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Conflict countryAug 26, 2012, 05.42AM IST This is a migration very few know of or care about. But a staggering 1 million people may have been forced out of their homes in thenortheast<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/northeast> in the past 20 years alone. And the displacement continues. Whenever it is geography, not shared history<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/history> or culture <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/culture> that binds men, the coexistence is bound to be tremulous and uneasy, reports Anand Soondas: The memories are a bit hazy, but the blur in Mahendra Singh's mind is more than compensated by the warmth in his heart for the small Shillong locality he left many years ago. "It was in 1994 that we packed our bags," he says, talking over phone from Varanasi where he's just set up a food business. "Dad was a scientist and we lived in Bishnupur. It all began as a tribal versus non-tribal thing, in 1989, I think. I was just a boy then. First it was the Nepalis and the Bengalis who were targeted. Soon everyone was called 'outsiders' . I still remember asking my father to show me what a curfew looked like." Many miles away in Mumbai, Vikas Singh, around the same age as Mahendra, has one thing in common with the mustachioed , big man. Shillong. "I was there from 1970 to 1990," he says. "I was too young to understand the political dynamics, but slowly became aware of the antagonism in the air and the frequent bandhs and random violence. Suddenly, after 20 years in a city I absolutely loved, it was time to go. There was no future for us as 90 per cent of jobs were reserved for locals. We couldn't do business or buy property in our own name." The two men are now friends, linked with each other in the unique way that exiles evolve to connect and cry. Sometimes Mahendra and Vikas, over bottles of beer and a fondness for Bhupinder Singh ghazals, talk about old friends, their childhood crushes and the turns their lives have taken. They talk about their love for the northeast, the migration of people like them, and a faint hope that perhaps someday they'll go back to build a house their children can visit during their summer breaks. India's northeastern tip, sometimes condescendingly called the Seven Sisters, has had a tortured history — of death and destruction , violence and victimization, and, of course, migration and displacement. Perhaps more than in any other part of India, this region, now often ignored by the central government and derided by people outside its boundaries, has always been in furious ferment. The nature of its make-up has been such that coexistence could not have been easy. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council's Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, there are about 475 different ethnic groups and subgroups in Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, and Sikkim, accounting for some 400 languages and dialects that a population of around 46 million uses. It's no wonder that coexistence has been so calamitous. These people were not supposed to be in such proximity in the first place. There were only the princely states of Manipur and Tripura, and a large, bulbous and undivided Assam at the time of India's independence in 1947. The country marched on and the geography of the northeast changed, unwilling to be left behind as a multitude of contours took myriad shapes. So Meghalaya was formed in 1972 and Nagaland in 1963, Mizoram in 1986 and Arunachal Pradesh a year later. What didn't change, though, was the fight for land, identity and space. IDMC in a report last year said, "Nearly a million people have been forced to flee their homes by ethnic violence in northeast India over the past 20 years." It says that from the 1990s to the start of 2011, over 800,000 people were forced to flee in episodes of inter-ethnic strife in just parts of Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura. "More than 76,000, according to conservative estimates, are still living in displacement...Most people displaced by this violence have been forgotten." The modern exodus, of course, began being chronicled in detail 50 years ago. In 1960, a few lakh Bengalis from Assam migrated to neighbouring West Bengal after fights erupted over implementation of the Assam Official Language Act. The new legislation made Assamese the sole official tongue of the state. In 1979, about 20,000 Bengalis were displaced from Meghalaya following attacks by Khasis, and in the 1980s, a mind-boggling 150,000 Bengali and Nepali-speaking people quit Assam because of turmoil created by the six-year anti-foreigner movement launched by the All Assam Students' Union and other organizations. Again, in 1980, close to 100,000 Bengalis were kicked out of Tripura even as Biharis around the same time faced the brunt of Manipuri nationalism . One of the biggest migrations was that of 50,000 Reangs from Mizoram in 2003. The 4 lakh-odd refugees in protection camps spread across Lower Assam right now are just the latest victims in a region that has fought wars against each others for hundreds of years. The Bodos have battled Muslims, but they have also locked horns with Adivasis and Nepalis. The Mizos have taken on Brus, the Karbis have gone against Dimasas, and Nagas have been at the throats of Manipuris. Refugee Watch, a journal that tracks internal displacement, says in its December 2011 issue that clashes between the Santhals and Bodos which erupted in the early 1990s turned an estimated 250,000 people homeless . "As of December 2005, around 110,000 people remained in relief camps in Assam's Kokrajhar and Gossaigaon subdivisions a decrease of 40,000 people since 2003," the paper says. "However, the displaced have not been able to return to their former villages as they remain occupied, mainly by Bodo communities." Forced by the British before independence and the reorganization of states after that to live together inside unnatural borders that they didn't know would suddenly come to exist, clannishness among the innumerable tribes in these parts has ensured that the various groups will try as hard as possible to secure areas of their own, a patch in which they can speak their own language or dialect, eat the kind of food their forefathers have eaten and sing the songs that they have always sung. Used to living in relative isolation, shrinking land and the emergence of "outsiders" , either as traders or farmers or labourers, has only complicated matters. Ethnicity, then, has been central to their ethos. But there's a turnaround these days, a cross-current that's both encouraging and life-altering for many. The younger ones want to break out, not dig in, something the rest of us abruptly realised when train-loads of northeasterners fearful of hate attacks headed home recently. There are many more that have stayed back in 'India' , waiting for countless others from their part of the country to join in. An amazing 14 million people are expected to move out of the northeast into the mainland between 2011 and 2021 in search of jobs and better livelihood, says the National Skill Development Council, a public-private initiative of the Centre that aims to create a workforce of 150 million skilled youth by 2022. There'll be fewer fights in the northeastperhaps when that happens — making it easier and less traumatic for people like Vikas and Mahendra to return home where they can talk about happy days sipping beer over Bhupinder Singh ghazals. *Hard history * 1960: Lakhs of Bengalis from Assam migrate to neighbouring West Bengal after violence erupts over the implementation of the Assam Official Language Act. The new legislation makes Assamese the sole official language of the state 1979: Almost 20,000 Bengalis are displaced from Meghalaya following attacks by Khasis 1980s: About 150,000 Bengali and Nepali-speaking people quit Assam because of turmoil created by the sixyear anti-foreigner movement launched by All Assam Students' Union and other organisations 1980s: Around 800 Biharis and Nepalis flee Manipur after Assam's anti-foreigner campaign spreads to the tiny state 1980s: Almost 100,000 Bengalis are displaced in Tripura following ethnic violence between Bengalis and tribals 1987: About 2,700 Nepalis are displaced from Meghalaya following land disputes with tribals 1992: Around 3,000 Nepalis quit Meghalaya following clashes between Khasis and non-tribals during Dussehra -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. 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