September 10, 2004 ☼ Public Policy
This concept of India, this dynamic and restless intermingling and confrontation, which cannot really be summed up in that smug phrase “unity in diversity”, has kept India what it is. There has never been a time when India has not been threatened and there has never been a time when India did not break into several kingdoms or separate States and come together again. But the process has always had, running through it, some strong and abiding bonds.
These are the bonds that are being tested in the northeastern region, and more particularly, now in Manipur. In time, the bonds may prove stronger and prevail, but the process must be understood and accepted as what it is by Indians generally and the government in particular. The process is of the re-identification of a group, a community, or people. Sometimes this perception tends to be smothered in the indifference and worse still, by the dreadful and all enveloping bureaucracy of the government. The danger lies here.
In years gone by, farsighted rulers or even colonial powers, saw these essential underlying factors and built on them. Today, we run the risk of this foresight slowly decaying and degenerating into a different setting in the form of note in a file maintained by a Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs. [Frontline]Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is finally considering taking greater personal interest, starting with the probable sacking of the Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil.
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