Homeland Insecurities: Autonomy, Conflict, and Migration in Assam 9780191945458, 9780192855329, 2022932536

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Homeland Insecurities: Autonomy, Conflict, and Migration in Assam Sanjay Barbora https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855329.001.0001 Published: 2022

Online ISBN: 9780191945458

Print ISBN: 9780192855329

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Copyright Page  https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855329.002.0003 Published: March 2022

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Subject: Migration Studies

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2022 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2022 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022932536 ISBN 978–0–19–285532–9 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192855329.001.0001 Printed in India by Rakmo Press Pvt. Ltd Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

For my parents, Bonti and Bijoy Barbora

Homeland Insecurities: Autonomy, Conflict, and Migration in Assam Sanjay Barbora https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855329.001.0001 Published: 2022

Online ISBN: 9780191945458

Print ISBN: 9780192855329

FRONT MATTER

Acknowledgements  Published: March 2022

Subject: Migration Studies

This book has travelled with me for a long time. It has brought me closer to many, indebted me to more, and helped me grieve and let go of others along its journey. I am grateful for this opportunity to remember the people, places, and institutions that have shaped this work. For more than two decades, Guwahati has o ered me a home, place of work, and friends to share my ideas with. I began my working life here as a researcher on 1 March 2000 with Walter Fernandes in North Eastern Social Research Centre (NESRC). I am grateful to still nd a cubicle to put in half a day’s writing every week, thanks to Walter, Ashpriya Rohman, and Melvil Pereira. NESRC also hosted my stint with Panos South Asia by o ering us space for an o

ce. Between 2005 and 2011, my work was made easier by colleagues and

collaborators—Arupjyoti Das, Julie Bhuyan, Kazu Ahmed, Sushmita Kashyap, and the late Achyut Deka— who took on far more responsibilities than was expected of them. My other place of work in the early 2000s was the central o

ce of Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti (MASS) that was located in the house of the late

Parag Das. Here, Lachit Bordoloi, Lalita Barman, Bokul Das, Powal Das, Pallab Borbora, and Pradip Buragohain shared humour and courage, as we documented cases of human rights violations in Assam. I am ever so thankful for their comradeship. Guwahati today is a transformed city, with educational and research institutions spread across its length and breadth. I am very fortunate to be at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), where its Guwahati campus hosts some of the region’s brightest students and most dedicated faculty and sta . In 2012, Prof. Virginius Xaxa, then deputy director at the newly established campus, gave me the opportunity to teach, and p. viii

despite initial inhibitions, I am glad that I lived up to the challenges that came my way. I am thankful

for

his encouragement and that of my current colleagues, among whom I have to name Meghali Senapati, Kalpana Sarathy, Jagannath Ambagudia, Abhinandan Saikia, Santhosh M. R., Rajdeep Singha, V. Sawmveli, Subeno Kithan, R. K. Debbarma, Navaneeta Deori, Razdan Sarim Rahman, Yengkhom Jilangamba, and Prashant Kesharvani, as members of a cohort who started working together at almost the same time. I also express my sincere gratitude to Chayanika Das, Dulumoni Das, Lydia Tirkey, Simanta Borah, Nabanita Paul, Bibhuti Singh, Sewali Patowari, and Dulumoni Gogoi, for their generous support. Working at TISS is all the more exciting because of the inspiring young persons who decide to make it their home for a few years, either as undergraduates, graduates, or research students. I am lucky to have taught several cohorts of inquisitive people as they struggled through lectures in sweltering humidity or biting cold. During the two years I coordinated the research programme at TISS Guwahati, I was introduced to the rich world of ideas and academic commitment by researchers Dixita Deka, Lallianpuii, Trishna Gogoi, Roluahpuia, Alimpana Goswami, Denjil Basumatary, D. Lallianthangsing, Kh. Pavei, Lahundashisha Rumnong, Nandini Ramamurthy, Bhaskar Kakati, and Amrita Gogoi, to name a few. In the near decade that has passed, I continue to be impressed by the impressive work done by graduating students like Bipul Dewry, Vareishang Phungshok, Manoharlal Bishnoi, Atan Konyak, Farhana Hazarika, Rukuvelu Chotso, Nayan Bhuyan, Prithibhushan Deka, Plabon Phukan, Rulee Phukan, Sharon Kath, Janki Ngonwa, Gyanendra Rai, and Abdul Kalam Azad (in social work); Beauty Narzary and Brojo Basumatary (in conservation); Snehasish Mitra, Prerona Das, Joel Rodrigues, Devansh Shrivastava, Asojiini Rachel Kashena, Sreyasi

Mukherjee, Seigoulien Haokip, Beda Dutta, Kusumika Ghosh, Vizokhole Ltu, Protima Brahma, Piyali Bhowmik, and Sarah Haokip (in social science research); Sayantani Chatterji, Sunayana Dutta, and Paromita Bora (in media and logistics); and Afreen Hussain, Augustin Millik, and Brinda Daulagupu (in administration and governance). The segments on autonomy and peacebuilding emerged in conversations and debates with impeccable p. ix

interlocutors. I wish to thank

Sanjib Baruah, Ranabir Samaddar, and Bengt Karlsson for constantly

pushing me to think outside my comfort zone in political matters and research. Their encouragement has been crucial for me in many important ways. These debates were further strengthened through interactions with Anjali Daimary, Holiram Terang, Mrinal Gohain, Kishor Kalita, Dharam Sing Teron, Raju Narzary, Chandan Sarma, Suryasikha Pathak, Manas Bordoloi, Prafulla Nath, Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Monjib Mochahari, Kaustubh Deka, Dr. Wati Aier, Uncle Niketu Iralu, Urvashi Butalia, Uma Chakravarti, Nandini Sundar, Tilottoma Misra, Udayon Misra, Bharat Bhushan, Paula Banerjee, Subir Bhaumik, Bonojit Hussain, Santanu Borthakur, Rasel Hussain, Dilip Gogoi, Rakhee Kalita Moral, Dwipen Bezbaruah, Rajib Handique, Uttam Bathari, Nani Gopal Mahanta, Alpana Borgohain, Joydeep Barua, Kalyan Das, Mirza Zul qur Rahman, Uddipan Dutta, Arupjyoti Saikia, John Thomas, Tara Basumatary, Soibam Haripriya, Priyankoo Sarmah, Ranjan Engti, Samir Das, Manish Jha, Moji Riba, and the late Aurelius Kyrham Nongkynrih. My initial attempts at articulating a lot of the material in the book have been encouraged by friends who are engaged in media and journalism. A. S. Panneerselvan and Mitu Verma were generous colleagues at Panos South Asia and continue to engage with my work. Kanak Mani Dixit has been an important commentator on regional identities, making me realize the immense creativity associated with inverting political maps and lenses. Nitin Sethi, Tongam Rina, Siddharth Varadarajan, Tarun Bhartiya, Aheli Moitra, Dhiren Sadokpam, M. S. Prabhakara, Rajashri Dasgupta, Prasanta Rajguru, Dileep Chandan, Sangeeta Barooah-Pisharoty, Rammanohar Reddy, Rakesh Kalshian, and Aniket Alam (when he was with Economic and Political Weekly) were among the rst who gave me space to publish rough, untested thoughts. These ideas were also nurtured at talks in di erent centres and departments around the world. I am grateful to Sharika Thiranagama, C. Matthew Snipp, Thomas Blom Hansen, and Sangeeta Mediratta at Stanford University; Erik de Maaker, Ajay Gandhi, and Radhika Gupta at Leiden University; Duncan McDuie-Ra (then) p. x

at the University of New South Wales; Susan Thieme and Anna-Lena

Wolf at the University of Bern;

Pratiksha Baxi at Jawaharlal Nehru University; Sukumar Muralidharan (then) at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies; and Mahesh Rangarajan (then) at the Nehru Memorial Library, who have been most generous with their invitations to speak and present my work at their respective institutions. I have been very fortunate in having fellow travellers who seldom let me stray from my roots in human rights and social justice. The four persons who constitute the points of my moral compass—Aküm Longchari, Lachit Bordoloi, Dolly Kikon, and Sarat Phukan—will recognize the parts of the work that speak of compassion, justice, and peace. Along with them, I thank Ameeya Gogoi, Rebati Khaklary, Tungshang Ningreichon, Thingnam Anjulika Samom, Angela Rangad, Bela Bhatia, the late Ilina Sen, Sehba Hussain, Khurram Parvez, Ramananda Wangkheirakpam, Shahana Bhattacharya, Gautam Navlakha, Harish Dhawan, Nagraj Adve, Akhu Chingangbam, and Ranjana Padhi for their steadfast belief in a more equitable world where justice and peace are part of the same thread of possibilities. It has been an absolute pleasure to break bread and share my doubts about the future of the world with Steven Lee, Inessa Gelfenboym, Zhanara Nauruzbayeva, Daniel Gallegos, Tania Ahmed, Himali Dixit, Fleachta Phelan, Tomàs Mac Sheoin, Itty Abraham, Rohan D’Souza, Boddhisatva Kar, Zilkia Janer, Arkotong Longkumer, Pravabati Chingangbam, my cousins Tina and Lona, brother-in-law Bumpy, and the late Vijay Nagaraj. They made dark clouds disappear with their wit, intellect, and most often the miraculous appearance of food and beverage. Since 2016, Melbourne in particular and Australia in general have o ered me and my partner home and refuge in equal measure. The Australia India Institute (AII) located within the precincts of the University of Melbourne has always opened its doors for me. I wish to express my gratitude to Haripriya Rangan and Craig Je rey for their unwavering support. Indira Laishram, Laurie Belcher, Inotoli Zhimomi, Nick Lenaghan, Elise Klein, Tania Miletic, Monica Minnegal, Sarouche Razi, Nyimbeni Patton, Athili Sapriina, Yamini p. xi

Narayanan, Gillian Tan, Craig Thorburn, Jon, and Richard Berber

have made Melbourne a welcoming

place for us. This a ection extends to Newcastle, where Juliette, Duncan, and our goddaughter Kimeri McDuie-Ra have showered us with a ection.

Oxford University Press has been the most patient publisher. What started as an ambiguous commitment to ‘work on something’ made to Barun de Sarkar eons ago nally resulted in a draft. I am grateful for the generous suggestions and comments from the anonymous reviewers that elevated the nal contents of the manuscript. Moutushi Mukherjee worked through a pandemic to ensure that I met deadlines and was always accommodating of my wayward sense of time. I am thankful for her calm and reassured mails and calls through the di

cult summer of 2020.

My extended family located in Guwahati, Jorhat, Dimapur, and Berkeley have been ever so patient and encouraging with me. In Berkeley, my sister-in-law Julie Kikon, nieces Kimiro and Samantha KikonSautman, and mother-in-law Mhalo Kikon have been unwavering in their encouragement and a ection. So too my sister-in-law Rosemary and her partner Michael. In Dimapur, my nephew Mhademo and niece Longshibeni are showing us how we can remodel old places with love and hard work. Purnima Das, Vikas Jain, Mamun and Mihir Barua, Joel, Neivi, Henry, Deepa and Deepak Dutta, Korobi Bharali, and our godson Konseng Phukan have made it a joy to work and live in Guwahati. In Jorhat, my sister Moushumi and niece Ishani have shown me time and again the remarkable world of caring, a ection, and compassion that allows all of us to grow in wisdom. Finally, the three persons I want to share this work with most. This book would not have happened without the patient encouragement and con dence that Sanchopeni Kikon has shared with me in all our years together. It is a testament to all those moments of missing one another and ones where we basked in each other’s company. I dedicate this book to my parents, Bonti and Bijoy Barbora. Ma and Ba sacri ced so much in order that I may lack for nothing. I breathe with gratitude in this world of possibilities that you gave to p. xii

me.

About the Author Sanjay Barbora is a sociologist and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Guwahati Campus. He has received a PhD degree from North-​Eastern Hill University, where he was a SEPHIS South-​South and National Centre for Competence in Research, North-​South grantee. Prior to joining TISS, he worked with Panos South Asia, a media support organization, and managed their media and conflict programme for South Asia. Sanjay has written extensively on human rights, migration, conservation, resource conflicts, and political violence.

1 From Autonomy to Accommodation On 30 July 2018, the Government of Assam released the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC), wherein the names of more than four million persons had not been included. According to the office of the NRC, more than 32 million persons residing in Assam had applied with documents to have their names registered as residents of the state. A figure of four million (and some) people who were not included raised the spectre of impending violence and the possibility of many being declared stateless in the bargain. In Assam, this fact alone is emblematic of the many strands of political activism that has gone into the making of citizens, insurgents and outsiders since the Assam agitation (1979–​1985). In fact, the NRC process, with its proponents and critics, could be read as a milestone event—​a Hegelian moment that is paradoxically universal, particular and individual—​where the politics of autonomy, indigenous rights and co-​ optation of radical ideas have come to rest for a moment. This book is an exploration of political and social issues that have shaped life in Assam since the past two decades. By using longue durée ethnography as well as my perspectives as a human rights activist for over two decades to focus on subjects such as autonomy movements, migration, wildlife conservation, and reconciliation, this book offers two arguments that run through its different chapters. The first questions the causalities that are implicit in the study of all the subjects mentioned earlier. Each case that I engage and write about has been overdetermined by militarization of crucial spaces of debate and dialogue within civil society.1 The second argues that a dense reading of the subjects does not just provide an annotated,

Homeland Insecurities. Sanjay Barbora, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780192855329.003.0001

2  Homeland Insecurities

granular description of what is happening in Assam, but refract attention to larger universal changes happening across the globe.2 In doing so, the book addresses the manner in which the subjects of the book have been represented in political and academic discourse on the region and offers alternatives that are reflective but connected to wider debates that are emerging across the world. Each chapter draws from orthodox observation of organizations involved in the movements and also focus more centrally on people who inhabit the heart and margins of the movements for autonomy, migration, and militarization. Fieldwork locations are also indicated at the start of each of the chapters barring the introduction and conclusion. In following academic convention, there are ethnographic sections in the book where names have been anonymized. However, I have retained original names while engaging with persons already in the public domain, as well as with those who have expressed their willingness to be quoted publicly. The connectedness of these issues always seemed self-​evident when I inhabited their inner worlds (both as an advocate for human rights and as a sociologist working on the subject), because they all came from and ended in the desire for enhancing social justice and equity. However, it was only as a teacher engaging with some of the brightest, most ardent students who demanded a less personal explanation of the world from me that I was able to put together a structure for this book. Here, I find myself agreeing with remarkable ease to Anand Pandian’s recent reflections about teaching, along with reading, writing, and fieldwork, constitute the way through which anthropology expands its rapidly transforming horizons.3 The process of writing therefore was greatly influenced by discussions with students, many of whom did not waste time to call me out on the certitudes of my political beliefs as a human rights activist. Not only did I have to find new ways to explain old problems in the classroom, but I also found myself going back to classical theories of social change and development to explain complex arguments that link autonomy, migration, conservation, and reconciliation in ways that are difficult to unentangle. In this scheme of things, the NRC was one of the most awkward, divisive issues that split a small classroom into many factions, eating into otherwise

From Autonomy to Accommodation  3

staid discussions about mechanical and organic solidarity in society. The following sections about its origins and contestations are therefore an effort to allow the dust to settle and the threads to emerge. The NRC update process was initiated in 2012, following a writ petition that was filed in the Supreme Court of India by Assam Public Works (APW) and Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha (ASM).4 Subsequently, the Supreme Court instructed the Government of Assam to initiate the process of updating the existing NRC in February 2015, which involved the employment of considerable human and financial resources by the government of India. The omissions in the draft NRC were preceded by campaigns alluding to the possible exclusion of Muslims in the final draft, as well as efforts to ensure that the verification process be carried out in a transparent manner. In the months preceding the publication of the draft list, there were cautionary articles in the media, warning against an uncritical celebration of the process. Sanjib Baruah’s Op Ed piece in The Indian Express on 19 January 2018 drew the English-​speaking readers’ attention to the disturbing realities of exclusion for poor, mainly daily-​wage earning and farming Muslim communities and the creation of a dystopian world of detention camps for those who would not be considered as citizens of India (or of any other country, for that matter).5 Baruah’s article drew self-​righteous ire from researchers who erroneously accused him of supporting the idea of detention camps in his Op Ed piece, and this set up an interesting spectrum of political positions on the NRC itself.6 Over the next few months, there was an acrimonious polarization of intellectual and academic opinion, where some supported the NRC process as a way out of the many decades of political victimization of religious minorities in Assam, while others saw it as an ineffective process that would only lead to greater marginalization of minorities. This book has its origins in a set of disparate issues that continue to impact the political situation in Assam in the first quarter of the 21st century. If the last quarter of the 20th century in Brahmaputra valley was about resisting the idea of Indian nationalism and securing some form of autonomy for indigenous communities, then the subsequent years were indicative of an altogether different kind of

4  Homeland Insecurities

political mobilization: one that embraced the symbols and accoutrements of middle-​class Indian nationalism; one that was provincial in its understanding of the social world that it inhabited. Similarly, the last quarter of the 20th century saw an expansion of small forms of solidarity between sections of radical political advocacy groups and human rights organizations in the region, where the idea of dialogues between peoples was encouraged to find common ground between indigenous communities of the Northeast region. Given such developments, it would seem paradoxical that popular political discourse after the state assembly elections of 2015 would have swung towards greater demands for exclusion of citizenship rights to vast numbers of people, by those who would have found common cause with them in the 1990s. Yet, as the works of anthropologist Arkotong Longkumer show us, sectarian ideas of citizenship have found a relatively fertile ground for expansion of a pan-​Indian, culturally divisive notion of identity and belonging in the region.7 I shall return to the impact of the debates around citizenship in the subsequent sections, but for now, I wish to dwell on the issue of autonomy, as it impacts conversations and analysis on political mobilization in Northeast India to the extent that it risks becoming the dominant lens through which the region is viewed by scholars and policy makers.

Autonomy, Social Justice, and Political Mobilization ‘All of us came out to be part of the big crowd at Kohima playground’, said Uncle Megometho sitting in his living room in Medziphema, Nagaland. I was there to ask him about the Naga plebiscite, since both events—​the first NRC in Assam and the Naga plebiscite—​happened in 1951. An octogenarian, he had been involved in the Naga national movement and taken part in the first ever plebiscite in the subcontinent. Our meeting happened just two months after the announcement of the draft NRC, when I thought I needed a different perspective on the significance of 1951 for the region. Many of the commentators in Assam, who defended the NRC, did so on the basis

From Autonomy to Accommodation  5

of precedence: that it was done once in 1951, and therefore, there was a legal precedence for its existence, even though there was no political will to update the register. This precedent seemed to give start to any debate on the NRC, at least in the public domain and among those who thought it was a solution to the constant tensions arising out of the immigration issue in Assam. Therefore, 1951 seemed to be an interesting political moment for the region, coming out of long period of British colonialism, where many of its political leaders aligned to the Congress, Muslim League, and Communist Party of India had negotiated some kind of merger with the union of India and avoided being part of Pakistan following partition. Uncle Megometho’s recollection of the event in 1951 was lucid. Prior to the event, Naga volunteers had disseminated Angami Zapu Phizo’s message that there would be a referendum held on 16 May 1951 at the Kohima playground. The plebiscite papers, Uncle said, were printed in Imphal and sent around to the different villages in Naga territory. Naga leaders, including Phizo, were busy campaigning for people to vote for independence of the Naga homeland. Villages that were unable to send representatives to Kohima had the papers sent to them. Naga women and men were asked to put their stamp on their preference. On the appointed day, Uncle Megometho went to his school where there were quite a few non-​Naga students. The Assamese teachers, who had earlier made them do the parade during Indian Independence Day, did not object to the Naga students going out for the plebiscite. In fact, he recalls the district administration allowing the exercise. It began with a short declaration by the participants to uphold the right to Naga independence, not just for themselves but for future generation as well. After that, people signed the document and went back to their homes or school (as was the case for Uncle Megometho). In subsequent years, the Naga plebiscite would become one of the moral foundations of demands for Naga independence. Authoritative beginnings to political movements are not unique to demands for autonomy and self-​determination in the region. Dwelling on the foundational political logic of the existence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the basis upon which the

6  Homeland Insecurities

clandestine organization acquires its legitimacy, Brendan O’Leary points to the fact that the IRA saw its armed struggle as a logical continuation of its objection to the partition of Ireland that was decided in the second Dáil Éireann (parliament) in 1921.8 Hence, the significance of the 1951 plebiscite in the Naga Hills provides a philosophical foundation for an analysis on demands for autonomy, especially in that particular year. Autonomy demands in the region have quite a few constitutional documents that bear testimony to the legitimacy of movements for autonomy. These documents are different from the bold, eternal statements that come from processes that are driven by people and organizations that appeal to a sense of justice. The demands for self-​determination derive their legitimacy and appeal because they are communicated with clarity and purpose, especially to the constituency towards whom they are articulated. Constitutional safeguards and assurances, on the other hand, are couched in a bureaucratic language that appeals to far fewer people. Hence, the Naga plebiscite remains a milestone that few in the region would find quarrel with. Even detractors of the Naga movement for self-​determination do not doubt that such an event took place and that it had a significant impact on the moral foundations of the subsequent armed struggle for Naga independence. Yet to a historian of the future, trying to make sense of all that was happening in the erstwhile colonial province of Assam in 1951, the Naga plebiscite would be only one of the three important process that were being undertaken. The year 1951 would also herald independent India’s first ever census as a democratic, sovereign country. Following the census, the province would also be subjected to the first NRC in certain districts bordering East Pakistan. Together, the three processes allude to two different kinds of pulls that political movements in the region would be subjected to: autonomy and social justice. Here, I draw from Mahmood Mamdani’s important distinction between demands that emerge from first nation communities in America and those (that emerged) from erstwhile slaves of the 19th century. In his essay on settler colonialism, Mamdani draws the reader’s attention to the persistence of the indigenous question in the biography of settler countries such as the

From Autonomy to Accommodation  7

United States and measured them against the kind of demands for equality made by former slaves.9 Such processes are apparent in Assam as well since demands for territorial autonomy by indigenous groups are often couched in the language of exclusive rights and cultural differences (from neighbours, dominant communities, and sometimes the state). Yet, the same constituency are also quick to point out the instances where the Indian state acts against itself, especially in the matter of legislation that reflects debates around citizenship. An example would be the opposition to the Illegal Migrants (Determination) Tribunal (IMDT) of 1983, where student bodies and other actors across a broad political spectrum consistently pointed out the constitutional inconsistency that placed the onus of proof to prove one’s citizenship upon the person and absolved the state of its responsibility. I discuss this matter in subsequent sections of this chapter as it has a bearing on the trajectory of debates around citizenship in Assam. However, at this point, I wish to emphasize the importance of the tension between demands for citizenship, social justice, and autonomy. In Assam, the NRC was viewed as the legal and political way to address the two issues that have influenced political mobilization since the mid-​20th century: autonomy and social justice. The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) 2019, on the other hand, was seen as a reiteration of a peculiar colonial relationship between Assam and India, periodically emphasized by the disregard for political opinions of Assamese and indigenous people. While autonomy demands reflect the desire for territorial control over land, social justice demands reflect an insistence on citizenship and equality under constitutional law. Both issues have a very tense relationship with one another. They have led to decades of violent conflicts, where the state has used a combination of military subjugation and co-​optation of dissenting voices to deal with the situation. Hence, political commentators and representatives of civic and political organizations from Northeast India have had a difficult time explaining to the rest of the country and the world, why they have either supported or opposed a Supreme Court monitored process to survey the legal status of every inhabitant of the state, even as they have differing positions on the

8  Homeland Insecurities

CAB. When did they, or their ancestors, make Assam their home? Could they prove their presence in the state going back to the partition of British India? Or did they come to Assam after the formation of Bangladesh in 1971? The NRC has an interesting timeline in the history of modern Assam, especially after 1947. It followed the 1951 census and appeared in government circulars issued to reassure agitating groups in Assam that the administration would address the immigration issue. This meant taking recourse to laws like Foreigners Act, 1946 and Foreigners (Tribunal) Order, 1939. Such a process was in marked contrast to the upheavals of the tragic transfer of people between India and Pakistan in the west, where these laws were put aside to accommodate people escaping violence in West Pakistan. This difference between the two partitioned sectors of British India is important, as it alludes to the different ways regional governments responded to the humanitarian crisis. Drawing attention to the government’s unwillingness to address the movement of people in the east, as well as the persistence of civic efforts to raise the issue of immigration, Sanjib Baruah underlined the different ways in which the partition narrative appeared in Assam and showed how it continues to have an impact on contemporary debates.10 In his recent writings on the NRC, Baruah addressed the government’s lack of preparedness in conducting such a process, drawing attention to the manner in which key neighbours were not adequately informed of the outcomes of this process, especially when political rhetoric was directed towards a historically specific population from Bangladesh.11 In 1951, people in Assam—​especially Muslim cultivators and urban poor who lived along the erstwhile East Pakistan border—​were asked to fill out an enumeration form by the government as the initiation process of the NRC. As mentioned earlier, it was not the only enumeration process that was being held for the first time since India had attained independence from Britain. Ordinary citizens would have felt a sense of confusion, since the census had just taken place. Moreover, those living in the Naga Hills were being asked a related set of questions regarding autonomy. Hence, the idea of a government

From Autonomy to Accommodation  9

process involving various organs of the state, but without much public debate, would have been seen as yet another administrative issue whose impacts were not immediately tangible, especially since it involved the declaration of documents and evidence by individuals to the administration. This was in marked contrast to reaffirmation of independence after a plebiscite on the question of Naga territory and people being part of India that was undertaken by Naga leaders in the province of Assam. The Naga plebiscite involved only one ballot paper upon which every adult Naga was asked to stamp their view on the political future of the people. As mentioned earlier, the plebiscite is central to the moral and political apparatus upon which Naga people continue to assert their independence and autonomy in India. The 1951 NRC, on the other hand, was not central to the debates around citizenship for a greater part of the political history of Assam. No elected government took it upon itself to revise the NRC until 2010. The capacity of the state to conduct such headcounts on the basis of documents that attest property, occupation, and proof of residence has increased manifold since 1951. However, as anthropologist Matthew Hull has pointed out, there is no clear correlation between an administration’s ability to document and how people respond to such demands.12 Most people who need to negotiate with the state know that there are theoretical (and practical) ways to create the kind of documentation in order to finish a job. In the recently concluded NRC in Assam, the government sought to minimize these shortcomings in two ways: (a) by throwing in the entire state machinery, including all departments of the Government of Assam, the Registrar General of India, and the Supreme Court, into the process; and (b) using technology to iron out dubious deals that are attributed to the everyday workings of the state in developing countries. The 2015 edition of the NRC was more robust. It required individuals to show their legacy data that included having a family member’s name in the 1951 NRC and/​or having the individual (or a direct family member’s name) included in the electoral rolls as of 24 March 1971, a day after the Bangladesh Liberation War was formally announced.13 In case a person was unable to find their

10  Homeland Insecurities

name in the legacy data, the administration allowed for 12 other documents that could be shown as evidence, provided they were granted before 24 March 1971. These were: (a) land tenancy records; (ii) Citizenship Certificate; (iii) Permanent Residential Certificate; (iv) Refugee Registration Certificate; (v) Passport; (vi) Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) policy; (vii) Government-​ issued License/​Certificate; (viii) Government Service/​Employment Certificate; (ix) Bank/​Post Office Accounts; (x) Birth Certificate; (xi) Board/​University Educational Certificate; and (xii) Court Records/​ Processes. These documents have an aura of middle-​class respectability to them. They attest to a person having ownership of property, access to education, jobs and documents that allow them to travel at will. However, a vast majority of itinerant working people—​most of who constitute Assam’s unorganized labour sector—​were unable to produce these documents. Therefore, the NRC process was one that seemed to bring together disparate strands of anxieties among different groups in the state, and as was evident from the media response outside the region as well. For a few weeks following the announcement of the draft, television and internet moderators were keen to understand the nuances of the citizenship debate in Assam. The positions for and against the exercise slowly emerged in a spectrum that had two diametrically opposed positions on either end. On one end, commentators welcomed the exercise, seeing it as the logical culmination of a historically constituted process of establishing a roster of citizens in a contentious place following the partitioning of the British Empire.14 This view emerged from an eclectic mix of commentators, mostly based out in the Brahmaputra valley and the autonomous hill districts, or with strong associations with political and civic organizations there. However, certain communities within the Brahmaputra valley, such as Muslims from the chars, Hindi-​and Nepali-​speaking groups, would have found it difficult to endorse this position. Thereby, the second view, on the other end of the spectrum, saw the NRC as an effort to further persecute minorities (religious and linguistic) in Assam, and as evidence of sectarian biases of the government machinery and civil society in

From Autonomy to Accommodation  11

the state.15 Both poles of the debate found common cause in their suspicion of local representatives of the government. Those who supported the NRC were keen to stave off accusations that they were unconcerned about the human rights of those who had been excluded. They acknowledged the possibilities of egregious behaviour by certain officials and also criticized the government for not having paid enough attention to diplomatic dialogue with neighbouring countries. Those who were against the NRC, strongly felt that government officials in Assam were biased against religious and linguistic minorities, especially those in the Barak valley. In responding to these charges, government officials kept drawing the critics’ attention to the use of technology, pointing to the near absence of errors that come from using algorithms instead of pliable officials. One would be hard pressed to find a sense of ownership for the NRC, as one could with the Naga plebiscite. It is difficult to find a narrative of hope in the state-​induced bureaucratic process. The confidence with which state officials kept referring back to technology is interesting. It resonates with Akhil Gupta’s view that there is violence embedded in the arbitrary outcomes of bureaucratic interventions of the Indian state.16 The absence of one’s name from the draft NRC would have appeared arbitrary to many. Some would have had to deal with insecurities about evictions and physical violence, leading scores of people to commit suicide.17 Technology, in this case, leaves one without much hope for redress. Although a figure of derision and anger, the pliant bureaucrat was also capable of undoing clerical errors by adding a degree of openness, either through bribes or a favour to those who wanted a different outcome from the exercise. As a metaphor, the technological innovations associated with the NRC suggested a closure of autonomy for an individual (especially women). It cast her once and for all as the legatee of a property owning, tax paying, and vote-​casting man (who might, or might not have been their grandfather). For those who were left out, the long, arduous process of filing for objections and attempting to reverse the decision of the administration with new evidence, would add to their anxieties.

