says.
  • Lalvungthanga is a supporter of the Mizo National Front (MNF), which has returned to power in Mizoram after a decade, winning 26 seats in the 40-member Assembly. His ramshackle house, the first on the road to Bawngva Natunbasti off National Highway 44A, sports the party’s flags. Almost all residents of Natunbasti, meaning ‘new colony’, are aligned with the MNF, unlike the majority in Bawngva Puranbasti (old colony) across the highway. Here the village council president Biakmawia and vice-president Lalfeli are both Congress workers and Brus “converted to Mizo”.
  • Bawngva, one of the 35 Bru resettlement villages in Mamit district, falls under the Mamit Assembly constituency. Of the 1,584 repatriated families in these villages, 57 are in Bawngva. Almost all of them had fled in 1997, and returned in less than five years.
  • Says Lalfeli, “All Brus are not BJP supporters. Some on the other side (Tripura) may be, but most of us here are devout Christians and perhaps not compatible with the BJP.”
  • Unknown perhaps to Lalfeli, the BJP has made inroads in a few Bru resettlement villages. One of them is Damdiai, a village of 115 Bru families about 40 km from Bawngva. A majority of the residents are among the 195 former extremists who had surrendered in 2005 to facilitate the repatriation process.
  • Former BNLF leader and Damdiai resident Elvis Chorkhy toured the Bru-inhabited areas as a campaigner for the BJP. He says, “We want all the Brus of Mizoram to return and be given a proper rehabilitation package. We want to ensure similar benefits for those who have already been repatriated.” He adds that the relationship between Brus and Mizos has improved over the years despite niggles from time to time.
  • Says Jacob Lalawmpuia, the Additional Deputy Commissioner of Mamit district: “As per our records, since 2010, 64 Bru families have returned from the Tripura camps to Mamit and Kolasib districts. They will be given the latest package that is being offered to those in Tripura. But they have to report to the local authorities and have proper documents.”
  • According to the data with the district authorities at Mamit town, 18 km from Bawngva, there were an estimated 10,919 resident Bru voters in 116 villages in Mamit district. The number of Brus from the same district in the Tripura camps was 8,777. Says Lalawmpuia, “The actual number of resident Brus may be different because many of them have Mizo names and are difficult to identify from the voters’ list.”
  • A. Sawibunga, the Tripura-based president of the Mizoram Bru Displaced People’s Forum, says the reception accorded to Bru voters by Mizo NGOs at Kanhmun was encouraging. “We hope this translates into general acceptance of the Brus in the greater Mizo fold,” he says.
  • “No one likes to stay away from their home, but we want to be assured of the security of our people, and of rehabilitation in areas where they can stay together,” says Sawibunga. The forum is also seeking an autonomous district council for Brus like the ones that other minority groups such as the Lai, Mara and Chakma have in southern Mizoram.
  • The fears, Vanlalruata says, are unfounded: “There are many more Brus living in Mizoram than in the Tripura camps, and they live happily, enjoying the same constitutional rights that Mizos do. It is wrong to say that Mizos are not accommodative, or that they do not want to give space to others.”
  • Some Bru leaders and villagers, seeking anonymity, say that conversion to Christianity, adoption of Mizo names, and giving up their age-old customs have not made them “Mizo enough” despite their having lived in Mizoram for ages. “No matter how much we try to assimilate, everything is measured in terms of zonahthlak [possessing Mizo traits],” a surrendered Bru extremist says.
  • According to K. Robin, who teaches History and Ethnography in Mizoram University, the identity of the people who were once ruled by the Sailo chiefs in what constitutes present day Mizoram and beyond crystallised to form the ‘Mizo’. The Sailos belong to the Lushei or Lushai group, whose dialect, called Duhlian, was adopted by ethnically similar communities such as the Ralte, Lakher, Poi, Lai, and Fanai. In return, the Lusheis expanded the Mizo identity to include other communities bound by a common language.
  • In his book Chin: History, Culture and Identity, Robin notes: “And in this (identity), the Mara, Chakma, and the Bru were generally not included, nor related Mizo tribes in Manipur or Myanmar. The rule under the Sailos gave a sense of territoriality to the identity, which had earlier been in a state of flux. The British contribution was that of legitimising their status.”
