A unidimensional portrayal of issues with deep roots like the indigenous people’s movement will be an oversimplification. There is no doubt however a closer look at the matter is vital both from the standpoint of a more comprehensive understanding of natural justice as well as that of peace and conflict. Those in the Northeast, exposed as they are to the complex and competing claims to indigeneity in the ethnic milieu of the region certainly cannot overlook.
One of the central issues in a debate on this issue is, who exactly is meant by indigenous? Given the multiplicity of claims, many of them often in contradiction of each other, the need also is for moderation in arriving at an understanding of the word “indigenous”. Even as it stands today, the very definition who exactly is an indigenous person has been problematic even for researchers in the field such as Christian Erni. Is this person somebody belonging to a primitive or pre-modern economy? Is he or she a practitioner of traditional, animistic religion? Is he somebody who lives in the wild under no canopy of a formal economy or administrative structure, and therefore stateless in the modern sense? Is a person indigenous only because she is believed to be the original inhabitant of a land?
In all probability the indigenous person, or the popular understanding of such a person, has attributes of some or all of these, and is vulnerable precisely because these attributes are pitted against the encroachment of the modern economy and political system into their spiritual and physical spheres. But, it is quite obvious, each of these attributes are also accompanied by unresolved problems? Take the last postulate that an indigenous person is the original inhabitant of a place. Does this imply he evolved out of the soil and never moved anywhere else? Or is it just a question of his having arrived at their place of settlement earlier than later migrants?
Again, what about nomadic people? Do they cease to be indigenous because they have not evolved a stable, sedentary lifestyle and economy? This problem, as Erni notes in his introduction to the edited volume The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia is compounded in Asia where numerous groups contest to be classed as indigenous and the boundaries of indigeneity are necessarily nebulous, unlike in settler states like America where these dividing lines are much more distinct. Likewise, should indigeneity be defined by religious faiths and cultural norms? If so, should traditional people who have left behind their traditional faiths and cultures to adopt more formal and universal religions and lifestyles be treated as no longer indigenous or tribal? If social, economic and political standards are to be seen as a linear progress, and if being tribal is only a stage in this progression, this argument should hold.
This contest has been made even all the more complex in India because there is a notion of “Schedule Tribe” constitutionally defined, but this definition does not always adhere to the anthropological understanding of a tribe. The incentive structuring that comes along with this classification has also added more layers to the contest for primitivity, with more and more communities wanting to come under this category. Furthermore, this incentive structuring is also somewhat ensuring the perpetuation of this condition and psychology, encouraging in the process the false logic that being tribal is a genetic predicament, therefore cannot be altered by socio-economic status or politics.
The Northeast is indeed a testimony that the concept “indigenous” has to be moderated and made a little more flexible. Take just the case of Manipur where the traditional communities are Kukis, Nagas and Meiteis, although this would hold as good for other diverse societies like Assam. All these three indigenous communities claim to be “indigenous”, and by Erni’s definition, all would qualify regardless of belonging to the Indian Constitution’s Schedule Tribe list or not. Nagas and Kukis are classified as Schedule Tribes, not the Meiteis, but there is a growing section amongst the latter who too are seeking the status.
This musing on the volatility of the term “indigenous” is important for one more reason. If a genome study were to be done today, in all likelihood, all Meiteis, all Nagas or all Kukis may not even share the same ancestry even within their communities. Consider the valley dwellers the Meiteis. Many traditions, folklores and also semi-scientific studies by colonial writers have pointed out the valley has been a melting pot where different ethnicities descended and merged into a single identity since prehistoric times.
Besides the hill tribes, names of places in the valley also suggest they were early settlements of Pong (Shan), Kabaw (Kachin), Awa (Burmese), Khagi and Kege (Yunnan Chinese), Takhel (Tripura), Tekhao (Assam) etc. Yale professor James C. Scott vouches this population amalgamation was a prominent feature of his and Willem Scheldel’s “Paddy States” within the mountainous massif of upland South East Asia that they christened “Zomia”, to which Northeast and Manipur obviously would belong.
The valley dwellers today probably would have the DNA of all these different peoples. If these happened in the pre and proto-historical times, this indigenisation process continued into the historical period too.
This brings in another thought. If settlers come to colonise, as indeed modern settlers do, and instead of seeking to merge with the cultures of their host population and thereby indigenise, they try to marginalise and domineer over the existing indigenous cultures, the fear from the standpoint of the original populations, most of whom are small communities, is obvious. This also means that if the settlers come and seek to sink into the local milieu and ultimately indigenise, it is equally obvious why leniency must be what host communities must receive them with. This also often is not the case, and instead the reactions have tended towards xenophobic suspicion of any outsider. Th Northeast and Manipur needs to revisit these ideas for the sake of peaceful coexistence in the present and the future.
It may be worthwhile to note the insight a civil servant at the time of Partition, and one who self professedly was in love with the Northeast, Nari Rushtomji, in his book Imperilled Frontiers: “While, therefore, no community can remain static and while change is an imperative for a community’s healthy growth and development, it has to be ensured that the pace of change is adjusted to the community’s capacity to absorb such change without detriment to its inherent organism and essential values.”
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
