The new book by Subir BhaumikSince post-clolonial India has been ever willing to create new statesor autonomous units to fulfill the aspirations of the batting ethnicities, the quest for an “ethnic homeland” and insurgent radicalism as a means to achieve it has become the familiar political grammar of the region.
So insurgencies never peter out in the Northeast, even though insurgent do. Phizo faded away to make way for a Muivah in the Naga rebel space, but soon there was a Khaplang to challenge Muivah. If Dasarath Dev walked straight into the Indian parliament from the tribal guerrilla bases in Tripura, elected inabsentia, there was a Bijoy Hranghawl to take his place in the jungle, alleging CPM betrayal of the tribal cause. And Hranqkhawl called it aday after ten years of blood-letting, there was a Ranjit Debbarma and Biswamohan Debbarma, ready to take his place. Even in Mizoram, where no Mozo rebel leader took to the jungles after the 1986 accord, smaller ethnic groups like the Burs and the Harms have taken to armed struggle in the last two decades, looking for their own acre of greengrass.
Throughout the last six decades, the same drama has been repeated, state after state. As successive Indian government tries to nationalize the political space in the Northeast by pushing ahead with mainstreaming efforts, the struggling ethnicities of the region continued to challenge the ‘nation-building processes’, stretching the limits of constitutional politics. But these ethnic groups also fought amongst themselves, often as viciously as they fought India, drawing daggers over space resources and conflicting visions of homelands.
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