12  Homeland Insecurities

As the dust was settling on the NRC debate, on 8 January 2019, the Lok Sabha passed the CAB of 2019. The bill had been introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party government to ensure that non-​Muslim minorities from India’s neighbourhood are granted citizenship on grounds of persecution in their countries of origin. Representatives of political and civil rights groups in Northeast India, including Assam, expressed their dismay and anger at the bill, arguing that it would pave the way for non-​Muslim migrants from other parts of the region (including Bangladesh) to settle permanently in Northeast India. Some also argued that the bill went against the secular spirit of the constitution, adding that the burden of reminding the country of this reality ought not to fall on the region that had been most militarized. These debates are crucial to understanding the sometimes-​paradoxical positions that emerge from the tensions around autonomy and social justice. The NRC involved all departments of the local state in Assam, as well as key institutions of the Indian state such as the Supreme Court, Registrar General and Election Commission. Its supporters ranged in a spectrum of positions on immigration and citizenship. What united them, however, was their belief that the state would embody its Hobbesian role, rising above narrow sectarian interests. The Bill had a different genealogy from the NRC. It was a specific project for a political party that saw itself in the role of protector of Hindus all across South Asia.18 It was evident from the very beginning that it was aimed at Hindus and other non-​Muslim minorities in the South Asian region. In the Northeast, it was specifically aimed at Bengali Hindus, and Chakma, and Hajong Buddhists from Bangladesh, leading to vehement opposition by political leaders and civil society in Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, and Assam.19 Organizations that welcomed the NRC came out in opposition to the Bill, while many who were opposed to the NRC, especially in the Barak Valley—​supported the enactment of the Bill. Civil society remains polarized along language and regional lines even after the Bill was allowed to lapse in the upper house of Parliament on 13 February 2019. Bengali-​speaking Hindus, especially in the Barak valley, felt betrayed by the government’s cynical mobilization of

From Autonomy to Accommodation  13

communitarian politics, while most indigenous communities celebrated collective victory in the aftermath. These issues are entangled in colonial history, ethnic identity, and control over resources in Assam. These three factors have been instrumental in defining the political discourse, anxieties, and activism associated with the NRC process. As a British colony, Assam saw an unprecedented inflow of labour and capital that transformed the economic and political landscape of the region in the late 19th and early 20th century. This transformation hinged upon extraction of resources and resulted in the politicization of ethnic identities. Radical political voices in Assam had frequently drawn from this mix to demand two seemingly contradictory guarantees—​territorial autonomy (even secession) and differential citizenship rights—​from the Government of India. The colonial period is key to understanding many of the enduring conflicts in Assam today. Adversarial positions on the NRC fall into a process that has been researched and documented well over the past few decades. The presence of the colonial state in Assam was limited to parts of the populated valleys, where the government allowed people from East Bengal to settle on agricultural land for annual and decennial leases. The landscape, economy, and society changed dramatically, as cash crops such as jute and tea, as well as minerals such as oil and coal were grown or extracted in abundance from the area in the 19th and early 20th century. This transformation also entailed a radical change in the demography of the region, as peasants and indentured workers from different parts of the British-​controlled Indian subcontinent were brought to Assam. Tea plantations, in the central and eastern part of the Brahmaputra valley and in parts of the Barak valley, were given leases for longer term. In the upland areas, however, the government followed a ‘light-​touch’ policy and allowed indigenous communities to retain their traditional chiefs and heads while making way for indirect rule by the colonial state. This policy continued after independence and was reaffirmed by the Bordoloi Committee in 1949, when it proposed that the hills be governed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

14  Homeland Insecurities

Under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule, use and transfer of land between individuals was left to the discretion of the autonomous councils that allowed indigenous communities (defined as Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution) to govern certain areas where they were a numerical majority. The councils functioned as territorial enclaves within the larger state and in matters related to transfer of land and property reflected the light-​touch administration during the colonial period. While some territories and communities accepted this autonomy arrangement, others such as the Naga and Mizo were less convinced. In both areas—​Naga-​inhabited areas (comprising the current state of Nagaland and parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Manipur) and Lushai Hills—​demands for independent, self-​governing territories brought together small, kin-​ based communities who were able to organize successful armed resistance to the postcolonial state and to settler communities. The state of Assam has been reorganized since the transfer of power in 1947, and currently, there are three territorial autonomous district councils (Bodoland, Dima Hasao, and Karbi Anglong) and six non-​territorial councils (Deori, Mishing, Rabha, Sonowal Kachari, Thengal Kachari, and Tiwa) in the state. There is little doubt that Assam’s long, complicated history of settlement and demographic changes continues to play a dominant part in political mobilization in the region. This process was informed by tropes of identity, embodied in differences between groups, bureaucratic distancing of the state from people and the eventual centralization of power. The postcolonial state has also held itself up as a neutral entity, claiming to uphold the rights of all citizens while simultaneously encouraging an incremental approach to demands for autonomy amongst indigenous communities and other communities who settled in the valleys during the colonial period. It continued after the partition of British India in 1947, as well as the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. It has predictably led to a polarization of opinion on the rights of the people of the region and those who have a right to call Assam their homeland. Assamese and tribal activists often allude to demographic changes as the continuing legacy of colonialism, where the colonial state (and its post-​colonial inheritor)

From Autonomy to Accommodation  15

wilfully used settlers in order to politically subjugate and economically exploit the region. This fact is reiterated through political mobilization along communitarian and ethnic lines, involving the formation of armed groups for almost all communities in Assam. Commentators argue that this is the precursor for attempts at creating majorities through acts of violence, causing large-​scale displacement along India’s Northeast borders.20 The discourse on identity politics does not allow for certain communities to assert territorial rights in Assam. This is particularly true for numerically large populations such as descendants of indentured workers in the plantations and subsistence peasants of the floodplains in the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys. Their presence in the region is tied to commodities, crops, and a labouring history that places them in the point of contact between Europeans and pre-​colonial society. This leads to a peculiar situation where radical political discourse on indigenous politics and rights over resources follows one that is similar to the cultural and political assertions of first nation communities in Canada, United States, Australia, and New Zealand. In the 1990s and early 2000s, sections of the left-​leaning advocates of autonomy made efforts to assert alliances that overcame ethnic identities. However, over time, as successive central and state governments began to negotiate with radical voices of dissent, ethnic territorial autonomy was foregrounded as a possible resolution. This allowed a section of people to remain outside the scope of political mobilizations and as outsiders in particular districts and regions. The relationship between Assam’s realities as a colonial province and the possibility of its existence as a nation separate from India was often raised in the Assam Association formed in the early part of the 20th century. The lack of an unequivocal answer has been one of the major sources of political mobilization, forming an ideological underpinning for movements for autonomy and secession throughout the second half of the 20th century, until contemporary times.21 There is a second order of issues linked to social justice that is associated to such politics in Assam. They have to do with securing equal rights for marginalized people based on their social position within the political economy of the region regardless of their ethnic

16  Homeland Insecurities

identity. As mentioned earlier, the working class for Assam’s tea plantations were forced to migrate from other parts of India, while many peasants in the floodplains were Muslims from East Bengal. Their conditions were markedly different from the white-​collared workers, merchants, and traders who were Bengali-​and Hindustani-​speaking Hindus from what is considered North India today. Historians and political scientists who have written about colonial Assam’s referendum in 1947 that resulted in the Muslim-​majority district of Sylhet joining (East) Pakistan and the rest of the province becoming part of India allude to the anxieties of local politicians in Assam when it came to colonial policies on immigration. Assamese nationalists of the early 20th century often differed with their counterparts in the Congress and also with the Muslim League on the issue. The League’s best-​known politician in Assam, Syed Saadullah, who has been portrayed in history texts as the person responsible for encouraging immigration from East Bengal in the 1930s in his time as the prime minister, was actually castigated by peasant leaders such as Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani for creating impediments in the acquisition of land by settlers. Similarly, Congress leaders such as Ambikagiri Raichoudhury and political commentators such as Jnananath Bora frequently reminded the party leadership (and Nehru in particular) of the similarities between Assam and Palestine on the immigration and settler question. Hence, when the Indian subcontinent was eventually partitioned, peasants and workers who were tied to the land and work in Assam were faced with difficult choices even though there did not seem to be much evidence of widespread violence (as in Punjab and Bengal). In the colonial province of Assam, religion was not the only determining factor in people’s decision to stay (or move). Language played an equally important role, especially for those who were going to become religious minorities within India. For a section of Assamese nationalists of the time, it was even more important than religion.22 One has to read these grainy details of uprooted lives that began with the unmooring of the British Empire in Asia. These events predated the formation of postcolonial nation-​states and yet, almost seventy years hence, we find ourselves at similar crossroads again. It

From Autonomy to Accommodation  17

was almost as though anti-​colonial movements in the region would bring closure to these divisive political events. Unfortunately, they didn’t and as the current NRC process in Assam shows, the government added yet another layer of oppression to a large section of people who had placed their faith in the law. These conditions force one to assess the future of debates around citizenship, not just in Assam but also in parts of the wider region that includes other states of the Indian union and countries such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Nepal. After all, discussions about citizenship and belonging have been central to the wider region and the fallout of conflicts has been significant as well.

Building Borders and Communities Borders, in the manner in which they are expressed every day, are profoundly modern objects. In Assam, they are often invoked as an integral part of the citizenship discourse, especially as a fence that ought to be built between India and Bangladesh. This is best expressed in the divisive discourse emanating around the issue of undocumented immigration in Assam. This discourse has been integral to political mobilization, as was referred to in the previous section. In his insightful essay, anthropologist Ghassan Hage considers modern border making as the renewal of older colonial projects. He points to the globalization of the settler-​colonial mentality, one that is constantly geared towards a state of war, as a crucial factor in the hardening of communitarian lines. Hage invokes the idea of the killing mob, an aggregation of colonized subjects that is capable of exacting violence on behalf of the colonizer, in the governance of parts of the globe that are considered to be conflict prone. He further states that such places of conflict often experience violent appropriation of resources that is facilitated by the creation of a racialized border within the territorial one of a country.23 This idea comes alive periodically in middle-​class homes around cities such as Guwahati where I live and teach. It comes alive during interviews with prospective research students, who passionately

18  Homeland Insecurities

make a case for wanting to study the problem of undocumented immigration into Assam for their research degrees. Three questions into the interview, we often realize what an impossible task that might be. How does a research student identify an undocumented immigrant, especially when this is a job for the various courts, tribunals, and police? Why does this matter to a student of sociology? How can a social scientist validate the results that arise from fieldwork? By the time we are on the third question, both interviewer and interviewee are aware that undocumented immigration has become sociological shorthand for a lot of other issues that continue to be unresolved. Indigenous rights, lack of material development of communities that live on the fringes of the urban sprawls, and a generation of impassioned youth growing up without access to platforms for political dialogue; all add to the kind of politics of death and dying that Achille Mbembe talks about in his seminal essay.24 In his invocation of the relationship between biopower and enmity, Mbembe draws on the two principles that define sovereign violence in modern European state (ergo in other imitative expressions of the state-​form)—​juridical equality of states and determination of frontiers of the nation-​state—​leading to the creation of wars between peoples along the frontiers of the state.25 In Assam, these principles have combined in interesting ways to allow for the perpetuation of violence between different communities of citizens, each claiming for itself the right to evict the other from the spaces that it inhabits. Here, the state manifests itself in myriad ways, falling short of accomplishing its role in all: as protector, as provider of welfare and jobs, as guarantor of security, and also as arbiter of territorial control. In its failure, the state has also added to the enactment of violence against those perceived to be the other, usually the migrant or the neighbour. This creates conditions for the de facto exercise of power of communities against each other and sometimes against the state, a concern that Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat outline in their introduction to the seminal volume on the condition of citizens and migrants in the postcolonial world.26 Hence, their contention that the violence of the colonial state has not withered away entirely,

From Autonomy to Accommodation  19

thereby rendering sovereignty to realm of private parties, can be evidenced in the periodic violence against outsiders in Assam. For instance, sociologists who have researched riots in Northeast India, define the massacre of Muslims in Nellie in the course of the Assam Agitation (1979–​1983) as a defining moment in the creation of vulnerable communities.27 After Nellie, violence was not contained by the state, nor were there any legal and social attempts at redress. Instead, there was a wilful evasion of responsibility, resulting in the several decades of silence on issues pertaining to ethnic violence between neighbouring communities. In the crucial decades that followed the Nellie massacre, several other events of a similar nature occurred all across the Northeast. The early 1990s saw violence erupt between armed militia in Manipur, leading to deaths and displacement of Kuki and Naga villages in the state.28 In Assam, there were conflicts that led to widespread displacement throughout the 1990s and 2000s, spilling over into the following decade as well. The media labelled these conflicts according to the main communities who were displaced, even though there were multi-​layered, complex issues that led to the outbreak of violence. Hence, the Adivasi-​Bodo (1996),29 Dimasa-​Hmar (2003),30 Karbi-​Kuki (2003),31 Dimasa-​Karbi (2005),32 Bodo-​Muslim (2008, 2012),33 and Garo-​Rabha (2011)34 displacements were all described in the media and research as conflicts between communities. Most often, social science researchers and media commentators club such conflicts under the aggregated category of ethnic conflicts.35 In such descriptions, it is quite possible to see conflict as self-​ generated and remove the state from the analysis, thereby adding to the idea that the region is constantly under a state of nature of the kind Rousseau described, an idealized primordial place of savagery. I believe this is an oversimplification of the conflicts; one that is designed to shift the onus away from the state. To bring the state’s responsibilities and roles back into the conflict would entail an engagement with two other realities. First, the state has not been able to provide security to all communities, especially in the rural areas. Second, in many places, armed militia that have some kin ties with the communities and civil society see themselves as protectors of the

20  Homeland Insecurities

community.36 Under such circumstances, the idea of the other and where they ought to belong become very important in the manner in which the state and other actors associated with it make political choices. Sections of media and political organizations perpetuate the recurring tropes of migrant, outsider, and foreigner in the course of their political mobilization. If the media-​labelled occasions of ethnic violence and displacement are evidence of this process, the state’s eviction drives around national parks and wildlife sanctuaries also need to be analysed in the same category. In Assam, the state has had to deal with natural disasters and conflicts since the 1970s. Its response has been piecemeal and focused more on resettlement.37 In many instances where natural disasters such as floods and erosion were involved, the state had facilitated the resettlement of affected persons around the fringes of parks and state forests. The Doyang-​ Tengani forest resettlement in Golaghat district (along the border of Nagaland) during the 1950s and 1960s is a typical example of one kind of trajectory that such processes take. Incidentally, it was the issues arising out of the Doyang-​Tengani resettlement that laid the foundations for the emergence of farmers and peasants’ organizations such as the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) in the 21st century. Initially, the government settled villagers who had been displaced by floods around the forests between Assam and the Naga Hills in the middle of the 1950s. Following the creation of the state of Nagaland, the Assam government created a half-​mile belt between the Naga Hills and the plains, allowing landless people to settle and cultivate there. Ever since the 1960s, people who were settled in these areas have struggled to establish ownership titles on the lands, since the government’s settlement process only allowed them usufructuary rights. In time, these struggles assumed a wider political aspect, becoming the fulcrum of the peasant struggle for land rights in the 21st-​century Assam.38 While Doyang-​ Tengani struggle assumed a non-​ ethnic, class character, most other struggles for resources have been marked by assertions of identity as well. In most other instances, reports about the involvement of ethnic militia undermine the government’s role

From Autonomy to Accommodation  21

as provider of security for all citizens. Ethnic militia and certain strong community leaders become symbolic fonts of power that can provide succour to those who have been affected by violence. In a region that is marked by linguistic and ethnic diversity, the effects of such violence are often the hardening of boundaries between communities. The state and its institutions intervene as if to keep people from different communities apart, almost like a person coming in between two others engaged in fisticuffs. As subsequent chapters show, reconciliation and dialogue are almost always left to those who have been affected by violence. As a result, the social milieu in the region is marked by the reinforcement of horizontal boundaries that are almost always expressed in terms of exclusive spaces, be they territorial councils or homelands. One has to take into consideration the growing class differences within communities as well. Since the turn of the century, the foundations of a predominantly agrarian society, with a considerable dependence on plantation and nationalized oil drilling has undergone a transformation.39 Ever since the 1980s, farming families have tried to move to other means to earn their livelihoods. Plantations—​tea, coffee, and rubber—​were seen as new, certain means to earn better incomes. Additionally, the 1990s and early 2000s saw an increase in migration of young men from the Brahmaputra valley to other parts of India. Recent works by anthropologists Dolly Kikon and Bengt G. Karlsson show how changes in the agrarian economy of the region have had far-​reaching affective consequences for individuals and communities. Their depictions of the lives of migrants from the Northeast draw on poignant accounts of class exploitation that begins at the home and village level of the places of origin for many of migrants.40 Their work reinforces Duncan McDuie-​Ra’s research on urban migrants from the region, who have had to leave home due to conflicts and lack of incentives to remain in Northeast India.41 Therefore, political discourse veers towards the intense identification of others as a source of problems. Violence against migrant and outsider extends to spaces that are considered to be porous. National parks are one such location where this discourse is played out to grievous consequences for wildlife and humans. This is discussed in

22  Homeland Insecurities

detail in Chapter 4, but it is important to underline the manner in which the idea of a hard border that contains an ideal mix of people, animals, birds, and plants has become a constitutive part of political discourse. It is manifested in myriad ways that may constitute a spectrum of responses. The Kaziranga National Orchid and Biodiversity Park that was set up by the peasant group, KMSS in the late 2000s would occupy the left end (of the spectrum). The manner in which the Orchid Park—​as travellers who visit Kaziranga know it—​is organized bears testimony to the left-​leaning imagination of Assamese nationalists. The members of the staff are young women and men from different ethnic groups who live along the fringes of the park. The complex has a canteen that serves ethnic food, taking care not to serve pork and beef so as not to offend Muslims and Hindus. There is a large greenhouse that is home to various local orchids, an open herb garden that grows medicinal plants, a rice museum, and a seed centre. All the elements of the mix come together to express an ideal type of national space that is inclusive, predominantly rural, and possesses abundant natural resources within its borders. The intruders, in this instance, are not humans (nor animals) but a developmental paradigm that is loaded against indigenous people and their way of life. Organizations that insist on evictions of suspected encroachers, detection of foreigners, and deportation of undocumented immigrants contribute to the discourse that forms the right end of the spectrum. The various instances of judicial activism during the NRC process, or the frequent pronouncements by non-​governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Prabajan Virodhi Manch would constitute a discourse that contributes to the hardening of borders and definitions of communitarian identities. This is one of the outcomes of the modern iteration of identities, where fluidity is only possible at an individual level, as opposed to pre-​colonial, pre-​modern times. Historian Yasmin Saikia’s work on Tai Ahom identity formation in eastern Assam, especially in the emergence of oppositional politics in the late 19th early 20th century, shows the complex political and social machinations that were involved in creating a sense of upper Assam, Ahom identity. For Saikia, what emerged in the interplay of

From Autonomy to Accommodation  23

politics and history in eastern Assam was the consolidation of an upper caste, Hindu Assamese identity that was sometimes at odds with the pre-​colonial Ahom identity that asserted an autonomous, non-​Aryan, non-​Indic past. The 20th century yielded the possibility of such assertions of autonomous, creatively constructed, and politically fluid categories.42 In contrast, the emergence of a citizenship discourse based on singular identity and documentation linked to property, place, and political practice has been a salient feature of the 21st century, as evidenced in the NRC debates. This is not to argue that one remains consistently in the assigned place (on the spectrum). The developmentalist discourse, with its insistence on economic growth and creation of jobs for both skilled and unskilled persons, has created a new paradigm that forces people to move from their position of rootedness. Since the turn of the century, as Kikon and Karlsson have pointed out, the availability of jobs outside the region and the lack of economic opportunities in traditional homelands have forced young people out to a world where they are immigrants.43 This has led to several lively debates within Assam, where commentators have raised questions about the futility of leaving the farm fields for lowly paid jobs, even as poorer cultivators and daily wage earners take on the work that others have left behind.44 Here, the idea of the homeland becomes an important motif that has the capacity to heal and hurt at the same time. As evidenced in research emerging from southern Africa, the so-​called backward villages and homelands that immigrants leave behind are also the highly contested places that they return to when their bodies have exhausted their capacity to labour.45 The violence in Assam then assumes the poignant spirit invoked by Chicana scholar, Gloria Anzaldua’s insistence that borders are more than just a physical boundary on the ground, but something that extends to the realm of the personal as well.46 She reflects on the kind of processes that make people doubt themselves, as they navigate the tense world of symbols, language, gender, sexuality, and class. These dispositions are universal, as they resonate with the kind of stories that one contrasts against the other in Assam. Narratives of return are often tinged with threats of violence, as was evident in

24  Homeland Insecurities

the exodus of workers in 2012 from cities such as Bangalore. The exodus reiterated the notion of Assam—​and the Northeast—​being a frontier in the national imagination; a place where it was hard to tell friend from enemy; a space where political debates eventually led to atavistic conflicts between people.47 This imagination is important in the hardening of particular types of differences—​language, religion, and clan affiliation—​and allowing for the proliferation of other, insidious processes that are aimed at the weakening of economic stability of vulnerable communities.

Security and Political Mobilization The sense of vulnerability in Assam is heightened by the volume of displaced persons who exist in the margins of popular consciousness and debates. As mentioned in earlier sections of this introductory chapter, much of the displacement that finds mention at all is because of the conflicts that involve villagers from different communities. However, there is also a more pervasive phenomenon of displacement that has been caused by developmental projects in the state, especially since the 1950s. Action researchers Walter Fernandes and Gita Bharali paint a formidable picture of development-​induced displacement that has taken place due to government-​aided projects since 1947. Their book that emerged from several years of meticulous enquiry looks into the amount of land acquired (by the state) for developmental purposes, as well as the numbers of persons and their families who were displaced or had lost their livelihoods. They state that between the years 1947 and 2000, the State Government of Assam acquired 1,410,000 acres (i.e. 8% of the state’s total land area) for developmental projects, displacing 1,910,000 persons. Many of those who were displaced were peasants, who formed the core of political mobilization for many post-​independence governments since the 1950s.48 Historians and commentators of modern Assam have told us the many ways in which the colonial state had disrupted old agrarian structures of the Ahom Kingdom in the Brahmaputra valley.

