Opinion Ava Keishing
The Manipuri leader rose above ethnic and regional divides. It was a remarkable political life
Ava’s political career began in the 1950s, when he was elected as an MP from Outer Manipur constituency in the first general election (Archive)
They called him Ava, father. Rishang Keishing, who died on Tuesday in Imphal, was a father figure not just to the Tangkhul Nagas of Ukhrul, where he was born in 1920, but to entire Manipur, the state he served as chief minister four times. His political career began in the 1950s, when he was elected as an MP from Outer Manipur constituency in the first general election. He retired from active politics at the age of 94 in 2014, when his Rajya Sabha term ended.
Keishing started his political career in the Socialist Party and was one of the 12 party MPs in the first Lok Sabha. It is said his close friend, the legendary Assamese writer, Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya, who was a follower of Rammanohar Lohia, influenced Keishing to join the socialists. In fact, Bhattacharya’s celebrated novel, Yaruingam, is also a life-story of Keishing. In the post-Independence years, when the nationalities in the North-east were in a ferment, Keishing was the self-made Naga who believed in the promise of a secular, federal India that could accommodate its peripheries.
Bhattacharya’s novel looks closely at the parallel political streams that were emerging in the eastern hills of Assam, one that stressed on ethnic identities and differences and led to an armed separatist movement and the other that sought to build a politics around the idea of love and tolerance preached by the missionaries and Mahatma Gandhi.
Keishing represented the second strand. In a region where tribal identities mark political cleavages, Keishing was successful in carving a profile that rose above regional and ethnic identities. In the early 1960s, as the socialist movement disintegrated, he joined Nehru’s Congress.
For many years, Keishing was the political face of the Indian state as it fought the Naga insurgency, led mainly by another Tangkhul Naga, Thuingaleng Muivah. In a region where fidelity to party and ideology is fickle and negotiable, Keishing was exceptional in staying with the Congress. The steadfastness earned him respect from even his political opponents.
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