Invaluable Information on Indias Northeast
Anil Bhat
It should not come as a surprise that a large number of educated Indians west
of West Bengal may not be able to rattle off the names of all the seven sister
States of the Northeast, or the fact that an eighth Sikkim has been added
in recent years to its council (NEC). Most of the early books written in
English on this region were by British anthropologists or army officers who
visited or served during the colonial era in this region, which the British
explored, developed and exploited for three major resources timber, oil and
tea, and large numbers of groups of tribals on whom they unleashed missionaries
of all denominations of Christianity with the calculated aim of converting
them. Then came a lot of Indian writers in the pre- and post-Independence
period, but perhaps none went to the extent of compiling an entire
encyclopaedia, as Colonel Ved Prakash has.
Encyclopaedia of North East India five volumes is the result of the
authors 11 years of service extended over three tenures in the region,
followed by six years of library research after his retirement. Being the first
of its kind, given its contents and sheer size, over 2,500 pages, it is a
unique book.
Writing on the Northeast is not an easy exercise, given its diversity ethnic,
racial, religious and linguistic as well as its extent, history and
geography. If India is a microcosmic world, the Northeast is a microcosmic
India. Of the 5,653 communities in India, 653 are tribal of which the 213 are
indigenous to the Northeast. Of the 213, 111 are found in Arunachal Pradesh
alone. With an equally amazing linguistic diversity, it is home to 325 of the
1,652 languages spoken in India. Yet again, the Northeasts total population of
3, 84, 95,089 (in 2001) constitutes 2.69 per cent of Indias 1,02,70,15,247,
while its area of 2, 55, 088 sq km is 7.75 per cent of Indias 32, 87, 263 sq
km.
After Independence, the Indian Army was deployed in this large
geo-strategically vital region, then mainly known as Assam and North East
Frontier Agency (NEFA), Naga Hills, Lushai Hills etc. But ironically, the
region which over the years became seven States Assam, Arunachal Pradesh,
Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura remained ranging from
undeveloped to underdeveloped, with the only post-Independence addition to road
communication being major roads and bridges built by the Border Roads
Organization. There are some parts or locations of it, which popularly came to
be known by names of Indian Army personnel, who were the first non-local
entrants into them. Soon after Independence began a series of insurgencies and,
barring Mizoram, which got resolved, most of them degenerated into terrorism by
the 1990s. Tracing the history of this vast region with so many communities and
their migrations is a mind-boggling task, which the Col Prakash has undertaken,
making suitable changes to English spelling and pronunciation.
Assam has been covered from 4th Century BC onwards under various names like
Pragjyotisha, Kamrupa, Mahakantara, Dharmaranya Kamanta and Assam. Ahoms were
the first to establish a modern political state and, despite its long distance
from Hastinapur and Kurukshetra making it of only peripheral interest to these
power centers and later to the Mughals, it had attained a high degree of
civilization by the seventh century. The author refers to the version of
British annexing Assam in 1826 as a misinformed claim and maintains that
for the common Indian it was always part of the Indian polity, albeit its
eastern limit. The fact remains that while large numbers of tribes in the
Northeast got converted to Christianity, Ahoms of Assam and Meiteis of Manipur
are to this day staunch followers of the Vaishnav branch of Hindu religion.
The first Muslim invasion against the Ahoms in 1527 AD was beaten back, and
those Muslims who were taken prisoner, chose to stay on, marry and get
assimilated as Assamese in all aspects except that they retained their
religion, Islam. Similarly, in Manipur, the Pangals (or Pangans as referred to
by the author) took to Manipur customs and culture till the 20th century, when
they were reached out to by the maulvis from Lucknow and Deoband and weaned
away.
However, Assam became the target of post-Partition West and erstwhile East
Pakistan for pushing in illegal migrants with the aim of changing its
demography a task which Bangladesh has followed to alarming proportions,
thanks to the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and vote-bank politics.
Pangals came under the influence of Pakistans Inter Services Intelligence
(ISI), from Bangladesh, again thanks to ULFA, which has actively assisted this
nefarious organization to spread its wings from early 1990s onwards to many
other insurgent groups in the Northeast, thereby converting them from classic
insurgents to cold-blooded terrorists. The vote-bank factor has been a boon to
Bangladeshis, whose illegal migration did not remain confined to Assam but
spread all over India creating a ready resource for terrorist groups to hire,
recruit or keep in hibernation as sleeper cells.
The oldest of insurgency movements which the Indian Army had to deal with soon
after Independence was the one by the Nagas. It gained ground under Angami
Zaphu Phizo, growing by 1950 into a movement for an independent Naga nation.
Active support was provided by China and Pakistan (via erstwhile East
Pakistan).
Col Prakash throws light on how the British were shrewd enough to treat tribes
differently through the 1919 and 1935 Acts and the mechanism of Backward
Tracts and Excluded Areas. The process of separation of the tribes,
extending even into North West Burma, is indeed interesting, to say the least.
The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), comprising mainly Tangkhul
and Konyak Nagas, fought hard against security forces and suffered a bloody
split later on.
For a vast region, which mainland Indians are still hazy about and which is
comparatively under-reported in the media, Col Ved Prakashs five volumes are
full of multi-faceted details of the seven-sister States of the northeastern
region and, as such, is invaluable reference material for bureaucrats,
diplomats, politicians, security forces and academics.
(The writer is Editor, WordSword Features& Media)
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