PA Sangma, Northeast's biggest national leader, will be missed

Purno Agitok Sangma was a man who kept national interest above his personal interests and political gains.

While following him for around three days during the election campaign trail in Arunachal Pradesh in 2009, we interacted on several subjects. When I asked him if “his stand on Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin” was the biggest mistake of his political career, he justified by saying that his stand was in the national interest, not just a cultural issue, as many politicians and political parties made it out to be.

In his paternalistic, yet measured words, he recalled becoming the Union minister of state (home affairs) in 1984, when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister, only to be moved into another ministry shortly thereafter.

"It was perhaps in the nation’s interest to shift me away since situations were fragile," he said and added that the Union government had genuine reasons to be wary of leaders from the Northeast since it was around that time that the Assam Accord (signed in 1985) was being hammered out and the Mizo Accord was in the offing (signed in 1986).

Sangma will be remembered as one of the best Lok Sabha speakers of our time who oversaw the proceedings of the lower house of Parliament at a time when “then” his party, Congress, was going through a tumultuous transition; a rainbow Third Front and its leaders were wriggling to come to terms with its new-found political power and the BJP was gaining momentum. It wasn’t an easy task inside and outside the floor of the House, as he made it out to be, with a smile on his face.

In ascending the chair of the Lok Sabha speaker, Sangma emerged as the mascot of the Mongoloid race, when the dominant Aryan race bought peace with the Dravidians by allowing the nation to have its first-ever non-Congress prime minister from the south of the Vindhyas since Independence in HD Deve Gowda.

As the speaker, Sangma effectively communicated in Hindi, broke the language barrier, demystifying the stereotypes about the Northeast region. He did it when the then prime minister, Deve Gowda wasn’t able to read or write the language of the majority.

He has been a political force on his own merit since the early 1980s when he held many portfolios as junior minister in the Union government. He spent many years grinding his teeth in state politics too as legislator and chief minister of Meghalaya.

Sangma, as a voice and face, stood out and stood for the region’s political aspirations and identity in the mainstream political battleground. He has been the biggest export from this politically insignificant eight per cent of India’s landmass, which has a miniscule 25 seats in Lok Sabha and nine seats in Rajya Sabha and represents only about 3.8 per cent of India’s population. In spite of odds, his rise sowed the seeds of hope and dream among 160 scheduled tribes and 400 sub-tribes of the region speaking more than 250 different languages.

In his demise, we have not only lost a political stalwart but a dreamer, a dream merchant who taught us – the people from the Northeast – the importance of national unity, yet was firm that within the framework of India’s Constitution tribal rights must be top on the agenda. He dreamt of tribal unity across India; talked of assembling and building a parliamentary institution called “NE Union” in line with the European Union (EU) to counter-balance the number games within the Parliament.

Is it possible? I asked him. "May be not possible in my lifetime, but it’s for the younger generations like you all to work on it; we must dream of it and work towards it," said Sangma.

To the youth of the region, Sangma was above and beyond political landscape. He was an agent of social change, a legend in his own rights.