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India-Myanmar :Their North-Eastern connection |
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The visits to General Maung Aye, the Myanmarese military chief and his high-profile delegation, and that of the earlier visit of the low-profile home minister, assume significance. Indians and Myanmarese have had historic links. the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah did in lonely exile in Yangon and more recently, the Indian National Army of Subhash Chandra Bose marched through Myanmar’s hills had plains, with the Japanese, in an effort to liberate India. But what many do not remember is an event in the 13th century which changed the face of North-East India as we know it.
A princely member of the Shan community, at the trijunction of China’s Yunnan province, Myanmar and northern Thailand, moved his ancestral kingdom with his followers and travelled to Assam, over the Patkai Range. This was the coming of su Ka Pha, the first jking of the Ahom dynasty which was to rule Assam for about 600 years, until the British overthrew the last Ahom king. There was a Myanmarese cause for the end of the Ahom kingdom : the Ahoms were defeated and devastated by Myanmarese invasions at the start of the 19th century. They appealed to the British for help. The British gave a lending hand and added Assam, with its great and rich valley and verdant forests, as the last jewel to the British Crown. The defeated Myanmarese renounced all claims to Assam through the Treaty of Yandaboo of 1826.
Over the past years, India has had a tacit understanding with the military side of the administration in Myanmar. Essentially, this involved limited cooperation aimed at curbing the activities of insurgent groups in the region and based in Myanmar. These have included both factions of the National socialist Council of Nagaland, the United Liberation Front of Assam and a few Manipuri factions. Myanmar has been the historic link for the North-east insurgents and china : T Muivah walked across the Myanmarese jungles to Yunnan in 1964 with the first band of Naga guerrillas.
In his footsteps followed the Mizos. The China connection was officially snapped in 1976 but recent disclosures show that the contacts are alive. While India toned down its public anti Myanmar rhetoric in the 1990s, it also actively sought Myanmarese help in combating the North-east insurgents. One of the first major cooperative strikes was a pincer forces and the Myanmarese army a few years ago, when they moved against a joint group of the NSCN, ULFA and the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur on the Indo-Myanmarese border.
But the bonhomie was shortlived : the announcement of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award to Mrs Suu Kyi ended further cooperation and influeriated the Myanmarese. But quiet contacts over the years involving former defence secretary NN Vohra and then more visits by the former Army Chief Ved Malik (two in 2000 alone) and a recognition by New Delhi that mere moral and political support (and to a degree, material backing) to “pro’democracy” forces was marginalising whatever role India could have in its large neighbour.
One major consideration was the huge influence that China yields in Myanmar not only is it the largest trading partner, but large numbers of Chinese have moved into northern Myanmar over these past years, predominantly as traders and businessmen. It is the biggest supplier of arms to Yangon and was a political ally during the time of international ostracism when the world sunned Myanmar because of its crackdown on democracy and human rights and its tolerance of poppy cultivation and heroin production.
That is why Gen. Maung Aye’s visit assumes great importance for it indicates that, however tentatively, Myanmar is now trying to tread a middle path between the Asian giants.
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