In a macabre replay of Partition, trains bearing refugees are running again. But in a tragic twist of history, 65 years after Independence the refugee trains are running within India. The violence that erupted in Assam between Bodo tribals and Bangladeshi migrants has spread to other parts of the country in a backlash against people from the northeastern states. Thousands of workers and students from the northeast are fleeing in fear of their lives from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.
The flight reportedly has been created by rumours spread through social network sites that there will be reprisals against northeasterners for the continuing conflict in Assam. Though the authorities in the states concerned have assured the safety of all citizens, panic has spread like bushfire.
The fire needs to be put out immediately by taking pre-ventive law enforcement measures against disorder and simultaneously snuffing out mischievous rumours through the legitimate use of censorship and by pursuing those found guilty of scare-mongering.
It is not just citizens from one region of the country who are imperilled today; what stands in danger is the idea of India, the ideal of the Republic. Much before the European Union was thought of, India founded a common economic and political market in which all its citizens could be stakeholders, free to seek life, liberty and the pursuit of livelihood in whichever part of the Republic they chose to do so.
Over the years, the resistible rise of the vote-bank politics of regionalism, and caste and creed identity, has sought to undermine this fundamental ideal of the Republic. What is happening in Assam today, and the repercussions being felt in other parts of the country, together constitute as great, if not a greater, security threat to the integrity of India than any act of terrorism or military aggression from an outside adversary. Today, India is engaged in a struggle with itself, with its identity of oneness under the tricolour, flying high and proud against an indivisible sky.
The Republic will weather this storm, as it has many others in the past, and as it will survive those to come. It will survive because the opposite is not an option. "If India lives, who dies; if India dies, who lives?" said the Mahatma during the birth pangs of the Republic. His words today are both a challenge and an indomitable inspiration to all Indians, everywhere. Unitedly inspired, let's unitedly rise to the challenge, in both the public sphere and in our own hearts and minds.
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