Chandan:
We must try to see the event in right
perspective. If you do that, we (guys from Assam or NE) will not be looking at
the presentation to find anything new (in fact there is nothing new for us to
know about NE), but to find that Assam and the NE has been preented at all,
ever, in an International NGO Research platform like Brookings Institute.
in Washington, DC.
The problem, or the root of the
proble, of Assam and the NE has been complete ignorance,
mis-representation and confusion about the region from all quarters, within
and outside India. Only people who
can change the situation are the people of Assam & NE. As such this has
been an opportunity let others know what is happening in Assam and the
NE.
From that angle, this presentation
was very important. Brookings Institute has organized and invited these
three individuals from India to talk about Assam and NE. We are proud that
Sanjoy Hazarika happens to be one of the speakers. (We don't have to know what
exactly what he spoke here, because we know what he will speak to prsent the
right picture).
(For those who donot know much about
Sanjoy Hazarika, I can summarize his achievements in the following
sentence: He is a hard working Assamese journalist of high caliber, who, among
other things, visited and dined with Phizo; who wrote such
classic books as 'The Strangers in the Mist', "The Rites of Passage" etc
giving the complete no-nonsense story of the insurgencies and the
immigration problems in NE; who recently won the an award from the World
Bank for designing the 'Ship of Hope', a unique but simple boat for
the Flood Victims in Assam and who produced the documentary "Brahmaputra", and
who I found to be a dedicated hard working young Assamese who is
presently engaged for the welfare on the entire people of NE without any
prejudice. See more of Sanjoy Hazarika in www.c-nes.com).
Partha Gogoi from Washington DC who
attended the presentation wrote about the workshop thus,"On the workshop,
there was no presentation in the form of a slide-show as such. The three
key-note speakers were asked to talk for at least 15 minutes about their views
on the North East. There were several heavyweights in the crowd - Salman Haider
(India's previous Foreign Secy - was basically India's top diplomat),
Swaminathan Aiyer (writes Swaminomics in Times of India and based out of DC),
Amnesty International Director, Stephen Cohen who's an expert on South Asian
affairs and several interested Americans who seemed to know about Phizo and the
Naga insurgency."
What we need is to find what the
other two key note speakers, namely Lieutenant-General VK Raghavan, former
DG Military Operations of the Indian Army, and Samir K Das of Calcutta
University spoke about. As a community from Assam, what we can and
should do, in my opinion, is to find out more about the Brookings Institute and
other such organizations where we can present the correct picture
about Assam and the North East. Sanjoy Hazarika has just opened the door
for us. He mentioned that the discussion was co-hosted by Stephen
Cohen, a friend of India, who is at Brookings, and Mutthiah Alagappa of the
East-West Centre; We need to explore more about these individuals for future.
May be we can explore to see if we can make it possible to bring Sanjoy Hazarika
for more presentation in such other international platforms or by any other for
that matter.
Rajen .
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 8:28
AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Sanjoy Hazarika:
Making Sense of the NE in Washington DC
Thanks for forwarding it Rajen.
I looked up the Statesman site. I know SH is very knowledgeable about NE
issues, and was thus looking forward to seeing something informative to be
updated with.
But aside from the name-dropping I learned precious little more. Did I
miss something?
c
At 11:30 PM -0600 11/7/05, Barua25 wrote:
Making Sense of the NE in Washington
DC
Sanjoy Hazarika
writes:
Dear
Barua:
We had an excellent discussion at Brookings,
the first such public event on the NE in decades (perhaps
ever in DC) and we could press a few home truths
and outline concerns and issues. You may looknat
my column on the event at www.thestatesman.net (link
is NE page and my column, North by North East). The
nE Page appears every Saturday ion the Statesman and
is the only rpt only platform for the NE that is read
the same day in Delhi, Kolkata, Bhuvaneswar and
Siliguri and on the net, unlike other papers which publish
NE supplemnts for circulation in the NE only
Sanjoy Hazarika:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
You may see more of
his activities by visiting his web page www.c-nes.org (Center for NE
Studies)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the NE Page of the
Statesman
North by North East:
Sanjoy Hazarika: Making sense of the N-E in
Washington
At 3-30 pm on Thursday evening, Washington
hosted its first public event on the North-East (at least I do not recall,
in 23 years of travelling to the US capital, of a similar event) and I was
privileged to be among those who made presentations on the situation in the
region. The others included Lieutenant-General VK Raghavan, former DG
Military Operations of the Indian Army, and Samir K Das of Calcutta
University. The discussions were held at the Brookings institute and drew a
range of academics, serving and former officials from the US administration,
journalists and human rights activists. We covered the Naga imbroglio and
Ulfa as well as the role of the military, the region and its neighbours, the
Look East Policy, economics, ethnicity and migration. It was a fairly
comprehensive list and participants asked good, sharp questions on several
issues, including the earlier CPI-M support to migration from Bangladesh,
which it has since discontinued. Whenever we cover the North-east to a
new and especially Western audience, one is concerned that we may end up
confusing the audience instead of clarifying the situation, of such
complexities is our region. The discussion was co-hosted by Stephen
Cohen, a friend of India, who is at Brookings, and Mutthiah Alagappa of the
East-West Centre; the latter had just concluded an exhausting four-day
workshop elsewhere in the capital on armed conflicts in Asia. In the past
days, one has talked with persons from other countries who are going through
similar if not worse crisis than what the North-east is struggling with:
Nepal and Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar (Burma). In each of these
nations, the peripheral borders cause the maximum trouble to the states.
One was struck by the difficulties faced by ordinary researchers in
gathering information; a Thai professor even went so far as to say that it
would be unsafe for a Thai researcher to work in a Muslim-dominated belt in
non-Thai areas in southern Thailand where vigilante groups and political and
religious pressures dominate. In the North-east, the threats to ordinary
citizens and professionals as well as media still exist. We have seen
reference to this, and take encouragement from the position of the Manipur
media which recently passed a resolution saying it would not be browbeaten
by the underground.
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