Abstract
North East India has become a major concern for the country today. Geographically, the region is largely isolated; politically, the region has become a haven of multiple identity movements and militant separatism; and culturally, it is highly diverse which altogether makes it very difficult and complex (for anyone) to study and understand the region.
The author includes rich historical debates that cover more than a hundred years, attempts to disseminate the root of regional problems and tries to construct coherent arguments with two important cases of Assam and Nagaland. The book contains essays and commentaries written over three decades, which dwell on critical nation-state relations, challenges of nation-building in India, the rise of secessionism in the region and finally the repressive state mechanism of the country. The last factor makes engagement futile by producing only ruptures, conflicts and ethnic tensions in the far corners of India’s North East. The core of this study lies in the duality of the role of the Indian state that had, through its policy of repression and negotiation, embarked on a journey of experience which the author refers to as ‘India’s North-East Experience’. This journey for him involves redrawing parameters of the Indian state and redefining the idea of nationalism itself. To support his arguments, the author highlights the role of civil society in conflict situations and how it continuously encounters a challenge of negotiating between the state and its armed opponents. The case studies of Assam and Nagaland that were chosen to understand this complex interface between the state mechanism and the ethno-nationalist movements of the Nagas and the Assamese are indeed critical to understand the region. While the Naga hills were largely unadministered during the colonial rule and its inhabitants did not form a part of the freedom struggle led by Gandhi and the Congress, Assam was indeed an active participant in the struggle for independence and was well integrated into British India, while at the same time being an integral part of what may be termed as the Indic civilisation. However, the valid question that the author raises is how Assam with its centuries-old relationship with the Indian subcontinent could imagine militant movements against the state, giving rise to secessionist overtones in the region. To answer this, the author critiques the role of the Indian state by suggesting that the power of Assam (as one state of the Indian union) had been drastically reduced due to carving out of many states from it. Further, this had the reverse impact on the financial and political autonomy of the state which ultimately depended on the Centre for its sustenance. This added to the historical confrontation between the Assam government and New Delhi during the immediate settlement of Hindu refugees in Assam from the newly created East Pakistan soon after independence. The issue of illegal influx of Bangladeshi migrants to the state ultimately brought not only demographic changes but also sour inter-group/community relations in the state. This resulted in the formulation of the notion of citizens’ rights of indigenous people and the question of ‘insider and outsider’ sharing the same territorial and political space. In my opinion, this discussion has left many more questions unanswered on land, territoriality and problems of governance/administration that need further exploration and discussion.
The case of the Nagas, on the contrary, is more complex and the people’s movement against the state is growing stronger, even today. Their demand has been based on the uniqueness of their history—that the Nagas had not become a part of India either by conquest or consent. An attitude of security concerns, like the security-oriented approach towards the entire north-eastern region, was expressed when the Nagas demanded for self-rule in the region. The Naga movement was treated merely as the issue of law and order problem and blanket powers were given to the armed forces that ultimately gave rise to the violations of human rights. This is evident in the imposition of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) of 1958 to tackle the growing insurgency in Nagaland, and then in Mizoram and Manipur. The irony is that the Government of India is quite convinced that the insurgency in the borderland needed extraordinary measures and that the laws meant for the rest of the country are not sufficient to deal with the situation in the North East region.
Furthermore, the excessive insistence of the state to ‘integrate’ and ‘absorb’ the North East into the Indian ‘mainstream’ could not bear much fruit. The clash of cultures (which continues today) remains a bigger hindrance to the process of nation-building in the country. Thus, the presence of these people from the margins in the heartland of India and their demand that they be treated as equal citizens of the country pose a challenge to all those who have long been accustomed to seeing only the dominant version of Indian culture. This perhaps is not only the root cause of every alienation and social discrimination that we encounter but also the state’s failure to implement effectively the constitutional rights of the minorities or the indigenous people at large, for only in such acceptance lies the future health of the Indian polity and that is exactly what the author is indicating in this book.