  • Says Lalzarliana, who teaches Sociology in Mizoram University: “Mizo language and identity used to be the sole preserve of the Lusheis, but we have all claimed ownership of it. I belong to the Poi group, which, along with the related Lai, is numerically larger than the Lusheis. I have no problem including the Bru in the Mizo fold, as Mizo itself is an amalgamation of several small groups. The Bru language, however, is very different from those clubbed in the Lushei-Kuki-Chin group.” He adds that the Mizos and Brus have continued to coexist despite their differences. The relationship has at times been strained, as is the case with most insular ethnic groups across the Northeast.

    • Staying together

  • Few villages in Mizoram exemplify the interdependence and intermingling of Mizos and non-Mizos as Bawngva. Of the 215 houses in the village, only three are of Mizos. One of them belongs to Gabriel-a, the former village council president (VCP).
  • Lalvungthanga stayed at Gabriel-a’s house for three days after returning from a Tripura relief camp in 1998. “Miscreants demolished the house I had left behind in Puranbasti. Gabriel-a helped me collect material to build a new house and resume jhum (shifting) cultivation on the hill slopes,” he says.
  • Another former VCP is Rosiama, a Mizo whose father Khalifa, a Bengali Muslim from adjoining Assam, died three weeks ago at the age of 96. Lalfeli, the Bawngva village council vice-president, is a Bru married to 52-year-old Dilip Roy, a Bengali Hindu from Karimganj in Assam and one of two non-tribal grocery store owners in the village. Jagat Pal, the other Bengali grocer in Natunbasti, has a Mizo name, Zominga, like his Bru wife Lalhlinpuii. Lalfeli and Roy’s daughter is married to the son of Lalropuia, a “pure Mizo” of Darlak, a village 1 km west of Bawngva.
  • “Some areas were disturbed during the violence 21 years ago. Many of our Bru neighbours fled out of fear. But some 10 families in Bawngva did not budge. In Darlak too, some 20 families stayed back,” says Lalropuia.
  • “There were some 200 Bru families here. Many went away during the violence. About 60 of these families returned within four years, and I don’t think they regret it,” says Lalchhanhima Valpuia, the VCP of Darlak.
  • Local literature has it that the Bru-Mizo relationship goes back to 1942-43, when a Bru leader named Ratnamani Noatia revolted against Tripura’s Manikya rulers. After Ratnamani was beheaded, the Mizo chieftains sent Lalhuliana, a pasaltha (or commander), to rescue the persecuted Brus.
  • Says V. Pachuau, the BJP’s candidate for the Hachhek Assembly seat bordering Tripura, “Lalhuliana was my grandfather. The Brus have great respect for him and my father, who carried on the job of caring for them.” The goodwill that his grandfather had earned from the Brus did not, however, translate into victory. He finished third behind his rivals from the Congress and the MNF, but did better than the 37 other BJP candidates who lost.
  • The BJP candidates in Mamit and Dampa, two other Assembly seats where the Brus form a sizeable chunk of voters, also finished third. According to Mizoram-based rights activist Paritosh Chakma, the BJP could have won these seats had it fielded Bru candidates. “The party should have fielded activist leaders who have a huge support base, as both the Brus and Chakmas are oppressed communities,” he says. The BJP’s solitary win came in Tuichawng, a Chakma-dominated constituency. Its candidate, Buddha Dhan Chakma, was a Congress import.
  • Says Pachuau: “Though I am a Mizo, I am also a Bru at heart. The Brus in Mizoram are 99% Christian while 40% of the refugees in Tripura are Christian. They have been victims of misplaced political aspirations and wrong advice from so-called intellectuals. I hope to play a role in bringing them back to Mizoram for the sake of peace, and of course, my grandfather.”
  • Mizoram’s influential church leaders, who had converted the Brus years ago, feel that they need to build bridges between the two Christian groups. “After all, they are our brothers and sisters,” says Reverend B. Sangthanga of the Mizo Presbyterian Synod, the largest Christian denomination in the State.
  • Adam Saprinsanga, who edits a magazine in Aizawl, says internal politics is what has been keeping the Bru issue alive. “Certain groups are trying to capitalise on the ethnic divide, which may take years or decades to resolve,” he says.
  • Lalvungthanga, used to living life as a “second-class citizen”, is prepared to wait. He hopes that his party in power, the MNF, would hasten the healing and assimilation process between the communities. “I hope I die feeling as much Nanda Kumar Reang as Lalvungthanga.”
  • In other words, as much Bru as Mizo.