I do not think, Sir, it is necessary for me to go into details. I do not think it is necessary. If the House wants to accept my statement, it is there for it to accept. But I do maintain that there are various kinds of hostilities. Fortunately, in the new set-up we have an opportunity to forget the past and to make a happy beginning, in the beginning of which the hill people have given us their assurance, and I am very glad that the Tribals Sub committee have gone as far as they can, to accommodate the wishes of those hill tribes. And the tribal people themselves, the hill tribal people themselves also have climbed down, if I may say so, to meet the wishes of the leaders of the Province. There is no question of keeping the hill tracts permanently in water-tight compartments. It is not good for them. It is not good for Assam, nor for the rest of India. That will not happen. The world is getting smaller and smaller every day whether you like it or not. India cannot isolate itself from the rest of the world, not can the hill tribes. And more so after all these hill tracts have been occupied by the various warring forces in the last global war. They are no longer inaccessible. Now ideas have penetrated the tracts, these mountainous tracts that were previously inaccessible. The position has completely changed. There is a new outlook. It is no good trying to think of the Naga as the eternal head-hunter. I wish people would read Haimendorf’s The Naked Nagas and try to understand these people even if they have not been to the Naga Hills. Let them understand what are the ideas that work behind the mind of the Naga. There are several books on these people. I know some of my friends think that just because these books happen to be written by non-Indians, they are worthless. That is a kind of attitude for which I have absolutely no use. There have been scientists, there have been anthropologists and various others who have written books, on the Assam hill tribes, and I would only wish that some of my friends had read some of them; and then they would have realised that the problems that my friend Shri Bardoloi and his colleagues have to tackle in the future are really immense, and I am indeed very glad that he has taken courage in his hands and he is confident the pattern of government, the pattern of administration that the sub-committee has recommended, while it may not be exactly all that he would like it to be, certainly gives him an opportunity to unite Assam, which in the past has been kept more or less in water-tight compartments. I would appeal to Members to be generous in what they say about the tribal people, to be generous to them and not think as if they were enemies of India. That seems to be the idea lurking in the minds of some here. They seem to think that they are going to get out of India and join Burma or join the communists or something like that. I am not pessimistic. Indeed, I am very optimistic about the future of Assam particularly if the Sixth Schedule, even with all its shortcomings, is operated in the spirit in which it should be operated, in a spirit of accommodation and in the real desire to serve the hill people of Assam, as our compatriots, and as people whom we want to come into our fold, as people whom we will not let go out of our fold and for whom we will make any amount of sacrifice so that they may remain with us.
