The Northeast Question PDF
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THE NORTHEAST QUESTION This book explores the idea, psychology and political geography of North- east India as forged by two interrelated but autonomous meta-narratives. First, the politics of conflict inherent in, and therefore predetermined by, physical geography, and second, the larger geopolitics that was unfolding during the colonial period. Unravelling the history behind the turmoil engulfing Northeast India, the study contends that certain geographies – most pertinently, fertile river valleys and surrounding mountains that feed the rivers – are integral and any effort to disrupt this cohesion will result in conflict. It comprehensively traces the geopolitics of the region since the colonial era, in particular: the Great Game; the politics that went into the making of the McMahon Line, the Radcliffe Line and the Pemberton Line; the region’s relations with its international neighbours (China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Nepal); as well as the issue of many formerly non-state-bearing populations awakening to the reality of the modern state. Lucid and analytical, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Northeast India, modern Indian history, international rela- tions, defence and strategic studies and political science. Pradip Phanjoubam is the Editor of Imphal Free Press and is based in Imphal, Manipur, India. He began his career as a journalist in 1986 as a sub-editor at The Economic Times, New Delhi. He has written exten- sively on affairs of the Northeast for many reputed publications, both in the mainstream media as well as academic journals. He was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (2012–14) at the time of writ- ing this book. This page intentionally left blank THE NORTHEAST QUESTION Conflicts and frontiers Pradip Phanjoubam First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Pradip Phanjoubam The right of Pradip Phanjoubam to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-95798-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-66141-4 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC For Ima and Pabung, who made this possible. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Introduction 1 1 G eography of conflict in the Northeast: rivers, valleys, mountains as integral regions 8 2 H istory of militarisation of the Northeast: search for a liberal response to radical civil unrests 31 3 E astern frontier of Northeast India: State and non-State 67 4 I nner Line as Outer Line I: making of the McMahon Line 108 5 I nner Line as Outer Line II: the Empire and its colony 135 6 L inguistic nationalism versus religious nationalism: Partition trauma and the Northeast 159 7 Conclusion: in the end is the beginning 195 Bibliography 211 Index 215 vii This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION This book was written during a fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, during 2012–14, and I express my sin- cere gratitude to the institute for accepting my proposal to research on what I call the birth pangs that went into the evolution of the idea of the Northeast region of India. I have chosen to focus on the seeds that shaped the tumultuous modern history of the region and not on its current myriad crises. On the latter, a reasonable amount of scholarly literature is already available. I have, instead, tried here to study the less-explored areas of the influences the geopolitics of the time – in particular, the Great Game – had in the shaping of the Northeast, its physical features as well as its psychol- ogy. In this exploration, my approach is, to a great extent, informed by the popular theory that geography and politics are vitally linked. The axiom I build my argument on, as outlined in the first chapter, is that certain geographies – in this case, those of contiguous mountains and the river valleys below them – are integral, and any attempt to disrupt or dismember this integrity will result in political unrests and even deadly frictions. I have also tried to show how from the time the British entered Assam in 1826, the approach to the Northeast has been one of evolving mechanisms for administering a frontier in which large tracts of territory were allowed to remain beyond the ordinary reaches of law, and simply as un-administered buffers. This legacy lives on to a great extent. Another point I insist consistently on throughout this book is that the Northeast cannot be understood solely within the parameters of Indian nationalist historiography, which zealously expect every historical urge and aspiration occurring within the geographical territory of the nation to be explained as emanating from intrinsic reasons born within the national boundaries only. That is to say, Peter J. Taylor’s ‘the State as a container, from which nothing spills out, and conversely, nothing from outside spills in’, as Taylor himself notes, is no longer enough in defining a nation and its 1
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