Has Rahul Gandhi's padayatra in Mizoram generated any excitement?
Congress leader RaGa visited Mizoram in mid-October 2023 for election campaign. People in rest of India might have forgotten that in 1966, PM Indira Gandhi bombed Mizoram capital Aizawl with IAF fighter jets. This is first and last time India used its fighter jets to bomb its own people. But people of Mizoram should not have forgotten that. Till the 1980s, the Indian military stoutly denied the use of air attacks in Mizoram in 1966. By 1967, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act was in force in the area that is now Mizoram.Equally disturbing part of anti-Mizo action by Indira Gandhi is creating of concentration camp (minus gas chambers) where suspected Mizo Liberation Front militants were camped. The military plan was to gather villagers from all over, and cluster them along the side of this road. These new, so-called Protected and Progressive Villages (PPVs), were nothing but concentration camps, minus gas chambers. This was called ‘regrouping of villages.’ Life here was tough: each res...