Abstract
India’s Northeast consists of the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura—known popularly as the ‘Seven Sisters’—and Sikkim—the last to have become a member of the North Eastern Council. The colonial and early postcolonial policy of governing the region by settling ‘nomadic’ and ‘unruly’ groups in clearly marked-out spaces they could claim as their ‘homeland’ has led to a history of bloodbath and homelessness in the region. On the other hand, the new policy of trumping conflicts by development pursued since the 1990s has triggered off many an anomaly and contradiction, particularly in recent years. Officially initiated peace processes hardly take into account the hitherto existing locally based micro-traditions of peace and coexistence. These traditions continue to make living in ethnically mixed villages and neighbourhoods possible. The introduction focuses on the three issues of insurgency, development and culture in the region through the lens of governance.
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Notes
- 1.
A term used freely both in official circles and in popular parlance in India without any of its necessarily pejorative connotations.
- 2.
A schedule of tribes entitled to enjoy seats and posts reserved respectively in State-run or State-aided educational institutions and government offices is officially maintained as per the provisions of the Constitution of India.
- 3.
The otherwise spread-eagled map of Assam is usually classified in popular parlance into ujani or upper Assam and namoni or lower Assam. As one moves from the west to the east across Assam, one slides down towards the so-called ‘Indian mainland’. The district of Nagaon is where upper Assam is said to merge into lower Assam.
- 4.
- 5.
The Inner Line is a continuation of the old colonial policy of drawing a line separating basically the hill tribes from the people living in the plains. While the colonial policy was intended to protect the ‘subjects’ living primarily in the plains, official policy in post-colonial India is the other way around—intended more to protect the hill tribes, their land, language, culture and tradition from the migrants from those of the plains.
- 6.
The Sixth Schedule was added to the Constitution of India on the recommendation of a sub-committee appointed by the Constituent Assembly and headed by Gopinath Bardoloi. Also known as Bardoloi Committee, the Committee recommended, among other things, the establishment of separate Autonomous District Councils in the tribal-inhabited areas of the Northeast. As per the recommendation of the Subcommittee, the Schedule provides for the establishment of autonomous district councils having the authority of making and implementing laws on such subjects as land and customary laws, etc., listed there and managing tribal affairs in a way relatively independent from the state legislature that is likely to be overwhelmed by the dominant ethnic and linguistic majority in the state.
- 7.
In 1980, a series of riots between the numerically dominant Bengalis and the tribes rocked parts of Tripura. According to unconfirmed sources, the riots of Mandai in 1980 alone accounted for about 3,000 lives.
- 8.
Assam witnessed one of the worst riots in early 1983 Ethnic militants claiming to represent dominant Assamese majority and a section of the indigenous people on one hand and the Bengali-speaking immigrants on the other. The Nellie riots, as they were called, took a toll of about 1,700 lives in just less than a day according to sources.
- 9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raza_Academy accessed on 9 February 2013.
- 10.
Adorno and Horkheimer (1993) of the Frankfurt School coined the phrase in order to understand the process of ‘standardization and mass production’ of culture. Similarly, peace has become an object of standardization—as we will see in Chap. 4—and is meant for ‘mass production’ with devastating consequences for cultures of peace already existing in the society.
- 11.
The Gujarat violence of 2002 refers to a series of incidents starting with the burning of a train in the hamlet of Godhra and the subsequent communal violence between Hindus and Muslims that followed it. According to an official estimate, 1,044 people were killed in the violence—including the ones killed in the Godhra train fire. Another 223 people were reported missing, 2,548 injured, 919 women widowed and 606 children orphaned. The unofficial death toll however estimates it to be close to 2,000.
- 12.
For an elaboration of this point, see Das (2007).
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Das, S.K. (2013). Governing India’s Northeast: An Introduction. In: Governing India's Northeast. SpringerBriefs in Political Science, vol 13. Springer, India. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1146-4_1
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