Disgruntled Geographies and Contested Connectivity in NorthEast India: Between Wireless and Wiremore

Abstract

Ethnic rumblings and cartographic discontent mark the neighbourly relations between India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar in the Northeastern borderlands of India. Paradoxically ethnic communities and religious groups celebrate “Shared heritages” of interconnected historical, ethnic, cultural, and religious ties in these borderlands. However, it is beyond denial that these time-tested connections are compelled to undergo “a trial by fire” in every day of the region in recent times. Taking the cases from the states of the region, the chapter would first, glean into the inherited cartographic spaces and the ethnic communities therein and the contemporary spillovers of the “Partition”, border-making exercises, and “othering” of people from across the borders. The discussion complicates the much celebrated “Peace” and projected Democracy in the state of Mizoram vis-a-vis the continued ethnic angst towards the Chakma, the Bru, the Chins/“Burma mi”, and other minorities in the self-declared “Ideal Zo Christian State”. The discussion evaluates the questions of Connectivity propelled by the gaze of Act East Policy by construing the policy imaginations and juxtaposing them with rumblings from the fields of implementations taking the case of the movement of commodities and materials “to, through and from” the region and elsewhere. We re-look into the questions of human security amidst the webbed trend of “ethnic terrorism” and securitisation through the militarisation of these borderlands and the creation of what I call the “disgruntled geographies” of South Asia. The discussions chart these everyday challenges that the three nations face in their vision to translate the aspirational issues of closer connectedness and the vexed issues of wireless and wiremore connectivity into an actuality in these borderlands.