Table Of ContentTHE NORTHEAST QUESTION
This book explores the idea, psychology and political geography of North-
east India as forged by two interrelated but autonomous meta-narratives.
First, the politics of conflict inherent in, and therefore predetermined by,
physical geography, and second, the larger geopolitics that was unfolding
during the colonial period. Unravelling the history behind the turmoil
engulfing Northeast India, the study contends that certain geographies –
most pertinently, fertile river valleys and surrounding mountains that feed
the rivers – are integral and any effort to disrupt this cohesion will result in
conflict. It comprehensively traces the geopolitics of the region since the
colonial era, in particular: the Great Game; the politics that went into the
making of the McMahon Line, the Radcliffe Line and the Pemberton Line;
the region’s relations with its international neighbours (China, Bhutan,
Myanmar, Bangladesh and Nepal); as well as the issue of many formerly
non-state-bearing populations awakening to the reality of the modern state.
Lucid and analytical, this book will be of great interest to scholars and
researchers of Northeast India, modern Indian history, international rela-
tions, defence and strategic studies and political science.
Pradip Phanjoubam is the Editor of Imphal Free Press and is based in
Imphal, Manipur, India. He began his career as a journalist in 1986 as
a sub-editor at The Economic Times, New Delhi. He has written exten-
sively on affairs of the Northeast for many reputed publications, both in
the mainstream media as well as academic journals. He was a Fellow at the
Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (2012–14) at the time of writ-
ing this book.
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THE NORTHEAST
QUESTION
Conflicts and frontiers
Pradip Phanjoubam
First published 2016
by Routledge
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© 2016 Pradip Phanjoubam
The right of Pradip Phanjoubam to be identified as author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
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identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
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ISBN: 978-1-138-95798-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-66141-4 (ebk)
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For Ima and Pabung, who made this possible.
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CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 G eography of conflict in the Northeast: rivers,
valleys, mountains as integral regions 8
2 H istory of militarisation of the Northeast: search
for a liberal response to radical civil unrests 31
3 E astern frontier of Northeast India: State and
non-State 67
4 I nner Line as Outer Line I: making of the
McMahon Line 108
5 I nner Line as Outer Line II: the Empire and
its colony 135
6 L inguistic nationalism versus religious nationalism:
Partition trauma and the Northeast 159
7 Conclusion: in the end is the beginning 195
Bibliography 211
Index 215
vii
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INTRODUCTION
This book was written during a fellowship at the Indian Institute of
Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, during 2012–14, and I express my sin-
cere gratitude to the institute for accepting my proposal to research on
what I call the birth pangs that went into the evolution of the idea of the
Northeast region of India. I have chosen to focus on the seeds that shaped
the tumultuous modern history of the region and not on its current myriad
crises. On the latter, a reasonable amount of scholarly literature is already
available. I have, instead, tried here to study the less-explored areas of the
influences the geopolitics of the time – in particular, the Great Game – had
in the shaping of the Northeast, its physical features as well as its psychol-
ogy. In this exploration, my approach is, to a great extent, informed by the
popular theory that geography and politics are vitally linked. The axiom
I build my argument on, as outlined in the first chapter, is that certain
geographies – in this case, those of contiguous mountains and the river
valleys below them – are integral, and any attempt to disrupt or dismember
this integrity will result in political unrests and even deadly frictions. I have
also tried to show how from the time the British entered Assam in 1826,
the approach to the Northeast has been one of evolving mechanisms for
administering a frontier in which large tracts of territory were allowed to
remain beyond the ordinary reaches of law, and simply as un-administered
buffers. This legacy lives on to a great extent.
Another point I insist consistently on throughout this book is that the
Northeast cannot be understood solely within the parameters of Indian
nationalist historiography, which zealously expect every historical urge and
aspiration occurring within the geographical territory of the nation to be
explained as emanating from intrinsic reasons born within the national
boundaries only. That is to say, Peter J. Taylor’s ‘the State as a container,
from which nothing spills out, and conversely, nothing from outside spills
in’, as Taylor himself notes, is no longer enough in defining a nation and its
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