We badly need the
Shillong Chamber Choir to sing us one of the multi-cultural songs they regale the world with and remind us all that is good about the hill station. Yes the aimless walks, the golf, the pristine lake and the picnic woods that made it the Scotland of the East, a colonial moniker it can now do without as it has developed its independent character. It has been peaceful all these years and has been accommodating of every outsider that has sought solace in its salubrious environs. So with authorities extending curfew in the Meghalaya capital as violence continued in tension-hit areas, one wonders if indeed a hyper-local issue has been allowed to gather momentum and draw attention to something in the hope that it could become politcal fodder. Perhaps Chief Minister Conrad Sangma is not entirely wrong when he said that extraneous elements were involved in stoking the violence between Khasi tribals and settlers and generating a wave of rumour-mongering. The tribal-settler conflict is not new to the hills, especially in these parts of the Eastern Himalayas, the mainland businessmen colonising the economy with locals as minority stakeholders, the latter pushed to holding up folk insignias and culture bazars.