From Autonomy to Accommodation  25

Arupjyoti Saikia’s work on peasant protests in the valley evokes the contentious world of peasant politics during the 1940s, when rather than celebrate the impending transfer of power from British rule, subsistence farmers were taking to the streets and laying claim to plantation and forest land in order to assert their custodianship over land. Saikia’s book on the century of struggles that Assam’s farmers forged and lived through, dwells on the increasing incidences of litigations that big landowners and plantation managers had begun against small farmers in the Brahmaputra valley. He further deliberates at length on the different tactical and strategic lines that the Revolutionary Communist Part of India (RCPI) and Communist Party of India had taken in order to mobilize the peasants of the valley.49 Bodhisattva Kar, on the other hand, shows us how small and marginal farmers in the valley as also in the hills were complicit in the process of creating semi-​legal trade in rubber and forest products, sometimes being able to avoid the revenue collection agencies of the state.50 From their lively accounts of crafty peasants and militant action by their leaders, we are able to reflect on the kind of social and political contradictions that existed in the middle of the 20th century. For historians of colonial Assam, taxation remained at the heart of their historical accounts. Peasant resistance to paying taxes to a state that was not interested in protecting their land and lives was the reason for militant action in the colonial period. Whenever the peasant appeared in the archives of the colonial state, one could be reasonably certain that there was some trouble in the air and that the peasant (or someone else) was in need of rescuing. Historian Amalendu Guha’s classic book Planter Raj to Swaraj has a very interesting section on nationalists and communist leaders of eastern Assam being concerned about the plight of the peasant.51 They had identified the plantation as a soul-​crushing, surplus-​sucking source of misery for Assam’s farmers. For one, it had taken over elevated areas of the (Brahmaputra) valley that were earlier used for seasonal cultivation and foraging. For another, it had created an enclave of colonial economy where local people did not eat what they produced and were unable to produce what they ate. Thus, nationalists

26  Homeland Insecurities

encouraged peasants to set up their own haats where they could sell their surplus to the emerging urban classes. These haats continue to be important in contemporary times and serve as markers of political and social alliances in much of eastern Assam.52 As a child returning home from boarding school in Shillong to Jorhat town for the winter, I recall with clarity my father’s attempts to retrace the six-​kilometre distance between our native village and the nationalist haat in Meleng. This haat was important to my father as my grandfather would trek to Meleng every week just so that he could show solidarity with the nationalist cause. Like many 20th-​century upper-​caste ujoni Oxom nationalists who had been educated outside Assam and had stopped farming, my grandfather saw no contradictions in his support for the nationalists and their concern for the peasant, while our clan still had other families attached to cultivate lands that supposedly was ours as part of the pre-​ colonial arrangement that was set up by the Ahom state. As people such as my grandfather moved away from agriculture, making sure that all his sons would never have to plough the fields, he was supposed to have become even more rigid in his support for a version of Assamese nationalism that saw people fixed to places that colonialism had relegated them to: the indentured labourer in the plantation; the Marwari and Bengali in the cities that were connected to one another by trains; the tribes in the hills; the Muslim immigrant in the chars; the English in the bungalows (in the plantation and in cities); and the Assamese in villages that were constantly trying to retain their pristine character, even as they made efforts to reach the cities. This has several implications for popular politics in Assam. It helped consolidate an untenable idea that the category ‘peasant’ and the identity ‘Assamese’/​(Oxomiya) would be welded together through a complex history of colonial revenue collection, nationalist literature, and political mobilization in the 20th century. This involved an interesting contestation over the kinds of crops that were being cultivated in the valley. Jute, according to the early 20th-​century Assamese nationalist, was a crop that was favoured by immigrant peasants, while paddy was Assamese.53 It was also a moment

From Autonomy to Accommodation  27

when refined calculations over the quality of land had become important for articulation of claims of belonging. For instance, the radical political figure for peasants of East Bengal origin, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, often claimed that it was the Bhatiali peasant who had transformed the wastelands of Assam. His name attests to the importance of types of land to a people. Bhashani was appended to the Maulana’s name because he had decided to build his house on a char called Bhashan when the British expelled him from Bengal in the early 1900s. He stayed on in Assam, drawing huge crowds at rallies against British imperialism, where he also spoke against the Muslim League led by the land-​owning, English-​speaking Assamese from eastern Assam—​Sir Syed Saadullah. The Maulana accused the League of selling out and Saadullah of being a post-​box for the colonizers, always delivering bad news to the hardworking peasants.54 The Maulana’s mobilization was not very effective in areas where the Bhatiali peasants were missing, or in smaller numbers. If one were to go by literature on peasant mobilization in the 20th century, the idea that there were exclusive areas based on inner and outer lines (for settlement) is very compelling. As evidence, there are residues of revenue department decisions such as tribal blocks and belts that exist today. It almost suggests the existence of hermetically sealed ethnic villages in wide prairie-​like landscapes, leaving aside the fact that the Brahmaputra valley is not very expansive. The points of contact, even without motorized vehicles and horse carts, could not have been more than a few hours through forest, river and swamps. It is intriguing, therefore, that the peasants chose their leaders, as much as their leaders chose to represent them. The absence of non-​Bhatiali speaking farmers in the Maulana’s camp is something we need to think through keeping in mind that the Maulana represented a popular movement that took pains to keep away from communal ideas, while working for a largely Muslim constituency. In a parallel world, some political leaders in Assam had been addressing the inequalities arising from the tea and oil industries, albeit in a very coy manner. By the early 20th century, there were at least a few Assamese families who had begun to plant tea and employ indentured labourers like their European counterparts. Some were

28  Homeland Insecurities

also involved in the Swatantra Party that was nervous about socialist influences in nationalist politics and were amenable to concessions from the colonial administration. They had imbibed the same ideas of hierarchy as the British, ensuring that the workers in the plantations remained in their labour lines. There were a few interesting differences though. As a child visiting relatives who were managing plantations in the 1980s, I would ask my parents why they were referred to as ‘Memsahib and Sahib’ in some estates and ‘Baidew and Kokaidew’ in others. It turned out that plantations belonging to Assamese owners felt more comfortable with salutations by their workers in the vernacular. I also recall the ease with which my upper caste, land-​owning, and rice-​eating relatives were able to slip into their modern European, whisky, and tea-​sipping selves. They had made a decision to use English education to move out of agricultural work and to a large extent, it did. As historian Jayeeta Sharma points out, it gave them an opportunity to partake in the colonial project of improving Assam and anchored the idea that this required industry and wilderness to be set apart for people who were able to work and improve upon the latter for the benefit of the market and the state.55 Like them, there were other groups of Assamese people who began to see their futures in the expanding industries and institutions of the colonial state. The discovery of oil had also led to a different order of anxieties among political leaders in Assam. As they did not have to deal with indentured labourers, it seemed like a very different project from the tea plantations. Oil exploration and extraction required skilled geologists, engineers, and technicians. These were aspirations that were desirable and doable for the emerging, early 20th-​ century Assamese middle class. It saved them from agriculture-​like work in the plantations that was done by indentured workers and allowed them to apply science and technology in their working lives. So, when the transfer of power happened in 1947, some Assamese-​ speaking professionals would follow their jobs, while a vast majority were left to live off the land. The end of Planter Raj did make a substantial difference to the emerging educated classes in the region. It allowed a considerable

From Autonomy to Accommodation  29

section of educated semi-​urban and rural youth to feel a sense of responsibility towards developing the region and its resources. The appeal to development was significant in the demands made by leaders of agitations in Assam.56 These demands, as one might expect, came from a conviction that progress would emanate from the various departments in the universities and colleges imparting technical education in engineering, medicine and the social sciences in Assam. Such processes have taken place elsewhere too. As anthropologist James Ferguson points out in his seminal work on Lesotho, developmental regimes with their insistence on providing modern technology also systematically flattened out local politics and discourse.57 Such regimes, as Ferguson notes, are capable of rendering obsolete all forms of local knowledge and debates that are at odds with the modernizing ones. In Assam, the developmental state was able to distract and divert attention from agriculture to other occupational possibilities that showed better connections with universities and their curriculum. The application of technology, as one might recall, was a hallmark of government policy for farmers in the country, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. It was during this period that engineers and agricultural scientists spread out from the colleges and universities across Assam and began to make yet another significant transformation of the landscape. Canals, dikes, embankments, and other infrastructure to manage the flow and water level in Assam’s rivers and water bodies were taken up with urgency during this period. Foreign aid and government policies of extending support to farmers meant the expansion of shallow tube wells all over the valley. The postcolonial state was keen to show that it would work for the peasants, since they provided an important political base for political mobilization and populist policies. This involvement of the state in agrarian matters in India has had a lively, rigorous, and discursive debate in the social sciences that brought in sharp opinions from left-​wing activists working with peasants.58 Hence, the matter of adding technological inputs to traditional agriculture assumed a political role for some who believed that state support for modernization would lead to

30  Homeland Insecurities

soviet-​style reforms among the farming communities in the country and do away with old feudal structures and build new alliances.59 Others, however, saw the co-​existence, even encouragement of certain feudal qualities, through the mechanics of caste dynamics in rural areas, even as the state went ahead with a capitalistic development of agriculture.60 The question as to whether agrarian relations in India were semi-​feudal, semi-​capitalist, or completely capitalist was not just a matter of semantics but also a reflection of the political fissures in the global communist movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It was as though the granular discussions on political strategies and tactical alliances on the ground were finding their way into academic knowledge about rural India. This also elicited enough discussion in Assam through the 1980s and 1990s and radical youth had a significant role to play in it, especially in the manner in which agrarian societies were to be represented. In the course of my fieldwork and interactions with friends in some of the paddy growing areas around Guwahati and Nagaon between 2001 and 2015, I was struck by the sharply contrasting memories that people had about these initiatives. For many village-​based activists, especially those who were close to views expressed by the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the embankments and canals were among the root causes of conflict. They complained bitterly against the rivers that were blocked in order to control floods, as well as against the canals that were constructed to irrigate scrubland areas. I remember my activist friend, Habibur Rohman of Nagaon saying passionately and wistfully back in 2000 at one of Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti’s (MASS) annual meetings in Nagaon: ‘If only ULFA had the courage to explode the dikes that prevent the Kolong from flowing freely’. In his mind, that explosion would allow the people of Nagaon to eat all the wild river fish such as Pabho and Chitol that he said had swum along the river until its mouth was closed as part of an effort to prevent Nagaon town from flooding in the 1960s. I reminded him about the floods and he looked at me as though I was a police informer: ‘Why should the people of a whole region suffer because of some business families and shopkeepers in Nagaon?’ he asked testily.

From Autonomy to Accommodation  31

Clearly, Habibur’s concerns for rewriting the course of history and restoring equity among people were somewhat different from mine. He belonged to a family of farmers from the Rupohi area outside Nagaon, and while the blocking of the river might have helped the city, it had led to a steady decline of production of paddy for the farmers. In many ways, his concerns were similar to the kind of issues that were raised by residents of Ferghana valley in Kyrgyzstan following the country’s independence from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In her nuanced, descriptive work on negotiations around water-​based conflicts, geographer Christine Bichsel analyses how post-​Soviet political realities left some areas arid and others irrigated and thereby exacerbated existing conflicts among different user communities. As she shows in her later work, central Asia’s national and sub-​national conflicts have frequently been the result of bad infrastructure and water sharing plans, where water flows were systematically diverted from one place to another, even as successive governments and planners were unable to ensure equitable distribution and dialogue among users.61 The parallels with what had transpired in Assam, especially in the period when irrigation and civil engineering efforts of taming rivers were undertaken, are hard to miss. This feeling was accentuated during my frequent visits to Nalbari, where a Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) alumnus runs a successful rural development organization called Gramya Vikash Mancha (GVM). Most of the women and men who are full-​time members of the NGO are from the area and have been doing some extraordinary work on renewing an interest in agriculture. Their office is full of handmade charts and maps that explain the impact of water flows from Bhutan to Assam, as well as migration into and out of Nalbari, Baksa, and Chirang districts. My friend and former TISS Guwahati Campus student, Prithibhushan Deka is one of the founders of the organization that now employs more than a hundred educated young women and men for projects that are funded by a wide array of Indian and foreign donors. He used to be a student activist in the 1990s, at a time when Nalbari was called Assam’s Jaffna as it was one of the many places where young people had joined the

32  Homeland Insecurities

armed rebellion in large numbers. In Prithibhushan’s opinion, much of it had to do with how grazing land and cultivable fields had become unproductive when canals and dikes were built in the area. Once that happened, young men had to migrate out to the city or beyond, in order to earn a livelihood. Water, as is wont, has a way of disappearing from one place and reappearing in another. Within the small ecological universe of Nalbari, it managed to seep through in other places that were quickly occupied by people from outside the district, who were poorer than the farmers who had decided to call it a day. Water, infrastructure, and human beings have combined to impact the value of land since the 1950s. The proximity to a road, once seen as a crucial factor to take produce to the market, also allowed people to leave the villages and become migrants elsewhere. GVM is located in an area called Barbari in Nalbari district. Most of their work and some of their volunteers are from an area, situated approximately 10 kilometres from the NGO’s office, called Dokoha. ‘It used to be called Doboka’, Prithibhushan informed me on the muggy evening of 22 June 2013, when he spoke of the time the area was declared a revenue village in 1935 by some British revenue official. According to an apocryphal story, the official’s elephant got stuck in the mud and made a sound that sounded like ‘dobok’, which is how the place got its name. At some point, he explained without saying much, the place changed its name and came to be called Dokoha. He had invited me to a screening of an episode of Satyameva Jayate, a television programme that was hosted by actor Aamir Khan. One of the episodes had dealt with the problems of chemical fertilizers in farming and GVM was keen to get as many farmers as possible to view the episode. Fertilizers had begun to make their presence felt in a big way in the area, and the organization was worried that it was doing more harm than good, at least for the few farmers who still relied on agriculture as their main occupation. We were on our way to the house of one of the older members of the NGO, Ajit, who had been involved in radical politics prior to his joining GVM. Assamese-​speaking Scheduled Caste and Muslims of Bengal-​origin communities, whose livelihoods depended on the

From Autonomy to Accommodation  33

flow of water in the area, dominated the village. Over the past few years, Prithibhushan informed me, local communities had fallen apart, especially after Muslims of Bengal origin had begun to arrive in the area when they were forced out of river islands and areas that had been eroded by rivers in western Assam. The conflicts always sounded petty when related to others—​a straying goat in the neighbour’s yard, pilfered grain from the barn—​but they added to the tension in the local area. All of it got accentuated in the rainy season, when waterlogging and floods made it necessary for most families in the area to seek support from NGOs and the government. Ajit’s support for local initiatives, given his involvement in radical politics earlier, was of great importance in the relief work that was carried out. Much of the GVM’s work was about mapping the causes of livelihood change and their impact on the local economy. As we moved out of the office to Ajit’s house, Prithibhushan pointed out the places where activists from ULFA and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) had their offices. They inherited some of the furniture and other material from these offices, but most importantly, they picked up a spirit of volunteerism from both the organizations. Similar acknowledgement would not have been easy a decade earlier—​ in the 2000s—​ as the government administration were incarcerating and sometimes killing activists with any obscure connections to ULFA. In most cases, the connections were as fragile as metaphoric spider webs that were both strong and fragile. GVM, AJYCP, and ULFA shared a very dense physical and political space with one another, and it was not inconceivable that there would be a traffic of ideas from one office to the other. In many ways, the evolution of GVM as a developmental organization concerned about livelihood, social justice, and development, emerged from a rejection of violent politics with a deeper focus on everyday needs of a very complex, multi-​ethnic rural society in their district. Currently, it partners with some of the country’s foremost donors working on development and relief. The organization works very closely with the district administration in extending material relief and awareness on many of the government’s flagship schemes for rural communities.

34  Homeland Insecurities

Ajit and his wife invited us in for tea. Unlike other men of the village, Ajit went inside his house, where he made omelettes and tea for us, as his wife asked Prithibhushan about the new work that GVM had taken on in anticipation of the floods that were predicted for the monsoon. In the sticky humidity of the late afternoon June heat, it was interesting to be suddenly reminded of the manner in which former guerrilla members were capable of questioning certain gender roles, such as housework. In most other households in the village, women were relegated to the kitchen, especially when men went visiting on official matters. Despite recent accounts of various degrees gender insensitivity to women’s issues within ULFA,62 there are anecdotal accounts—​as well as parts of Dixita Deka’s research—​ to show that gender roles were indeed part of the process of revolutionary change within the organization, as many former and current cadre have spoken about organizational mores questioning social roles ascribed to women.63 In fact, in the course of my fieldwork across the Brahmaputra valley between 1999 and 2005, my love for cooking and kitchen work had led several of my hosts in villages to look upon me with some suspicion. Many were used to ULFA male cadres who came to seek shelter in their homes. These young men had little hesitation to cook and clean, since these were tasks that they had been used to in the bush. Ajit and his partner were therefore emblematic of a perceptible turn in gendered ideas prevalent in rural Nalbari. However, for even the most discerning observer, the world of volunteers and voluntary work in rural Nalbari was markedly masculine, with relatively few women being seen in the execution of community-​based work. To return to the everyday relief and developmental work being done in Nalbari, it is also important to understand the role that animators and community leaders (like Ajit) play in bringing people together. However, they also had to contend with local sentiments. In this case, Assamese Muslim communities around the river Bullu had been at loggerheads with Muslims of Bengal origin, accusing them of petty crimes in the area. Neighbours saw the newcomers as land grabbers and cattle rustlers, yet such allegations did not merit greater police presence or vigilance. Ajit, Prithibhushan, and I left to visit a

From Autonomy to Accommodation  35

small settlement around the Pagladiya River, not far from the office and Ajit’s house. The settlement had come up in 2012, when settlers from other districts came and blocked a stream that flowed into the Pagladiya, by building houses nearby. In doing so, they flooded areas that were used as paam (seasonal) cultivation and dwelling area by Assamese Muslim farmers. GVM had attempted to mediate between the local farmers and the settlers, but in the end, the police had to get involved to prevent violence between the two parties. Even so, the police were forced to retreat from the dispute and the channel was cleared to allow the water to flow again. This led to rancour between the settlers and the local Assamese Muslim communities. As the three of us made our way to the house of one of the GVM’s main animators, one of the settlers began to berate Prithibhushan about the lack of facilities for their families. ‘The government has not given us anything sister’, he replied in Bhatiali. He asked whether the child she was carrying in her arms had been vaccinated, but she ignored his question and kept asking for more information on relief that was promised by the government, as well as what would happen when the rains came again. As he extricated himself from her, and joined Ajit and me, we met the animator Javed (an Assamese Muslim from a neighbouring village) who muttered under his breath: ‘Drama again’. He took us to the Jatiya Vidyalaya (National School) in the neighbourhood, which was yet another outcome of the complicated interplay of Assamese nationalism and the Government of Assam’s attempts to extend community-​based, people-​funded primary education.64 The animator’s obvious frustration with the woman spilled over into our conversation about the preparedness for the rains and GVM’s work plans laid out for the summer. He was exhausted by the constant demands for relief among the settlers, he said. ‘They are way more aware of the kind of material that the departments send during relief than our Assamese farmers’, he said. In the course of discussions about work, Ajit asked Javed about the possibility of screening the Satyameva Jayate episode in the area, leading the latter to scoff: ‘These farmers (who have settled here) are the main culprits. They use chemical fertilizers indiscriminately as they have no commitment to the land’.

36  Homeland Insecurities

For the volunteer-​animator Javed, the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers was linked to the loss of grazing areas, as well as the reduced numbers of cows and buffaloes in the area. He spoke about a time, well into the middle of the 1980s, when the dairy products of the area—​curd and cream—​were celebrated across western Assam. However, with the canals and embankments, large tracts of land had become unfit for grazing. The cows and buffaloes had also provided farmers with manure for their fields. As the dairy producers began to leave the area, farmers with economic means began to acquire land and rented it out to settlers who had begun to come to the area from other parts of Assam towards the end of 1980s. The settlers, who rented the land, did so for a few years and were understandably interested in maximizing their produce. Javed continued explaining that the settlers used any chemicals that private companies had begun to market and bought hybrid vegetable seeds for the winter season as well. All of this had different interpretations, depending on who was being asked about the issue of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The sharecroppers were renting the land for amounts that they found very high—​approximately 200 kilos for every bigha cultivated, or 50% of the produce—​and the only way to break even was to ensure maximum production from the land that they were renting in. The chemical fertilizer and pesticide companies allowed them a few years of subsidized procurement of the material, after which they had to pay full cost for it. Caught in the vicious cycle, the sharecroppers said that they knew no other way to break even, especially when they were not sure how long they would stay. Those who could, tried to invest some of their money into buying agricultural land, so that they did not have to rely on short-​term, expensive tenures. Those who were renting out land were also not in a position to cultivate their fields on their own. Over time, they had seen their families and relatives turn away from agriculture and rely on hired farm labour. With farm incomes dropping each season, they found it easier to rent out the land for an amount that could help supplement the family’s income. In all, everyone around the area covered under GVM’s work was attempting to eke

From Autonomy to Accommodation  37

out a living by doing everything they could around land. Farming was one of the few options that they had. This resonates with what anthropologist James Ferguson says about the speed with which social scientists conflate the land question with the agrarian one. He argues that the question of land was associated with the kind of rights one enjoyed over it and what one wanted to do with it, while the agrarian question was more about the manner in which farming ought to be organized as well as the roles different actors played in it, adding that the beneficiaries are distributed across family and ethnic lines.65 Talking to people around Nalbari, one is struck by just how much the village field has to subsidize the work of the family. It provided direct livelihoods to those farming, but it also provided a safety net for members who left for cities in search of different kind of labour. That bag of rice that came from home was a point of pride and security for young women and men in the city. In drawing up the various activities that people did with land—​farming, renting, selling, collecting firewood, grazing livestock—​there was little doubt that most families shared common activities and connections. However, when it came to attributing symbolic collective identity and pride about the place, newly arrived settlers seemed to be excluded. Would they come for the screening of the film, I vacuously wondered as though they had nothing else to do during the summer. Prithibhushan was sure that they would and hoped that he could persuade some of them to begin thinking along different lines, to be more able to interact with others and change the narrative. The Assamese Muslim and Assamese Hindu amity stories were clearly used to underline the divide between those considered to be outsiders and the locals (where the Assamese word ‘tholuwa’ was used to denote the latter, while the outsiders were quite summarily described as ‘mia’). Eventually, many men did turn up for the screening. Women and settlers though were conspicuous by their absence on that day. Perhaps there were occasions where the world of settlers and natives met without rancour—​during festivals and disasters—​but even as late as 2014 and in the absence of sustained political projects that draw the various threads of the

38  Homeland Insecurities

transformation of agriculture narrative, it was hard to see how one could create possibilities of inclusion within the local community in the area. Organizations such as GVM have continued to explore ways by which women and children, irrespective of their ethnic origins, could come together on common platforms. Health and education were high on the list, but the organization was working under extremely difficult circumstances. On their own, these stories are not spectacular and perhaps undeserving of academic attention. Recent scholarship on women’s lived experiences along South Asia’s violent borderlands have been instructive in drawing one’s attention to the manner in which large numbers of people—​especially women, as the previous section tries to show—​have been excluded from statist narratives of belonging and policy making.66 These accounts and research help one understand the Kafkaesque world of policy making, their impact and failure along places that are far away from officious decision-​making processes. However, I have not been able to shake off the idea that there exists an aggregated story that weaves farming, migration, and insurgency from one end of the Brahmaputra valley to the other. It is also important to confront the idea that political solidarity and praxis has never been formulaic in Assam. Class alliances were difficult across language and religious divides, but there were always organizations that attempted them routinely in the course of their political mobilization. The cultural works of the Indian People’s Theatre Association and other leftist organizations from their pre-​ 1947 activities until the 1970s had bridged the divides with some degree of success, though they were unable to sustain them in the long run.67 For researchers looking at patterns and responses, it can be immensely rewarding to look beyond the formulaic answers to class and identity politics in the state. While it is true that agriculture is an important element in understanding local politics, there is a sense that it is the unheralded parts of the element—​water sharing, dike building, and so on—​that become crucial to the responses and not merely the quantity of land owned by individuals. Thus, this cycle of poor peasants leaving from and arriving at a small area could be seen as a dense, disaggregated experience of farmers in Assam in the

From Autonomy to Accommodation  39

20th century. Who then, were speaking for them, or speaking about political matters, during and after the days of planning in the 1960s and 1970s?

Structure of the Book Autonomy, migration, conservation, and reconciliation remain at the heart of different chapters of this book. They emerge through ethnographic moments, as well as engagement with secondary literature on the subject. The chapters are organized along thematic lines with short headings that reflect the subject being discussed. They have been used as political slogans, or important expressions used in the public domain in order to press home a point. Chapter 2 is titled ‘Autonomy or Death’ and comes from a popular slogan that appeared on wall writings all over western Assam in the 1980s and 1990s. It was part of a Weltanschauung that sustained critical debates on constitutional guarantees for autonomy in Assam, especially after interventions from indigenous organizations at the Constituent Assembly debates in 1947. The sections of the chapter thereafter trace the outcomes in the region, following political violence, especially the manner in which communities have reorganized their lives and livelihoods. Chapter 3 is titled ‘Migration Matters’ which formed part of the title of an old collaborative project that I was involved in during my PhD programme (2003–​2007). While all the data for the chapter comes from a later engagement with the field, I retained the title for its evocative possibilities. The PhD project on migration involved sharing data across South Asia with colleagues who were working on Indo-​Nepal migration, migration to the Persian Gulf, India-​ Bangladesh enclaves, and remittances from South Asian citizens to their home countries. For me, as for the other who collaborated in the writing of a peer-​reviewed article, making our data intelligible to one another was a challenge and revelation.68 I use that revelatory moment to turn the lens on the migration story in Assam by focusing on the plight of those who leave Assam in search of better

40  Homeland Insecurities

opportunities, as well those who are forced to scratch the land at home in the hope of improving their lives somehow. The need to integrate this story of land and livelihoods is extended to human-​animal relationships in Chapter 4, which is titled ‘Elephants (and Rhinos) in the Room’. Taking on the pioneering work on environmental conflicts, governance, and resource extraction in the turn of the century by Nancy Lee Peluso, Michael Watts, and their collaborators, this chapter looks at the pressures and paradoxes of the conservation story in Assam. The human–​animal encounters in Assam are increasingly seen through the twin lenses of militarism (both in the poaching of animals, as well as killing of alleged poachers) and development (both as a fait accompli and as hopeful possibility of coexistence). My choice of animals—​the rhino and the elephant—​emerged from an engagement with eviction of subsistence farmers, extra-​judicial killings of alleged rhino poachers, and the increasing human–​elephant conflicts that occurred in Kaziranga and Manas national parks. Chapter 5, titled ‘Commune and (Relief) Camp’, draws on the implications of the previous chapter. It looks at the precarious worlds created by conflicts and increasing instances of natural disasters. Many of these natural calamities are induced by climate change, according to researchers across the world, especially those who work on deltaic Bengal (of which the Brahmaputra River is an important factor). This chapter raises questions on the new ways through which communities, individuals, and organizations are being pushed to rethink ways and reasons to live, work, and nurture human relationships and associations. It draws on the tragedies that have come from a political vocabulary that draws from old ideas of conquest, transfer of populations, and managing conflicts. However, in juxtaposing the commune and the camp, it draws hope from the enduring possibility of human generosity to show how other ways of thinking and living are practiced, often by those whose voices are rarely amplified in the media and academia. The final chapter, ‘Conclusion’ is a summing up of the arguments and moments that went into writing the pages of this book. This chapter describes the ideas and politics I embraced in support for

From Autonomy to Accommodation  41

autonomy as a younger person, as well as the engagement with the discursive world of emerging research on the subject during my days as a PhD researcher; the realities of migration from the region and the precarity of migrant lives; my personal (almost accidental) engagement with conservation and its antecedents in militarized histories; and finally the unlikely, uplifting places, both intellectual and political, where I found answers to some of the intractable problems in Assam.

2 ‘Autonomy or Death’ I had stopped at Biju Baidew’s1 office in Tamulpur on my way to the border town of Samdrup Jongkhar in Bhutan on a hot summer day in August 2013. She had started a non-​governmental organization (NGO) to encourage women’s empowerment in and around Baksa district of the Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts (BTAD).2 My visit to the border town was to get a sense of the transformations that had taken place since I had last been in the vicinity of the place in 2003 following the massive military operations against insurgents by the Royal Bhutan Army with the help of the Indian army. In 2003, Tamulpur had just become part of the newly formed BTAD following a peace deal between sections of Bodo insurgents who were fighting for autonomy, even as those who had continued to defy the government and were living along the border, were subjected to military operations. Back in 2003, Baidew was among a handful of Gandhian social workers in the area. In the intervening decade, she had branched out from her mentor to form an organization that engaged with women and children in an area that continued to see outmigration in fairly large numbers to warrant concern from those who were concerned about trafficking. ‘Samdrup, eh?’ she asked, while responding to a small child, who insistently called her Biju-​ma, tugging at her sleeves to remind her that Titu-​ma wanted something. Biju patted the little boy and said that she would join him soon and continued to explain how work had been exasperating her for a while now. ‘There is so little work here’, she went on. ‘Most people from here—​Bengali, Hajong, Bodo, and Adivasi—​try to find some daily wage work there’. She was responding to my questions about how there were many rows of cycles Homeland Insecurities. Sanjay Barbora, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780192855329.003.0002

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along the gate leading to Samdrup Jongkhar. This was in marked contrast to the deserted roads following the army operations in 2003. Over tea and the little boy’s reappearance, Biju Baidew and I spoke about her anxieties regarding the trafficking of children, especially girls from the villages and neighbouring tea plantations. ‘The numbers of people leaving the area for work and who get exploited are on the rise’, she said, leaving me to think about the various layers of ironies involved in this brief conversation. In this chapter, I focus on both a historical trajectory of the autonomous movement, as well as its more quotidian moments where much of the political rhetoric is constantly being challenged on the ground. I argue that the militarized social milieu does not allow for the resolution of many of the nuanced outcomes of conflicts that arise in the process of political mobilization by local communities and conflict management strategies of the government. All the field-​ based data for this chapter were collected between 2013 and 2017 from Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa (that are part of the current Bodo Territorial Region), as well as Kamrup (rural) and Nalbari districts, where I was participant in research project works and peacebuilding campaigns. One of the most enduring aspects of political life in contemporary Assam, especially after 1947, has been the demand for territorial and political autonomy by indigenous communities. Many of these communities are categorized as Scheduled Tribe under the Indian constitution. The Scheduled Tribe/​indigenous debate is a well-​traversed terrain in Indian politics and academic scholarship, where scholars and activists have debated the merits and demerits of both the term ‘tribe’ and ‘indigenous’ in the Indian subcontinent.3 While acknowledging the layers of the debate, this chapter looks at the impact of the debate on demands for territorial and political autonomy in Assam. Territorial autonomy for tribal areas is not a new phenomenon in Assam. The Government of India had evolved a set of principles to grant autonomy to territories that were predominantly inhabited by communities that were categorized under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution in 1950. There are two distinct but related matters that

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have contributed to growing violence in Assam’s autonomous territorial districts in contemporary times. One relates to the timeless quality to the idea of territorial arrangements that suggest a closure of debates around such issues. The other relates to the government’s decision to categorize people and land they live in, as entitlements granted to those who are able to prove that they have not immigrated from outside the state. Both, in turn, impact the propensity for violence in the state. The framing of dialogue on territorial arrangements is mostly around (a) constitutional provisions4 or (b) historical grounds that lead to a renegotiation of administrative power.5 The purpose of this chapter is to add details to these frames. It aims to show how movements for autonomy are an effort to refashion the existing political landscape in Assam, by mounting challenges to public authority and encouraging erratic alliances between different groups in the state. While drawing from a rich tradition of existing scholarship on resource conflicts in the region,6 it aligns itself to recent works on state formation through property and citizenship in moments of rupture.7 There is an existing body of literature that highlights a series of lively debates on citizenship that began in the 1980s in Assam.8 Emerging from the political turmoil of the Assam Agitation (1979–​ 1985), this debate has assumed foundational proportions in framing the debates around citizenship and property but has not contributed much to an understanding of how conflicts shape social relations in the state.9 Here, the parallels with what is happening in other violent environments are telling. In their seminal volume on violent environmental conflicts, Nancy Peluso and Michael Watts show how ethnicity, occupation, and class tend to converge during moments of political and social upheaval and uncertainty.10 Emerging from more than three decades of counterinsurgency and armed conflict, where identity was constantly used as a political trope for resistance and oppression, Assam is poised in a moment of uncertainty that requires a deeper analysis, as well as a more wide-​embracing view of the manner in which political mobilization for territorial autonomy has contributed to the reconfiguration of citizenship debates and property regimes in the state.

