The Naga assertion for self-rule and distinct identity had led to the creation of different movements, some of which have gone underground. Regular confrontation between the underground outfits and the Army has become quite normal in Nagaland.

On one occasion, there was an attempt to ambush the Army convoy near the college, where I was teaching in 1995. Minutes before the convoy could pass the area, the patrolling soldiers detected the plan. They saw a band of young men disappearing into the forest.

When they could not catch them, the soldiers began their enquiry in the vicinity especially with a few Bihari workers at a construction site near the college. As the soldiers could not elicit satisfactory hints, they beat them. The issue rocked Delhi and compensation was immediately awarded to the wounded workers.

The spontaneous reaction of the workers at that moment was heartening: they laughed, “Danda bi mila, anda bi mila.” It means “we got the rod and we also received the egg”. The words, danda and anda rhyme. The euphemistic statement of the workers conceals their real trauma and the tragedy of human rights violation.

Danda and anda have become metonymy for torture and governmental compensation respectively.

The experience perhaps illustrates the tragic situation a common man faces in Nagaland. In other words, the understatement of the Bihari workers bears witness to the larger malady of contemporary India. It shows how common people cope up with violence that is perpetrated by the state in the name of security and welfare.

Nonetheless, I wouldn’t like to portray the police or the Army as villains nor do I want to show ordinary citizens as hapless victims. I would like to explore the issue to get some lesson to learn for the future.

I would like to take the two recent incidents, which have caught the attention of everyone and has sent alarming signals to the political leadership, industrial tycoons and the votaries of globalisation. One of them is the shooting down of 14 persons by the police at Nandigram in West Bengal, when they protested against the acquisition of their land by the government for a Special Economic Zone. On the next day, the Naxalites shot down 55 police personnel at Mariagudem in Dantewada district of Chattisgarh.

Though they are two independent, unrelated incidents, they throw up so many issues for the civil society to ponder upon. If the farmers are portrayed as the victims of the wrong policies of the government in Nandigram, the same farmers are accused of massacre in Chattisgarh. The government has used this situation to form anti-Naxalite groups called “salwa judum”. It mostly consists of tribal youth. They are appointed as special police officers and are given .303 rifles in order to protect their villages. The state sponsored anti-Naxalite groups function largely as an alibi to the police force.

The police and the soldiers are the children of farmers and workers. They have to shoot their own kith and kin, who protest against the state that forcibly takes away their fertile lands in the name of development. The police and the soldiers are guilty of patricide, matricide, and fratricide. Due to the faulty policies of the government, the police become the victims. No one mourns the wounded police. They are suspended for the atrocities. The police who are supposed to protect and safeguard democracy are forced to guard the gates of industrial estates and houses of the very same people, who exploit their relatives.

In the same way, Naxalites too have humble births. The experience of exploitation and injustice is supposed to have created the revolutionary zeal in them. The violence of Naxalites has taken the lives of citizens and police personnel. The supposed aim of radical transformation of the society has driven them to set a stage for a tragic-drama, where they assume the role of a protagonist and, ironically, the police become their antagonists. In all this, the middle class people are coerced to be spectators who, now and then, either clap and cheer or fret and fume.

Needless to answer the question, “who are the directors and producers?” They are not seen on the stage but they remote control every tear and smile and manage the show successfully. Thus, there is a class aspect to human rights and victims everywhere are mostly subalterns, be it the police, the farmers or Naxalites.

Hence, new ways of struggle and strategies for action need to be evolved so that we don’t fight among ourselves and allow the directors and producers to book the profit at our expense and fly to the US.

(The writer is a lecturer in Sacred Heart College, Madanthyar, Dakshina Kannada)