New Delhi: Any talk on Northeast is incomplete without the mention of Manipur. And in recent days, without talking about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit since violence broke out in the state in May 2023. So, when The Shillong Times editor and author Patricia Mukhim spoke about her new book in Delhi, she couldn’t resist but comment on the PM’s visit.
“There can be no peace without justice. Manipur is awaiting the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” said Mukhim, as the audience at the India International Centre broke into a round of applause.
PM Modi is expected to visit Manipur on 13 September.
It was a gathering of authors, journalists, and public intellectuals. At the heart of it was Mukhim with her new book From Isolation to Integration: Navigating the Geopolitics of India’s Northeast (1990-2023). At IIC, the hall was packed to listen to Mukhim on Saturday. The panel featured prominent voices: IIC president Shyam Saran, former Union Home Secretary GK Pillai, former professor at JNU Tiplut Nongbri, senior advocate Vrinda Grover, and Shekhar Gupta, founder and editor-in-chief, ThePrint.
The book was not an easy one for Mukhim. It took her 30 years of extensive travelling through the region trying to listen to people. When the author started speaking about the Northeast, she spoke about what was at the core of the conflict — autonomy, power, and tussle. Her hefty two-volume book provides an in-depth understanding of the Northeast — its politics, society, and economy. It covers all the seven sisters — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. The book analyses the history and politics of the states through the lens of the people living in them.
The book talks about these tussles and complexities of a region homogenised in the broader Indian lens despite having over 200 ethnic groups with their unique culture and languages.
“We are seven states with about 238 ethnic communities, each one wanting greater autonomy, greater power and the tussle continues,” said Mukhim.
Understanding the region
Not everyone on the panel knew enough about Northeast and senior advocate Vrinda Grover had no shame admitting.
“I really typify here the ordinary Indian who knows very little. And that is something that I would place squarely before us,” she said.
Grover met Mukhim when the latter was facing multiple cases — once for even writing a Facebook post. “Another for writing an article for which she faced contempt from the high court,” said the senior advocate.
Without talking much about the book, Grover quickly moved to her own visits to Northeast and her understanding of the region. With that, she asked a question while also expressing her objection to the violence in Manipur. “Everyone knew it,” she said.
“The Supreme Court takes it up because women have got raped, not because all this violence has broken out. What if women had not been raped, I want to ask? Would the SC of India have been moved?” asked Grover.
Shyam Saran has been India’s ambassador to Myanmar. For the leaders of these states, he was the face of Delhi in the Northeast.
“Therefore, I was given quite an earful each time as to what the problems of the Northeast are… And I can’t think of any better person to actually put this book together because she has the insider’s perspective on what is the Northeast,” said Saran.
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‘Metamorphosis’
Growing up, Mukhim was a coy girl at school who would hardly speak, recalled her childhood friend and professor Tiplut Nongbri.
“I remember Praticia as a soft, mild-mannered girl with her hair neatly tight in white ribbons,” said Nongbri.
It was in 2004 when Nongbri was commissioned to do a report by the National Commission for Women. And the duo — Nongbri and Mukhim, who was a teacher — went to the hotel where the meeting had been convened.
“That day the Meghalaya government unexpectedly announced the constitution of Commission for Women for the state with no consultation or information to women’s groups in the state,” recalled Nongbri.
In addition to women groups not being consulted, despite them writing to the NCW earlier, Nongbri said the commission was filled with those who were never engaged with women’s issues.
“That day, the otherwise mild and well-mannered Patricia was deeply disturbed,” said Nongbri, as Mukhim nodded her head in agreement.
And that’s how Nongbri traced her friend Mukhim, what she described as metamorphosis.
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Isolation and integration
Shekhar Gupta’s association with Mukhim goes back to the early 1980s when the journalist lived in the Northeast. Gupta, who was introduced as a scholar on Northeast and a senior editor, quickly added that he lived in the region 45 years ago and that doesn’t make him a scholar.
“We – Mukhim and I – lived in the same neighbourhood and bought our eggs from the same publisher’s small bookshop but that doesn’t mean that you know Northeast. The region is changing and so are its people,” said Gupta.
He recalled how till the mid 80s, if one had to travel to Guwahati, they had to take a train to Bongaigaon, then change to a metre-gauge train from there, and then come to Guwahati. “Then, if you were going to Shillong, which was in the tribal Northeast, the largest city, the most cosmopolitan, had the most institutions, it took you more than a day to get there, more than a day after arriving in Guwahati.”
Talking about the book title, From Isolation to Integration, and its theme, Gupta said that isolation was a function of India — the way it had inherited its boundaries and its problems. However, India has become stronger with passage of every decade.
“And a few things are happening right now, which worry me about the idea of integration, because integration, what’s the difference between integration and assimilation. And I would worry about it, because a lot of fights in these states are about identity.”
However, there is one integration that is happening. “The expansion of the Northeast outside of the Northeast . That’s a kind of integration as well,” Gupta said, as the audience listened intently.
According to Gupta, integration was not about everyone following the same, but acquiring the same interest to be a part of a larger republic.
“That everybody in the Northeast should become vegetarian, should not eat particular meats or should sing particular poetry. It (integration) means more and more people should acquire a vested interest in being a part of a larger republic. I think that process is on, and the representatives of that process are people from the Northeast, who are working across the country.”
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)