Mission to the Misty
North-East - I
By Lipika Bansal
We arrived in New Delhi, where my 3 cousins came to pick us up. It was my aunt’s birthday, so that evening we met with my whole family. This was during the tense period, when all foreign newspapers were calling back their citizens back to their own countries, as a war might break out between India and Pakistan about Kashmir. So during those days, border areas are of course extremely high secured. My whole family already knew that we were going to the northeastern part of India. Also this part of India is having many internal problems. There are 7 states in Northeast India, many of them are fighting or have been fighting the central government for independence. From the 7 states in the northeastern part of India, we went to Assam, Manipur and Mizoram. Manipur and Mizoram are bordering to Burma.
I think this region is maybe one of the most interesting places, as this area shares its borders with about quite a few countries: Bhutan, China, Burma, and Bangladesh and not too far from Nepal. The Northeastern people belong to the Mongoloid race.
If foreigners want to travel to the northeastern states, they need a special permit, and they are closely watched by Indian Intelligence, as the Indian government doesn’t want any international publicity about these ethnic armed struggles. Even Indians need to get permits, as the local state governments want to keep track of Indians going to their states. So this was a bit worrying for my family, so one by one, my uncles came up to me, to give us some good advice, how to travel to Northeast India. The next day my father also traveled to India for work, so I was lucky to meet him after a long time.
The next four days we had been just extremely busy visiting the Burmese community in New Delhi.
Our research objective was to learn about the drug route from Burma and the effects of drug in Northeast India- HIV/AIDS victims. Burma is the second biggest heroin producing country. 60% of all the heroin comes from Burma, in which the military regime of Burma is highly involved. It than crosses the border in India. From there it goes to all the big ports, such as Madras/ Chennai, Calcutta/ Kolkata, and Bombay/ Mumbai, from where it is further smuggled for western markets. From my pre-research, I learnt that Manipur is one of the highest HIV affected area in the world. I thought this was due to the high heroin trafficking through this state. But during our first four days in New Delhi we learnt, that most people can’t afford to buy heroin, so they over-drink cough syrups, or use proxyvon (painkillers) and other pharmaceutical drugs. They take out the powder from these capsules and dilute this with water. Unfortunately the drug doesn’t dilute properly, so when they inject for long, their arteries get blocked, and eventually their limbs have to be amputated. One Naga friend – Joel, someone of our own generation, gave us also quite some shocking information; teenagers because they only get little pocket money (11/ 12/ 13 years old) use strange ways to get high. They dilute ‘Good Night’, some chemical used in India against mosquitoes, in hot water and drink it. According to him, youth have no alternative activities to do. Also because of the political disturbance in this area; the government doesn’t promote any kind of sports.
Also he was saying that the police is earning from both sides, they know who the drug dealers are, but take bribes from them, and the same is when they encounter drug-users they take bribes from them as well.
Here in New Delhi we also got many contacts for our further trip to the Northeastern part of India. People gave us many tips and advice. They also told us, that it would be maybe more difficult for me to go there, than for Jang, because she anyway looks like a local. But I of course have an Indian appearance, so they might stop me and ask for an ID, but I only have a Dutch passport. So Zaw Zaw one of our very helpful friends in New Delhi, created for both of us a false refugee status copy, and we were ready for our expedition to the Northeast. We took the train to Guwahati, the capital of Assam, the gateway to the northeast. A 28-hour very pleasant and comfortable journey, on persuasion / recommendation of my aunt and all family members. We decided to travel first to Guwahati, to know the current situations in the other states, because the situation is always unstable. From there we could know more detailed the latest news. Also foreigners are allowed to travel until Guwahati freely. Do you want to proceed to the other states; you will need to get permits.
We arrived at around 6.00 p.m. and I phoned an Assamese friend, whom I had met in Pai- Thailand, but because I didn’t inform him in time, that I was about to come, he had already left. So we went out to search for our first guesthouse on our tour. Also we had to be careful about telling what we had come to do. In India it is not very common to see girls traveling all by themselves, therefore many questioning, curious eyes were following us. We arrived in a guesthouse, when I went in to ask if they had a room vacant, the male receptionist asked me, if I was with boys. At that time I didn’t really realize what he meant. We were the only girls, but ok, it was already late, and all the previous guesthouses were full. I went out to phone, seemed to more adventurous than I thought. The main road in Guwahati is a complete disaster, and in the rainy seasons, well you can imagine, the roads are nice and muddy “kicher” as we say in Hindi, and than of course the complete freedom of traffic- do what ever you want, but yes please do use the horn. So here I had to cross this very difficult crossing, but I couldn’t wait forever, because traffic appeared never to stop. So I went ahead. I made it!! Only I almost lost my slippers twice in the muddy puddles, and my feet were covered with fresh jet-black slimy gutter-cow-street slush. I went to make an appointment with one of our contacts we got in New Delhi, a journalist working with Assam Tribune. This was just the beginning of our adventures in the Northeast.