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The Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) governs four districts in western Assam—​ Baksa, Chirang, Kokrajhar, and Udalguri—​ with its administrative centre in Kokrajhar. Its webpage states that it covers a provisional area of 8,970 square kilometres, though this often changes as district boundaries are drawn and redrawn.11 The architecture of the council’s powers mimes those in Dispur, the capital of the federal state of Assam. It has a legislative assembly and an executive council. There are forty members elected to the legislative council, who once elected serve for a term of five years. The BTC came into existence after a ceasefire agreement between the Government of India, Government of Assam, and one section of armed insurgents under the banner of the Bodo Liberation Tigers Force (BLTF) in 2003. The BLTF morphed into a political party called the Bodo People’s Front (BPF) and participated in elections. After three rounds of elections to the council, its members have always won a majority in the Council’s legislative assembly. The Chief Executive Member (CEM) leads its elected members, whose acronyms, when spoken aloud sound conveniently close to Chief Minister (CM). It thereby induces the speaker and listener to accord the person with a similar respect given to the head of the federal government. The BTC was given charge of forty departments, which meant that it could employ people and control the course of work for them.12 This implies that inhabitants of the four districts would not need to go to bureaucrats in Dispur to get work done under any one of the forty departments (except the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation that has not been transferred yet). With the transfer of these departments to the BTC, people of the four districts would, in principle, have access to their services within their local area. As one might expect in places where there is a scramble for both political and natural resources, various groups of people vie for a place in the Council. There is a substantial financial outlay for the forty departments that are placed under the council, but the money takes a circuitous route to get to the four districts. Much of the money for the departments comes from the Central Government but is not sent directly to the administration in Kokrajhar. Instead, the money is sent to Dispur and is released to the Council following a review of

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its budget by the state’s exchequer. In 2016, following his third stint in power, the CEM railed against the delay in the transfer of funds to the Council, saying that even though the Centre (New Delhi) had sanctioned a ‘one time special Plan assistance to the Council amounting to Rs. 421.02 crore for the period 2015-​16 . . . the said sanctioned fund . . . was still lying with the Government of Assam’.13 Despite the lack of fiscal autonomy, various political groups have continued to contest elections to secure the interests of the communities that they seek to represent. These groups include organizations that explicitly claim to stand for ethnic rights, such as BPF, as well as those specifically opposed to one ethnic group such as the Ana-​Bodo Surakhsa Samiti—​Front for the Protection of Non-​Bodos (ABSS). They also include Hindu nationalist parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as parties that have a considerable base among Muslims, such as the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF). However, as researchers and journalists have pointed out, the alliances that emerge after episodes of violence and elections are often counterintuitive and require more reflection.14

Journeys into Silence On 16 February 2013, two senior journalists and I were driven from Guwahati, to the headquarters of the BTAD, Kokrajhar to speak at a function organized by the National Institute of Bodology the following day. It was also a day when the People’s Joint Action Committee for Bodoland Movement had called for a hundred-​hour bandh (civil strike) to press the Government of India to show more urgency in creating a separate state of Bodoland. Coincidentally, the All Assam Tribal Students’ Organisation and the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) endorsed a strike call by Rabha organizations protesting against non-​Rabha voters—​mainly Muslims of Bengal origin—​being allowed to vote for local government elections in their autonomous council area. The journey from Guwahati to Kokrajhar, therefore, was an eerie one; with our jeep being the only vehicle on a highway that otherwise bustled with traffic.

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Fearing that we would be stopped by one of the many student organizations that had called for a strike, the organizers of the conference requested a young activist of the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU) to accompany us. He pinned an ABSU flag on our jeep, and it drove along the recently renovated highway, past tarpaulin sheet shelters of persons displaced by conflict, and vast expanses of dry winter fields. Almost all the displaced, and those calling for civil strikes, lived in an area that each claimed as their own. Bengali, Assamese, and other groups within the caste-​Hindu and Muslim fold vociferously challenged demands for autonomous territories and councils by indigenous communities such as the Bodo and Rabha. Political representatives of various groups invoked the past and warned of dire consequences for the future, if the present state of affairs were left to fester for long. In Kokrajhar, the strike had almost led to cancellation of the conference that had been organized to initiate a dialogue between Bodo and Muslim intellectuals, where the senior journalists and I were supposed to be observers.15 Although the meeting was free of rancour and conducted in the spirit of reconciliation, it was difficult to miss the weight of the conflict that the people had been subjected to in the summer of 2012. Every conversation that involved groups of three or more was hesitant and restrained. When the Bodo people left the room, some of the others—​Assamese, Bengali, Nepali, and whichever ethnicity that shared the contentious space—​would quickly allude to the hardships that they were likely to face in the event of the Bodo demands for statehood becoming a possibility. Likewise, when non-​Bodos left the room, the Bodos present would quickly suggest to the justness of their demands for a state that would at least protect their rights and resources, which, given the demographic changes in Assam, were likely to be eroded further under the present dispensation of ambivalence and prevarication. Both positions were borne out of lived experiences and grievances. The fears emerged as the foundations of a precarious political condition that did not allow for meaningful conversations about how people would organize their lives and those of their children. For the briefest moment, conversations would show some spark of anger and frustration. Then, as the

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absent member returned to join the group, the discussion would slip back, just as quickly, to a tenor of resignation and indifference. The aggregation of half-​completed stories could be read as political metaphor for social commentaries about violence in Assam. Ever since the late 1970s, questions of belonging, claims to land, resources, and political demands have been part of an incendiary amalgam that has resulted in thousands of deaths and many more displaced in the state. In 2012, more than 300,000 persons were displaced from their homes due to ethnic violence in the Bodo Territorial Area Districts (BTAD). Over the past decade, the autonomous territorial councils of Assam have witnessed large-​scale violence between different ethnic groups, following contests over land and resources. Although there is a tendency to see ethnic differences and quest for political representation as the triggers of violent confrontation, there is more to the recurring violence in Assam. Ethnic differences are not the causes but emerge as contested identities in the course of the conflict. In the following sections, I focus on the changing agrarian relations in Assam (in districts that are part of ethnic autonomous territories, as well as those outside such arrangements) to understand how different communities are forced into competitive politics. Each of these issues—​belonging, land, and politics—​is in turn steeped in an epistemic closure that further adds to causes for conflict between different ethnic groups.16 These issues have their roots in the colonial moment of contact between a predominantly European administration and local communities. The pre-​colonial landmass of Assam was an interesting ecological landscape of paddy fields, forests, marshes, and highlands. My intention here is not to go over the merits of colonial descriptions of the region. I endorse the robust critiques of colonial ethnography (that often doubles as historical truth) that have emerged from political anthropology and other branches of social sciences, mainly in the African context, but increasingly in the Northeast as well.17 These critiques are very useful in framing the contemporary milieu in western Assam, where political processes have had to deal with the intellectual paucity of critical thinking around issues of past, identity, and knowledge production about peoples’ histories in the region.

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This is not meant to reduce the impact of the colonial encounter. The landscape, economy, and society changed dramatically, as cash crops such as jute and tea, as well as minerals such as oil and coal, were grown or extracted in abundance from the area in the 19th century and continue to have an impact on politics and society today.18 This transformation also entailed a radical change in the demography of the region, as peasants and indentured workers from different parts of British-​controlled Indian subcontinent were brought to Assam. It is through this 19th century encounter that the political, social, and economic structures of region were to be transformed radically.19 However, it is the selective reading of history in post-​colonial policy making for the region that has contributed to the persistence of conflicts over the past four decades.20 Such a reading of history and its frequent appearance as tragic fait accompli in contemporary politics is responsible for the silence that surrounds causes of conflicts in western Assam. There are other social determinants of conflict: overall impoverishment of the peasantry in the Brahmaputra valley; large-​scale flooding and erosion in the valley due to ill-​conceived civil engineering projects; and ethnic autonomy arrangements (that) do not go far enough in either (a) allowing for indigenous communities to exercise substantive control over resources and wealth producing capacities of their territory, or (b) assuaging the fears of non-​B odos who fear they will be disenfranchised in the new autonomous councils and proposed Bodoland state. These conflicts, in turn, create a world of closed communities where dialogue and engagement are difficult. Why does the past play such an important role in defining the contours of present-​day conflicts in western Assam’s BTAD and other autonomous areas? Is the past, with its incessant claims for validation, an appropriate place to begin an arduous journey out of the silence that surrounds ethnic violence in Assam? Since this question does not have an obvious answer, it would be useful to lay out the dominant tropes that are used to construct different political narratives of belonging in Assam. It is in the varying renditions of the past that one can see the beginnings of distinct community histories,

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each seemingly divorced from the other and at times contradicting themselves in their quest for primacy.

Politics, Belonging, and Claims to Land The idea of closed ethnic communities is a convenient political fabrication in a world dominated by claims to belong and control over land. Here, I wish to draw anthropologist Franck Billé’s thoughtful somatic metaphor of border-​as-​skin in his study of China and Russian Far East territories. He argued that borders are not simply linear, uncontested territories, but experienced in highly textured and palimpsestic ways, much like skin. The manner in which narratives of belonging, invocation of history, and use of architecture are seen and experienced, Billé says, points to a double sidedness of border landscapes.21 While pointing out that western Assam constitutes a borderland only in a limited sense, I draw from the mainly non-​material segment of the border-​as-​skin metaphor to highlight how violent conflicts have a different kind of effect on how space is reorganized. Moreover, the continuous application of two kinds of laws—​one guaranteeing autonomy and the other enabling a harsh counterinsurgency milieu—​adds to the demonstrative ability of such worlds to shrink (much like skin) to ensure that certain narratives take precedence over others. In the subsequent segments of this chapter, I draw on fieldwork in areas that were used to settle survivors of violence, who in turn were forced to maintain their camps as ethnic villages. Contests and conflicts for autonomy, as I explain, emerge from a narrative of belonging, of being part of the body of the land. In western Assam, these narratives collide in a manner that makes violence almost inevitable. The high Himalayan foothills that are located in Bhutan and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in the north and the Garo Hills of Meghalaya to the south hem the expanse of land in question. It is divided almost in half by the Brahmaputra River. Prior to colonization in the 19th century, the area was home to several shifting agricultural communities, many of whom paid

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some form of tribute to retain their autonomy from rulers in the hills (Bhutanese) and plains (Mughal Bengal, Koch, and Ahom). Historians and linguists have mapped people, place, and pasts into this area in a manner that lends itself to contestations and conflicts. This mapping has rested on a finite set of beliefs and ideas that appear with predictable frequency. Hence, indentured workers and immigrant peasant communities were invested with a particular narrative of movement and identity that they find difficult to shake off even now. For all practical purposes, western Assam—​like other parts of the Northeast—​is peopled by two kinds of communities: (a) those who claim a pre-​colonial presence and (b) those who came during the colonial period. Clearly, certain communities such as the Bodos fit neatly into the first, while Muslims of Bengal origin would occupy the second category. The 2011 census data are interestingly silent on the ethnic and linguistic breakup of the population in the BTAD area. While the total population stands at 3,151,047 for the four districts (Baksa, Chirang, Kokrajhar, and Udalguri), official figures for the ethnic composition of the groups have not been released. This matter has been raised frequently by elected representatives in the Legislative Assembly. On 12 March 2015, Ali Hussain of the AIUDF, a party that was started by perfume businessman Badruddin Ajmal and perceived to speak for the rights of Muslims from erstwhile East Bengal/​Pakistan, raised the question in the assembly again. Responding to Hussain’s written question on the distribution of Bodo and non-​Bodo communities in the BTAD, as well as lists of villages that had more than 50% of non-​Bodo communities, Bismita Gogoi who was then the minister in charge of the department for the Welfare of Plains Tribes and Backward Classes, stated that such figures were not available in the census.22 Both the question and the answer conceal narratives of belonging that need further explication. Mining through secondary literature leads researchers to familiar narratives of conflicts. The most common one begins with the onset of migration of peasants from the deltaic areas of Bengal, which in turn leads to displacement of pre-​existing shifting agriculturalists. When translated into contemporary politics, it immediately creates

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grounds for separating Muslims of Bengal origin and Hindus, Hindi-​ and Nepali-​ speaking Hindus, Santhali-​and Mundari-​ speaking Christians and Hindus, from the Bodo-​, Rabha-​, Garo-​, Goalparia-​, and Kamrupia-​speaking communities, at least for political matters. In this schema, social groups are then tied to particular forms of land use: Bengali, Nepali, and Hindi speakers are always present as revenue earning, surplus producing agriculturalists; the Mundari and Santhali speakers are present as indentured workers, who also live on the fringes of settled agriculture by clearing forests. The second category of people, who in reality comprise a very differentiated section of society, is presented as semi-​settled, semi-​shifting agriculturalists, with strong ties to the forest and the land. This particular permutation of land use is an important part of the political vocabulary and vision in contemporary times. The truncated conversations that I referred to earlier are perfect examples of this predicament. Non-​Bodos, especially those belonging to the first category of people, expressed their fear of being thrown out of a land that they had had claims for over four generations. They lacked power within the new administrative architecture of the BTAD, since most of the members were Bodos affiliated to the BPF, a political body comprised almost entirely of Bodo activists associated with an armed Bodo militia that was known for its bombing campaigns in the 1990s. In most parts of the BTAD, non-​Bodos were scrambling for old notifications from the Assam government, dating back to the 1960s. These notifications, with their typical administrative restraint, specified exactly which category of people were to be temporarily displaced from designated areas and then allowed usufruct rights over government forest and grazing lands. Back in the 1960s, the government could afford to not name the communities in question. A typical notification would detail the area that was to be declared a permanent grazing reserve (PGR), even going to the extent of acknowledging that there were existing villages in those areas. The notification would then announce the emptying out of the area, in order to allow the state to take control and regulate the new allocation of rights to communities. These communities would then be allowed to settle (or graze) on the land for specific periods of time.

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In 2012, Bodo political leaders challenged this administrative non-​chalance as yet another reason why their struggle for a separate state is just and inevitable. In the five long decades of political mobilization and internecine conflict, BTAD might not have been the most representative culmination of their layered demands, but it was one small measure of success to preserve their territory and reclaim a past. The demand for a separate, autonomous homeland for the tribal communities in the plains of Assam is an old one. It began with the demands for Udayachal and was articulated by representatives of most of the plains tribes of Assam.23 Their reasoning was based on the fact that land use regulations that were introduced in the colonial period were unfavourable to tribal communities that lived in the plains. The indigenous groups categorized as ‘hill tribes’ were offered a modicum of protection under colonial acts—​such as the Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas Acts—​that allowed hill communities to retain control over land in their areas. Indigenous communities in the plains were not offered such legal protection and their descendants perceived that this enforced an unfair competition upon them. They had to share their lands with immigrant peasants, capitalist tea planters, and various government agencies (especially the forest department). Following the transfer of power in 1947, the Interim Government of India appointed a sub-​committee of the Constituent Assembly, called the North-​East Frontier (Assam) Tribal and Excluded Areas sub-​committee under the chairmanship of the Assamese political leader, Gopinath Bordoloi. Ostensibly, this came about, as the leaders of the anti-​colonial struggle were sensitive to the need for adequate understanding of the situation in the Northeast, especially with regard to the growing aspirations of the tribal people. The sub-​committee, also known as the Bordoloi Committee, sought to ‘ . . . reconcile the aspirations of the hill people for political autonomy with the Assam government’s drive to integrate them with the plains’.24 The instrument of this integrative devolution of powers was embodied in the concept of the ‘Autonomous District Councils’ designed by the committee. This instrument was thereafter passed by the Constituent Assembly with certain modifications, and it

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now constitutes the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India. Originally, the Sixth Schedule was to apply to the ‘tribals’, essentially hill areas of Assam. On 25 January 1950, the Indian Constitution came into force. As would be expected from such an ambitious nation-​building project, the Constitution tried to build in some safeguards for the marginalized and oppressed groups in the country. For the people of the Northeast frontier, this safeguard came in the form of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. The provisions in the Sixth Schedule dealt mainly with the issue of safeguarding the land and customs of the hill tribes of the region. It drew upon the erstwhile ‘excluded and partially excluded areas’ legislation of the colonial state. The plains tribal communities felt that they were left outside the ambit of Constitutional protection yet again. The Constituent Assembly debates around the application of the Sixth Schedule to the excluded and partially excluded areas were highly contested. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who was the president of the drafting committee, saw the tribal communities of the province of Assam as different from their counterparts in other parts of India, where they were surrounded by Hindus. To him, the tribes of Assam, especially those who lived in the hills, were like the Red Indians in the United States and therefore was keen to set up institutions that reflected the American experiences with reservations for the colonized. This view was contested by many, including Congress leaders from the Brahmaputra valley, who felt that the differences between the tribal and non-​tribal people of the region were being played up. There was also a third position from parliamentarians from mainland India that felt that autonomy for a multi-​ethnic province bordered by foreign countries was an invitation for trouble and advocated central rule instead.25 All three positions—​(a) desire for territorial and cultural autonomy among tribal communities (as articulated by members such as JJM Nichols Roy and Rupnath Brahma), (b) fewer restrictions for settling in tribal areas (as articulated by Congress leaders from Assam such as Kuladhar Chaliha), and (c) more centralized control over the region (as articulated by political leaders from mainland India, such as Brajeshwar Prasad)—​ have been vying for supremacy since then.

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As early as 1933, when the All Assam Plains Tribal League was formed under the initiative of the Bodo leader Rupnath Brahma and his counterpart Bhimbor Deori, the need to reassess the condition of the Bodo-​speaking peoples in the region was of utmost importance. Continuing with the formation of a consolidated political collective, the Bodo Sahitya Sabha (BSS) (Bodo Literary Forum) was formed in 1952. The forum’s main activities were to promote and protect Bodo culture and identity within what they perceived was the growing threat to their survival as a people. It also aimed to devise a ‘standard Bodo language’, which could be link for all the Bodo-​speaking peoples in the region. Some years later, in 1967, the educated Bodo youth also formed a student body known as the ABSU. In the years to come, these civic organizations would try to steer Bodo political discourse against severe odds—​both from within and from external forces. In 1963, the Government of Assam recognized the use of Bodo language in the Bodo dominated areas, albeit with a catch that after a particular age Bodo would give way to Assamese as the medium of instruction for primary school students. In a play of positions, the BSS demanded that Bodo be taught at least to the middle school level. In 1968, the state government recognized Bodo as a medium of instruction at the secondary (middle) school level. As if occurring on a parallel stage, the political movement also underwent a split with a dissident Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) leader announcing the formation of a militant political organization that would speak for the Bodo community but also represent a wider non-​Bodo, tribal outlook. It was called the United Tribal Nationalist Liberation Front.26 However, despite the ‘tribal’ nomenclature in the acronym of the political formation, it actually accepted the idea of a separate state that would be called Bodoland. The vicissitudes of the autonomy movement in western Assam took a radical turn in the 1980s and 1990s, leading to the formation of armed groups who would then be subjected to the predictable fractious splits.27 Despite the violence that claimed the lives of several intellectuals and leaders from within the Bodo community in western Assam, a large cross-​section of society also participated in the processes that were aimed at

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reviving cultural traditions. The BTC was created in 2003, following an agreement between the Government of Assam and BLTF led by the current leader of the BTC, Hagrama Mohilary. This contentious agreement also resulted in the consolidation of the disparate non-​ Bodo communities, who felt that they would be short-​changed in the new deal.28 The violent struggle led to a parallel revival of Bodo literature, culture, and identity. Part of the renaissance involved celebrating the political history of Bodoland and those that toiled for the creation of a separate state. Near Kokrajhar, the authorities of the BTAD have commissioned the construction of a park that celebrates the martyrs of the struggle for a separate state.29 There are no non-​Bodos in the park. The notion that outsiders have expropriated Bodo peoples’ lands is built into the political struggle, as the Bodo leadership is forced time and again to prove that they constitute a demographic majority in the area. In doing so, the Bodo leadership of the BTAD is willing to push the limits of the powers that have been promised to them. Denying people to return to their villages after the conflict because they (the villages) happen to be on grazing reserves, or designated forest areas, is but one way to exercise this power. However, this is also a process that has led to further polarization between different communities leading to various permutations of alliances between them.30

Work, Settlement, and Livelihoods in BTAD There is very little difference in the material conditions of the Bodo-​ speaking people and their non-​Bodo neighbours. There is a remarkable congruence in the working lives of people in small towns such as Kumarikata and Darranga and surrounding villages, where I conducted fieldwork (between 2012 and 2015). The pattern and history of settlement in this area actually act like a code for larger changes in the agrarian structure. Groups of people were induced to settle in the area—​before, during, and after the peak of the Bodo movement—​by the state government. In the 1950s and 1960s, large groups of Assamese and Bengali-​speaking Hindus were settled in the area.

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The former had lost their land to raging floods, while the latter were displaced from erstwhile East Pakistan. In the 1970s and 1980s, large groups of Bodo and Adivasi people were settled around the fringes of forests, as they were displaced by conflicts along the Assam–​ Nagaland border, or (as in the case of some Adivasis) had chosen to leave the plantations. In the late 1980s and 1990s, violent clashes occurred between different communities, thereby adding to the complex ethnic landscape of people who depended upon cultivating the land and foraging around the forests. Today, agriculture is no longer the main source of income for many, though the need to acquire land would make it seem otherwise. Instead, short-​term and long-​term seasonal migration has replaced agriculture as the primary livelihood in such rural and semi-​urban areas. In Darranga, this reality is exemplified by the large crowds of young men who pour out of the gates at Bhutan’s Samdrup Jongkhar, six days a week in the winter months. The gates shut at five every evening, and all Indian residents who do not have a permit to stay on have to leave. The young men—​ who speak several languages among themselves—​work at the stone quarries, road construction sites, and other hubs of economic activity inside the country of Bhutan. This change of occupational preference also has an effect on the village economy. In most Bodo villages around Kumarikata and Darranga, older people complain that there are no young men left to do the harvest. Hence, they have to rely on the labour services provided by young Muslim men of Bengal origin to ensure that the harvesting can take place at the end of the season. Even then, there is a distinct sense of order and tradition, for many older Bodo inhabitants talk of a time when they did not have to depend on labour from outside the district during the harvest season. Instead, they spoke of the generous and respectful behaviour that was accorded to them by older Muslims (and Adivasi) sharecroppers who lived in their neighbourhood. These stories about getting along in the past resonate with the wealth of material that has emerged from other conflict around the world, most notably places such as former Yugoslavia. Ivana Macek’s seminal work on doing ethnographic fieldwork in Sarajevo during the war dwells at length about the manner in which

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wars change perceptions about the past, thereby changing accents, manner of speech, as well as responses to questions about the other.31 This further reflects the manner in which memories play a central role in the presence/​absence of reconciliatory processes in the region. Media reports following conflicts are less likely to dwell on dialogues and conversations that happen after violence, unless there are important people involved. This situation lends itself to a particularly disturbing silence about the permanent scars left in public memory, even as knowledge about perpetrators, victims, and survivors continue to circulate around a contentious political and social environment.32 The 1990s were years of change in western Assam and in the BTAD areas. The old narratives, of local people living in relative harmony with second-​and third-​generation immigrants, were put to the test by the fact that many marginalized communities had found alternate sources of employment. Ironically, it was the violence against Adivasi and Muslim communities, perpetrated by the Bodo militia (in the 1990s) that had sent non-​Bodo communities away from the BTAD areas in search of work. Over a few years of being wage labourers outside the districts of their birth and residence, they were capable of remitting enough money back to their families to buy land so that their parents and elder siblings would no longer have to be sharecroppers. This had radically altered existing relations between them and their landlords in the BTAD areas. For the Bodo people, this was another proof that they were being sequestered off their own homeland by people who did not belong there. Despite these stand offs, there are still windows of opportunity for reconciliation in the BTAD areas. There are efforts being undertaken to enable social change in the area by a few NGOs. Most of them work on the twin issues of livelihoods and disasters, since both are of concern in BTAD. For the various Bodo, Santhali, Bengali, and Assamese villages in the area, the need to secure land rights, to ensure minimum price for their agricultural produce, and most importantly, to have some claims to belonging to the area are of paramount significance. What they do with the land—​cultivate, lease, or sell—​is another matter altogether, but for now, it is this claim for property

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rights that sets one community against the other. It is these inchoate sets of practices around land that political commentators and social scientists need to take cognizance of. It is difficult to compute an average for the extent of land that is owned by farmers in the BTAD. In districts that border the erstwhile-​undivided Kamrup, land-​ceiling acts did not allow for the growth of large landowners. The scramble for land and the need to hold on to whatever piece one can claim are impulses that are common in western Assam. A typical situation may be found around Baksa district, where local villagers around Tamulpur town have been engaged in a struggle to secure their lands and prevent being evicted by various government agencies, especially the forest department. The area has Bengali, Santhali, Nepali, Bodo, and Assamese communities sharing space in several villages located in the gradual upward sprawl from the Brahmaputra River to the hills of Bhutan. In the 1960s, Gandhian activists from other parts of India set up gramdan villages in the area. Land continues to be collectively owned in these villages and therefore individuals are unable to sell to other, especially outsiders. Transactions are relatively simpler for their neighbours who have settled in villages along the fringes of forests. The forest department had issued land users’ certificates (LUC) to many villagers who had come to this area in phases, escaping conflicts and natural disasters in other parts of Assam. Residents of these villages are engaged in a constant struggle to secure the right to continue to live in their homes and access the forests and grazing reserves that have been brought under the control of the BTC. It is therefore not surprising to find uncanny slogans on the walls and lampposts around the area. For a place where consolidation of ethnic groups is supposed to be final and unbending, it is counterintuitive to find Bengali representatives and Muslim student supporters of a supposedly Bodo party. Yet, their support for Bodo parties remains tied to the security of their lives and livelihoods. In response to these vulnerability-​inducing circumstances, villagers around the area had started various land rights committees almost immediately after the signing of the BTC agreement between the BLTF and the government in 2003. These committees continue

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to lobby with the functionaries of the BTC. They also conduct surveys of the PGRs, village-​level census, and social surveys. These are almost like wishful attempts to lend an official quality to their activities. It seems to add some weight to their claims for land, especially when officials from the various departments that control land use are dismissive of the presence of people around the forest areas. One of the main activities therefore becomes the constant negotiation with political authorities that control the BTC. This adds a surreal quality to the lived realities of the various communities that live in the area. On one hand, their lives revolve around decisions that are made by the council. On the other hand, they feel as though they lack adequate representation within the council itself. It is perhaps for this reason that a non-​Bodo front has emerged in the area. Various left-​leaning groups had been in the forefront of the demand for clarity on land-​ rights and land tenures in the BTAD, especially for non-​Bodo small and marginal farmers. Today, these voices have coalesced around the figure of a former insurgent commander—​Hira Sarania (a.k.a. Naba Sarania)—​of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), who is the Member of Parliament for the area. All nuances about livelihoods, class formation, and autonomy arrangements seem to have given way to the prevalence of strong-​man politics of the kind that is visible in Myanmar.33 It is almost as if Sarania was elected as a foil to counter another powerful former insurgent who had become a government-​supported politician (Hagrama Mohilary). There is a Bodo song that is sung in villages that have been adopted by NGO groups. A listener does not have to know the language to know that the song is a symbolic gesture of peace and solidarity. It mentions every known community that lives in the area and then proceeds to plead for Bodoland to be a homeland for all. Thereafter, it calls upon the inhabitants of Bodoland to believe in the emancipatory capacity of statehood, where all communities can live in peace and dignity. This, of course, is a politically loaded song that must have had some significance in framing the contours of political mobilization among a section of the armed Bodo militia. As the Government of Assam transfers various departments to the BTAD authorities, it is the transfer of the department of land and revenue

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that is cause for concern for many non-​Bodo communities. It is impossible, therefore, to ignore the connections between the changes in administrative structures and transformation of the rural economy in western Assam’s autonomous districts.

