The roots of insurgency in Northeast India have manifold connections with the history and geography of the region. Before the colonial state made inroads into this region, a relationship of friendship and familiarity largely prevailed among its people. There was constant and continuous crisscrossing across the geographical boundaries that resulted in the creation of numerous oral narratives of human encounter. Thus, ethnic ties transcended political boundaries imposed by the British regime upon what they considered a ‘hinterland’—large swathes of unexplored terrain inhabited by people aloof from the notion of civilization. With later developments like the demarcation of boundaries through administrative categories like hills, plains, inner line, outer line, frontier, trans-frontier, reserves etc., inter-ethnic tensions got heightened. Earlier, friction between the different ethnic communities was confined mostly to the overlapping of spatial domains. Once the boundary-making exercises caught pace, the ethnic ties of friendship weakened for the worse. Thus, the first seeds of identity politics were sown. Boundaries were drawn up arbitrarily to convert an entire geography into a frontier zone.
For the British, nothing was more important than marking their presence and legitimacy over a huge geographical expanse through territorial demarcation. What they saw in the Northeastern region of India was an immense economic potential, which they decided to tap before anyone else given the fact that the region acted as an international crossroad. What followed next was a series of meticulous exercises aimed at transforming the crossroad into a colonial ‘resource’ frontier. New routes were created and traditional routes were cleared to make way for increased surveillance of indigenous communities. Cartographic expeditions under the supervision of Political Officers or Agents were carried out into the deep reaches of the territory. There are instances of officers heaving insults to Naga people demanding at gunpoint that they carry their luggage and provisions during these expeditions. When plantations were opened and were subsequently extended up to the foothills, restrictions on the movement of people ensued as traditional routes were brought under the jurisdiction of the British. This is just one of the many examples by which the British appropriated the territory and enacted policies in their favor. An implicit feeling of hostility was brewing in the native population against the settlers, for the British were in a mission to annex every inch of the land, even those that served as traditional hunting grounds for the tribesmen. At the same time, Christianity was fed to them as a sort of civilizing grace. The colonial framework that was adopted for Northeast India by the British was inherently capitalist in design and exploitative in nature. The genesis of armed struggles in Northeast India dates back to colonial times, when events like the Kuki Rebellion of 1917 broke out against forceful colonial labour corps. Gradually discontented woes swept the entire landscape and the indigenous communities came to be fuelled by antipathy towards the British. As such, anti-colonial attacks were mounted on the British such as those in Kohima and Khonoma. The final result of the battles might have favored the British, but the spirit of resentment and anger in the so-called ‘savage’ could not be crushed.
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The haunting presence of a colonial past hindered the all-embracing acceptance of belonging to an Indian nation-state when the baton of power traded places. In the elected political representatives from the Indian mainland, Northeastern people saw a rebirth of the British. Although the actors have changed, the people see the postcolonial state as bequeathing the same colonial legacy. To provide for the workforce during the expansion of railroad into and within this territory and also an informal labour force to till the wastelands, hordes of labourers were brought in from Mymensingh, Sylhet, Rangpur—now in Bangladesh. Migrants from the Chota Nagpur Belt were moved in to work for the tea plantations. Hence, there prevailed a climate of loss—of territories, of homelands, of spaces—to outsiders. The same could be said to have applied in the postcolonial era. Scholars have argued that today the colonial frontier is conceived primarily as a postcolonial ‘borderland’. The logic of ‘violence against violence’ has been the mainstay of postcolonial politics in the region. Time and again the loyalty of the people inhabiting this region has been questioned, on grounds of the assumption that they could forge alliances with enemy states. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a counter insurgency measure resting in the hands of the Indian nation-state has been employed to tame this suspect loyalty by use of force and bestowing politico-legal impunity to its stakeholders. Renaming of territories like the ones in Arunachal Pradesh with ‘Indianized/ Sanskritized’ varieties has furthered the incorporation of the multitude of ethnic communities into the fold of the singular category of Northeast India. Much of the insurgent movements have stemmed from such drills, as animated responses. On a side note, development projects in Northeast India never took place until very recently. The region has been ravaged by a high degree of poverty and unemployment. Coupled with these, there is a sense of emotional disconnect with the entity of mainland India. There also have been allegations of negligence on the part of the Indian nation to bring about growth and prosperity in this region. Those among the citizens who were disillusioned with the political machinations took to arms to protect the interests of the ‘sons of the soil’ and remove the non-native from the land. These are briefly the causal factors that led to the growth of insurgency in Northeast India. Subir Bhaumik, a journalist of international repute, has classified the types of insurgencies in Northeast India under the following categories :
- Insurgencies that are secessionist in aspirations.
- Insurgencies crying a separatist rhetoric but having autonomist aspirations, and thus can be co-opted.
- Insurgencies having separatist overtones but ultimately co-opted by the Indian state through sustained negotiations.
- Insurgencies with trans-regional dimensions that sought or found allies in mainland India.
- Insurgencies with pronounced autonomist aspirations aligned with tribal and ethnic concerns.
- Insurgencies that work as proxies of more powerful groups.
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