Struggle For Identity In North East India

Scientific Study from the year 2020 in the subject Sociology - Miscellaneous, grade: 9+, , course: Social Anthropology, language: English, abstract: This monograph elucidates the core features of North East India such as ecology, demography, language, family, marriage, kinship, economic practices, and religion as also complex issues of ethnic conflict, identity politics, immigration problem, insurgency, peace parleys and concerns of development and governance. This monograph aims to update and critically blend empirical facts with official documents. Especially meant to introduce the readers with basic disposition of this frontier region, this monograph also discusses how the region is gradually experiencing the democratization process and economic advancement in the backdrop of rampant ethnic dissent, backwardness, poverty and protracted neglect of the nation-state. It also aims to dispel prevailing prejudices and misunderstandings about northeast and its vibrant cultures.

In many senses, India's Northeast has been an enigma to the rest of the country. Beginning with the earliest challenge of the nation-building process in India, this highly diverse and multicultural region has, through its multiple identity movements and militant separatism, thrown up several major issues which have resulted in re-drawing the parameters of the Indian nation-state and helped to re-define the idea of nationalism itself. This selection of essays/commentaries, written over some three decades, analyze the complex processes of the nation-state's engagement with the demands for autonomy/independence raised by the small nationalities of the northeastern region but also focuses on the contradictions and new equations that have been emerging both within these movements and in the State's response to them. The factors behind the rise of ethnic nationalist assertions, the role of civil society, the rise of exclusivist politics and the question of citizens' rights are other issues that figure prominently in the discussions.

Communications présentées à une conférence organisée par le North-East India Council for Social Science Research, les 5-6 décembre 1986.

Ethnic Life-worlds in North-East India: An Analysis draws upon the phenomenological notion of the life-world to understand the culturally-embedded construction of communities, for whom the lived experience of cultural politics constitutes their identity. It analyses the cultural and political determinants of ethnic- and identity-oriented struggles in India's North-East, as well as the cultural politics of ethnic mobilizations in the region. Such mobilizations are an attempt to construct a self-identity distinct from that constructed by the state—both colonial and post-colonial India—which becomes a source of concern for the latter with regard to its achieving legitimacy and development in the region. While both the state and insurgent groups carve out their distinct ideological and political agenda on to the life-world of the North-East, it is at the point of diversion that the struggle for establishing such agenda falls into the trappings of constitutional determinism. This book analyses the articulation of ethnic politics in North-East India that takes into account moves for integration as well as apparent differences. In doing so, it critically examines two major insurgent outfits of the region—NSCN and ULFA. It also discusses struggles launched by the Naga and Assamese people and develops a neologism of nations-from-below, arguing that one needs to take into account the concrete totality of the people's lived experiences. It bases this analysis on a critical discussion of the colonial construction of tribal identity and its post-colonial critique. Thought-provoking and analytical, this book opens a new window to the study of India's North-East, which will intrigue students and scholars across various disciplines of development studies, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political science and ethnic studies, and will be of interest to policy-makers, NGOs and global humanitarian communities.

Scientific Study from the year 2020 in the subject Sociology - Miscellaneous, grade: 9+, course: Social Anthropology, language: English, abstract: This monograph elucidates the core features of North East India such as ecology, demography, language, family, marriage, kinship, economic practices, and religion as also complex issues of ethnic conflict, identity politics, immigration problem, insurgency, peace parleys and concerns of development and governance. This monograph aims to update and critically blend empirical facts with official documents. Especially meant to introduce the readers with basic disposition of this frontier region, this monograph also discusses how the region is gradually experiencing the democratization process and economic advancement in the backdrop of rampant ethnic dissent, backwardness, poverty and protracted neglect of the nation-state. It also aims to dispel prevailing prejudices and misunderstandings about northeast and its vibrant cultures.