After the War: Living Together, Separately The movement for autonomy in BTAD demands greater reflection for the kind of answers that it has already thrown up. As has been explained earlier, the historical trajectory of the movement included both democratic, non-​violent mobilization and armed interventions at strategic moments. In the following sections of this chapter, I wish to dwell on the outcomes of the moment of violence. It is not as if the violent conflicts removed all the spaces for groups to come together. Such spaces do exist and continue to challenge researchers who are far too quick to read the conflict as events that follow a standard trajectory. The origins of conflicts about autonomy, in such narratives, are found either in cultural differences, or in economic deprivation. Following the attacks against Bodo, Adivasi, and Muslim villagers by alleged insurgents in 2012 and 2014, one saw an increase in the traffic of persons and ideas from metropolitan India to the BTAD. There is a predictable set of visits that those doing research on conflict have had to cover: the university or college professor who has written on ethnic conflicts, the various students’ groups who are seen to represent a particular communitarian view of the events, police officials, local reporters and journalists, local non-​governmental agencies working on relief and rehabilitation, and the eventual visit to one of the villages from where people have been displaced. This process adds to the manner in which autonomy, citizenship, and property acquire an instrumental quality, practically like a self-​validating claim that emerges from the researchers’ knowledge of their definitions. Therefore, autonomy appears either as a solution to intractable issues,34 or as an additional layer of various obdurate problems.35 This position underlines Joel Robbins’ caution for social anthropologists to avoid the dangers of shedding light on things that are already

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known, before replacing it with subjects that demand more time. Robbins’ argument would resonate with scholars, activists, and various functionaries of the state, who are attempting to make sense of the world that they are being asked to interpret to an audience of peers and superiors, who at the best of times are ill-​informed and at their worst, indifferent.36 Various departments of the Government of Assam—​such as Health and Family Welfare, Welfare of Plains Tribes and Backward Classes, Education and others that are directly involved in welfare work—​often approach research institutes and universities for reports and background notes after conflicts have taken place. These moments of contact between the government and academia require a separate set of questions that I am unable to handle here. However, it would be interesting to note how self-​referential these reports become within a particular circle. The reports are seldom subjected to peer review. Instead, they circulate within a limited sphere of influence, usually the English-​speaking world of donors, departmental heads, and partner agencies in the field. Some reports at mapping have attempted to move beyond mining for information that is already in the public domain. In 2015–​2016, a group of five researchers (including the author) were invited to map the condition of children who were affected by conflict (mainly) in BTAD by the local UNICEF field office in Assam. UNICEF’s mandate is well known, and their presence in Assam has been significant for various departments that require support in interpreting local policies to bigger donors. For this particular project, UNICEF was generous in allowing the researchers to take conduct fieldwork for a year, though there were occasional pleas to be more focused on the condition of children in the various villages and camps that were affected by violence. As a result, one got a varied sense of the impact of conflict especially around the fringes of forests and plantations in the area. The first extraordinary figure that one had to confront was the large number of people who had been displaced in Assam. Figures from government sources vary, largely due to the fact that the government is keen on ensuring that survivors of violence return to their villages as soon as they are able. Survivors, on the other hand,

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are less enthusiastic. Many are aware that the state’s ability to provide security to them, once they are out of the designated camps, is at best limited. The other source of data for many researchers would be the figures that emerge from local NGOs working closely with the administration in the area. Here too, there is a real dearth of comparative figures that allow one to have a sense of the scale of displacement. The best method to have some idea of what the number could actually be, require the combination of data sources, coupled with verification and validation of the data from the ground. This is precisely what the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre does in its efforts to calculate the numbers of internally displaced persons around the world. According to the figures that it put out in 2016, India had a total number of 796,000 internally displaced persons due to conflict, of which 448,000 were added because of new conflicts.37 These figures surpass some of the tragedies in sub-​Saharan Africa and have to be taken as compelling facts to begin an enquiry into what is actually going on in BTAD. Visits to camps and villages where survivors had taken shelter following clashes were revealing. For most researchers, entry into the camps comes from their association with NGOs working in the area. This fact resonates with the kind of analysis made by Nausheen Anwar and Sarwat Viqar, where they reflect on the role of research assistants (RAs) in enabling access, as well as acting as intellectual sounding boards for researchers who are looking to work in conflict areas. In reflecting on the voice of the RA, Anwar and Viqar outline the constraints and compulsions of class, ethnic ties, and dispositions of those who are constantly by our side when we are taking notes, asking questions and reflecting on the immensity of the events that fuel conflict in the region. The sigh of frustration, note of silent dissent, and other matters of concern are capable of entering into our analysis without our recording their moment of entry.38 This is true in Bodoland as well. Our articulate guides, assistants, and collaborators are not without agency and often it is their signature that appears on the analysis of conflicts in BTAD. How else does one explain the silence around the slow disappearance of mixed villages in the area? In these areas, there has been a reconfiguration of an ethnic

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map. Communities choose to live in camps that are closer to people of their kind while leaving their cultivable fields behind in other areas. In so many ways, the constant retelling of stories of trauma and testimony is not enough to understand how future and contemporary relations are being reconfigured in the area; Nor is it enough to locate these narratives of violence in juridical-​political discourses. In sifting through field notes, observations, and discussions on autonomy in western Assam, one is forced to reflect on a process Veena Das describes as ‘ . . . a concrete engagement with the tasks of remaking that is mindful of both terms of the compound expression—​ everyday and life’.39 The reconfiguration of ethnic maps after conflicts is not new and has happened in other places around the world. Most notably, the violence in Sarajevo in the 1990s had the effect of dislodging layers of communities who had been living in close proximity to one another for decades.40 In many parts of South Asia, especially in India, similar violence has resulted in the expulsion of one community, leading to the occupation of vacated lands by another. If anything, this was the logic upon which the partitioning of the erstwhile British Empire took place in 1947. This cartographic tragedy resulted in the production of a particular kind of reflection about violence, memory, and history within the region.41 Furthermore, such violent events gave students of political science and sociology a template to understand how riots unfolded, its internal logic as well as the role of various internal and external factors in shaping the aftermath.42 Many of the analyses that had taken place before, during, and after the violence in BTAD bear the imprints of such studies.43 They press home the point that the layering of space and territory in western Assam is deeply contested projections of a political idea that have very marked outcomes for the people who live there. Conflicts of the kind that had taken place in BTAD have at least three immediate consequences. First, in being forced to leave their villages, people are unmoored from their fields and can no longer cultivate, or harvest as they used to earlier. Second, in being reduced to a life without any security, individuals and their families are often placed at the mercy of the government’s relief agencies.

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Figure 2.1  Koraibari-​Runikhata fieldwork area, along Bhutan–​India border (Source: © Joel Rodrigues and Rulee Phukan)

This seemingly innocuous detail has actually been instrumental in fostering an interesting relationship between those seeking relief and the government. It is marked by intimidation as well as cooperation, since survivors of conflicts are often vulnerable due to lack of documentation, such as proof of residence, birth certificates, and other forms of evidence. On the other hand, they are also completely

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beholden to the authorities for material support and therefore are always looking for ways to be included in the government’s programmes for relief and rehabilitation of the rural poor. The third consequence of the conflict is the polarization of both people and narratives about the violence. In the rendering of causes of conflict, it is as though people become mere ciphers for the communities that they belong to. Similar to Mamdani’s anecdote about knowing a speaker’s ethnicity by listening closely to their narrative about the 1994 conflict in Rwanda (2002), a researcher’s analysis of the conflict in BTAD was often marked by the informant’s ethnic identity. Hence, pronouncements on autonomy and politics resulted in predictable responses, especially during informal conversations. Returning to the fieldwork moment, it is impossible to drown the voices of the RA in the final expression of the differences in the narratives of causes and effects. Official records, including the material culled from courts and the police, are not very helpful in apportioning responsibility to the violence. This leads to a situation where claims are constantly being questioned in the public domain. In Op-​Eds, feature-​length articles, and online portals, as well as in the details of citizens’ fact-​finding commissions, the need to fix the narrative is both compelling and cautionary.44 Journalists, writing in English and who had come down specifically to report on the violence, were authors of some of the most compelling narratives. Their use of police records, survivors’ testimonies, and spot visits to camps were similar to the kind of work that was done by researchers who followed them. Like other researchers, the five of us working in BTAD from 2015 to 2017 found ourselves picking up from the threads that were left behind by English language journalists. These stories could be stacked together thematically. Suffering of people in camps, cordial relationships that turned antagonistic after the violence, and the ubiquitous but tangential stories about the failure of the autonomous arrangement in BTAD were some of the most pronounced accents of English reportage on the conflicts.45 The Assamese print media reports on the violence of 2008, 2012, and 2014 also had cautionary stories that competed with one another to find the causes of the conflict.46 Some

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concentrated on the increase of migrants in fuelling the conflicts, while others focused on the inability of the law and order machinery to protect the lives of minorities rendered vulnerable within the BTAD arrangement. Going by media reports alone, one could sense the levels of insecurity that existed for the people within the autonomous council. Hence, even those of us who were working to initiate dialogue, or simply to understand the dynamics of the place, were left with similar sense of insecurity about our questions and whether we were brushing a difficult issue under the carpet. The manner in which ethnic boundaries were redrawn in the BTAD areas were almost surreptitious, inasmuch as it forced the government to provide security to people who had been affected by conflict. The most common option for the government was to keep people in separate camps to contain the violence. As a complex assemblage of actors emerged to provide relief and rehabilitation, the state continued to act in an interventionist manner, putting itself between two communities it perceived to be at war with one another. This is not an uncommon practice elsewhere, such as in Northern Ireland, where the state had inserted itself into a polarized political setting, with the hope of integrating recalcitrant opposing parties to it.47 Unlike Northern Ireland, where following decades of intractable conflict one saw a semblance of engagement between various parties to the conflict, the level of engagement between state and non-​state actors in BTAD is limited. The elections to the Territorial Council, Legislative Assembly, and Parliament that had taken place since 2003 (when the council was formed) have been fraught with tension and counterintuitive alliances between leaders of groups seeking to represent their ethnic communities. It is therefore not anything like the deliberately drawn-​out negotiations that occur between politically opposed groups in deeply divided communities, as McGarry and O’Leary point out in their study of the Northern Irish situation after the Good Friday Agreement of 1997. Instead, the situation in BTAD is marked by the lack of assuring gestures of mediation by the state’s institutions. This absence has forced leaders of different communities to look for short-​term alliances that are oriented towards specific ends, such

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as winning an election, or providing some form of security for survivors of violence. In effect, it is not much different from the kind of affiliation to ethnicity that was attached to governing during the colonial period. This was a process that political anthropologist Partha Chatterjee referred to as the politics of the governed, where people relate to the state not as individual citizens, but as competing sub-​populations.48 The only difference here was the fact that the competing groups were able to script autonomous programmes for the safety and security of their constituents. Similar processes are at work in countries such as South Africa, where communitarian identity is readily employed in both personal and group security, thereby paving the way for authoritarian expressions of politics.49 Parallels to the South African experience also help in reframing the aftermath of violence, not just in BTAD but also in all of Assam. In a sense, in refiguring space, both survivors and perpetrators of violence have added credibility to the underlying principles of the Afrikaans word, apartheid, where peoples are herded to live together with those of their kind and in separation from those who are unlike them. Enactments of likeness and difference, togetherness and separateness, are in the last instance played out in such violence, and they serve to underline the minor differences that exist between communities in the region.50 In places such as Koraibari (See figure 2.1), most displaced persons lost access to their cultivable land and were relegated to foraging in the forests. For those who had settled in and around the forests and forest villages, the limited access to land for cultivation was a serious matter of concern. Some communities such as the Sutradhars had settled in villages such as Aeipouli 1 in 1986, while the Adivasis were allowed by the forest department to settle in adjoining Aeipouli 2 after the conflict in 1996 (almost a decade after the Sutradhars). Similarly, to the west of the highway leading to Gelephu in Bhutan, there are three different sets of Adivasis who were allowed to set up forest villages in Koraibari, Deosri 1, Deosri 2, and Deosri 3, by the local administration. Similarly, east of the highway and slightly south of Aeipouli 1 and 2, the Bodo survivors of violence from 1993 and 2014 began leaving their villages in Nangdorbari 1

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and 2. Each numbered village came up after a particularly violent conflict between the communities, and the government’s response was to ensure that those being resettled would do so among people of the same community. Hugging the road and the boundary between Bhutan and India were Nepali-​speaking communities, some of whom had been displaced from Bhutan generations earlier in the 1990s. Therefore, in the Chirang area of the BTAD, a relatively small sliver of land was emblematic of an ethnic mosaic of displaced persons who were left with very little support from the council or the state once the conflict had receded to the background. However, the survivors of violence were always pushed into providing for their families in difficult times. The Adivasi and Sutradhar villagers had had to leave behind their cultivable lands and almost all women and men of working age were then forced to become daily wage earners in Bhutan, as well as become sharecroppers for Bodo farmers in nearby Nangdorbari. Most of the Nepali-​speaking families had set up shops along the road, and some younger men had jobs as drivers of local transport in the area. Most Adivasi and Sutradhar families in the area did not have the capital needed to set up shops and at best were able to sell foraged food and vegetables occasionally in the weekly markets. Even there, the effects of social tensions were difficult to ignore. In the market area of Runikhata, Adivasi sellers would bring home their domesticated pig after it was slaughtered, only to have the predominantly Bodo buyers reject it for being too lean. Pigs belonging to the Adivasis were not kept in captivity all the time and were allowed to feed in the nearby forest areas. Unlike the farmed pigs, the meat of such animals was lean, and therefore many Bodo buyers walked past the Adivasi sellers in search of meat that had more fat. At the end of the market day, the Adivasi seller would have to knock down the price of the meat to a very significant level in order to make the slaughter of the pig worth it. One has to also remember that such instances where domestic livestock are killed for market day are also signs of distress among the poor in the region.51 Interestingly, the army, police, or paramilitary personnel were not present in the market. Instead, one found them sequestered to their posts in the block centres such as Runikhata or

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patrolling the roads that were frequently used by trucks, private and government vehicles from Bhutan, as well as the occasional civic transport within India. There was no presence of security personnel in the villages, where local activists and political entrepreneurs had to make efforts to keep peace under trying circumstances. Strategic gestures where the state inserted itself between warring communities by setting up so-​called peace walls, or policed enclaves, were common in the pacification of unionists and republicans in the conflict in Northern Ireland, especially between 1979 and 1997.52 In western Assam’s BTAD, the state’s intentions might have been similar, but without the physical and material presence that is required following the building of a wall or setting up of policing enclaves, and their outcome extends the tragic dimensions of people living together separately. As people need to depend on one another for survival, it is the everyday that takes precedence for many. On one hand, it is not uncommon to find Bodo politicians of BTAD regularly visiting non-​ Bodo villages around the affected areas, mostly assuring people that they would be safe, as long as they continued to support the party that controlled the council. On the other hand, the council itself did not have the budget to secure the territory from threats to the life of its many inhabitants. Neither did it have the budget for its own police force, nor for any direct control over the paramilitary or the army that was stationed in the area. Moreover, the camps and forest villages were set up in land that was legally under the Forest Department, who admittedly did not have capacity to extend its jurisdiction in the 1980s and 1990s.53 However, since the signing of the accord in 2003, the BTC authorities have had some say over who could be settled where. In the absence of neutral forces to secure the population, many of whom felt that they did not have adequate political representation or were vulnerable to threats and attacks by insurgents claiming to secure the rights of one community, violence became an easy way to leverage political power in the BTAD. The refashioning of identity and identity-​based political mobilization is an important outcome of the conflicts around autonomy in western Assam. Difficult analytical frames that reiterate existing

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narratives of the conflict and political articulations of identity after a conflict confront the researcher and developmental worker. Coming back to seemingly neutral rooms in circuit houses to pore over data, or to villages dominated entirely by one community, it is hard to miss the fact that the reorganization of space is paradoxically permanent and ephemeral at the same time. In the absence of efforts at dialogue and reconciliation, it is very difficult to see how there can be any forward movement on issues of resource sharing and claims to land. For many, the relief camps are permanent fixtures of life.54 Yet, these camps offer the barest of hope and become places from where the young have to leave for faraway places to find work or return to a world of wage labour and farming nearby. For communities such as the Adivasi and Muslims of Bengal origin, alliances with communities who claim an indigenous status are never permanent, where even a hint of a quarrel between two members of different communities can set off a series of tragic events. However, one of the ephemeral features of this situation is the forced mobility of many of the poor among the communities involved. For all the human lives lost in the conflict for and against an autonomous state in western Assam, the arrangement that emerged from the 2003 Memorandum of Understanding is unable to create enough opportunities for the young to remain. It has tried to attract investment in some sectors such as tourism and industry but has not managed to create enough jobs and has resulted in acrimonious accusations of corruption and ineptitude.55 For social scientists, the lives of those who are forced to move from places such as western Assam provide an opportunity to reflect on new templates to understand identity and politics, especially when struggles for autonomy have proven to be difficult places for many.

Postscript from a Project Gossaigaon was one of the field sites for the UNICEF project that my colleagues and I were working on through 2015 to 2017. Two researchers—​both women and recent graduates of social work—​were

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permanently stationed there for a year, trying see how we could build pathways for dialogue between Muslims of Bengal origin, Adivasi, Assamese, and Bodo communities in the area. Initially, it was very difficult for them to establish connections and meaningful relationships among the different communities. Since the work had to do with encouraging peacebuilding among young students, my colleagues had begun to work with primary schools, especially in blocks such as Howriapet (a few kilometres north of Gossaigaon town). These were areas that were most affected by violence in 2012 and the schools they had selected had a mix of children of all the communities in the area. In order to identify places to begin their work, they approached the village headmen of the area through local elders but had found it difficult to retain their interest in the school-​ based work. Mr. Mahanta, a former member of Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chattra Parishad (AJYCP), who was himself a village headman of his locality, was most helpful in finding safe rented lodgings in Gossaigaon town. He was most pleased to welcome me to his home, as I went to thank him for helping us with the mapping project. He remembered my association with the human rights movement and called the former chairperson of AJYCP, who also happened to be an old acquaintance. Mr. Mahanta was worried about many things, most of all the fact that there were too many local youths leaving the area in search of work. In the bargain, many (especially women) risked being trafficked to big cities and also being exploited by unscrupulous employers outside Assam. ‘But what is there to stay for?’ he asked rhetorically and changed the subject about earlier days when alliances and political positions were more clearly marked. ‘These days things are so unclear; all kinds of people from outside are coming in to influence the students’, he said to the three of us as he asked for tea. We were meeting just a week after an indefinite hunger strike was called by the ABSU and other Bodo groups in Kokrajhar on 10 March 2017. The hunger strike was to put pressure on the new government (both at the centre in Delhi and in Dispur) led by Hindu nationalist BJP to accede to the demands for Bodoland. For someone like me, with my background in movements for autonomy, such moments

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were full of anxieties, as it seemed to confirm a narrative that I had found hard to accept that movements for autonomy, instead of allowing for solidarity, was creating more divisions among local communities. Many old residents of the area like Mr. Mahanta, who had participated in earlier protests against police and army brutality in the 1990s, felt reluctant to participate in the pressure protests such as the hunger strikes, though he said that he understood why Bodo youth were agitating for a separate state. ‘But already there are too many outsiders and those of us who have been here from before are not happy’, he said by way of offering qualified support for the grievances of the students on hunger strike. He did not wish to speak critically about the strike and yet was unable to offer solidarity and that made him edgy. Instead, he asked about how my colleagues were getting along with Alisha, the young Bodo woman from Jalpaiguri (in North Bengal) who had recently moved to Gossaigaon after having married the local pastor there. We had met Alisha earlier in the day, as she tried to keep pace with the kind of work that was expected of her. For someone who had grown up in Jalpaiguri and spoke Bengali and Rajbongshi beside her mother tongue Bodo, she was much better in navigating her way through the various communities in a way that was free of the weight of others like Mr. Mahanta. ‘Yes, she is very nice’, he said reassuringly to my colleagues and me. ‘You see, it helps to not know anything about who is not talking to each other in the village’, he said laughing, as if to imply that Alisha was accepted by all because she was not from the area, but also since her husband—​who was Bodo—​was the local pastor of the Baptist church, someone who was seen as being above ethnicity-​based political passions that kept people apart. Perhaps there was some truth in this fortuitous detail. The manner in which the autonomous districts council had played out over a decade and half had individuals suspicious of the other and most public figures in villages and towns were seen as ciphers of their communities. Hence, someone like Alisha was both tied to her community and free of it since she had not lived through the contentious events that others had survived. This predicament has parallels in other parts of the world where conflicts

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have emerged over how and who remembers the past in multi-​ethnic societies. In his third-​person autobiographical novel Boyhood, an account of growing up in apartheid-​era South Africa, writer J. M. Coetzee draws his reader’s attention to the insidious manner in which colonial history and race enter into everyday relationships between people through the lens of a young boy trying to navigate politics and life. The tragic outcome of colonialism and apartheid, as the young protagonist begins to find out, is the creation of isolated, atomized, and shrunken worlds of prisons, townships, and benign poverty where everyone is left looking over their shoulder at their neighbours. In practice, the persistence of violence and consolidation of coercive state laws through the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 and other legal measures that have been used to deal with conflicts have made it difficult for communities to find common political ground in the autonomous districts of western Assam. This, however, is in sharp contrast to the underlying possibilities of reconciliation and dialogue that exist at almost every turn. One sees such possibilities appear in the fictional characters of Parismita Singh’s layered stories in her alternately hopeful and sorrow-​inducing book, Peace Has Come.56 Fiction therefore is a good way to navigate the current bottlenecks around the autonomy movements in Assam, especially in their ability to hold claims for justice and demands for political pragmatism that excluded large sections of people living there. The local state, its various departments, the people who worked there, and those who wished to access the departments of the autonomous state for security had gone through an unsettling period immediately after the signing of the 2003 accord. While many departments and some funds for universities and infrastructural development were placed under the control of the BTC in Kokrajhar, the incentive to remain and make a life in the local villages was not very attractive to many. Here, the vignettes I open and end with are indicators of the two primary paradoxes that social workers and local community mobilizers on the ground have to deal with. Biju Baidew’s concerns

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were about the young who were leaving, while Mr. Mahanta was cautiously optimistic about the kind of people who were coming in. It is this paradox that frames the backdrop to recent stories of migrations in Assam that unsettle an older 20th century narrative about Assam being a land and resource frontier.

3 Migration Matters If immigration into Northeast India has been one of the most discussed issues in the history of contemporary, emigration of young women and men from the state is perhaps relatively understudied. Assam was long considered to be a land frontier during the 19th and early 20th century, especially during the period when European capital was expanding across the Brahmaputra valley, resulting in the establishment of the tea and oil industry. In addition, the colonial government encouraged agriculturalists and graziers from deltaic Bengal, the Gangetic plains, and the Terai region to move to the valley and foothills. These historical developments have become inscribed in academic work in (and on) Assam, to the extent that it is impossible to begin a story about migration without mining through historical literature, thereby being stuck on narratives of arrival of various communities who live in the state. In August 2013, following rumours and threats spread on social media platforms, many workers from Northeast India and Nepal, who were working in metropolitan cities across India, were induced to return home. The media narrative dwelt on the role of rumour and fear, as well as the fact that large numbers of people from the region were working in different parts of India, a fact that was often overlooked in the discourse and politics of immigration that emerged from the Northeast, especially from the state of Assam. However, more critical analysis of the event dwelt on the history of militarization and vulnerabilities of the migrants from Northeast India.1 Prior to this tragic event, there was some country-​/​region-​specific migration in academic discourse pertaining to the remittance economy, as well as historical view of the political entanglements caused by Homeland Insecurities. Sanjay Barbora, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780192855329.003.0003

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migration in South Asia.2 Duncan McDuie-​Ra’s seminal work on the lives of Northeast students and young professionals in New Delhi predated the 2013 exodus but was prescient of the underlining effects of the long years of militarization on them.3 The exodus of migrants from Northeast India in 2012 forced political commentators and academics to revisit the scholarship on remittances, migration, and violence, resulting in the renewal of interest on the lives of people who left Northeast India in search of work.4 The themes that emerged from the research and reports reiterated the harshness of the conditions that migrants leave behind and the difficulties that they undergo once they leave home, and resonated with the larger debates around displacement due to conflicts and natural disasters that have been taking place in South Asia.5 This chapter draws from some new developments in the old narrative. It argues that the standard notions of migration of peasants and workers to Assam crucial to establishing the political discourse framed in settler–​indigenous conflicts have changed since the first decades of the 21st century. There are many more individuals leaving the region in search of work than coming in. This raises crucial questions about the kind of transformation that has transpired in the stable, enclave economy framework that had been central to any analysis of politics and society in 20th-​century Assam. In this chapter, I look beyond the statistical aggregates of migration and remittances, to matters more intimate such as the movements through life that people have had to make. The field-​based data for this chapter were collected through the period between 2014 and 2017 from Morigaon and Kamrup districts. Drawing inspiration from Michael Jackson’s work on exemplifying the migrant’s experience as a collective human condition, I focus on his invocation of ethics as a crucial lens for understanding the inchoate conditions that arise in new debates around migration.6 Even as one continues to engage with notions of outsiders and settlers in political debates, what can we make of the impulsions that drive people to leave their home and homelands? In tracing and annotating some of the stories of migration—​both voluntary and forced—​I wish to focus on the existence and pressures placed on explaining the ordinary, or the

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intimate, in attempts to understand the impact of migration in contemporary Assam.

New Templates of Mobility In the summer of 2014, I received a call from the chairperson of the human rights organization that I am associated with. He wanted me to meet with Mrs. Arupa Patar, a middle-​aged widow, who was also his neighbour in Morigaon town. We met at a noisy intersection of the town and went into a busy restaurant. Mrs. Patar looked worried and clutched on to a plastic folder with photocopied documents inside. Over cloying cups of instant coffee, she explained her problems to us. Her son, she explained, was duped by an agent and sent to work on an old ship owned by an Iranian businessman. Following a series of unfortunate events, the young man was found without appropriate papers and was detained in a port in Iran. Clearly, the chairperson had heard it before as he expanded and summarized the narrative for me. As I scanned through the documents that Mrs. Patar handed over to me, I asked the obvious questions: Had she contacted the Indian Embassy in Tehran? Had she been in touch with the agent who had found her son the job? It turned out that she had not been able to contact the embassy but had been in touch with the agent, Sonu, in Dubai. He had not been very helpful in divulging information that could help her. She had not been able to contact the embassy because she was unsure about their role in securing the release of her son. I realized that this would be a long and complicated process of contacting different arms of the state, diplomats, as well as international organizations that are supposed to protect the life of working people such as her son. Her husband had died a few years ago and left her with two sons and two daughters. The husband had a hotel in the vicinity of the restaurant where we were, but she had sold it off to a Bengali businessman in order to pay off debts and educate her children. Mrs. Patar’s son, Siddhartha, had been in a lock-​up in Iran, and she wanted our organization to help her bring him back. Siddhartha was the

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second of her four children. He had an elder brother, who was a musician and two twin sisters who were still in college. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Patar had begun to sell herbal medicine and follow the teachings of a Hindu guru, who had many Assamese-​and Bengali-​speaking followers around smaller towns such as Morigaon and Nagaon. On the day we met, she was carrying photocopies of Siddhartha’s passport, seaman papers, and details of the institute that had offered him a diploma in handling ship engines. She explained that her son had been to jail a few months earlier and was currently staying as an undocumented alien in a dry dock in Iran. His condition was precarious, as he and his friend and a co-​worker from another part of Assam were dependent on the goodwill of passing ships and seamen for food and sustenance. Over the next few weeks, Siddhartha’s story unfolded as an unlikely example of the predicament of many young women and men who leave home in search of work. A high school graduate, he had struggled as a student and had had his mind set on leaving the confines of Morigaon to work elsewhere. When he saw the advertisement for applications for a short-​term diploma course on joining the merchant navy, he badgered his mother for money to apply and be part of an exciting world where he would sail across to places very far away from Morigaon. The first step towards getting to these exotic locations brought him to Guwahati, where he and several other young men from various parts of rural Assam who had responded to the advertisement were made to sit for a cursory exam to test their abilities and faculties. The test was hardly very difficult, and despite the fact that he was not such a bright student in school, Siddhartha cleared it and was selected to be part of a cohort of young men who would be trained for six months in Patna, Bihar. Most of the young men from Assam shared Siddhartha’s social background. They were from small towns or villages in districts, from where one could reach the capital city of Guwahati in a matter of a few hours. Like Siddhartha, they had pestered their families to pay for their training for a career in the merchant navy. They were young—​between the ages of nineteen and twenty-​two—​bored of schools and colleges, unnerved by the idea of staying home to find

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work and with a sense of adventure that would come back to haunt some of them later. They stayed for a little more than five months in Patna, where Siddhartha was taught the rudimentary art of handling the engine side of big ships that sailed the oceans. Following the training, Siddhartha and his colleagues were sent back home with demands for more money for their placement. His mother sold off another parcel of land and sent money to an agent who was recommended by the training school and who had visited the young men when they were in training in Patna. Part of the money also went into getting Siddhartha’s passport from the regional passport office in Guwahati. This was mandatory for all the trainees, and the agent had insisted that they all go back to apply for passports. The process of procuring a passport remains an ordeal for most people in the region. Despite attempts to simplify the procedures, applicants still have to provide an endless number of documents that upon verification form the basis for allowing for a passport to be issued. Back in 2011 when Siddhartha applied for his passport, it took him more than four months to actually have one issued to him. Even then, he knew that he was among the lucky few. He was very excited when he got his call from the agent, who was called Sonu Mishra, and was gone from Morigaon within the week. This was the last that his mother, brother, and sisters would see of him for more than three years. His ordeal began at Mumbai itself. Sonu had already left for Dubai, and Siddhartha was asked to go there to join his work. He got his seaman’s papers, the all-​important Continuous Discharge Certificate (CDC), from the International Maritime Organization (IMO) office in Mumbai. Once he had his papers, he was given his appointment with an Iranian company and asked to join them with immediate effect. He flew to Dubai, where the immigration authorities did not allow him to leave the precincts of the airport. One of Sonu Mishra’s employees came to meet him at the airport and gave him a ticket for Kish Island—​the strategic resort and gateway to the Persian Gulf—​ in Iran, where visas are not needed. There, he was taken to a guest house, and within a week, he was working for an old ship that belonged to an Iranian businessman.

