The Northeast-In the Mainstream

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEEKLY A NOTABLE feature of the Guhati session of the A ICC was that the three main resolutions on the political, economic and international situations were all moved and seconded by leaders from Sikkim, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. This was done evidently to underline the fact that the people of these regions, who in the recent past were widely represented to have had reservations about accepting an 'Indian identity' had at last joined the Indian mainstream. Insurgency, talk of secession, etc, were all now only dim memories, and the old antagonisms between the people of these peripheral regions and the people of the rest of the country were supposed to have been washed off by the holy waters of the mainstream. It may be noted that leaders from Assam itself played a notably subdued role in the public deliberations at the AICC session, and the chief minister of Assam was content to function as the treasurer of the reception committee, leaving the more visible role of the chairman of the reception committee to the former chief minister of Nagaland and present president of the NPCC, Hokishe Sema.