Modi’s Northeast Story : FREE READ | Introduction
A Brief History of the Region
Between 1817 and 1826, there were three Burmese invasionsof Assam, leading to the control of Burma over the Ahom and Manipur kingdoms. Subsequently, the British engaged in the first Anglo-Burmese War against Burma, which ended with the British emerging victorious, thereby beginning the colonial period in the region.
Northeast India was first made a part of the Bengal Province in British India, which covered large parts of what is now South Asia and Southeast Asia. In the early twentieth century, the Northeastern states were established and became separated from their traditional trading partners, Bhutan and Myanmar. The city of Shillong had served as the capital of the Assam province and continued as the capital of undivided Assam until Meghalaya gained statehood in 1972. After Meghalaya’s separation, the capital of Assam was shifted to Dispur, while Shillong became the capital of present-day Meghalaya.
The British influenced the conversion of certain communities in present-day Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya to Christianity. As a result, the majority of the population in these regions today follows the Christian faith.
During World War II, Japan planned an invasion of India from Burma, leading to two significant battles—the Battle of Kohima and the Battle of Imphal. The Battle of Imphal took place from March to July 1944 in the vicinity of Imphal city. The Japanese forces suffered heavy losses and were defeated, forcing them to retreat to Burma. The Battle of Kohima occurred between 4 April and 22 June 1944, around the town of Kohima. It resulted in the defeat of the Japanese troops.
Following India’s Independence from British rule in 1947, the Northeastern region of India comprised Assam and the princely states of Tripura and Manipur. The North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), originally known as the North-East Frontier Tracts (NEFT), was one of the political divisions in British India within the larger state of Assam and later the Republic of India until 20 January 1972, when it became the Union Territory of Arunachal Pradesh, along with some parts of Assam. Arunachal Pradesh subsequently became a state on 20 February 1987. On the same date, Mizoram which was earlier carved out of the Lushai Hills District of Assam in 1972 as a Union Territory (UT), also became a state.
Nagaland was established on 30 November 1963, followed by Meghalaya on 21 January 1972 and Mizoram in 1987, which were carved out of the larger territory of Assam. Manipur and Tripura remained Union Territories of India from 1956 until 1972, when they achieved full statehood. This group of seven states was commonly known as the ‘Seven Sisters’. In 2002, Sikkim became the eighth state to be integrated into the North Eastern Council (NEC). The historic addition of Sikkim to Northeastern states was made by then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who coined a new name for these states—Ashta Lakshmi (eight avatars of Goddess Lakshmi).
Right after Independence, the Northeastern region was plagued by multiple problems on various fronts. Southern Assam was caught in the storm of an unhindered mass migration of people from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Insecurity, uncertainty and chaos became an unalienable part of the lives of people living in the border districts. The first Chief Minister (CM) of Assam, Gopinath Bordoloi, wrote to the then Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in sheer exasperation: ‘If Assam is to continue as part of India, it must be allowed to exercise the power of restricting the ingress of people not only for avoiding an economic breakdown but also maintaining communal harmony…’7 The problem of illegal migration was to only grow by leaps and bounds in the decades to come, leading to a demographic distortion in many parts.
In many isolated hilly districts of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland, the resident tribals feared the invasion of outsiders, and hence the Inner Line Permit (ILP) had to be restored in large areas. Interestingly, apart from the cynicism towards outsiders, in almost every state there were conflicts, even among different Indigenous tribes. The central government in the initial decades neither had the understanding nor the interest to address these. This led to a prolonged alienation of these states that resulted in insurgent groups and violence taking centre stage for a very long time.
In 1962, tragedy struck with the Indo-China War, which most impartial commentators believe was the result of a horrible miscalculation by PM Jawaharlal Nehru. Prime Minister Nehru’s apathetic address to the nation during the war caused a lot of anguish among the people of the region—a hurt Kiren Rijiju (Minister of Earth Sciences of India) has spoken of this rather candidly and mentioned in his essay, following in this book.
The unsavoury embarrassment of 1962 was followed by another dark chapter in March 1966. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government was caught unaware when the Mizo National Front (MNF), which was then an insurgent outfit, declared independence from India in the early hours of 1 March 1966. Following this declaration, MNF rebels launched coordinated attacks on the Indian army and paramilitary installations all over the Lushai Hills (the present-day state of Mizoram). Limited intelligence reports available with the central government pointed towards the collusion of East Pakistan, wherein the objective was for Lushai Hills to declare independence from India. Left with scant options, PM Indira Gandhi retaliated with brutality. On 5–6 March 1966, Indian Air Force (IAF) fighters rained incendiary bombs and strafed many urban clusters in the Lushai Hills District. As most people had already fled their homes to safer shelters, fearing violence, the death toll was limited. However, this unfortunate bombing of its own citizens due to prolonged mismanagement of the problem left an indelible scar in people’s psyches and a trust deficit that only increased with time.
The late 1970s witnessed an unprecedented students’ movement in Assam against the uncontrolled illegal migration from Bangladesh, which had now led to a large number of outsiders being settled across the state. This student movement was to later assume the form of a political movement and result in the formation of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government in Assam in 1985, led by the then youngest CM in India, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.
In all these decades, the natives and residents of Northeast India longed for a concrete change and a sense of belongingness that eluded them repeatedly. Despite the entire region being breathtakingly beautiful, tourist footfalls remained abysmally low. Insurgent attacks continued sporadically across the region and kept people from other parts of the country away. Interestingly, Delhi University (DU) had a good number of students enrolling every year from the Northeastern states. A one-way journey from their native place to Delhi would sometimes take them almost three days. The grit and determination of these students were admirable. Those were the days when people would get away with casual racist slurs aimed at these students, making their struggles in Delhi even tougher. Thankfully, the perversity has reduced enormously over the years, with the increased mainstreaming of these students and their regional pride.
Read more in Modi’s Northeast Story edited by Tuhin A. Sinha and Aditya Pittie here: Link