Witoubou Newmai
In James Joyce’s Ulysses, a young history teacher by the name of Stephen Dedalus leaves a room rather abruptly because one of his seniors ignores him. The setting is in Dublin. One of the senior colleagues by the name of Mr. Deasy runs after Stephen Dedalus asking him to wait for a moment. Stephen halts, breathing hard and swallowing his breath when the senior colleague tells him, “I just wanted to say this—Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews. Do you know that?” “No”, replies Stephen Dedalus. “And do you know why?” asks the senior colleague. Stephen Dedalus frowns sternly on the bright air and asks, “Why, sir?” The senior colleague answers, “Because Ireland never let the Jews in.”
One may think the Ireland way of dealing with things may not suit the affairs of today's world. But when available mechanisms to contain the influx of migrants, especially from Bangladesh, cannot produce the desired effect, employing of invidious strategies by desperate people will become inevitable. The 1983 Nellie Massacre of Assam was one display of desperation by local people.
The sad part is that migrants have become the workforce of the Northeast Indian region today---things have come to such a stage where the fate and fortune of many local politicians and local businesspersons have come to depend on the migrant workers.
It is time we realise together that if the issue is not addressed urgently, the whole structure of our culture will get altered.
The recent representation of Nagaland Tribes Council (NTC) to the government is worth recalling in this regard----"The immense concentration of lakhs of people in the tiny state like Nagaland from outside and particularly those of the illegal immigrants has posed serious threats to the economy, the faith, the culture and the tradition, the politics and to the very existence of the indigenous people of Nagaland. At this rate, the indigenous Nagas of Nagaland will become secondary citizens and servants to the floating population in all respects sooner than expected".
In the wake of the rising sea levels due to global warming, the pace of migration from Bangladesh to the Northeast India region is going to get accelerated. According to the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-6): Regional Assessments, in three decades' time a large area of Bangladesh will be submerged and as a result more than 25 million people will be displaced.
In the Northeast Indian region, we see today various organisations with one form of campaign or the other swarming in the streets ‘to protect the indigenous people’ although proponents of policies in our society are irretrievably far from consensus in their approach even as this basic existential issue is getting more complex by the day. Survival Nagaland (SN) in the State of Nagaland, a conglomerate of 14 NGOs in Meghalaya (they called themselves simply ‘Pro ILP Group’) and Joint Co-ordination Committee on Inner Line Permit System (JCILPS) in Manipur feel today that whatever mechanism that is at hand is not serving its worth in curving the inflow of ‘outsiders’ into the states. So these groups indulge in acts which are abhorrent to ‘outsiders’. For the local organisations and activists, this is the only way they can respond to ‘outsiders’ inflow. On the other hand, the ‘outsiders’ think otherwise on the campaign of the local people. For the neutral observers, each side digs out the biggest worm from the other.
