Review Of Sanjoy Hazarika's ‘Lal Thanhawla'

At the start of Sanjoy Hazarika’s new book, Lal Thanhawla is called away from the dinner table. It is dusk in Aizawl, the early spring of 1966. As a family sits down to eat, the elder son, Lal Thanhawla, is called out to a city embroiled in conflict. With Lal Thanhawla (Westland), Sanjoy Hazarika sets out to fill “a gap in the writing of India’s Northeast” and he does so with a man who began his life as “strapping, handsome”, a guitar and dance performer, and ended up being held behind barbed wire. Hazarika explains how he came to write what he calls a “biography of a state”.

The book is the result of over 16 months of research in national and state archives and libraries. From the National Archives, Nehru Memorial Library to the state records of Assam and Mizoram – all contribute to this biography that has the closeness of a family album and the detachment of a ledger with no emotional debt. It is testament enough to the author’s meticulous nature that such a premise does not sound unduly harsh for a genre that can so often feature hagiography.

The writing shines brightest when discussing the state’s troubled history. The mautam famine with its bamboo flowering and subsequent explosion in the rat population is summarised perfectly as “few rebellions in history have been triggered so directly by a natural calamity.” As the young men "stepped out of their homes in the dead of night, like ghosts”, the rebellion begins, but as Hazarika adds poignantly, legends can sour. With the government’s aerial bombardment and campaign of stringent action, the protagonist soon learns that imprisonment is only the beginning of one’s woes.

The second chapter, dealing more with history, sees a rapid progression from the ancient clan chiefs who ruled Manipur to the advent of British rule – and to the Lushai Expeditions – “The empire extracted retribution and ensured absorption.” Welsh and Scottish missionaries bring their alphabet and hymns to the region, and “their impact cannot be underscored enough.” Hazarika highlights their “regressive and illiberal approach” to local traditions. Their arrival changes “everything”, almost overnight. It is “nothing short of cataclysm.” He is unkind to the notion of a “hill Crown Colony”–“a dangerous oversimplification or even an obfuscation of complex issues”–dreamt up by “the sputtering embers and remnants of the British Empire and its fading hopes.”

A chapter devoted to the Accord captures the tension as government officials rush to sign the deal, as June in Delhi—the month chosen for a senior minister’s retirement–sees the last major confrontation. The threat made to the rebel chief is deftly described–“Laldenga had buckled under a threat.” When Rajiv Gandhi asks Thanhawla to serve under his new boss Laldenga, someone he cannot trust but believes himself to be the only man fit for the role, he is met with “That was the end of the argument”– there had been no argument at all. One man’s restraint, and the region was transformed. Hazarika draws attention to Thanhawla’s refusal to be a “spotlight-grabber” on the road to peace.

The later chapters deal with the personal. Hazarika’s sharpest observation is on the tobacco control campaign–derailed soon after Thanhawla leaves office–leading Hazarika to note that “leading from the front counts.” When he talks of Thanhawla’s wife–her commitment and strength as she stood by him during election campaigning–he offers no more than a reflection on her fortitude: “That takes commitment and toughness.”

The book does have punch. In the end what remains is a half-open door, and a man who has left them to themselves so that a bloodied hill country might be quiet. Isn’t the purpose of a biographer to make one remember? However, Hazarika goes one step further. He wants readers to remember not only who answered the knock—Lal Thanhawla, called away from the family dinner—but also the political crisis that brought it to his door.

The book leaves us with a dinner, cooling as the evening stretches out. There is an image of an open door, and a man who chooses to step aside so that his homeland may heal. It is a fitting conclusion to a biography that does not merely remember its beloved subject–it wants the reader to remember the lessons of those who came before. To stop, listen and think.

(Wani Nazir is the author of two collections of poetry: ‘…and the silence whispered’ and ‘The Chill in the Bones.’ He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education, J&K and writes prose and poetry in English, Urdu and Kashmiri.)