Tag: Ethnic Conflict

April 26, 2020 /

Daily we gulped down the alcoholic news
of roasted cars and brutalised bodies, fleeing
families and flimsy appeals for peace, curfew
reliefs, temporal windows for resupply, while

at home we gossiped about spilled blood
between endless games of scrabble, our tones
hushed lest the police patrolling sanitised streets
would hear and accuse us of plotting. That year,

with winter fast approaching with no sign
of school reopening, I learnt the vocabulary
of hate and placed my preadolescent signature
on a certificate that declared my neighbour

and friend, Abhijit, his family, had become
our enemy.

November 30, 2019 /

Kuki Rebellion has been has been usually portrayed as a heroic act of fighting the Colonial force but this particular ‘anti-colonial’ narrative ignores the sufferings meted out to Zeliangrong people (a conglomeration of Naga tribes (Zeme, Liangmai, Rongmei and Inpui). How a significant part of historical event has been obscured so far requires a retelling/rewriting experiences of Zeliangrong people from Kuki Rebellion, 1917-1919.

February 9, 2019 /

Migration is a universal phenomenon and no part of the world can be completely immune from it. Meghalaya, one of the states in Northeast India, is not an exception and has been experiencing migration of the outsiders particularly the non-tribals over a fairly long period of time. However, it was in the 1970s that the process of its problematization started with the tribal educated elite undertaking the leadership role under the influence of several factors that worked collectively. Though the process eventually led to the occurrence of a series of violent ethnic conflict in the state, yet it was largely responsible for the prevention of the emergence of existential crisis situation for the indigenous tribals.