Thank you C'da for the forward. And to Xonjoi
for a touching portrait of a rebel and a scamp.
I want to focus on the last line in the piece
"It is about ............. justice will be done".
Can we make sure that it will be? Should we
form a pressure group, say Justice to Gelekey
Group who can keep the pressure on the
Goevrnment and the justice system to make sure
that Nikhilesh and Bholu are not
forgotten? Should a few local lawyers be engaged
to follow the inevitable torturous path this
case will take? do we have the stamina to see
this through the next 10 years so that an
example can be made of the occupants of the jeep
so that there are no future Nikhileshs and
Bholus?
best regards
RB
------ Original Message ------
Received: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 01:31:44 AM SGT
From: Chan Mahanta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Assam] Fwd: Killing the Gelekey Legend:
Nikhilesh and Bholu Gogoi were assassinated and
Arup Saikia seriously injured at Geleki, by the
CISF, about five miles from my ancestral village
at Namti, the night before I left the place in my
recent trip to Assam. I got word of the killings
from the young men who gave me a ride outb of our
village the next morning.
The following article by Xonzoi is on the Tehelka
website also, except in an edited version.
cm
Usually, legends have a larger-than-life aura
around them. They are masters of all they survey.
While this may be the general trajectory, it does
not explain how legends are born (and killed) in
small towns in far-off places like Assam.
Nilikesh Gogoi was a coal trader, a poet, a
farmer, a collectivist, an oral historian and a
person who resolved conflicts between people in
the hills and the authorities in the valley. He
was, in short, a local legend.
On January 23, 2007, he and his two of his
business associates were returning from a normal
trip to the hills that border Gelekey. On the
way, they overtook a slow-moving jeep manned by
personnel of the Central Industrial Security
Force (CISF). Just about the time that they were
going to go clear of the four-wheeled vehicle in
front on them, they were shot at. Nilikesh Gogoi
and his pillion rider - Bholu Gogoi - died
instantly, but their companion, Mr. ?rup Saikia,
survived the shooting. Nilikesh Gogoi died
instantly.
The fact that the CISF personnel felt empowered
enough to take his life in this manner and
expected to get away with it, is a statement
about the tragedies that unfold with the
government of India's security policy for the
Northeast. I risk making this note a sane,
rational analysis of militarization, at a time
when I should be mourning a friend.
Nilikesh Gogoi was the undisputed scamp and
pixie-king of the Assam-Naga foothills. His
universe stretched from Sibsagar town to the
villages of Anakhi Imsen, not a very huge tract
of land but stable enough to be a storehouse of
history, myths and folklore. He crisscrossed the
winding Pioneer Road, whizzed across the
Lahdoigarh Line, and stumbled all over the place
as though borders never mattered to him. Truth be
told, he was not too convinced by modern maps and
surveying techniques. Over several shots of rum,
he would reel off names of villages and towns
that were the domain of the Naga people in the
olden days. At times like this, his conversations
- like his wonderful imagination - would be free
from chronological and political fetters. The
past, with its myths and immense possibilities of
romance, was what could happen tomorrow,
according to him. At times this, he was
irresistible.
One day, not so long ago, he strapped my
partner's rucksack on to his back and took her up
a treacherous mountain track to meet with her
fellow Naga people who lived along the frontiers
of the plantation complex. He explained to her
that he was carrying something very important and
so, needed her rucksack. He was carrying rum and
his stories about how the planters came in the
nineteenth century, cut the forests to make tea
chests, and pushed the Nagas further from the
valley where they would come to trade. These
stories grew bigger and more real as he narrated
how the Lahdoigarh Line sequestered the hill
people and how planters brought in troops to
secure their precious investments. His stories,
fuelled by a bit of rum, spoke of the times when
his ancestors, realizing the limits of their
power had made peace with the Naga people and
evolved a civilized system of respect for each
other's authority. He liked that part of the
past. He half-jokingly wore the mantle of a
latter-day Supatphaa (Gadadhar Singha), the great
Ahom adventurer king of the seventeenth century,
and issued mock commands to his grinning friends.
