>I think Barua, you should tell us who ought to be the judge. Ram: Interesting question. That is my take on the issue. All these killings are governed by man-made rules. It is only in human society that we see these rules for killing. Animal donot kill each other like man do, and they donot have such rules for killings. In all human society, it is the society who make these rules and the society is the judge whether one killing is OK or not. Based on this, the following are the judgments: Germany killed millions of Jews in the second world war. > OK by Nazi. USA bombed and annihilated millions of innocent Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. > OK by USA Chinese killed so many Tibetans?> OK by Chinese GOI killed thousands of Nagas.> OK by India USA launched Iraq War where thousands of innocent people are being killed every day.> OK by USA Al Qaeda killing innocent people. > OK by Al Qaeda It is a world where one society fights against another. Most of the time, it is the Golden Rule that prevails. Rajen Barua
_____ From: Ram Sarangapani [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 4:15 PM To: Barua, Rajen Cc: Chan Mahanta; [email protected]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Assam] Fwd: Killing the Gelekey Legend: Thanks for those additions - I somehow missed them. >And who is the Judge? I think Barua, you should tell us who ought to be the judge. --Ram On 2/6/07, Barua, Rajen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >The question of why people kill has probably some complicated answer. Here are >some reasons >War, revenge, survival (land, ethnicity, language, etc), self defense, greed, >jealousy, psychopathic killing spree or even just plain >>misunderstanding/accidental or by mistake. And you add to those, Fear, Urge of freedom, Land, Belief, Desire to control others, Scare the enemy to hell etc and you get almost all the reasons that people kill each other. You get all the reasons Why almost all the kings in India took part and killed so many people in the Mahabharata war in ancient times. Why Germany killed millions of Jews in the second world war. Why USA bombed and annihilated millions of innocent Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Why Chinese killed so many Tibetans? Why GOI killed thousands of Nagas. Why USA launched Iraq War where thousands of innocent people are being killed every day. Why Al Qaeda killing innocent people. Why insurgents are killing innocent people all over the world. Do you find any difference in one killing from the other? If not how do you differentiate from one good killing from one bad killing? One just and one unjust? And who is the Judge? Barua _____ From: Ram Sarangapani [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 2:48 PM To: Barua, Rajen Cc: Chan Mahanta; [email protected]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Assam] Fwd: Killing the Gelekey Legend: Barua, >This brings back the same question, which was triggered by >Umesh's question, >which Umesh felt uncomfortable to answer, >why people kill!! The question of why people kill has probably some complicated answer. Here are some reasons War, revenge, survival (land, ethinicity, language, etc), self defense, greed, jealousy, psychopathic killing spree or even just plain misunderstanding/accidental or by mistake. But, very rarely, very rarely indeed do people kill randomly and with absolutely no reason. The act of killing has to be usually be triggered by some kind of stimuli - don't you think? What triggered the killings of Gogoi and his passenger? --Ram On 2/6/07, Barua, Rajen <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: This brings back the same question, which was triggered by Umesh's question, which Umesh felt uncomfortable to answer, why people kill!! Rajen Barua -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chan Mahanta Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 11:31 AM 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 Š" (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 _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] <http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org> http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
_______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
