Dear AAPSU leaders,

On the Chakma-Hajong issue, the way I see it, I see you as a _____ leader. I have deliberately left the blank unfilled, because I could not find, seeing the situation you are in, any apt word to fill to describe you.

Imagine a little kid trying to fight a bully in hand-to-hand combat, a bully that outmatches him in size and strength. Giving up is not an option for him, for what is at stake is his honour. Your heart goes out to the kid, for you know the inevitability of the outcome. You look like that kid to me. You look weak, not for want of courage but for lack of leverage. For your enemies are far mightier than you have assumed them to be.

The image of David taking on Goliath also came to my mind, but at least David could see and identify his enemy. He knew whom to fight, where to sling his stones. You don't know who you are fighting against. If you think your enemy belongs to a particular community, the reality cannot be farther from the truth. The enemy is, call it a system, if you may, that did not seek your consent when it decided to settle a refugee community in your backyard. 1964 is the year, to be precise.

Your forefathers were innocent. They were silent because they did not have the modern vocabularies to articulate the injustice shoved down their throats. Today you, the sons of your forefathers, can name it. It is called violation of rights of indigenous tribes - a basic and non-negotiable human right - that your land, forest and rivers belong to you. And your informed consent must be taken before anything is done in your land, including settling outsiders. No other person or agency can give that consent on your behalf, not even your elected representatives. When you say that, we know, you are not quoting something from the figment of your imagination. In human rights parlance it is called free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). That is an injustice that you carry, as sons of indigenous soil, in your heart like a scar that refuses to heal. On the contrary the scar is festering into wounds with the passage of time. And the world has not bothered to hear your story, glance at your scarred heart, much less offer a remedy.

I also thought of the image of Abhimanyu, single-handedly fighting against the legions of Kaurav sena in the battlefield of Kurukshetra. But at least, Abhimanyu knew how to fight his battle; he came learning the tactics of war from his mother's womb. You don't even know how to fight this battle. For the chakravyuh has been orchestrated in such a manner that, to the world, you look like the perpetrators, rather than the victims of human rights violations. For, all these years, you have been fighting the wrong enemy. And you yourself have to be blamed for the image you have created for yourself. It was natural for you to become apprehensive when the union government declared its intention to grant Chakma-Hajongs citizenship in India. That was the year 1972. Till now the refugees were like uninvited guests who had overstayed their welcome, and you thought they would go away one day. Now faced with the prospect of the guest becoming owner of your land, it was understandable that your tribal instinct took it as a threat. And it became, rightly so, an issue of identity and survival for you. For yours is not a lone story. The story has been repeated many a time throughout human history. It has a pattern to it where vulnerable and voiceless indigenous communities are marginalised, their rights trampled, and their land appropriated.

But then you staged a self-sabotaging act, the ghost of which you have not fully exorcised even today. Your 'quit notices' of 1994 might have been a misdirected and foolhardy act to push back against the powerful; an expression, you might call resentment, when your repeated pleas to solve the refugee issue fell on deaf ears of the central government. But in the eyes of the world you crossed a red line. To worsen the matter, around the same time, the state government tried to forcibly expel the refugees without following due process of law. It appeared to the world that you, in collusion with the state government, were trying to commit an unforgivable sin that verged on ethnic cleansing.

The National Human Right Commission and the Supreme Court of India had to intervene to avert a human tragedy. You may not agree, but that is how the narrative got set. You lost the war of narrative that you did not even know that was there, by default or design. The world did not look at your scar of grievances or hear your cry for justice. They looked at the other side and saw a stateless, defenceless community fighting for survival and for their rightful claim to belong to the state. As for the little kid fighting a bully, to the world it looked like an ogre wearing a green skin of xenophobia trying to gobble up its defenceless neighbour. For the kid was fighting the wrong enemy all this time. And the world does not hesitate to trample a weak and threat-issuing ogre. Even today, when you issue some kind of ultimatum, you only play into the very hands of your enemies.

By now, you must have got a hint of who your enemies are. They are forces that do not want the meek and weak to inherit the earth; the tribals to claim ownership of their own land. They smile in glee when indigenous tribes mourn having been dispossessed of their own land through aggression or official diktat, in the name of economy or national security. They are difficult to identify because they are faceless; they can take on the face of individuals, institutions or even the state. You see their face when the central government does not heed your demand for constitutional protection of your land. You see their face when your own state government uses all its might to dispossess one of your brother tribes of their ancestral land, rivers and forests to build a 13,000-megawatt monster dam, citing China angle.

By the way, does that remind you of the China angle they cited when Chakma and Hajong refugees were settled in your land? If you ever notice even if a hint of xenophobia creeping into your own feeling, sound the alarm bell, the faceless face is taking over your face too! Fight back. Fight back with all your might. For this is a fight for your human rights, and narrow is the way of its fight, that is to fight with a human heart, and a human face.

Maybe it's time for you to realise you cannot fight this bully in a hand-to-hand combat. You need to retreat, not to give up (for that is not an option, of course, for it's a matter of honour), but to regroup or re-strategise. You need to understand that you are weak in this fight (not for want of courage of course) due to the asymmetric nature of the fight. You must realise that you are fighting from a position of inherent structural powerlessness. So, maybe it's time you looked back and learnt from your forefathers. When they find themselves helpless before such structural inequality, when the enemies try to trample them through sheer lies and disproportionate violence, they would cry out, "Donyiekalangka," let truth prevail. It is not a mere cry of desperation, but a belief that for the weak truth is their last refuge and their only weapon. For truth has its own way of fighting its battle, and prevailing in the end.

The truth is: the Government of India unilaterally placed the Chakma-Hajong refugees on a protected tribal land (now called Arunachal Pradesh) with utter disregard for tribal rights, whatever the reason may have been - an act that can only be called gross violation of human rights. As a democratic nation, working under international obligation, it may have been India's duty to shelter persecuted refugees from neighbouring nation. And in keeping with principles of human rights, grant the refugees citizenship in due course of time. But can you justify one wrong deed by claiming that it led to one right thing? Can one righteous human rights deed be hidden in the garb of another human rights violation? Under which basic principles of international state responsibility are states permitted to fulfil their humanitarian duty to one group by burdening or dispossessing the recognised traditional rights of another group?

The Chakma-Hajong issue is entirely a creation of the central government's mishandling of an issue; let them take full ownership of that. If necessary let them bring out an Act, or amend the Constitution, to protect the indigenous rights of the tribals of the state. This will go a long way in remedying the gross historical injustice the Centre had perpetrated on its own tribal people guarding the frontiers of nation. As for stateless Chakmas and Hajongs still living as refugees in the state, they too have their genuine grievances against the central government. As human beings, they have fundamental human rights to belong to a state; their grievances must be remedied by the central government. It won't cost you, dear AAPSU leaders, a dime if you show magnanimity and extend sympathy to their condition, without compromising on your non-negotiable condition to not surrender an inch of your tribal land. After which, maybe then you can ask them (Chakmas and Hajongs in the state) whether it would be reasonable for them to expect the central government to protect the human rights of their community by committing human rights crime on another community. If so, will it not make them, at least in their intention, a part of the very system of which they themselves are victims?

Chakmas in the state at least have a voice; they have a strong and thriving diaspora, and the NHRC is standing rock solid with them. You don't even have a voice. When you issue ultimatum, it is not called a voice - it is called false bravado, the bravery of desperation. Maybe you need to learn to tell your story in a manner the world will understand, human rights commissions will extend their sympathies, the Supreme Court will find reasonable. True, the world is not fair, but it is not hopeless either; truth does prevail in the end.

From one of your brothers