The Northeast ethnic cauldron is known for boiling over routinely. This is only to be expected though, for even long before the arrival of modern administration brought by the British, this cauldron has always had a mix of “state carrying populations” and “non-state” tribesmen, resulting in a unique internal friction so well characterised by James C. Scott’s in his book Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchic History of Upland South East Asia. Much of the ethnic turmoil the region is witnessing today is a continuation and sometimes complications of this tension within.
As the non-state tribesmen wake up to the reality of the modern state and begin aspiring for one for themselves, they find their statehood already defined. Much of the insurgencies in the region, as well as the ethnic rivalries, are consequences of this unsettled identity question. The current ethnic violence in Manipur between the Kuki-Zo tribes and the Meiteis has elements of this though there were also other immediate triggers. That the Union and state governments have not done enough to resolve the crisis seven months into it, is another story.
Demonstrated in this unfolding drama is also the contention that identity is fluid and dynamic, and not by any means static or fixed. Identity, like so many attributes of the human story, is fiction. It has all to do with choosing to belong to one story or the other story of peoplehood and nationhood. As Yuval Noah Harari points out in Sapien: A Brief History of Humankind and much before him by another scholar Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities, humans have this unique ability to tell stories and on the basis of these stories unite to build communities.
This capability came apparently after the Cognitive Revolution humans went through 60,000 or so years ago, brought about by certain evolutionary neurological changes in the human brain circuitry, giving them the ability to create and understand symbols. From this viewpoint, community identities are not intrinsically determined, but depend on the ideas of community built and internalised by groups of people. Obviously, these stories can be accommodative or exclusive, and accordingly, identities can expand and grow, or else narrow down and rigidify.
The Treaty of Yandaboo 1826, by which the British ended the Burmese occupation of Assam by direct intervention, and in Manipur by indirect assistance, marked the start of the colonial era in the region. British Assam which then was the entire Northeast except for the kingdoms of Tripura and Manipur, came under the British and was merged with Bengal. Manipur was allowed to remain as a protectorate state.
From the start, expectedly, the pattern of British administration in Assam reflected the challenges of dealing with this mix of state and non-state communities. The plains of Assam which were already familiar with the centralised bureaucracy of a state were therefore much easier for the British to handle, unlike the non-state spaces where the authorities of each village, tribe and clan did not run beyond each’s closed communities. Hence, while the British introduced normal land revenue administration in the plains, they left the surrounding hills either unadministered, and after the Government of India Act 1919, as “Excluded” or else “Partially Excluded” areas.
The scant importance the British administration initially gave the region after their takeover in 1826 is also evident from the fact they withdrew most of their regular troops from there not long after the Burma debacle. In 1835 however, when the tea experiment by the Bruce brothers began meeting with phenomenal success, a British civil officer E.R. Grange conceived of the idea of raising a civil militia “less paid than the military, better armed than the police” to aid the British administration. This was the Cachar Levy and it met British needs well. Three years later the Jorhat Militia was also raised, but soon merged with the former. In the years ahead it came to be known by different titles depending on where they were posted. One of the incentives given to these militiamen, was that those who performed well would be absorbed in the Indian Army’s Gurkha Rifles and in time they became a fertile nursery for the latter. During World War 1, the original five battalion of this militia sent a total of 3174 soldiers and 23 Indian officers (now known as JCOs) to the Gurkha rifles for duties in Europe. For this contribution, at the end of the war, the unit came to be redesignated formally as a paramilitary force and rechristened the Assam Rifles.
The two world wars had great impacts on the identity churnings in the Northeast. World War 1 experience was especially interesting for the contrasting ways it initiated identity formation amongst the Naga and Kuki tribes. The British administration raised a Labour Corps from among these tribesmen to be taken to Europe, however, while the Nagas cooperated, the Kukis in Manipur refused to be enlisted leading to what British chroniclers describe as the Kuki rebellion lasting 1917 to 1919. The delay in subduing the rebellion is generally attributed to the Assam Rifles sending away practically all its fighting force to the war in Europe. Indeed, the rebellion ended as the war in Europe concluded and troops returned. Nonetheless, this is an important chapter in the birth of a consolidated Kuki identity.
The Naga story is even more intriguing. Disparate Naga tribesmen who enlisted in the British Labour Corps discovered in Europe that they were treated as one and also different from even other Indians. As Naga author Charles Chasie writes in his book, The Naga Memorandum to the Simon Commission 1929, they returned enlightened by their experience in Europe and with the help of sympathetic British officials, formed the Naga Club in Kohima in 1918 to work for unity and friendship amongst Naga tribes and their message soon spread to the administered areas of Assam’s Naga hills first, and beyond in time. In 1929, the memorandum they submitted to the visiting Simon Commission is today considered an important marker of the rise of Naga nationalism. Among others, they told the Commission that Nagas were not Indians.
This is the mystique of the identity question. It does look simple and straightforward but it has also been behind some of the most bitter and bloody conflicts in history.
This article was first published in The New Indian Express. Original can be read HERE
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