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One night, his ship ran into rough weather in the Persian Gulf, and the crew, including Siddhartha, had to be rescued by the Iranian Coast Guard. Thereafter, his life took several unfortunate turns, and he and another young man from Assam found themselves inside an Iranian detention centre in Bandar Imam Khomeini port. According to Siddhartha, his employer (the owner of the ship) was not in ‘good terms’ with the port authorities and had not procured the correct work documents for the non-​Iranians working for him. This left three international sailors—​Siddhartha, his other colleague from Assam, as well as a Bangladeshi—​at the mercy of the port police. They were shunted from one detention centre to the other for more than three months, until a judge finally declared that there was no reasonable ground to hold the young men and that the police ought to convince the employer to have their work and travel documents in order. The boys were then taken on a journey that terrified them: They joined a group of around twenty Afghans who had crossed over to Iran illegally and were being taken back to the border so that they could be pushed back into Pakistan or Afghanistan (Siddhartha was not sure which country). During this trip, the Afghans were beaten and abused by the guards, but they spared the Assamese and Bengali youth. They were then brought back to Bandar Imam Khomeini port, where they said they had to wait on board ships that had come to port until their employer was able to pay the fines required of him by the courts in Iran. This was not the end of the ordeal for the young men. At the time when they were detained, the United States and European Union had imposed unilateral sanctions on certain sectors (including shipping) in Iran. This would have a bearing on their case, as I was to find out later. Their employer was asked to provide a fine as well as ensure that the working papers of the young men were in order, so that they could be set free. The sanctions had meant that very few ships were actually docking along Iranian ports, and Iranian ship owners (like the employer) were strapped for money and could scarcely afford to keep up with obtaining the required permits because much of the payment had to be made in U.S. dollars.

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This rendered the young men particularly vulnerable, as they had to depend on the generosity of other working people on ships and within the confines of the port. Fewer ships meant that their food and water requirements were entirely dependent on the ill-​paid port staff that left the port when the day’s work was over. In the searing heat of summer, the young men from Assam and Bangladesh waited listlessly for ships to come and offer them some comfort. Someone handed Siddhartha an old mobile phone, while different sailors paid to top up the charges so that he could contact his mother and other people back home. Such acts of solidarity and kindness allowed him to contact his worried family back home. He would later use the same route to call me to ask if I was able to secure news about his release, or sometimes just to talk about his anxieties and fears about never being able to return. As I began to work through a long list of possible persons and institutions that could help, I too began to share Siddhartha’s anxieties. Sitting in Guwahati, I called human rights lawyers in New Delhi about Siddhartha and his friends. Following up on the case, they would send me helpful but dispiriting news about similar incidents of Indian employees and workers being stranded in Iran, making sure to add more contacts of persons and institutions that I could approach for Siddhartha.7 I called the Indian Embassy in Tehran several times and was guided to their consular attaché in Bushehr. He was a very harried man, whose work involved attempting to convince people like Siddhartha’s employer to do the right thing. Time and again, I was approached over telephone by seamen and engineers who had met the young men and who offered to write testimonies to the International Labour Organization (ILO) and IMO for me. For more than a year, it seemed as though I was swimming in the intricacies of three complex universes: (a) Indian High Courts and a legal system that would then ask the government to produce the body of one of its citizens; (b) the international diplomatic corps, in order to secure the release of a citizen incarcerated in another sovereign country, and (c) institutions such as the ILO and IMO that evolved around the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, with a historical mandate to secure the lives and conditions of working people.

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Between the three, Siddhartha and I had to cover almost four hundred years of legal precedence and traditions of democratic philosophy. I found myself attempting to convince Siddhartha and his mother of Immanuel Kant’s Third Definitive Article for a Perpetual Peace, where the German philosopher called for unquestioned hospitality to be extended (by states) to strangers who come in search of refuge, or profit, to lands that are they are not native to. In doing so, I also found myself explaining the intricacies of international diplomatic processes (to explain why Siddhartha could not be immediately sent home despite India and Iran being on friendly terms at the time) and the fruitlessness of approaching an Indian Court (to ask for the state to produce a body that was clearly in another sovereign country), to both mother and son. After each telephonic conversation with the son and meeting with the mother, I felt more anxious and helpless about Siddhartha’s predicament, until one morning, unable to hold it in any longer, I exhorted the young man and his friends to find their way to Tehran and advised them not to leave the precincts of the Indian embassy until someone there was able to sort out their case. A few weeks later, I met with Siddhartha and his mother and in the year that we had conversed over the phone, trying each other’s patience, we had become comfortable enough with one another to ask questions that we might never have asked strangers. For instance, why were young Assamese men like Siddhartha risking their lives to leave home? Are such youth, who push ideas of work, identity, and belonging that have been filtered down to us over several hundred years, going to be the template of mobility in Assam? ‘Perhaps the worst fate that can befall any human being is to be stripped of the power to play any part in deciding the course of his or her life, to be rendered passive before impersonal forces he or she cannot comprehend and with which he or she cannot negotiate’, writes anthropologist Michael Jackson, in his profoundly reflective essay on the life and imaginaries of Sewa Koroma in southeast London.8 Displaced by conflict, aspiration, opportunity, and circumstances from his home and place as traditional chief following his father, Sewa was a young migrant from Kondembaia in Sierra Leone, who had managed to come away to London to first study accounting

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(since that was the only subject that the British High Commission in Freetown would approve) and then to work for his uncle. From run-​ ins with the Metropolitan Police, to helping fellow migrants, Sewa’s life in London was not simply one where he was absorbing new experiences, but also continuing with trauma of suspicion and violence from his past life in Sierra Leone. Such situations, as both Sewa and Siddhartha had experienced them, made them see the world from the standpoint of their struggles, having been reduced to the kind of labour that can quickly be devoid of dignity. So, it would not have been inconsistent on my part to expect that the views of people returning from difficult lives outside Assam would reflect some of the solidarity that they earned and shared with others in their time as migrants. The answers to such questions are, at best, staging posts for other equally contentious queries, giving one the impression that issues of mobility in Assam are rooted in a historical narrative that has little room for nuance. One of the reasons for this is the political weight that immigration lends to any discussion on civic issues in the state. It stands above and over other matters of existential concern, at least as far as articulating political strategy is concerned. Hence, it is not uncommon to find a convergence of ideas coming in from disparate locations and persons—​social science departments and researchers, media houses and journalists, self-​ help-​ groups, and women farmers—​that seem to agree that one of the main concerns in Assam is immigration. Months later, when I caught up with Siddhartha in Morigaon, I was reminded of the ironies and coincidences involved in Assam’s immigration story.

Representation of Immigrants in Contemporary Assam Republican traditions of citizenship, with their insistence on the individual as the font of sovereignty and focus of welfare, have an uneasy relationship with the figure of the outsider. Very often, it is this figure that invokes reactions from host communities and sometimes leads

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to violent confrontations that force the state machinery and political society to intervene. Immigration was one of the main issues leading up to the state assembly elections in 2016. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that had already come to power with a large majority of seats in the Indian parliament in 2014 had made immigration one of its main election issues. The BJP’s alliances were strategically geared to capitalize on several competing identity issues, the most urgent being the question of illegal immigration of Muslim peasants from Bengal. This was an old issue, forcing earlier generations of nationalists to question citizenship and belonging within India and particularly in Assam. Political scientist Sanjib Baruah’s seminal book India Against Itself is devoted in part to addressing this persistent question in Assam.9 With its roots in the early 20th century, immigration had polarized political opinion within the state. For many who were voting for the first time, including several students born after India’s economy and politics had undergone liberalization, the discourse of ‘illegal immigrants’ was crucial in determining their decision. How does one represent communities who have acquired a political label that they find difficult to shake off? In political discourse, they are often referred to as ‘illegal immigrants’, but there is very little to substantiate this pejorative shorthand. Cautious academics often refer to them as ‘Bengali-​speaking Muslims’, further problematizing their claims of identity. It is not as if other Bengali-​speaking persons (either from West Bengal or from Bangladesh) are in any hurry to claim affinity to the poor, char dwellers. Among some radical circles of activists and scholars from the community, the need to highlight their dialects—​Bhatiali, Sylheti, and so on—​is preferable to being added on to either Bengali or Assamese (national) languages. They highlight the democratic quality of dialects, as opposed to the ironclad quality of languages that are tied to nationalist projects. Many of them prefer to use the term ‘Mia’ to denote the community, rather than the unwieldy and inadequate term ‘Bengali-​speaking Muslims’, much to the discomfort of middle-​class Assamese academics. Unable to shake off my own identity as an Assamese, upper caste person for whom the term ‘Mia’ was used in anger and scorn, I chose to use another long, perhaps unwieldy term that nevertheless is

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closer to the community’s search for a political identity; to describe the communities of Muslim immigrants who moved to Assam during the first quarter of the 20th century. Following discussions with community activists and researchers, I find it more comfortable to use—​‘Muslims of Bengal origin’ to denote the category of people also referred to as ‘Mia’ (both in scorn and as a newly acquired source of identity consciousness among members of the community). The political history of modern Assam would be incomplete without a discussion on the many different ways in which immigration played a role in the reorganization of agriculture, as well as politics. In the early 20th century, landless peasants from the densely populated regions of deltaic Bengal moved to the then relatively thinly inhabited districts of the Brahmaputra valley in Assam, with a song and a slogan: Chal, chal, Darrang chal/​jangal bhangia abad kar/​patit mati dakhal kar (Let us march to Darrang/​clear the jungle/​ make it rich and occupy the fallow lands). Darrang was an important location for the immigrants in the early 20th century, as were the neighbouring districts of Kamrup and Nagaon.10 For Muslims of Bengal-​origin peasants, politico-​religious leaders such as Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani (1880–​1976) were instrumental in their assertion of claims to land and belonging in Assam. Bhashani was a committed socialist, who was among the few people who consistently stood for the rights of landless peasants from Bengal, who were trying to make a life for themselves in the valleys and swamps along the western banks of the Brahmaputra River. A charismatic leader in the Weberian tradition, he represented a particular constituency that was otherwise unrepresented in the electoral world of colonial Assam. The poor Muslims who had migrated to the valley were not welcomed by the Congress of the period, nor were they readily accepted by elite, English-​speaking Assamese leaders of the Muslim League.11 Under such conditions, it was inevitable that the narratives of poor immigrants would forever be a matter of concern for social scientists and historians of modern Assam. One way of gaging this fact would be the paucity of research in Assam on the papers, policies, and pronouncement of leaders such as Maulana Bhashani, while there is considerably

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more on his ideological (and political) adversaries in the Congress and the Muslim League.12 The immigration narrative would in turn be poorer without a reference to the passions and calculations that moved people to a land frontier, which would have been both forbidding and familiar. It would seem as though the colourful Maulana has been excised from academic memory and with him, so have the poor Muslim peasants of Bengal origin. Elsewhere in the world, pioneering histories have thrown up interesting political figures that are remembered for their commitment to the pioneers. South Africa has cities named after Boer trekkers such as Piet Retief and Andries Pretorius, while Australia has highways and lakes named after explorers such as Hamilton Hume and Edward Eyre. This is not to suggest that there was an equivalence of material and political conditions of the Muslim settlers from Deltaic Bengal and European settlers in the countries just mentioned. Still, it remains an interesting puzzle as to why settlers to Assam were never able to commemorate their heroes and nurture pioneering stories beyond the sketchy, disjointed accounts that emerge from time to time. Perhaps this has to do with compulsions brought about by the partition of the British Empire, where certain ethnic groups were sequestered into vulnerable pockets as a significant minority, forever at war with their numerically superior neighbours. This was true of the partition of Northern Ireland, as well as in Palestine and in most other places that were part of the British Empire. Census operations, as well as encouraging political participation along identity were the hallmark of British colonial governance and played a significant role in how communities were going to be represented in the future.13 Yet, there is no such self-​aggrandizing attempt at creating historical narratives of a celebratory kind among early 20th-​century Muslims of Bengal origin that had settled in the Brahmaputra valley, at least not in academic or official capacities. Instead, one finds a kind of polarization between academic and political positions that would warrant a slight digression to locate the sites of the immigration issue. For academics writing on immigration in Assam, Myron Weiner’s book published in 1978,14 provides

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a peg around which more positions could be taken.15 His arguments centre around the manner in which indigenous groups used political power to negotiate the presence of immigrants. This led to the rise of nativist politics and conflicts in Assam. Weiner’s book was published just before the Assam movement had begun and thereby had an immense impact on later debates around events of the movement. The book became a standard that elicited others to respond in degrees, either to endorse the position or repudiate it. Those who endorsed the position pointed towards the issue of representation and mobilization of regional identity, as well as realities of moral panic brought about by the idea of demographic changes.16 Those who repudiated the arguments concentrated on the inconclusive evidence surrounding the debate; the idea of a demographic change and political mobilization was actually fuelled by an anti-​Muslim sentiment among the middle-​class leadership of the movement.17 There were still others that used the mobilization of the 1980s to ask the kind of questions that graduate students pose before heading out to the field: Who were the immigrants? They wrote detailed accounts about the trials and tribulations of Muslims of Bengal origin in the river islands, as well as Nepali-​speaking people along the foothills of the Brahmaputra valley.18 The immigrant is a shadow in the political and academic discourse in Assam, especially as an outcome of the contentious issues related to the partitioning of British India. When the dust finally settled on the partition drama in 1947, Assam was left without the district of Sylhet and remained within India. It was at this time that other fissures appeared on the political landscape of the province. Starting with the Naga national struggle, the ethnic assertion of different hill tribes resulted in the reorganization of the province into quasi-​linguistic states.19 However, sub-​nationalist demands continued to fester in the erstwhile colonial province and immigration and language remained the lines along which political mobilization was carried out. The Government of Assam manned mainly by caste-​Hindu Assamese persons from the Brahmaputra valley was seen as an aggressive proponent of the ‘one state, one language’ policy. Its language policies violated the provisions of the Indian Constitution, especially

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Article 29 (1),20 Article 30 (1),21 Article 347,22 and Article 350.23 In 1969–​1970, the state government was berated by the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities for not having ascertained the pupil strength and school facilities for linguistic minorities and for giving jobs to only those who learnt Assamese.24 In the following year, the commissioner mentioned in her report that the Government of Assam’s stand to reserve the right to recognize any mother tongue ran contrary to the constitutional provisions in the country. Many Muslim migrants from the province of Bengal had begun to say that they were Assamese-​speaking respondents during census enumeration in the 20th century. Writing about the census as a social register of contestations and confrontation, Sanjib Baruah pointed out the fluidity—​as also the manner in which ethnic groups chose to represent themselves—​ of the census operations in Assam.25 Hence, choosing Assamese was not a very surprising act for people who could not actually claim with certainty that they were Bengali speakers. In a universe where speakers and hearers of language were divided by mistrust, one had to take recourse to the existence of multiple dialects that allow for conversation to proceed beyond fixed political positions. It was perhaps this ability to see through official duplicity that allowed leaders such as Maulana Bhashani to speak for the immigrants. He was emblematic of an era of capital expansion to hitherto untrammelled landscapes such as Assam, where growth and colonization were predicated upon the movement of populations26 and creating frontiers became a condition peculiar to the type of economy introduced. With it, there was a visible move towards what Rumley and Minghi call the ‘consideration of border landscapes as a set of cultural, economic and political interactions and processes occurring in space’.27 Those inhabiting regions that were not earmarked for expansion of capital and colonial administration were subjected to a position of marginality precisely because they constituted a new periphery. It is in this interplay between spaces and peoples that ethnicity becomes an important factor in defining subjects. This created a layered experience of citizenship for the inhabitants of the valley, one that would begin during the colonial period

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(19th-​to mid-​20th century) and carry on into contemporary times. It typified a class and ethnic that was difficult to transcend, especially for the Muslims who had migrated from Bengal. In the popular imagination, constantly strengthened by media debates in print and television, the pervasive notion was that there were large numbers of Muslims of Bengal origin taking over rural spaces. Cultural commentators, such as Arup Jyoti Das, had questioned the deeply racial categories that middle-​class Assamese employed in their depiction of ‘the other’.28 Das’ commentary of middle-​class biases in Assam could well be built upon Ernesto Laclau’s notion that troubled identities that emerge from contemporary social movements (especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc) are capable of reiterating relations of subordination, which, in reality, are oppressive and laced with threats of violence.29 The frontier, therefore, becomes both context and contest, where people are forced to lay claims to belonging. Modern societies, at least in their republican form, lay an emphasis on documentation and civic participation as the basis for individuals and groups claiming their rights as citizens. The frontier culture, on the other hand, forces upon society a particular kind of social order that is both coercive and coerced; where different groups are prone to treat the other as interlopers in their space, while simultaneously being alienated from their own means of production. This is a process that Pierre Bourdieu conceptualized as symbolic violence, with the naturalization (and internalization) of social asymmetries. He further explained that we (particularly those setting out to explain society) perceive the world through lenses that are issued forth from the same social world, thus leading us to misrecognize the social order as natural.30

Displacing Others, Placating Ourselves—​In Media Res Aristotelian commitment to form dictates that all tragic stories must begin somewhere in the middle. This one began on 15 August 2016

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as villagers of Kasokila, situated a few kilometres north of Mayong Bazar (in Morigaon district), erected barricades to prevent Muslim farmers of Bengal origin and their families from accessing the local market. Angered and insulted, some families who had been living there for fourteen years allegedly teamed up with other Muslim families from neighbouring Darrang district and attempted to break the barricades. In the ensuing brawl, six Hindu persons were injured. In its aftermath, approximately 120 Muslim families who lived as sharecroppers in Kasokila village were evicted from the area. They were moved to a char on the Brahmaputra River a few kilometres from where they had been living peaceably. This news was widely reported in local papers and drew many political actors to the area over the next few days. I called a research student, Bhaskar Kakati, who was working on Panchayati Raj Institutions in Morigaon district to ask him what was going on. He informed me that he was following the matter ever since the conflict started. As Morigaon is barely an hour’s drive from Guwahati, on 20 August 2016, I decided to visit him and find out more. While in Morigaon, I called on my old acquaintance—​ Siddhartha Patar—​whose mother had come to me in the summer of 2014 to ask for help, as he was locked away in a prison in Iran. Siddhartha was not at home, but he immediately came rushing in with a friend who had an expensive motorbike when he heard that I was visiting. The two young men were excited and immediately showed me a blueprint of their plans for the future. They were going to go to the Assam government and ask for money to start a factory where they would recycle plastic and convert it into fuel for cars. They had downloaded some information from the Internet and had quickly put together a docket that they said was to be presented very soon to the Chief Minister. I was amazed by their confidence and naiveté. After all, who could imagine that the Chief Minister—​or any government official for that matter—​would have time for two slightly confused young men trying to initiate a start-​up. Siddhartha and his friend belonged to the indigenous Tiwa community, so I assumed that they had some connections with members of the Tiwa Autonomous Council whose offices were situated

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in Morigaon town, very close to Siddhartha’s house. However, the friend soon dispelled any such possibility. He said that he was an activist with the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Yuva Morcha (ABHYM), and this apparently gave him access to the corridors of power in Assam. The activist had come to convince me to help Siddhartha because he was busy with social and political work for his organization. He was quick to add that unlike other student bodies in Assam, particularly All Assam Students’ Union, his organization was recognized as a political organization that could represent all Hindus anywhere in the world. In passing, he mentioned that they were heading out to Mayong Bazar to help the Hindus whose lands had been encroached upon by the illegal immigrants. Baffled by the turn that Siddhartha’s life had taken and hoping that it was not one that he would regret, I returned to Bhaskar’s house to mine him for more details on what had transpired in the eviction story. We decided that we would visit the village a week later and as we tried to negotiate the complicated business of organizing the trip—​he lives in Morigaon and I in Guwahati—​he remembered that he had to sit for an exam for some government job and was going to be in Guwahati anyway. In a sense, the central characters of the story were all in place, replete with matters that they were concerned about: Bhaskar’s need for that rare government job; Siddhartha’s fantasies of exciting business opportunities; young indigenous youth keen to join the mainstream; and impoverished Muslim farmers looking over their shoulder for the next assault on their dignity. All of them will continue to play a role in contemporary Assam.

The Eviction at Mayong Bazar There are two roads that drivers can take from Guwahati to Mayong Bazar. The longer, better road is National Highway 37, and the much shorter, picturesque one runs parallel to the river. The shorter route takes one through Chandrapur, a place that was to have been the capital of Assam after it was moved from Shillong in 1973. In the last decade of the 1990s, the abandoned capital site and the verdant hills

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to its south were infamous for throwing up dead bodies of activists and ordinary persons, many of whom had allegedly been killed by death squads. On 27 August 2016, this was the road that Bhaskar and I took as we made our way to Mayong Bazar. As we passed through a desolate building that used to be a thriving cotton mill, he called his contact, a man called Rabi Mondol, who was to take us to the village from the centre of the town. Mayong Bazar is the centre of the Mayong Developmental Block in Morigaon district. Most of the shops in the bazar cater to neighbouring villages, so one sees the ubiquitous tea and sweet shops, restaurants and small bars, shops selling hardware, paddy threshing machinery, cement, and plastic. These are the permanent structures that are surrounded by flimsy polythene roofs and jute mats, which is where the vegetable, fish, meat, and tobacco sellers often set up shop. On a hot Saturday afternoon, one would have been forgiven for empty streets and closed shops. On the contrary, there was an uncanny bustle in the area. We struggled to park our vehicle between a big banyan tree (under which we were asked to stop and wait for Rabi) and a bar (where we eventually found some parking space). Rabi would not enter the bar, saying that it was not the best place to have a conversation about delicate matters. Instead, we found ourselves inside a busy teashop, where he spoke rapidly in accented Assamese about what had happened: ‘What can one say? It is lucky that we managed to avert a bigger conflict but even now things are tense’, he said. Within five minutes, he managed to fix our visit to the village from where the Muslim families had been asked to leave. Rabi’s conversation was intemperate, as he did not hesitate to refer to the Muslims with scorn, even as several of them sat drinking tea around us. Within minutes of our meeting him, it was clear that he thought the Muslims who were evicted deserved what was coming to them. Rabi’s access to the community and the area was a matter of some interest for Bhaskar and me. When asked, he gleefully rattled out the number of things that he did during the day, things that allowed him access to the community in Mayong Bazar. Officially, he worked for the Public Health and Engineering (PHE) department, though (as

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he insisted) he was not a permanent employee. He was indispensable to the department and the officers knew his worth. With a wide wave of his hand, he explained that he had installed shallow hand pumps in most villages in the area. He was also the local informant for most television channels and newspapers and had a worm’s eye view of how local officers were doing their work. To prove his point, he began to tell us how most newspapers had got their story wrong, at least on the involvement of the police. ‘The OC might be a Muslim, but he did not favour them’, he repeated more than once. More importantly, Rabi was also a member of the local unit of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Part of his responsibilities entailed helping new office bearers of the organization—​who usually came from Hindi-​speaking parts of the country—​to get to know the area better. About three kilometres from the centre of Mayong Bazar, we saw a line of dismantled houses and two young boys and teenaged girl picking up whatever they could from the ruins. Rabi went off in search of their parents, yelling loudly to some people in the distance. Before heading out to the bewildered adults packing bamboo in the distance, he pointed out three temples in the vicinity, to drive home the point that this was sacred land for Hindu people: ‘The Congress MLA built that Ram temple four years ago, the Ganesh temple has been here for a long time and there . . . in the distance, just beside the river, there is a Narasingha temple that is surrounded entirely by Muslims’. Perspiring profusely, we could only imagine the details of the seemingly vibrant religious landscape that was being drawn for us. The Muslim area of the village was set up fifteen years ago, even though many had moved to undivided Nagaon district in the 1980s. They had come from different parts of Assam, mostly from the erosion prone areas of Darrang district, to work as agricultural labourers in the fields owned by Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class from the Assamese communities. There were also a few Bengali–​Hindu families in the area, who, like their Muslim counterparts, had settled there after the river had eroded their lands. Some of them were said to be doubtful voters (D-​voters) and had to struggle to get their names in the National Register of Citizens. Both Muslims and Hindus who were categorized as D-​voters had resorted

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to getting into minor conflict with the forest department, just so that they could include their misdemeanours as proof of residence for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) officials. Fourteen-​year-​old Rezia was as curious as we were about the manner in which things had changed in Kasokila. She was one of the three children who were helping their parents pack their remaining belongings to move to another location—​a char—​about two kilometres away from where we were. ‘So, you are not from the TV channels?’ she asked me, in an accent rooted in rural middle Assam with its emphasis on enunciation of the syllables of certain Assamese words. ‘It’s a pity, I wanted to speak to someone from the TV channels. They have been calling us Bangladeshi immigrants’, she said with all the defiance that a fourteen-​year-​old could muster, when her home and dignity had been suddenly taken away from her. She looked suspiciously at Rabi, as he herded her father towards us, reconfirming all the while that he was the good guy who had brought potable water to the villagers when they had been evicted. She had grown up in the village and was among the seven or so girls who had been attending the local school at Mayong Bazar. She said that she had done consistently well in school—​a fact that was immediately corroborated by her aunt who had come to pick up the shingle that had appeared around the recently abandoned settlement. Rezia said that unlike all her friends who were indifferent about school, she was committed to attendance and would continue to go to school even though their settlement was being moved further away from the school (that was on the main road leading to Morigaon). Bhaskar asked her father—​Rafique—​what would happen to their livelihoods, now that they had developed conflicts with those whose lands they had cultivated? He replied wearily that they would have to go somewhere else in search of work and land. Struggling to express himself in Assamese, he told Bhaskar that he too had voted for the BJP and was in favour of development. The irony and fear that laced the statement stopped our conversation. All the while, a posse of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) speaking priest from the Ganesh jawans and the young Hindi-​ Temple stood around observing us. Apparently, both Bhaskar and

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I looked like intelligence officers—​due to our short haircuts and clothes—​so they left us alone, as we wandered off towards the river to see where the Muslim villagers had been relocated. Striking up a conversation with the priest in Hindi, Rabi asked if we wanted to talk to the CRPF personnel, who looked bored by their duty though felt obliged to show some interest in our presence there. Clearly, we were not media persons, as none of us had cameras. Ironically, they seemed to share Rezia’s coalescing of television reporters being the only kind of media person worth talking to, thereby underlining the ubiquitous presence of the electronic media in the narration of political stories in Assam. Rather than engage with the paramilitary personnel, I began to converse in English with Bhaskar in order to keep the governmental image going, and we were left alone to proceed towards the riverbank to see the place where the displaced persons had been relocated. As the sun blazed down on us, we saw scores of children—​young boys and girls—​swimming and fishing in a pool, oblivious to our invasion of their play. Most of the children had small plastic bags around their waists, as they skillfully pocketed small, slimy fish into them. This would perhaps be the only protein supplement for the evening’s meal. Beyond the pool lay an expansive, braided river and in the distance, Rabi pointed out tin sheets that shimmered in the sun: ‘There they are, now they have more land than before’, he said. I asked what would happen in the next rainy season, because this year was particularly harsh for communities that survived on the chars. ‘They will come back, I guess’, he said, sanguine in his predictions about the lives of subsistence agriculturalists who had to live on river islands.

