Lynched and Stripped Naked in Nagaland: Angry Times Ahead

The Dimapur lynching has laid bare the fault lines that have come to symbolize the town over past quarter century

Last week, one more gory chapter was added toNagaland’s violent recent history. The brutal and very public lynching of SyedFarid Khan, a small-time Bengali-speaking businessman in Dimapur, consideredNagaland’s commercial capital, has laid bare the faultlines that have come tosymbolise the town over the past quarter century or so.

Dimapuris the only major town in Nagaland exempt from the decades-old Inner Line Permit(ILP) system. Under this system, non-tribals have to obtain a temporarypermission to enter Nagaland -- and two other states, Mizoram and ArunachalPradesh -- to work or live there. No ‘outsider’ is permitted to buy land or setup business in his or her own name under the ILP system.

Influx of Outsiders

However,Dimapur, Nagaland’s only airport and a major railway station, has witnessedlarge-scale influx of ‘outsiders’ over the past 25 years and especially afterthe Centre put in place in 1997 a ‘ceasefire’ with the Issac-Muivah group ofthe National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM), regarded as thebiggest insurgent group in the north-east.

Theoutsiders are a mix of Indians from neighbouring states of the north-east and afair sprinkling of illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Over the years many of themhave married local Naga women and have become owners of real estate andfarmlands by proxy.

Farid Khan too had married a Sema woman and was more orless settled in Dimapur after migrating from southern Assam’s Karimganjdistrict. In fact, the young woman who had accused Farid Khan of rape, belongedto the same village as that of his wife. All this still does not explain themob fury witnessed last week when Farid Khan was pulled out of the Centraljail, stripped and paraded naked even as he was being beaten, stoned andabused.

Thepolice have arrested nearly two dozen people for instigating people andparticipating in the public lynching. Many saner voices from among the civilsociety, political parties and student organisations, have also spoken outagainst the barbarism displayed by the crowd, mostly made up of young men andwomen.

Butmany others have also called for deep introspection and put a finger on thefactors that led to the unacceptable lynching of Khan.

Troubled Times Ahead

Thestate government will have to take a closer look at developments in Nagalandand especially Dimapur in recent months that point to the likelihood of risingtension in the near future on account of the growing anger against, what localpeople call Illegal Bangladeshi Immigrants (IBI). The Nagas, fearingmarginalisation in their own state, have started agitating against theoutsider, or more precisely the ‘IBI’, more openly than before.

Thefear is: anger against IBI and the fear of being marginalised in their own landmay lead to recurrence of such incidents unless the state government,responsible social organisations, all come together to find an acceptablesolution to this knotty problem that has been a bane for states in the northeast for decades.

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