New Delhi: Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga’s virtual meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week seemed to have hit a translation hurdle.
PM Modi had held a meeting with chief ministers of nine states on the coronavirus lockdown extension Monday, but Zoramthanga was unable to understand a word anyone was saying in the meeting. “They were all speaking in Hindi,” the chief minister was quoted by The Indian Express, a language he didn’t know.
This is not the first time that concerns have been raised in the Northeastern states over the use of Hindi, especially during this pandemic.
Recently, there was a spike in Google searches from Mizoram on the meaning of “lakshman rekha”, hours after PM Modi used it while announcing a nationwide lockdown on 24 March.
This is not surprising as only 0.97 per cent of the population in the state speaks Hindi.
The language has often stuck out like a sore thumb in several parts of these eight Northeastern states. Assam, for instance, has viewed its Hindi-speaking community as “representatives of a colonial New Delhi” — a sentiment fuelled by the militant outfit United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) to drive its secessionist agenda in the 1970s.
Similarly, Hindi films have been banned in Manipur since 2000 by the separatist group Revolutionary People’s Front to “stamp out Indianisation“. The last Bollywood movie to screen here was Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in 1998.
Konyak king wants a ‘united Nagaland’ after Covid-19 shuts borders
Tonyei Phawng, the 12th generation of his family to rule the tribe Konyak in Nagaland, has made an unprecedented appeal for a “united Nagaland”.
The Konyaks are one of the dozens of Naga tribes, a people yearning to reunite the three million living in India with their 400,000 cousins in Myanmar.
Phawng lives in the village of Longwa in Nagaland’s Mon district that straddles the border between India and Myanmar. It is the ‘capital’ of a ‘kingdom’ comprising 40 Konyak Naga villages, some of which are in Myanmar.
Several members of the tribe would cross the border between India and Myanmar for trade, however, the Covid-19 shutdown has impacted this movement.
Nahmai Konya, a Longwa-based tour guide, has been quoted by the AFP as saying that Myanmar authorities were not providing emergency ration to the Konyaks during this lockdown. “Those living hand-to-mouth in Myanmar are finding it very difficult…We just can’t help them,” he said.
Therefore, Phawng and his tribespeople want a united homeland — one that will help them reunite with their brothers in Myanmar.
Manipur books over 10 cases, including 3 under sedition, for posts on Covid-19
More than 10 cases have been filed in Manipur’s Imphal West for publicly criticising the government’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak. Three of these cases have been registered under the controversial sedition law.
According to The Indian Express, official records indicate the police invoked sections of the Disaster Management Act and the Indian Penal Code to press charges against people across the state.
In one case, two activists of the Youth’s Forum for Protection of Human Rights in Imphal were charged under sections of the Disaster Management Act section 120(B) of the IPC after the organisation questioned the location of a proposed quarantine facility.
In another case, a private school teacher and five others were booked for sedition among other charges for a Facebook post in which the teacher had said that he could not remember the name of his local MLA.
Covid-19 patient swims from Bangladesh to Assam for treatment
Abdul Haque, a resident of Sunamganj district in Bangladesh, claimed to be a Covid-19 patient and swam across the Kushiyara river located on the India-Bangladesh border in South Assam’s Karimganj district to seek treatment.
The incident took place at Mubarakpur near Karimganj town, in an unfenced portion of the boundary.
Haque was later handed over by the BSF to Border Guards Bangladesh.
In another lockdown story, a youth from Mizoram undertook a heroic 3,000 km-long journey from Chennai to Aizawl by an ambulance, along with two Tamil drivers, to bring back the body of his best friend, who had met an untimely death in Tamil Nadu.
Raphael, a youth from Mizoram scripts a heroic story during #lockdown in the country, when he set a journey by ambulance from Chennai to Aizawl, a 3000 km path by road, accompanying the body of his friend Vivian Lalremsanga(28), who had met an untimely death in the southern state pic.twitter.com/YS0HwIDy1B
— DD News (@DDNewslive) April 28, 2020
Longleng, an Amur falcon named after a Nagaland district, returns from Somalia
A female Amur falcon named ‘Longleng’ has returned to the Indian subcontinent after flying non-stop for five days from Somalia.
The bird’s location has been tracked to Maharashtra and it is likely to fly across Nagaland and Manipur to China via Myanmar soon.
Named after the Longleng district in Nagaland, the falcon is part of the radio-tagging project that was started by the Manipur forest department in 2018 in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).
In other environmental news from the Northeast, 2.7 lakh trees are likely to be felled for a hydropower project in Arunachal Pradesh’s Dibang Valley, which is considered as one of the most diverse Himalayan zones.
In Assam again, 98.50 hectares of land at Saleki (which falls under the Dehing Patkai Elephant Reserve) has been approved to be used for a coal mining project under the North-Eastern Coal Field (NECF), a unit of Coal India Limited.
Also read: Assam cancels annual Kamakhya temple fair, largest Hindu event in NE — a first in centuries
Despite being Assamese , I am learning bodo , planning to learn meetei and kokborok language. After all bodo people are our brothers and we are related genetically .
No hindi , hindi is hegemony to indian ise north east and to destroy it’s rich cultural diversity
Believe it or not, that one issue, , Hindi forced down the throat, will eventually kill a united India one day.