Retrospection to the journey of armed struggle in NE region

There are always ups and downs in revolutionary movement in any nation across the world. At the moment the armed revolutionary movement in the North East part of India particularly in the state of Manipur has been reduced to a mere law and order problem from the perspective of the Indian government. But during 80s and 90s, it was the Indian army that has been deployed to suppress the insurgency movement by equipping them with the Special Powers- the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Had it been mere law and order problem, there is no reason for the then government of India to deploy Indian Army, which perhaps is one of the largest in the world. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the issue of the armed movement here in the region has been put up in the De-colonization committee of the United Nation and at the UN General Assembly by one of the revolutionary group –Revolutionary Peoples’ Front. The group also signed the article 3 of the Geneva Convention. Another rebel group – the UNLF had also put up the issues of the Manipur and the armed movement for restoration of its sovereignty twice to the forum of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the UN Indigenous Peoples’ Forum. Having known all the facts, the Indian government has been insisting that the armed conflicts in the region are just ‘Law and order problems.
Today the region sees the falls of the revolutionary movement in Manipur. What cause the falls of the movement has been highlighted in this newspaper’s editorial column of November 26. The interpretation of the write-up can be negative or positive for some groups. But it is the reality. However, it is just the falls and not the death of the movement. There hasn’t been a resolution or solution even as the movement has been presumed suppressed in the line that this column had highlighted. But what is needed to be understand is that this perhaps could be another warfare and the existence of the movement should be acknowledge by the Indian authority.
The founders of Marxism were also pretty well aware of the changing character of war. Engels in his introduction to Karl Marx’s – the Class Struggle in France: 1848-1850, written in 1895, mentions that history has shown that the mode of struggle is ‘Today obsolete in every respect’. And that the common form of all these revolutions was that they were minority revolutions.
On the other side Engels also said that conditions for insurrection have grown worse , that people would appear divided because the middle strata would never group round the proletariat.
What we see today is lack of appreciation to the movement from majority section as it is now virtually absent from the debates of the academia.
A retired Colonel of the Indian Army while speaking during a function in late 90s had stated that “if you know 50% of the strategy of your enemy you have won the war before striking at them”. During 2000s and till today several books on the revolutionary movement have been written. Several seminars had been held and several issues on the modus operandi of the movement had been held.
Media today have stopped discussing the issue of the armed revolutionary movement as reporting the line faces many obstacles from all sides. Except for pressure on what to report and what not to report, core issues of the movement have not been notice in the print media for a long time. But the world heard report of media being threatened creating a bad name to the revolutionary movement.