Where The Mind Is With Fear

By Manuwant Choudhary

Rejecting the caste census as I wrote in my last blog today I continue to fear for India.

Even as I watch the thousands of people from the north-east flee Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai...all trains in India it seems head towards Assam.

I cried.

Even as the violence continues in Kokrajhar in Assam where the helpless are targetted by an unforgiving underground Bodo militants.

I cried.

I watch a helpless Prime Minister (elected to Rajya Sabha from Assam) make feeble assurances..

I cried.

Chief Ministers asking people to return..

But the tv footage shows people are ready to believe the rumours and not the politicians they elect.

So I fear for India.

I do not sit in India's parliament because liberals are barred by law to even contest elections.

But it hurts to see our MPs crack jokes while Indians flee in fear.

I cried.

I also cried because I see a helpless parliament not quite knowing how to deal with the situtation...and instead blame twitter and facebook...just they did the foreign hand in the sixties and seventies.

I have cried before too when MNS and Shiv Sena would attack Biharis.

But as an Indian and a journalist I have always fought back and fought back hard.

I have got the Shiv Sena president in Bihar to condemn his own leader Bal Thackeray.

And the violence stopped.

But the Bodos how do you deal with them....when they attacked Biharis in Assam and Biharis who had never even been born in Bihar or seen Bihar began pouring into Patna, I cried.

It was late 10.30 pm and I did what few would have thought of...I went to meet an old source of mine.

Sitting in a tin shed in Patna in his simple kurta pyajama he was the general secretary of the truckers union of Bihar.

He was surprised to see me so late and asked me what he could do for me.

I told him if he could stop all trucks going to Assam in order to put pressure on the Bodos to stop the violence and also on the Assam government to provide security to all Biharis living there.

He agreed and gave me his interview calling all trucks to stop going to Assam - an economic blockade till all violence stopped.

Dalkhola in Bihar is a vantage point from where all trucks pass...and as we aired his interview on national Tv...trucks blocked Dalkhola completely.

And as the supplies stopped Assam's chief minister was compelled to get serious....the violence pettered out as well.

India deserves better politics and politicians. Not the ones we have now based on caste reservations, religious considerations and netas who are really corporate agents stealing  farmers lands.

India needs a liberal alternative - Vikalp. (and not the Anna way).