The Flâneur in Chandrapur’s Tea Shop The flâneur appeared as an inveterate commentator and critique of modernity and capitalism in the works of French poet Charles Baudelaire. Never staying long at one location, flânerie evoked a world of alienation and tensions of urban life that only capitalism

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could create. A week after my visit to Mayong Bazar, I saw myself engaging in a bit of flânerie sitting in a tea shop in Chandrapur and staring at the hollow shell of a building that once used to be a medium-​sized factory that spun cotton yarn. A private company called Associated Industries had set up the factory in the 1970s, most possibly in anticipation of windfall advantages following the shifting of Assam’s capital from Shillong. When it was clear that the capital would not move beyond Dispur, the company decided to close down in 1972–​1973, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of employees. Those were different times, and the Government of Assam negotiated with the central government, as a result of which the National Textile Corporation of India took over the management of the spinning unit. Once the hub of enterprise and events in Chandrapur, the factory—​or Cotton Mill, as it is known locally—​closed down in 2007 and approximately seven hundred workers were forced to take their voluntary retirement scheme packages. Some of them sat with me and discussed a series of accidents that had taken place the previous day. They blamed it on the trekker jeeps that carried passengers from Guwahati to Morigaon (and also Mayong Bazar) at breakneck speeds. The old men sat fanning themselves in the heat and rebuking me mildly for paying for their tea. ‘You ought to have seen this place at its peak’, said Sailen Das. He spoke of a factory where workers came in to work in three shifts, where the streets were busy with people returning from or going to the factory, where the houses of the administrative staff and workers were lit up during the festivals. All this was a far cry from the ruinous views that my students could observe on this day they went out to collect information about Chandrapur for their mid-​term assignments. The people at the teashop were as curious to know about the students, as the students were about them. ‘Ah! This reminds me of the time when students would come to the factory and take down everything we said about production so diligently’, Sailen said wistfully. ‘They must know the practical world also’, he added, as the others nodded in agreement. Sadly, the practical world seemed to be elsewhere, at least for young teenage students at Chandrapur. Two young men ambled into

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the teashop and asked me what my students were up to. One of them, a burly young Assamese man called Mrigen had just returned home from Mumbai where he worked as a driver for a Gujarati builder who lived in its suburban Andheri. His friend was a younger, Bodo boy in his teens, who worked as a driver with the Pan Bazar police station in Guwahati. A third boy, Dibyajoti, sauntered over to ask the other two if they were going to join him for a welcome party in a college outside Guwahati. I asked if he was a student at the college, and he said that he wasn’t. He was simply looking forward to hanging out with his friends there and he was trying to show Mrigen a good time. ‘He has been gone for so long’, Dibyajoti said, clearly in awe of the older boy who had returned from far away. As the three young men and I engaged in friendly banter, two boys whizzed past on a souped-​ up scooter, dangerously overtaking others who were on the road. ‘That fellow is riding to his death’, said the worldly wise Dibyajoti adding that the person riding the scooter was the general secretary of the students’ union of his college. Dibyajoti mentioned that he too had contested the elections but had lost to the scooter rider, who had more political clout and infinite access to money. Their college was not supported by state funding and had around three hundred students, most of who were being taught by a handful of guest lecturers. Every time the class could manage to muster up more than seven students, they would call the lecturer in concern, and she/​he would then come down to Chandrapur from the outskirts of Guwahati to teach for an hour. Even Dibyajoti acknowledged that the teachers were paid poorly. He was grateful that they came to teach at all. The old men, the lady of teashop, and the three young men stayed on to talk about mundane matters. As they conversed, a poor Muslim man who traded in recycled tin came in and asked for water and tea. He was hard of hearing, so Sailen spoke loudly in Bhatiali, asking about his health and if he was out to dupe people with faulty weighing scales. It was all good-​humoured repartee, as the older men clearly knew the trader. They drank tea together, chiding me again for paying. ‘Don’t be fooled by his clothes, he is actually quite rich’, Sailen said nudging the trader gently. Everyone laughed as the old people dispersed slowly, leaving me with the three young men still

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undecided about their plans for the afternoon. Mrigen was trying to convince the others to join him in buying and cooking pork for lunch. The others demurred, saying that it was too humid for meat but Mrigen was adamant. ‘He missed pork’, said his friend. Apparently, his employer in Andheri did not like it when he ate meat, leave alone pork. He had to take leave and join other migrants from Assam living far away in Thane city whenever he wanted to eat pork. ‘Real Hindus do not eat pork outside of Assam’, he said in an effort to convince the other two, who looked at him, completely aghast. They decided that they would reconvene near the train station and move on to the party that Dibyajoti was keen on attending. The scene at the teashop reiterated the ephemeral quality of rural life, just a few kilometres away from the bustle of Guwahati. The threads of the conversation, like the lives of the people who communicated with one another, were broken and disjointed. It was as though the familiar was quickly becoming forbidding: young men unsure of their futures. At the same time, the forbidden was also becoming familiar: For perhaps the first time in modern history, children of the Assamese peasantry were leaving for jobs outside their homes.

No Country for Poor Peasants There is a sense of the unreal happening in Assam: relentless noise about immigration emanating from every corner of civic life; a euphoric victory for change and (primarily) young, lower middle-​class men getting drawn into political activity that is very different from the kind of chaotic mobilization of the past. Where does one look for an annotated description of these events and the origins of the ideas that drive them? The assembly budget is a good place to begin. In July 2016, the state’s finance minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, tabled a fairly ambitious budget that had, above all else, a promise of the disbursement of INR 16,000,000 to 25,425 villages across Assam under the Chief Minister Samagra Gramya Unnayan Yojana scheme. The government’s vision was to encourage fishery, dairy, organic high

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value crops, land management and conservation, cottage industry, road and broadband connectivity, market linkages, and sports in order to double farm incomes by 2021–​2022. This was supported by an apposite economic reality that saw a marginal increase of 0.88% of farm income between 2003 and 2013. The state’s investment was meant to create an entrepreneurial class of aristocratic farmers, who will integrate their cultivation of high-​end organic crops with a game of cricket over the weekend. Right now, they do not exist. The 68th Round of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data from 2011–​2012 actually shows a more layered and complex picture in Morigaon district. Only 0.87% of the population was reported to have answered positively to being ‘Market Oriented Crop and Animal Producers’, while a considerably larger percentage (23.48%) reported to be ‘Market Gardeners and Crop Growers’. The largest percentage of respondents (31.3%) reported that they were ‘Business Professionals’, which would cover a large spectrum of people who have had to fend for themselves. The lady who owned the teashop in Chandrapur, as well as the scores of dusty hardware shops that lined the streets of the district headquarters, would have said that they were Business Professionals. There is little to doubt the veracity of the NSSO data. Five years ago, the state government had announced that there were approximately 2,000,000 registered, unemployed youth in Assam. One assumes that the numbers have only gone up. Young men like Siddhartha would have signed up for jobs back then, as does my friend Bhaskar. With rural Assam in disarray and public sector manufacturing units—​like the one in Chandrapur—​ being declared unviable, one can only see a bleak future for young adults like Rezia (evicted from her home in Kasokila) and Dibyajoti (who phones his teachers when he sees an adequate number of students in class). They will, however, have to pay more taxes to a government that is (financially) bankrupt and is desperately hoping that people will remember the fantasies that were spun during the run up to the Assembly Elections in 2016. So, what does one make of the August 2016 evictions in Mayong, especially in light of the fact that only a month later, it would be the

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government that would use the state machinery to evict farmers around the fringes of Kaziranga National Park? Following the Assam Assembly elections in 2016, Hiren Gohain used a profoundly Gramscian title for his article: The Assamese Do Not Really Know the Guests They Have Welcomed With Open Arms.31 One can now visualize, with more clarity, the processes that have been played for well over a decade now. Since 2000, Assam has witnessed violence between predominantly rural communities every year. In a country used to the template of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, the tragic conflicts in Assam involving Adivasi, Bodo, Dimasa, Garo, Hajong, Hmar, Karbi, Kuki, Rabha, and Zeme do not seem to warrant as much space in newspapers and television studios. Yet, there is a nagging thread that runs through all these tragedies, including the one that is taking place in Mayong, Morigaon, and Kaziranga right now. It is one of growing impoverishment in a place where the state wants to sell an impossible fantasy of wealth and riches. Moreover, those who died and were displaced were without fail the poorest people in the state. Those who committed acts of egregious violence did so with the claim that they were unable to share space and resources with others. Most political parties have been complicit in the weaving of this dream, as also nurturing the nightmare that comes with it. From the smaller parties demanding autonomy for indigenous communities, to larger, national ones that have better finances to campaign during elections, the idea of a perfect take-​off into developmental heaven is both ubiquitous and compelling. Statistics and observations, on the other hand, have shown that most men (and increasingly women as well) from villages in Assam have been seeking jobs outside the state. Many advocacy and rights groups working in rural areas, such as Gramya Vikash Mancha (GVM) in Nalbari, have alluded to diminishing returns from agriculture as an important factor for poor, young men to leave in search of work. GVM’s workers have documented the various other activities that a farmer has to do in order to sustain their families. Migration, petty trade, contracts, and other forms of unskilled work are part and parcel of the lives of the rural poor. Under such conditions, it is not difficult to see how

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tempting it would be to divert attention from matters that used to drive politics a decade ago, such as, autonomy over resources and self-​determination. It is also easy to see how fences and borders have become such compelling motifs in the project of accumulating wealth in the region. Student activists and their supporters have consistently drawn attention to immigration and conflict over resource sharing as part of the political problems confronting the government and civil society in Assam. Yet, they are not the only ones responsible for rolling out the concertina-​ fence-​ along-​ the-​ border idea. For the vocal, urban middle classes and the city-​centric media who have no desire to move to the border to rattle sabres with Bangladeshis, Nagas, and Arunachalis, it becomes much easier to construct a racial fence within the city, where the urban poor are mostly Muslims who speak dozens of different dialects that are conveniently labelled as Bengali. There is little doubt that anyone who is unable to see a future outside of agriculture could also be a target of the urban classes and their media. The periodic violence between people living in the border between Assam and the other states in the region has often led to similar demonization of those who are not from Assam. Hence, phrases such as ‘marauding Nagas/​Arunachali’ are commonplace whenever there is an incident along the border. For the city-​centric media receiving news from their stringers in the border, the fault always lies with others. The manner in which the news about the evictions of Muslims is being presented now show a similar simplification and one-​sidedness of the narrative and exemplifies the dangers of forgetting the lessons never learned from the past decade. However, what seems to be clear—​from statistics, government policy, and political mobilization—​is that very few parties are interested in the future of the subsistence farmers in the state. It is a matter of concern that the current government has identified Muslims of Bengal origin as the only ethnic group who deserve threats and coercion. They are, after all, also a group of people who are least likely to be able to fantasize about real and imagined wealth emanating from control over forests and potential oil exploration sites. They are, for better or worse, forced to eke out a living by cultivating other people’s

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farmland and when they are able to save some money, they are wont to buy some agricultural land in order to establish a precarious security that comes from land ownership.

The Road Ahead . . . The 2016 Assam state budget had only one concrete commitment for creation of jobs for unemployed youth. The finance minister announced the government’s intention to recruit more than four thousand police personnel within the financial year. The other sections of the budget showed the myriad ways through which the state would raise and collect taxes—​which is what the state is supposed to do throughout the world—​while allocating finances to different sectors of society. There is little gainsaying in pointing out that these are difficult times for the state government, especially when it is no longer able to count on financial support from the centre, nor is it capable of unilaterally claiming royalty from the public sector for oil and natural gas. These issues have animated political debate and mobilization in the state since the past five decades. In the last quarter of the 20th century, young indigenous men like Siddhartha and Dibyajyoti were likely to have been drawn to struggles for greater autonomy in the region. It is not a very far-​fetched idea, because as recently as the late 1990s, Morigaon (and Mayong) witnessed large-​scale army operations and extra-​judicial killings of activists who lived as (and among) farmers. The subsequent generation has seen some leaders of self-​determination movements manipulate ethnic mobilization for electoral and financial gains, thereby producing ideas of opposing groups within a particular class of rural poor.32 While the leaders may be able to pretend that the conditions that gave rise to insurgency have been transformed, most of the poor (on whose behalf all struggles are usually taken up) are keenly aware that nothing has changed for them. Therefore, as the government allows Hindu groups to mobilize among the rural poor, it also seems to speak for a rootless, bruised constituency of young people, who are looking for

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connections to power. They have become complicit in the demands for a qualitatively different kind of homeland, one that evokes little empathy for those considered to be interlopers in their homelands. However, they also find themselves alienated from the struggles that were being fought by an earlier generation, where indigenous culture, language, and identity were constantly being highlighted.33 In her work, Chicana cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldua explains the ironies and difficulties of being in-​between, of finding the duality of one’s own culture to be both stifling and comforting;34 an instructive indicator for many young migrants from the region. Duncan McDuie-​Ra alluded to similar anxieties of migrants from the region who have made New Delhi their home. Even as they talk about the homes, friends, and familiar things that they miss, they are acutely aware of the reasons why they have to try and make a coherent world for themselves in the capital.35 Anthropologists Dolly Kikon and Bengt G. Karlsson have extended this research with their study of those who leave the land to escape violence, unemployment, and exploitation, only to return to a world that has not transformed as much as the time when they left.36 The political violence of the 1990s and early 2000s has not disappeared but turned inwards thereby leading to a transformation that is disruptive of social peace. It is to use a concept popularized by sociologist and scholar of peacebuilding John Paul Lederach, ‘both circular and linear’, where things that generate conflict seem to move in circles, even as they take on different forms.37 Such an environment enables the displacement of conflicts onto other spheres, where the silo effect—​with groups and communities not having knowledge of the other—​takes on tragic dimensions. Migrants from the region are therefore an important emerging social fact. Their frustration, anger, dejection, and demoralization upon return serve to underline an important aspect of research that frequently escapes the sociologist’s gaze: looking at people, places, and processes where there seems to be little action happening. As social scientists have begun to delve deeper into the political causes of conflict in Assam, they have focused on matters pertaining to ethnicity, resource competition, and militarization of society.38 On the other

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hand, as advocacy around the issue of NRC has shown us, there has been a displacement of social tensions towards relationships that were earlier not as pronounced. In the following chapter, I look at how the migrant has emerged as an important category in the encounters between humans and animals in Assam. As the discourse around space and homelands continue to deploy tropes of the outsider to tragic effect, similar effects can be seen in the conservation debates around wildlife, poaching, and human–​animal relationships in Assam.

4 Elephants (and Rhinos) in the Room Rallying for Land, Rescuing Animals On 7 and 8 November 2012, activists of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (Front for the Emancipation of Struggling Peasants)—​ KMSS—​organized a meeting on illegal immigrants in Guwahati. The venue was the old office premises of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on the banks of Dighalipukhuri. The NCP office was a favoured spot for protests of agitators of different struggles. As an organization that championed the rights of farmers and peasants, KMSS rallies have been conspicuous for the kind of activists who participate. Other than the rural poor and farmers, one is used to seeing men with prayer caps and women in hijab at the rallies as also many indigenous farmers who are marked out by their waistcoats and sarongs. Going by a visual representation of KMSS rallies, an observer would be reasonably educated about the composition of the farming communities in the Brahmaputra valley. The rallies also draw in a sizable number of people from the urban fringes of Guwahati, many of whom find low-​paying work in the city. For an organization that draws support from a wide range of people from different communities, its call to discuss the issue of illegal immigration was a departure from earlier efforts to not address ethnic/​ nationality issues. These debates acquired a more urgent note after the violence in the Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts (BTAD) and seemed to force the identity issue to more radical expressions, where activists and media commentators came together to argue that the BTAD violence was an expression of anger felt by indigenous communities Homeland Insecurities. Sanjay Barbora, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780192855329.003.0004

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against immigrants. The idea of illegal immigrants forcing their way into the paddy fields of Assam is not a new phenomenon and has been invoked over several decades since the 1930s. However, the KMSS rally was important because its support for indigenous rights came after it had raised the issue of eviction of farmers from various areas of Assam throughout the 2000s. Eviction and infiltration are issues that evoke passionate responses from people in Assam, where the narrative was already tilted against Muslims of Bengal origin, as they were seen to be the infiltrators who evicted indigenous farmers from their fields.1 However, following the KMSS meeting on illegal immigration, farmers were being evicted not by other peasants, but by the government that wanted to secure wildlife from encroachers, especially around the various national parks and reserved forests in the state. It created a unique situation where government policies, middle-​class aspirations, and a particular form of conservation coalesced around the image of the one-​horned rhino while managing to erase the peasant from the debates. This chapter looks at the manner in which issues around peasants and farming communities have been framed in contemporary Assam, especially since the turn of the century when armed organizations purported to speak on behalf of the rural farmer receded into the margins of political discourse. This process allowed for the emergence of non-​human elements into society and politics in Assam in ways that had not been seen earlier. In the following segments of the chapter, I focus on the ongoing encounters between animals and humans in order to understand the changes that are taking place in the political ecology in Assam. In Assam, data from the ground compiled by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) India suggest that 201 elephants and 507 humans were killed following animal–​human encounters, between 2013 and 2018.2 Between 2016 and 2019, 26 rhinos were poached, and 212 alleged poachers were arrested,3 preceded by 239 rhinos allegedly killed by poachers and 661 arrests made between 2001 and 2016.4 In a state where social scientists and advocacy groups have been researching on the human costs of political violence, the figures emerging from the animal–​human encounters offer another

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counterintuitive opportunity to assess the costs of uncritical development following decades of counterinsurgency. Important advocacy work had emerged around the issue of civil and political liberties in the 1990s and early 2000s. Similar advocacy has emerged around conservation issues in Assam, Nepal, and Bhutan. Landmark legal and political changes have emerged in the interaction of both kinds of advocacy with local and national governments. However, advocacy groups and those who provide research material for them have not yet begun a meaningful discussion on the continuities and breaks in the developmental discourse that drives political and economic transformations of the region. The region shares major biospheres (Khangchendzonga, between Nepal and India) and wildlife parks (Manas, between Bhutan and India) that are home to migrating wildlife species. In this chapter, I look at how the rhino has become a dense symbol around which notions of race and class have coalesced in Assam, even as the elephant has receded into a liminal space from where the animal finds itself being squeezed out of its traditional habitat, ‘corridors’ and migratory routes. In explicating the themes of the chapter, I begin with the growing political focus on the rhino and draw from a growing interest in political ecology that sutures connections between conservation, violence, and conflict over contested resources that includes wildlife parks and sanctuaries, especially where local, state-​led conservation efforts rely on eviction of marginalized farmers while promoting tourism as a form of capital accumulation.5 To do so, I draw an outline of the growing interest in locating criminal activity around Kaziranga National Park (KNP) by looking at the lives and livelihoods of those who live around the fringes of the park. Thereafter, I locate the historical development of interest in conservation (in Assam) to a period when colonial institutions and discourses created a particular hierarchy of belonging for animals and humans. Subsequently, I show how this discourse has been carried over to the present day, especially in the manner in which anti-​poaching, pro-​conservation individuals and institutions have begun to find common ground with an alarmist anti-​immigration political discourse in the state. Following the discussion on the

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rhino, I look at the manner in which the fate of the elephant encapsulates the emerging conflicts around the use of land and territory that are likely to arise in the human–​animal conflict. Fieldwork for the section on the Rhino was conducted in Kaziranga and Tezpur, while fieldwork related to the elephant was done in Manas National Park (MNP).

The Rhino The image of a charging rhino has adorned the buses of the Assam State Transport Corporation (ASTC) since 1970. It has had a more contemporary presence in the form of Tikhor, the playful mascot of the 12th South Asian Games that were held in Guwahati and Shillong from 5 to 16 February 2016. Travellers who drive into petrol stations are also likely to see the imprint of the red rhino emblem of Assam Oil pasted on pumps, and also on bags of tea. However, all is not well with the celebratory story of the animal in Assam. The local print and electronic media have reported several instances of rhino poaching, especially around the iconic KNP, where the animals are hunted down for their horns. Poaching is allegedly a high-​stakes, lucrative affair that involves a motley cast of characters such as politicians, government officials, smugglers, insurgents, petty criminals, and ordinary villagers. In this nebulous world, places such as KNP and its picturesque neighbourhood, are supposedly linked to other locations in India, Myanmar, and eventually to the place where all things illegal are supposed to head to: China. As a response, at least twenty-​five young men were killed in Assam (in different parks, but mainly within KNP) in 2015 alone. The forest department, as well as the local media, says that these killings were the result of encounters between forest guards and poachers. This charged media imagery of the embattled and much-​loved rhino being killed and the figure of the poacher has resulted in the emergence of yet another set of responses from the urban, middle class people of the state. In 2014, the Beltola area of Guwahati city had an interesting motif for its Durga Puja display, an important Hindu

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festival celebrated around September/​October every year. Upon entering the premises of the Puja pandal, one saw a mechanized rhino mother and her calf grazing near the statue of the goddess. Within minutes, an evil poacher (also a mechanized wonder) would appear and mow down the mother (with fake bullets), leaving the calf crying and the mother shedding psychedelic, electronic blood. To the ordinary devotee visiting the Puja premises, this was another attack on Assamese heritage and culture, coalesced in the form of the helpless and peace-​loving rhino. Indeed, this predicament even moved a local independent filmmaker—​Rajkumar—​to make his own low-​ budget film on rhino poaching, where he was both saviour and terminator. In his film, ill-​clad young men would creep up to a rhino that was superimposed onto the screen, while dramatic (and loud) music played in the background. The protagonist—​who is a middle-​ aged man in real life—​teams up with a tough forest officer and becomes a vigilante in search of poachers.6 Between the Durga Puja festivities and the slapstick film on YouTube, one would be forgiven to believe that the rhinoceros is a public good that needs protection from rapacity of private greed of sections of Assamese society. There are three questions that emerge as corollaries to this peculiar situation. First, what is it that constitutes a public good in the rhino story? Second, who are the protectors and predators of the public good? Third, why has the rhinoceros become such a charged symbol of empathy for the middle class in Assam? These questions have an immediate political bearing as well. Even the current Prime Minister of India singled out the predicament of the animal during the run up to the parliamentary elections in 2014. He accused the Indian National Congress-​led government in Assam of colluding with illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and conspiring to rid Assam of rhinos, so that there could be more space for settlers to come and cultivate in the marshes of KNP.7 It is fairly imaginative to draw connections between migration and murder in Assam, but bringing in the plight of the rhino into the incendiary mix is a new phenomenon. It is true that middle-​class Assamese who drive past KNP are prone to making sociologically unfounded comments about the presence of cultivators with visible markers—​skull caps,

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beards, and chequered wraparounds—​who live along the fringes of the park. However, the Prime Minister’s electoral pronouncements on the issue was perhaps the first time that there was an official connection drawn between disparate matters pertaining to middle-​ class Assamese concerns in the public domain. The question about the quantum of wealth generated by poaching and the destination of rhino horns is an important postscript to the issue. These are undoubtedly important questions, but I have no investigative means or the heuristic need to venture into those areas, for I choose to concentrate on the public aspects of the poaching story (rather than its clandestine dimensions). It is for this reason I did not seek alleged poachers, choosing instead to work among communities who are thought to be susceptible to poaching.

Crime and Criminals in the Park My own interest in this peculiar relationship stemmed from a few gory pictures. In May 2015, a young activist who lived in a small town near the park brought a file to my office and began to explain the increasing cases of extra-​judicial executions in and around his village. In the pictures, armed police and paramilitary personnel stood around bodies of emaciated young men, whose faces were blown off. Their frail hands were either folded neatly along their chests, or behind them (that almost suggested that they were bound). Their faded jeans and shirts seemed almost spotless, but gaping flesh stood in place of where their face ought to be. In the past, such killings would have scarcely gone unprotested. The past three decades of counterinsurgency in Assam had thrown up similar bodies—​some claimed, others not—​but they became part of a documented resistance to extra-​judicial executions and excesses committed by the state.8 Barely a few years since the infamous secret killings (1996 to 2001), these horrific pictures did not elicit any public anger, save the visible anguish of the hunched young man who showed them to me. I was moved enough to travel with him to the park and visit some of the relatives of those who were killed in such a brutal manner.

