This book maps the evolution of India′s North East into a constituent region of the republic and analyses the perpetual crisis in the region since Independence. It highlights how land, language and leadership issues have been the seed of contention in the North East and how factors like ethnicity, ideology and religion have shaped the conflicts. It also throws light on the major insurgencies, internal displacements, protest movements and the regional drug and weapons trade in the region. It examines ′the crisis of development′ and the evolution of the polity before offering a policy framework to combat the crises. The book includes a large body of original data, documentation and field interviews with major players as well as stakeholders. It is an important reference resource for students of politics and international relations, especially for those involved in South Asian studies and conflict studies. It is also an informative read for decision-makers, bureaucrats dealing with the North East and those involved in counter-insurgency operations in the area.

Northeast India: A Place of Relations focuses on encounters and experiences between people and cultures, the human and the non-human world, allowing for building of new relationships of friendship and amity in the region. The twelve essays in this volume explore the possibility of a new search enabling a 'discovery' of the lived and the loved world of Northeast India from within. The volume employs a variety of perspectives and methodological approaches - literary, historical, anthropological, interpretative politics, and an analytical study of contemporary issues, engaging the people, cultures, and histories in the Northeast with a new outlook. In the study, the region emerges as a place of new happenings in which there is the possibility of continuous expansion of the horizon of history and issues of current relevance facilitating new voices and narratives that circulate and create bonding in the borderland of South, East, and Southeast Asia.

Contributed papers presented at the Seminar on Reorganization of North-East India since 1947 held in Feb. 1993.

This book brings together essays on North East India from across disciplines to explore new understandings of the colonial and contemporary realities of the region. Departing from the usual focus on identity and politics, it offers fresh representations from history, social anthropology, culture, literature, politics, performance and gender. Through the lens of modern practices, the essays in this volume engage with diverse issues, including state-making practices, knowledge production and its politics, history writing, colonialism, role of capital, institutions, changing locations of orality and modernity, production and reception of texts, performances and literatures, social change and memory, violence and gender relations, along with their wider historical, geographical and ideational mappings. In the process, they illustrate how the specificities of the region can become useful sites to interrogate global phenomena and processes — for instance, in what ways ideas and practices of modernity played an important role in framing the region and its people. Further, the volume underlines the complex ways in which the past came to be imagined, produced and contested in the region. With its blend of inter-disciplinary approach, analytical models and perspectives, this book will be useful to scholars, researchers and general readers interested in North East India and those working on history, frontiers and borderlands, gender, cultural studies and literature.

The book is a very detailed work on the relationship between movements for autonomy by indigenous peoples (the so-called ‘tribes’) and violence in Assam, in northeast India. The book addresses some of the reasons for the failure of ethnic conflict management and for the frequent emergence of violence in the region. In particular, the historical description of movements by the Dimasas, Misings and Bodos is well compiled and provides a good summary for the readers. At the same time, the work offers a good understanding of ethnic violence in contemporary India. The volume offers some new research data based on comparative analysis of different trajectories followed by three important movements among Assam’s ethnic minorities. While the pieces of the argument are based on the existing literature on ethnic violence and contentious politics, they are effectively connected to materials drawn from northeast India. Furthermore, the book raises significant concerns on the debates on crafting of decentralised institutions and executive opportunities that may facilitate ethnic accommodation thereby reducing the likelihood of such groups to pursue their goals through channels that are radical or extreme.

North-East India, comprising the seven contiguous states around Assam, the principal state of the region, is a relatively unknown, yet very fascinating region. The forest clad peripheral mountains, home to indigenous peoples like the Nagas, Mizos and the Khasis, the densely populated Brahmaputra valley with its lush green tea gardens and the golden rice fields, the moderately populated hill regions and plateaus, and the sparsely inhabited Himalayas, form a unique mosaic of natural and cultural landscapes and human interactions, with unparalleled diversity. The book provides a glimpse into the region’s past and gives a comprehensive picture of its physical environment, people, resources and its economy. The physical environment takes into account not only the structural base of the region, its physical characteristics and natural vegetation but also offers an impression of the region’s biodiversity and the measures undertaken to preserve it. The people of the region, especially the indigenous population, inhabiting contrasting environments and speaking a variety of regional and local dialects, have received special attention, bringing into focus the role of migration that has influenced the traditional societies, for centuries. The book acquaints the readers with spatial distribution, life style and culture of the indigenous people, outlining the unique features of each tribe. The economy of the region, depending originally on primitive farming and cottage industries, like silkworm rearing, but now greatly transformed with the emergence of modern industries, power resources and expanding trade, is reviewed based on authentic data and actual field observations. The epilogue, the last chapter in the book, summarizes the authors’ perception of the region and its future.

Contents: Vol. 1: Arunachal Pradesh, Vol. 2: Assam, Vol. 3: Manipur, Vol. 4: Meghalaya, Vol. 5: Mizoram, Vol. 6: Nagaland, Vol. 7: Sikkim, Vol. 8: Tripura

North East India is called nature’s gift to India. It is mountainous, thickly forested, nourished by massive rainfall, has massive rivers, has a diverse wildlife, inhabited a number of forest dwellers called tribes who cherished environmentalist ethos. The region has been experiencing environmental depletion which was a result of colonial policies, exploitation of its ecological and mineral resources, large scale trans-border immigration and settlement of people, establishment of the plantation industry through deforestation and the dependence of the dairy industry on grazing and other factors. This books depicts the precariousness of the environmental situation and traces the history and politics of such degeneration with a view to raise the consciousness of the people of the region towards their environment and save it from further aggravation.

This book discusses the untold story of North East India’s role during the Second World War and its resultant socio-economic and political impact. It goes beyond standard campaign histories and the epicentre of the Kohima-Imphal battlefields to the Brahmaputra and Surma Valley of Assam—the administrative and political hub of the region, where decisions on the allied war efforts were deliberated and effected right from the outset of the War. What happened in the entire region during the intervening years from 1939? What did the war mean for the people of Assam? How were resources from the region mobilized for the global war effort and how did people adapt, co-opt and survive during these tumultuous years? What was the response of the nationalist and provincial political leaders to the challenges and demands of war? How did the crisis of the 1942 war impact the region? First of its kind, this book investigates hitherto unanswered questions to offer an understanding of contemporary Assam and the North East, including discussions on the complexity of issues such as terrain, migration, taxation, profiteering, inflation, famine and food grain trade. With its lucid style and rich archival material, this volume will be essential for scholars and researchers of history, the Second World War, South Asian history, politics and international relations, colonial studies, sociology and social anthropology, and North East India studies as well as to the interested general reader.