REVIEW: The Talking Guns

REVIEW

The Talking Guns: North-east India
Nirendra Dev
Manas Publications
Rs 495
Pp 304
ISBN: 8170493307
Hardback

Blurb
The book pointing at the innovative forms of anti-India resistance from the militants with the foreign support and about the basic problems like unemployment, the compendium should contribute towards better understanding of the root causes of the problems in the North-east India.  Raising issues related to human conditions, the book also examines what happens to an individual when an abnormality like shutting down life by 6pm everyday in considered normal.  The book is, however, not only an exploration of what went wrong; perhaps it will also make natives ask where did we Nagas or Assamese go wrong.  It is also a people's history narrating incidents how the author escaped being caught in crossfire or survived the bomb blast.

Review
A candid expose of the North-east discard Organizer
This is a book about north-east India written on the basis of the author’s personal experiences as he was born in Nagaland and educated in Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya and is currently working as a journalist in New Delhi.

Cradled amidst the hilly wilds, the north-eastern end of India is famous for its pluralistic, multilingual and multi-racial character. The region is home to a number of ethnic communities - about 200 tribal and non-tribal groups living together and braving extreme odds. Mutual suspicion and rivalry abound between the tribes, the clans and even confusion abounds about the historical background. For tribals to tea estate managers, militants in this region have spelt terror. In 2003, a high-level delegation tells then Home Minister, LK Advani that terrorism in states like Tripura and Manipur had ceased to exist for any political cause. Advani tells a meeting of military officials that Tripura, a state with only three million people, has the highest rate of kidnapping for ransom and warns, "No businessman will ever invest here if such a situation continues to prevail."

Advani had a serious point to make with guns reigning supreme and panic gripping the fledgling tea industry where tribal guerrillas-with tacit support from Bangladesh-regularly went on rampage, killing and kidnapping tea-garden owners and staff in a bid to step up their extortion activities.