We also had to be careful about what we were saying to people, we couldn’t say that we had come for research, so we pretended to be tourists. Although the states we were traveling to, are not touristy at all. Also we were not interested to get any kind of foreign permit, and that the Indian Intelligence would follow us. So we wanted to go as locals, without any kind of permit or shit. At the first guesthouse I accidentally slipped that Jang was from Thailand, during my talks with the people at the guesthouse. Anyway in our room we saw a red light, we were both very suspicious what kind of guesthouse we were staying, and also we were spying from our windows on the streets, trying to discover if there weren’t illegal drug dealings going on. But after a while we felt bored with our silly spying game. The next day the journalist came to visit us at our guesthouse, he also recommended us to move to another guesthouse, as this wasn’t a very good/safe area. So we moved to another guesthouse. The journalist took us to the ministry of commerce. Here we got to learn about trades between India and Burma. At this moment tires are the biggest import product from Burma. And than there are illicit border trades, such as arms, drugs, logging business. At this moment Burma is the 3rd highest deforesting country in the world. India doesn’t allow any timber imports from Burma, overland. At the ministry of commerce we met one businessman, who was interested to import timber overland, but is facing many hinders from the Indian side. Now he got a personal invitation from Rangoon – Burma (Ministry of Foreign Affairs or something, I don’t exactly remember). So that he will have no problems in importing timber from Burma. Also Burma’s rule is that India must first export their products to Burma, than they will export. Also they demand the payments must be done in dollars, as Burma is short on foreign currencies. As almost the whole world is boycotting Burma for its dictatorship.
We went to a local organization, they explained us the situation, that there are many armed struggles in the northeastern part of India, and that it is completely isolated from the outside world. Also many refugees from bordering countries come to this already overpopulated region, where there is such a scarcity of resources. Especially because mostly this region is a hilly area, so the plains are densely populated. Most people practice jhum cultivation, which means slash and burn cultivation. They use one part of the forest which they use for cultivation, but this forest area has become too small for this kind of cultivation, because of the amount of people. So the cycle of jhum has shortened, which causes environmental degradation. And because there is such a lack of everything, people feel frustrated and start fighting, consequently you find many internally displaced people, (people refugees in their own country, forced to leave their homes). But later we would learn also other reasons for these struggles.
We were mostly of course interested to travel overland, because you can see many interesting things and learn more. But some people in New Delhi had advised us to travel by air. But we were fortunate that we could travel the next day by bus. Because the day after they would call a ‘bandh’ (which means closed in Hindi). It means that nobody can go in and nobody can go out of Guwahati. This happens quite often in Assam. Many indigenous people live in these beautiful fresh green hills of Assam, than suddenly the Indian government claims that land to be government property. So these people are forced to leave their homes, and have no place to go, but to go to the bigger cities such as Guwahati and live in slums. But sometimes they are able to demand their rights, such on days as ‘bandh’; they demonstrate and claim their rights.
So the next day we took the bus to Imphal the capital of the highly disturbed state of Manipur. Before we got on the bus, we met a very curious student, on the bus-station, who asked me many questions. As Jang and I could only communicate with each other in English. He asked where Jang was from, so we said that she is Naga. Naga is also one of the ethnic groups in the Northeast of India. They live in Nagaland and in some hills of Manipur. There are many Naga tribes, with their different languages and styles of clothes. So he started to talk with Jang in Nagamese, but of course she doesn’t speak the language, so I told him that she is Tangkhul, one of the Naga tribes, which we had heard from someone in New Delhi. This was a good test for us to see, whether our story made any sense, and if he bought it or not.
Our story was that we are students in New Delhi; we met each other at our college. We study sociology. Jang doesn’t speak Hindi, but also that is no problem, because India has many languages and many people don’t speak Hindi and studies at college are in English. And we were going to Manipur, to visit Jang’s family, because we were having summer holiday. Luckily it was summer holiday for Delhi students. We took the evening bus, arriving the next day at 3 p.m. after a 19 hour drive. We had left all our sensitive materials in Guwahati with the journalist. We kept all other materials, which we needed on the bottom of our backpacks. And than we had our video-camera, Jang thought of putting it in a big plastic bag, so it doesn’t seem very obvious. There were many checkpoints everywhere, on the way to Imphal, soldiers patrolling everywhere. They checked luggage, but ours was not checked, because we had put our backpacks, uncomfortably where our legs are supposed to be, because they had advised us, that if you put your luggage in the luggage cabin they will surely check your luggage, we didn’t want that, so we thought to keep our luggage with us. So they never checked us, probably we seem as innocent young girls, so very easy to do this kind detective work. In the bus 2 men from Kerala, a state in South India, were sitting behind us, I overheard them say they were going for orchid business. During my pre-research I had also read that a lot of orchids are being smuggled from the Chin Hills of Burma to South India. So I immediately jumped to the conclusion, that they might be doing illegal business, but I can’t be sure, because I never verified my judgment.
to
be continued......
(The author attends the University of Amsterdam in Holland majoring in International Communications)
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