<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When it came to standing up for their common interests, Mizos showed they had no permanent enemies; only permanent interests when they all rose as one against the controversial Chief Electoral Officer(CEO) now removed, S.B. Shashank. Finally, the ECI, after vain attempts to smoothen ruffled feathers, relented to the one-point demand by removing the officer. Shashank was probably trying to do his job without realising that in a democracy of majority where even some things that are not totally right can be turned right; his dedication to duty went against the sentiments of the majority. Shashank had asked ECI to remove the Principal Secretary(Home) Lalnunmawaia Chuaungo on the ground that the latter officer, a local Mizo belonging to the Gujarat IAS cadre, had been interfering with the decisions of the CEO. Shashank had only tried to implement the ECI directive to allow Bru refugees to vote within the refugee camps where they were sheltered, inside Tripura. Mizos don’t really like Brus and certainly not inclined to give them voting rights to those who have been out for over 20 years after having fled Mizoram. Shashank had also requisitioned around 40 companies of central forces to be deployed for election duties and ensure peaceful polling. For the public, the requisitioning of so many armed personnel meant that elections in Mizoram were not peaceful. The Principal Secretary was certainly irked by the two orders from the CEO and reminded the officer not to bypass the home department. Taking affront to the reminder the CEO wrote to the ECI asking for removal of Chuaungo since the poll process was in danger of being disturbed by interferences. ECI removed Chuaungo and asked him to report to the ministry of home affairs. The Mizoram government including several influential NGOs and public rose up to protest the treatment meted out to a local officer who had only tried to act in the best interests of the majority community. Two decades ago, thousands of Brus fled to Tripura because of communal tension triggered by the murder of Lalzawmliana, a Mizo forest guard, near Persang hamlet inside the Dampa tiger reserve in Mamit district by suspected Bru militants on October 21, 1997. Brus say they had been mostly supporting the ruling Congress but the “anti-Bru situation is likely to see a change” in the government. Today, the Brus( from Myanmar) and Chakmas(from Bangladesh) are inclined to the BJP since the saffron party has offered better deal. Though a number of Bru families returned to Mizoram during repeated repatriation process, a sizeable number of families remained in Tripura. The recent conflict that concluded with ECI removing Shashank and now likely to appoint Mizo IAS officers from Mizoram as the next CEO; only shows that majoritarianism in India has become the means to even deny or deprive. It has the potential to damage democratic institutions in India where transporting cows or suspicion of eating beef could lead to lynching by ‘fringe elements’ from the majority community. However the Mizos are not wrong about their apprehension of Brus and Chakmas, who are non-Muslims. The Brus and Chakmas are therefore welcomed by BJP a party espousing majoritarianism and which is a threat to the indigenous people. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Majoritarian democracy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}