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14. J.B. Ganguly, 1987.
15. Census of India, series 21, Tripura.
Land, Language and Leadership 87
16. B.K. Hrangkhawl s several letters written to Chief Minister Nripen Chakrabarti
during 1984 87, quoted in Subir Bhaumik, 1996.
17. For details on the Sengkrak movement and the large-scale land alienation leading
to it, see Bhaumik, Insurgent Crossfire.
18. Press Trust of India, 5 August 1984.
19. Amrita Rangaswami, Mizoram: Tragedy of our Making , paper read at Queen
Elizabeth House, Oxford University, 12 October 1989.
20. Gunjanan Barua on behalf of the Assam Association in memorandum to chief
commissioner of Assam.
21. Anandaram Dhekial-Phukan, quoted in A.T.M. Mills, Report on the Province
of Assam (Calcutta: 1854).
22. As per the 1931 census, Assamese speakers numbered 19,81,369 or 42 per cent
of the population while Bengali speakers numbered 10,87,776 or 23 per cent of
the population.
23. Quoted in Sajal Nag, Roots of Ethnic Conflict: Nationality Question in North East
India (Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1990).
24. Bengal Government Proceedings, General Department, Order of the Lieutenant
Governor, 25 July 1873.
25. Speech in Bengali, Assam Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 1938 (pp. 67 71).
26. Atul Hazarika (ed.), 1957.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Purno Agitok Sangma, during a press conference at Guwahati Circuit House,
4 May 1996.
30. Text of the resolution reproduced in the Hindustan Standard (Calcutta), 11 July
1960.
31. Dharanidhar Basumatary, interview with the author, 17 August 1993.
32. Anadi Bhattacharya, 1987.
33. Balmik.Prasad Singh (Governor of Assam), 1987.
34. Ibid.
35. Mohan Choudhury, chief of the party s armed wing Shanti Sena in the 1950s,
in an interview with the author on 12 March 1992.
4 Insurgency, Ethnic Cleansing
and Forced Migration
ver since decolonization, India s North East has been scarred
Eby violent agitations, sustained separatist insurgencies, ethnic
riots and heavy-handed state response, all leading to considerable
bloodletting. The region has witnessed large-scale insurgent violence,
frequent fi ghting between militia factions representing different
ethnicities or competing for the loyalty of the same ethnic group
and the huge deployment of security forces on a sustained basis. The
consequent militarization has impeded the growth of civil society
and restricted the space in which it can thrive. Rampant violations
of human rights and use of terror by both state and non-state
actors, ethnic cleansing and extra-judicial killings have weakened
the political system and the social fabric and have led to substantial
displacement of populations.
It is unfair, however, to signpost this remote periphery as a region
of durable disorder , to see its angry youth through the prism of the
gun, guitar, girl syndrome. There are provinces in India s Hindi-
speaking heartland Bihar, Jharkhand or Chattisgarh where the
level of social and political confl ict and the activity of armed rad-
icals, especially the Maoists, are comparable to the North East. The
legislative instability in contemporary Uttar Pradesh is also com-
parable to that of smaller North Eastern states like Meghalaya, and
even parts of the cyber state of Andhra Pradesh are as backward
or poor as in the North East.
Insurgency, Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Migration 89
But the North East is surely the one area of post-colonial India
where the outbreak of insurgency has been more frequent than
elsewhere in the country and where recourse to armed struggle has
often been the first, rather than the last, option of a recalcitrant tribe
or a larger ethnic group. The prairie fires that began in the Naga
Hills and Tripura have continued to spread. Successive generations
of youth in the Naga and the Mizo hills, in Manipur and Tripura
and then in Assam, have lived under the shadow of the gun. Even the
once peaceful states of Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh have been
affected by recent violence perpetrated by homegrown insurgents
and/or by stronger rebel outfits from neighbouring states.
The insurgencies that have afflicted the North East during the last
50 years do not represent a stereotype and their similarities often
end with the factor of choice: the use of violence to attain stated
objectives. Very often, their goals are as much in conflict with each
other as with those of the Indian state. Although any typology of
the insurgencies of northeast India is unlikely to be adequate, they
can be broadly classified into six broad categories:
1. Insurgencies pronouncedly secessionist in aspirations the
Naga insurgency would fall in this category, though its leaders
are now seeking a negotiated settlement after being weakened
by several splits and military setbacks.
2. Insurgencies that are separatist in rhetoric but autonomist in
aspiration, thus can be co-opted most insurgencies in the
North East fit this category.
3. Insurgencies with separatist overtones but ultimately co-opted
by the Indian state through sustained negotiations the Mizo
insurgency is perhaps the only one in this category.
4. Insurgencies with trans-regional dimensions that sought or
found allies in mainland India the early Manipur PLA or
communist insurgents of Tripura in 1948 50 would fall into
this type.
5. Insurgencies with pronounced autonomist aspirations that
seek separate states or autonomous units for a particular tribe
or an ethnic group like the Bodo, the Dimasa, the Karbi, the
Bru or the Hmar rebel groups.
6. Insurgencies that work as satellites of more powerful groups
like the Dragon Force or the United Peoples Volunteers Army
90 Troubled Periphery
(UPVA) of Arunachal Pradesh which are small organizations
sustained by larger Assamese or Naga rebel groups and rarely
display any independence of action or articulation.
India has been able to control, though not end, these insurgencies
by a complex mix of force, political reconciliation, economic incen-
tives and by splitting the insurgents. I have argued that the post-
colonial Indian state did not follow Western colonial or post-colonial,
not even British models of counter-insurgency in the North East
except picking up some military concepts like the village regroup-
ing of Malaya. Rather it went by the precepts of the traditional
Hindu realpolitik statecraft, by the teachings of the great Kautilya
(also known as Chanakya) who advised India s first trans-regional
empire builder Chandragupta Maurya after Alexander s departure
from India.
Kautilya s four principles of Sham (political reconciliation), Dam
(monetary inducement), Danda (force) and Bhed (split) has been
amply applied in dealing with the insurgents of North East more
than anywhere else in post-colonial India.1
After the initial use of force has helped contain the insurgent move-
ments, the Indian state has been quick to offer political negotiations
(Sham) to talk the insurgents into settlements that offered substan-
tial autonomy (including separate states) and liberal doses of fed-
eral development funds (Dam). But if that did not work, India
has freely used its covert agencies to split the insurgents on ethnic,
religious or ideological lines to take the sting out of the separatist
movements (Bhed). Splits worked well as short-term strategy of
military containment but became an impediment when the Indian
state looked for a durable settlement with the insurgent movements.
Multiplicity of insurgent groups fighting over the same political space
have often created conditions of competitive radicalism groups
making impossible demands on the state just to outgun rivals within
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