Later, in the course of this rough ride up the
mountain, he would look remorsefully at the
ground when my partner berated him for his
impossible projects that mostly involved rum. To
make up for his almost adolescent trespass, he
sang a Naga Bihu song: "Milakpani te ahibo, sopna
te dekhibo " (I shall come to the River Milak
and you will see me in your dreams). That song
was my personal anthem, when my colleague and I
walked the streets of Bangkok trying to connect
with our Thai cousins. Sitting on the streets of
the city with a bewildered audience, we sang his
song and it made us so proud.
His grasp of history and politics was simply
unparalleled. He kept a critical distance from
dominant political parties and organisations. His
universe was rather small, but like any good
activist, he knew it well. The plantations that
dot the landscape of Gelekey, the local marts
where people barter their good and incur debts,
the small settlements of migrants - were all part
of his politics and his life. He knew that the
lines between legality and illegality were
ambiguous in the frontiers and the presence of a
gun blurred the boundaries further. Like any
person who has to survive this predicament, he
pushed himself into work that would make life a
little more to his liking. He had a bed and a
warm meal ready for him in all the Naga villages
along the foothills. To them, he was a friend who
could talk to the police and contain conflicts
that usually arose when Naga villagers came to
the valley markets. For him, the Naga villages
were his home. His political strategies were a
matter of scale. Of course, he also spoke about
the indignities heaped upon the people of Iraq,
but he was equally passionate about the
collective farm that he had helped start. He
would take unsuspecting visitors to the farm that
was systematically organized - gourd in one
section, bamboo in the other, a bit of tea on
higher ground and paddy in the low-lying areas -
in marked contrast to his restless behaviour when
people dropped by. He was always in a hurry to
point out where history, politics and economy
met, in his huge universe of forty square
kilometres.
One was always surprised with his natural ability
to navigate through the vicious politics that
surrounded the various security agencies in the
area. For a small place, Gelekey has many people
with guns. The government and security agencies
would have us believe that this is because there
are Naga and Assamese rebels in the area. Even if
that were true, the government, not to be
outdone, has thrown in its companies of army and
paramilitary personnel making the small
forty-square kilometres a veritable garrison.
Nilikesh saw them as temporary trespassers, like
the British planters. He charmed them, perhaps
even infuriated them, but he always looked right
through the barrel of their guns. His life in the
small town was always a chaotic run for
documents, titles, the occasional conversation
with a friend, a few stern words to errant
associates and he took all of this - including
runs in with the authorities - in his stride. In
the evenings, when friends dropped in from far
away places, he would wrap his fingers around a
cup of tea and narrate mad stories about ghosts
and spirits. For those of us not used to the
layered life of Gelekey, it seemed that the
ghosts and spirits were all around us. He would
taunt these ghosts, as he would taunt the armed
paramilitary personnel for their corruption.
Then he would head home, partly with gastric
pains and partly out of sheer hunger. However, he
was never exhausted. Had his partner, Kunti,
allowed it, he would come right back after the
household was asleep. She was a formidable person
and he always took care never to test the limits
of her patience. What an incredible supply of
adrenalin for a man so small and wiry! He was
just unstoppable.
Ironically, that is what the CISF are saying now.
They are saying that he did not stop when asked
to. His associate who survived has a
diametrically opposed story that is easier to
believe. They were shot and killed without any
provocation. There is talk of a high-level cover
up even as the state government announced a
compensation package and the arrested an accused.
As one tries to come to terms with the loss, one
realizes that this is an unending and vicious
cycle of lies and subterfuge. Following all the
innumerable loss of lives in Assam, the
administration will walk the tired road and hope
for things to become a little quiet before
ploughing the barren fields of security and
counter-insurgency.
They may reduce Nilikesh Gogoi to another
statistical victim of counter-insurgency, but if
he were alive, he would cackle into his glass of
tea. He always believed that legends could not
die. They always re-appeared in time. This, then,
is his time to re-appear. Nilikesh Gogoi's
universe has just become bigger. From Palo Alto
to Purona Bosti, those who knew him and what he
stood for will sing his Milakpani song. Those in
power will wonder what this song means. It is,
after all, a simple song about the legends, myths
and folklore of the foothills. It is about how
our people live despite the conditions imposed
upon us and in some wild, wonderful way, justice
will be done.
Xonzoi (Sanjay) Barbora
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