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Horen Doley was a twenty-​two-​year-​old student of Numaligarh College (not very far from KNP). A young man given to woodcarving; he had gone missing from his uncle’s village where he had chosen to spend his summer vacation in June 2014. His uncle—​a farmer—​lived in a village close to KNP. The river Brahmaputra flowed barely a kilometre from the farmer’s house, and one could see the embankments from the open front of his raised house. The core area of the park lay to the east, while the paddy fields and the Dhansiri River lay about four kilometres of the west. About four or five kilometres to the south of the homestead was the town of Golaghat and then, the hills of Karbi Anglong district. A narrow, pitched road veered off the arterial highway—​NH 37—​to lead visitors away from the bustling traffic and enterprise of Bokakhat town and into the farmer’s village. Barely four kilometres towards the village, the tarred road constricted itself into an even narrower mud track, where four wheelers would have to stop. On the night he went missing, Horen’s aunt cooked dinner for him. He annoyed her by slipping away, instead to smoke and carouse with some of his friends from the village. Initially, the family members were not worried because young men often stayed out late with friends. He kept calling his aunt and uncle from his mobile phone and informed them that he and his friends would be out late. ‘He was a good, handsome boy, our Horen and he loved the animals in the park’, his uncle said to us as she displayed the carvings of rhinos and birds that the young man had done earlier to earn some extra money. In fact, the ranger of KNP impressed with the youth’s talents and in a typical flourish of magnanimity that comes with a certain amount of bureaucratic power had made vague promises of a job to Horen. The ranger’s association with the man was something that his uncle kept rueing on the day he related the tragic events that occurred for the family. The ranger had had no qualms receiving gifts of curd and carved animals from the young man, who thought that these efforts would help him get a job with the forest department. Horen never came back home that night. Instead, a couple of days later, his uncle and a few other villagers were told that the body of a poacher was sent to the morgue in Golaghat town (more than fifty kilometres

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away). Fearing the worst, the uncle accompanied Horen’s father to Golaghat, where they reclaimed Horen’s decaying, and maggot-​ filled body. Such murders were not uncommon in KNP. Local villagers, police personnel, lawyers, and forest officials spoke about the enormity of the problem in a disturbing media report that appeared on 31 January 2016 in The Hindustan Times.9 According to the report, as many as twenty-​four persons (allegedly poachers) were killed in and around the core area of KNP in the 2014 alone. Most families, including Horen’s, who spoke to the journalists, were sure that the forest department had something to do with the killings. They questioned the timing and reliability of the First Information Reports (FIRs) that the forest department filed with the police after an alleged encounter between poachers and them. Media report took special care to mention the discomfort local police personnel expressed when handing over dead bodies of alleged poachers to the families, many of whom were subsistence farmers who eked out a living from their fields on the fringes of the park. One is left with a foreboding sense of poverty and loss that permeates the different characters in the story: The alleged poachers and their families, the ill-​equipped guards of the Forest Department as well as the police, seemed trapped in a vicious cycle of need and greed. Right to Information (RTI) appeals by activists in the KNP area show that between 2010 and 2015, there were as many as 636 persons who were arrested under the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA) of 1972. Of these, 227 cases were pending under Nagaon jail, 233 cases under Tezpur jail, and the remaining 176 were pending in Golaghat jail.10 These statistics are important not because they reveal a sharp rise or fall, but because they represent an increasing awareness among the forest officials that cases need to be recorded and registered against those accused of poaching and trading in wildlife. In most cases, the law would take its own time and leave both parties—​the accused and the accusers—​in limbo. In such instances, those accused of such crimes were likely to be at a much more disadvantageous position than those who had accused them. Not only were they likely to enter into the litigious world of courts, judges, and the police, but

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they would also have to contend with an increasingly hostile media and public opinion emanating from newsrooms and living rooms in urban Assam. In fact, for many young men like Horen, even a minor brush with the law rendered them more vulnerable to threats and in extreme cases, executions. Moreover, with little or no access to lawyers and legal experts, many young men seemed destined to a precarious life in the labyrinth of law. Even then, if one were to take media reports and interventionists seriously, it does seem as though petty crimes—​exemplified in the number of cases filed under the WPA—​have gained some traction in the areas around KNP. Even the occasional visitor with an eye for detail would be able to see the conditions that make such conditions possible. In an effort to keep the peace and perhaps in an attempt to reiterate the importance of the Eco-​Development Committees (EDC), the village elders had in the past rounded up the unemployed youth of the area—​especially those who were ‘marginally involved in hunting’—​ to surrender their home-​made arms to the forest department. I have used quotes to describe the extreme care and caution exercised by the people who spoke to me about this event. ‘Were they poachers?’ I asked somewhat disingenuously, using the Assamese word ‘Surang Sikari’ for poachers. The villagers were immediately defensive and perhaps rightly so. ‘No, they would just hunt for game sometimes’ (Nai, enei maje-​xomoi-​e sikar korisil), they kept insisting several times, just so I was able to see the difference between a just hunt for food and an unjust enterprise for rhino horns. In 2010, the young men from Horen’s village were asked to surrender in order to have the cases (that were pending) against them dropped by the courts. The elders of the EDC had supposedly spoken with the forest department to ensure a win-​win situation for all concerned. The young men would not have to pursue a long and expensive litigation, while the forest department would have the kind of partnership with local youth that was envisaged in the Joint Forest Management (JFM) and EDC mandates. However, the elders of the village were disappointed by the lack of initiative shown by the forest department, who neither tried to employ the young men in their ranks, nor really drop the cases against them. While some

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cases might have been dropped, many of the young men were picked up for questioning every time an animal was killed. As a result, most of the young men who had taken part in the 2010 ‘surrender ceremony’ had left the area in search of work.11 It was as though the surrender itself was a precursor for the eventual unmooring of their lives: With no future in agriculture, without the prospects of jobs and with criminal cases pending against them, these young men went far away from Assam to take up lowly paid jobs in other parts of India. The relationship between the different authorities and institutions that are meant to protect the rhinoceros (and other wildlife) and the cross-​section of individuals and collectives who live along the fringes are of immense importance in one’s effort to understand the statistical data on criminal cases filed under the WPA. From the moment it enters the surroundings of KNP, the highway reflects the class, gender, and ethnic fractures in Assam. Assamese-​speaking men own the various restaurants and resorts that served ethnic food and alcohol and were built along the highway, or within the fringes of the park. The presence of women—​in both restaurants and resorts—​was almost fleeting, as they came to clean living and dining spaces after holidaymakers and travellers had left. Of course, one saw a welcome degree of difference of attitudes among owners of resorts and restaurants. Some of the older proprietors had painstakingly ensured that local villagers found it possible to use the space that their resorts had to offer. For instance, some resorts had built small houses where villagers could come to weave and make baskets and other crafts in their free time. This allowed villagers and the guests to engage with one another and exchange information. More importantly, some of the older private resorts served as places where guests could buy local handicraft that the villagers had made. Other, newer resorts were less welcoming of local communities. Their tall walls sequestered rich, SUV-​owning guests from the flimsy mud huts, half-​dressed children, amorous chickens, lazy pigs, bucolic cows, and goats outside. Within the confines of the resorts, most of which were opulently constructed, with air-​conditioned rooms and swimming pools, tourists could taste ethnic food

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and drink while being completely sealed off from their immediate surroundings. The journey to visit families of those who were killed in the park was instructive. In the mornings, the streets were empty of people, except for the occasional elderly person or infant. Even Horen’s uncle’s household in a village on the fringes of the park was empty because his aunt and the children had gone fishing. The uncle apologized for their absence, as there was no one to make tea for us. He showed the visitors the exact spot around his barn where wild elephants had knocked over a heavy wooded beam just a day before. ‘Elephants are a menace’, he said almost as though the pachyderm were an errant family member. ‘They are loud and clumsy when they want to be destructive’, he added pointing towards the patches of paddy that were trampled upon. The family returned after an hour, caked in mud, but they seemed happy with their day’s work in the various streams and ponds in the area. As they laid the fishes out in the sun to dry, the woman of the house brought out bowls of rice beer and rice cakes for the visitors. She too expressed resignation in the face of problems brought about by elephants. Her demeanour changed drastically when she realized that the conversation was about Horen. She wondered if the boy would still be alive had she insisted that he stay home for dinner. ‘He loved animals, look at the replicas of the rhinos he made’, she said, as she brought out several bamboo carvings that he had made. The conversation stopped for a while as the couple retreated to a private, melancholic realm, and it was only when one of the visitors asked about more examples of human–​animal conflict that they reluctantly resumed talking about rhinos and elephants. ‘We coexist, even if they sometimes harm us. We have to forgive (both animals and humans)’, she said as she returned into the house for more rice beer. I was told that such episodes of destruction of standing paddy crop (especially when the paddy was growing) were frequent. Sometimes the forest department compensated the farmers if they were able to prove that animals (especially rhino, elephants, and wild buffalo) had damaged the standing crop, but it took several months for the money to find its way to the farmer.12 Engaging with the forest department

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on matters relating to compensation were becoming more contentious for local farmers, especially since the department was quick to claim that human farms came in the way of animal (especially elephant) corridors. Local activists would seethe at the irony of having poor farmers pay the price for wildlife conservation, even as the authorities allowed places like the neighbouring Numaligarh Oil Refinery to construct an extravagant golf course along the elephant corridor. In conversations with the underemployed young men, one was able to sense some discordant notes as they spoke about the resorts along the fringes of KNP. They did not want to work there as waiters, nor did they want to have anything to do with the tourists who came to the resorts, they said. However, there were frequent social transactions between some of the older villagers, especially women, and many of the lodges and resorts to warrant a studied response to potential conflicts between the two. Hence, when confronted with ruined paddy fields, even as they deflected accusations about poaching, the villagers and activists around KNP were under no qualms expressing their ire against the big refinery and resentment against some of the more exclusive resorts. Some villagers said coexistence was possible with animals but more difficult with corporations and big businesses. This did not stop people from aspiring to be part of some enterprise that could lift them from their lot. In all the time I spent in the villages, it was rare to find a young person who felt comfortable with agricultural work as a way of life. For many, the aspirational world beamed into their homes through satellite television was always outside Assam. Horen’s cousin, a young man with a K-​Pop inspired haircut, for instance, had no wish to remain in the village. He had recently applied to join the Indian army and had been among the few to be recruited. He unselfconsciously let slip the fact that he wanted to join the paratrooper regiment. One could sense that these were perhaps the last few weeks that the young man would spend with his friends in the village. Scores of young men, some who remembered Horen Doley with a degree of casual affection that is typical in an overtly masculine milieu, waited along the road playing carrom or cards. The

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younger ones watched the games, as the older ones stayed glued to their boards and deck of cards. Every passing vehicle elicited a momentary disruption of the game. Very few of them wanted to participate in the agricultural work that their parents had been engaged in. Instead, they sought employment in the urban sprawl of mainland India, where they had no qualms working as security guards, waiters, chefs, bouncers, fish, and meat packers and (for those who went to Southern India) labourers in rubber plantations. In Assam, this is a phenomenon that has led to several lively newspapers and television debates with people weighing in on different sides. Some, such as the political commentator, Hiren Gohain, wondered why young Assamese men were leaving their homes (and agriculture) to work for paltry monthly wages of INR 7,000 as this would then lead to either of the two possibilities: (a) poorer, migrant peasants taking up the lands on lease for cultivation, or (b) richer capitalists buying agricultural land and slowly converting (the land) to private estates and resorts.13 Younger scholars and researchers, such as Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Gaurav Rajkhowa, Bidyut Sagar Boruah, and Anshuman Gogoi, felt that Gohain’s arguments reflect an ‘old, left-​ nationalist ideal’ that placed unfair onus on the migrating peasant to answer for the ills of the new rent-​seeking, primitive accumulation-​oriented economy.14 The situation in Assam reflects a wider global phenomenon where economic growth has taken place without any new employment opportunities in the manufacturing sector that rural landless are able to turn to.15 Migration (at least for young men around KNP) was the manifestation of processes that were both coercive and voluntary.

Parks, Gardens, and Making of the Modern Menagerie I had visited villages, forest department outposts, resorts, and non-​ governmental organization (NGO) offices around KNP between May 2015 and July 2016. ‘Resort’ is a catchall phrase for budget homestays (on one end of the spectrum) and expensive hotels (on

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another) along National Highway 37 that passes through KNP. The one being referred to here would be somewhere along the middle of the spectrum, i.e. not a cheap bed-​and-​breakfast, yet not an expensive option like some other establishments. A proprietor of one of KNP’s oldest resort for tourists wondered if Lady Curzon had ever come to the area at all. A much-​admired person among conservationists, wildlife enthusiasts, and travellers, the proprietor was a quintessential raconteur who held forth on a wide array of matters ranging from foraging as a sustainable food gathering resource for the poor, to the rice-​growing techniques of Muslim peasants from Bengal who lived along the fringes of the park. He was not convinced that Lord Curzon’s American wife ever made it as far as KNP. ‘It was cooked up by a canny forester back in the 1980s and has become integral to the park’s myth of origin’, he said. The Lady Curzon fable, however, has become an integral part of the KNP story that begins with her visit to the area to see rhinoceroses in the wild. Upon failing to see even one, she was said to have pleaded with her husband to ensure that the area be declared a wildlife park where hunting would not be allowed. Today, it is a World Heritage Site and was declared a Tiger Reserve in 2006. Both tributes carry with them a series of obligations that involve conservation and sequestering of land for animals, on the part of the administration. These developments, as I will illustrate later, create new relationships between those who live along the fringes of the park and departments that are entrusted to care, protect, and monitor the interaction of humans and animals within the park. Adding to this already complex relationship is the embedding of a labour-​intensive tea plantation system that were set up in the middle of the 19th century, just a few decades before wildlife parks were established. Historically however, other than the apocryphal story about Mary Curzon, there did not seem to be much affection—​or even derision—​ for the rhino in Assam. Her spouse, Lord Curzon, was a sportsperson and enjoyed shooting animals around the colony during his lifetime. In fact, tigers and wolves were central to the evolution of colonial rules and discourse regarding hunting, avoidance, and killing in self-​defence of flesh-​eating animals in the Indian sub-​continent.16

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However, other than a few stray comments about hunting rhino in the Indus valley by Zahir-​ud-​din Muhammad Babur, there seemed to be little interest and honour, either in pre-​colonial or colonial times, about killing rhinos in the wild. Folk tales and historical accounts about the bestiary of the Brahmaputra valley make no mention of the animal. Many animals and birds constitute the colourfully entangled work of animals and humans in Assam and have charmed and frightened young and old people in equal measure. Unlike kites, tigers, and sundry spirits, the rhinoceros did enter the stockpile of folk stories that brought together humans and animals. Moreover, historical accounts do not have anything to say about the relationship between gentry, peasants, and the rhinoceros unlike the frequent references to elephant hunting expeditions.17 The association between the rhino that is much loved today and human beings seemed to have been one of evasion in Assam. The 19th century expansion of capital to the Brahmaputra valley seriously altered the relationship between the rhino and humans. Historian Arupjyoti Saikia writes about the incremental manner in which Assam’s rice and jute growing areas were extended in the early part of the 1900s, especially after Viceroy Lord Curzon (Mary Curzon’s husband) decided to partition the colonial province of Bengal.18 The migration of a fairly large peasant population from different parts of deltaic Bengal created considerable unrest among indigenous communities in the area. At stake were substantive issues of radically different land use and land relations that the migrants had introduced to the area. Added to this mix were the powerful European tea planters who had transformed the foothills and higher, less marshy areas of the valley for tea cultivation. Tea and the introduction of the plantation system would transform agriculture in Assam and lead to an expansion of labour and capital at an unprecedented pace. The expansion of colonization and conservation in 20th century Assam was a significant event. Ever since, the transformation of nature had remained a messianic project for colonial and postcolonial governments alike. Writing about the impact of (both) colonialism and nationalism on the ecological landscape of South Asia, Cederlöf

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and Sivaramakrishnan write (in particular reference to Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision of developing postcolonial India), ‘. . . portraying romantic visions of landscapes while transforming it profoundly—​the colonial and postcolonial states converge in their relationship to nature’.19 Thus, the 19th-​century transformation of KNP can also be seen in light of a more universal attempt at creating a modern world where spheres of human activity (plantations, farms, and mines) could exist in marked separation and difference from spaces where animals lived in the wild. It mattered little that places such as KNP were corralled in areas where neighbouring forests were being cleared for tea plantations in the early 20th century.20 Such paradoxical predicaments continue into contemporary times, with stone quarries, modern oil refineries, and busy highways intersecting and enveloping the KNP on all sides.21 Under such conditions, Lady Curzon’s apocryphal anxieties about the rhinoceros seem like a curious concern. For a better part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, colonial authorities were systematically reducing animal and subsistence peasant habitats while allowing for an expansion of extractive industries by corporate entities. Today, KNP is a wide area that falls under three districts—​ Nagaon, Golaghat, and Karbi Anglong—​of Assam. The entire area of the park is under the control of the Forest Department of Assam though some of the contiguous areas that fall under the autonomous hill district of Karbi Anglong are governed under special provisions that are granted under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. In addition to this, several highways and smaller roads’ upkeep is entrusted to an entirely different department of the government. As such, much of the financial responsibility for the upkeep of KNP falls squarely on the government, though there is an increasing tendency for external agencies to get involved (as is discussed later). Over the past few decades, especially after the 1990s, various private organizations and individuals have secured tenures to settle along the fringes of the park and create opportunities of earning a livelihood. The Forest Department had even controversially leased out land for the quarrying of stones in 2006, leading to protests by environmental groups and individuals.22 The scales of these enterprises

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differ greatly as do the taxes that they pay (to the government) for the upkeep of KNP. This creates a creative and harmonious picture of flora, fauna, human beings, and commerce in the park. Birds and animals find their way into billboards and hoardings that advertise wildlife getaways for tourists in the park. The separation of animals, humans, and their habitat that began during the late 19th century in Assam would seem to have reversed its course, if one were to go by the associative advertisements along the highway. Today, beasts and entrepreneurs compete for attention as they invite tourists into a play-​world of exciting encounters. Here too, the rhinoceros is a late entrant into the menagerie. Recent scholarship on the elephant–​human relationship around KNP has unearthed some interesting linkages between the pachyderm and its habitat, as well as its difficult connections with humans. Geographer Maan Barua’s work attributes an uncanny cosmopolitanism to the elephant and shows how class and transnational interests come together to create a favourable environment for elephant conservation efforts, which in turn have always had unsympathetic responses by those who have to share space with the animals.23 For every effort to build smart corridors for animals, there is always the counterintuitive question about animals’ agency and intelligence that come from various sources, especially those whose livelihoods are vulnerable to animal depredation. The elephant, as Barua points out in a separate article, is also a familiar presence in the lives of people whose villages and farms fall within its ambulatory arc, where one might even draw connections with alcohol-​seeking behaviour between man and animal, both of whom face an intense competition for resources.24 Thus, one might actually be drawn to create a heuristically motivated chart of animals and their affective relationship with humans with whom they have to share space with. Elephants, monkeys, deer, and certain species of bird and snakes would be considered everyday visitors for whom humans would have almost quotidian parables and stories to explain variations in their behaviour and perceived intelligence. For other, rare species such as tigers, one might even go as far as to attribute a universal cosmopolitanism that reify the western idea of conservation.25

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These examples serve to highlight the historical contestations around the idea of a species boundary between humans and animals. Picking up a similar thread in their book on the cultural history of the Orangutan, Robert Cribbs, Helen Gilbert, and Helen Tiffin delved deep into the philosophical traditions emerging from the Enlightenment to show how doctrines of human inequality often recruited animals to enable a racial ranking of (other animal) life.26 The increasing clamour to address the poaching of rhinos coincides with the demands for evictions of Muslim peasants from the flood plains that form the perimeter of the park’s core area. There is little doubt that the decline of the rhino population in Assam (and in South Asia) is part of a biological reality. Ever since the 16th century, the historical homeland for the rhino has been drastically reduced in a manner that require social scientists to re-​engage with the interconnected world of conservation, recreation, and reproduction of occupational life-​worlds in the manner in which Maan Barua urges them to. Tracing the contours of the colonial/​modern idea of wilderness and civilization in Assam, to a contemporary emphasis on animal conservation, one can see the imputation of place to both people and animals. The Assamese peasant was located in the paddy fields and the rhinoceros belonged to the jungle. The only time when history was allowed to displace either was for a nebulous public good that combined democracy and development within a framework of citizenship and belonging.27 In recent times, the rhino has become a central motif in political attempts to redefine the idea of a singular public good in Assam. In the following section, I examine who constitute the protectors and predators and the concept of the public good in contemporary Assam.

A Peculiar Conservationist Conundrum The rhinoceros looks like a slow lumbering animal, given to glacial movements from one path of grassland to another over the course of a day. Visitors driving through KNP often stop and indulge in a bit

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of ‘rhino-​spotting’ at parts of the park that is dissected by National Highway 37. Driving towards eastern Assam, the grasslands of the park fall to the left—​which is where the rhino often graze—​while there are extensive paddy fields to one’s right. Local farmers around the villages where I conducted fieldwork wryly acknowledge the precariousness of their fields and farms, especially when animals decide to cross the highway. Even a recently-​constructed fence that emitted a mild electric current was not enough to dissuade the animals from taking in some cultivated crop. The farmers I interviewed rarely expressed rancour against the animals. When asked how they protect their crops from rhinos, they offered a range of activities, such as lighting fires, standing watch at night and (curiously enough) verbally abusing the rhino. In conversations with groups of farmers, the rhino seemed like an errant neighbour, rather than a source of wealth that needed to be hunted for its horn. Every discussion ended with well-​articulated ideas about the need for poor farmers and the animals of the park to coexist, as well as a formal declaration disassociating the farmers from acts of poaching and illegal hunting. Yet, for many other actors, especially those who were able to create public opinion—​including the media and environmental NGOs—​ this situation was fraught with problems for the rhino (and other animals). On 30 September 2015, the Assam Tribune—​an English language daily published in Guwahati—​carried front-​page news about poor rates of conviction for those arrested for rhino poaching.28 Quoting contradictory claims by the minister responsible for the Forest Department and an environmental NGO worker, the report mentioned that rhino poachers were getting away because of loopholes in legal procedures. This sort of bickering within the various circles of authority in the administration rest on two pivotal issues: (a) the WPA of 1972 and (b) responsibilities apportioned to various departments and groups for the protection of wildlife. Their inherent loopholes are the reason why NGOs have emerged to complement the state’s existing departments that deal with forests, animals, and also humans who have claims over both (forests and animals). This creates a lively arena for contestations that seem to work at cross-​purposes.

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Ever since the late 1990s, the Government of India had encouraged forest departments to be less feudatory and stentorian in their relationship with the local people. The JFM efforts were a result of this departmental glasnost, and it allowed for a modicum of consultation between officials of the forest departments and other stakeholders in the forest.29 In Assam too, the government-​initiated efforts to reduce conflicts over usufruct rights and forests, though here, the radicalization of indigenous communities had led to armed invasion and occupation of forests by activists and insurgents.30 Since the early 2000s, the government seemed to have managed to reestablish a certain degree of control over the forest. However, several social scientists had also pointed out the inherent difficulties involved in the implementation of the JFM, especially with regard to the setting up of committees that included villagers (mostly comprising men, thereby bringing into sharp focus the gendered view of communities), as well as forest officials, since the latter were always the ones who wielded power in the last instance.31 Around KNP, the forest department had had to diversify its programmes in order to include villagers (and villages) into a conservation project that would be beneficial to both. They had set up Forest Development Agencies (FDA) that were to disburse funds for the protection of forest land, as well as help regeneration of pastures for grazing at the district level and these were always headed by civil servants of the Indian Forest Service. At the very local level, as in the villages that surrounded KNP, they had set up EDCs. There were thirty-​three EDCs in the KNP area, and its members were selected from among the village elders. They also received a modest sum of money to implement the Forest Department’s community outreach programmes. The outcome of these efforts had scarce bearing on the largely urban public opinion that the problem with poaching of rhinos at KNP was largely due to the presence of humans along the perimeter of the park. On 8 February 2016, a division bench of the Gauhati High Court, chaired by Justices Manjit Bhuyan and Hrishikesh Roy, issued notices to the Assam’s Chief Secretary for failing to evict persons from the animal corridors of KNP.32 Earlier, on 9 December 2015,

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the same judges had issued a court order giving the government a month’s time to evict encroachers from certain areas of the park. The petition to act against the government’s lackadaisical approach came from private individuals living in Golaghat town and Guwahati city. On its part, there was little that the government could do to address the court’s order. In reality, the people who inhabited the areas mentioned in the court order had valid documents to settle there. The court was not the only institution that had taken up cudgels on behalf of conservationists in Assam. The local media—​both print and electronic—​had continuously aired similar views on the problems faced by small and large species of wildlife in Assam. Newspapers and television channels expressed great concern in the month of May 2015, following police reports of an increase in poaching. They focused on the perils of poaching in wildlife, not just ‘mega animals’ such as tigers, elephants, and rhinos, but also smaller species and appreciated the kind of work that was being done by the WWF India and Wildlife Crime Control Bureau in this regard.33 ‘My work falls in the grey area of conservation’, said Deepak Saha (name changed), who works for a foundation dedicated to the protection of rhinos in different parts of the world. We sat at a busy crossroad near the city of Tezpur, not very far from the fringes of KNP that was spread across the other side of the Brahmaputra River. He described his work as something that fell halfway between criminal investigation and paralegal aid to the forest department. He spent a better part of the afternoon explaining the details of the illegal trade in rhino horns in Assam and drew on anecdotal incidents from his previous experiences working for the WWF in other parts of India. As we conversed, he was careful to draw a distinction between the kind of work he had done for WWF and the semi-​clandestine nature of his current responsibilities. Saha saw his efforts as an amalgam of the routine work of spies, policemen, and forest wardens to curb the illegal trade and hunting of wildlife. He admitted that this was a difficult job. The WPA was enacted in 1972, but it was difficult to enforce in places where traditional communities were used to hunting for game. Moreover, the state had

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legalized the auctioning of rhino horns until 1974, and entire communities had grown up believing that hunting was part of their culture, Saha claimed. In the course of our discussion, he kept referring to various events where he had apprehended poachers and helped the forest and police departments seize all manner of animal parts that were meant to go to different parts of the world. An unmarried NGO professional, he was very forthcoming about the limits of his ability to empathize with the lives and lot of those who were hunting the rhino for its horn. Rather, he saw them as criminals who were greedy and wanted to make some quick money at the expense of the helpless rhino. He kept referring to a well-​known tiger poacher, Sansar Chand, who was caught in Rajasthan (in western India), who had a battery of lawyers and lived a lavish lifestyle. Saha admitted that the poachers in Assam were not likely to be as flashy as Chand (who incidentally died in 2014). Instead, he invoked the murky world of insurgent groups, particularly in Manipur, corrupt politicians and lawyers, without actually specifying any details about who they were. They were all, gaming the law in their quest for wealth and there was precious little that the government was capable of doing on its own. In this particular context, the WPA seemed a peripheral concern for everyone involved in the story. The poachers, as Saha reiterated several times over coffee, seemed unconcerned about the Act and often found easy loopholes to avoid prosecution; the forest department did not know how they could use the law to prosecute those who came intending to kill rhinos; the police, army, and other armed agencies of the state saw it as a quaint piece of legislation that seemed to distract them from real business of policing and counterinsurgency; the rhino (and other animals), for their part, continued to be poached and traded illegally and with alarming regularity. Even so, the Act remained an anchor for international NGO functionaries like Mr. Saha. He had structured his engagement with government agencies to appear as though he was a consultant, who had the task of holding workshops with police personnel and forest officials. At these workshops, he would train them on how to improve their conviction rates of alleged poachers by including sections of the WPA in

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their case diaries. This allowed him access to the forest departments, the police, and some sections of the local communities as well. Saving the rhino was as viable a commercial enterprise as was poaching, according to Saha. He was quick to point out that several resorts and lodges had come up over the past decade. All of them catered to a seasonal burst in tourists who saw KNP as an embodiment of wildlife and biodiversity that Assam had to present to world. Even the tea companies were cashing in on the need for conservation by encouraging high-​end tourists to live in palatial planters’ bungalows all over eastern Assam. There is a sense of irony in this: An industry that might have been responsible for the drastic reduction of forest cover for the rhino was now being called upon to find ways to conserve the habitat for the animal. It is not as if the planters would send out their guards and workers to look for poacher, but they were called upon to address the larger conservation attempts at creating alternate livelihoods for the people dependent on the parks. Hence, some of the bigger companies had created small showrooms that sold ethnic fabric and handicraft along National Highway 37 that cut right through the heart of KNP. It gave them a sense of being part of an endeavour to police the parks and the people who live along its fringes. It is not clear if this gives bigger tea and oil enterprises special privileges to influence the outcome of conservation activities around KNP. The immediate gatekeepers responsible for conservation and protection were the guards appointed by the Forest Department, often ill paid and always under pressure from the media and the ministry, especially when news of poaching of animals trickled out from the park. Forests guards are seen patrolling the highway that passes through the park, as well as the paths inside. Dressed in khaki and carrying old rifles, they live in spartan dwellings inside the park, where daily work and leisure take on an entirely different meaning from the ones that their neighbouring villagers are used to. Unlike the predominantly farming communities of the village, they work through the night to ensure safety of animals, as also to ensure surveillance around the perimeter of the park. This multiplicity of stakeholders—​government bodies, NGOs, and others—​who show an intimate interest in the biophysical life (and life

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forms) in the park, is an interesting phenomenon.34 Clearly, the emphasis on species diversity, as well as protection of migratory routes, is not a simple affair left only to the Department of Environment and Forests of the Government of Assam. Nevertheless, much of the costs of protecting the park—​and this include paying salaries, upkeep of watch towers and equipment and so on—​are undertaken by the department. Some money also comes from multi-​lateral sources such as the World Bank and Agence Française de Développement. The World Bank finances the Assam Agricultural Competitiveness Project (AACP) through the Assam Rural Infrastructure and Agriculture Society (ARIAS), which is a society under the control of the department and is able to route money into promoting agriculture in the state. Agence Française de Développement has been funding the Assam Project on Forest and Biodiversity Conservation Society that seeks to involve local communities in the conservation of forests and wildlife in Assam. There also exist a few societies devoted to looking after the lives and families of forest guards, under the Kaziranga National Park Staff Welfare Society (KNPSWS) that was set up by former forest guards who had medical and legal requirements, even after their service tenures. However, as mentioned in the earlier section, it is not only the cost of running the park that is important, but also the possibilities of using the resources for generating wealth that matters in the final analysis of the different persons and institutions involved in conservation. Archaeologist Lynn Meskell’s work on the politics of conservation in South Africa’s Kruger National Park points to similar processes involving government departments, conservationists, and local communities that have competing claims to forests and parks in postcolonial societies.35 South Africa’s Kruger National Park had become the site of serious contestations over the idea of conserving nature in colonized spaces, leading to the outright militarization of the park and middle-​class celebration of the killings of rhino poachers.36 In a similar vein, Jake Kosek’s reflective account of the inequalities that fuel conservation attempts in New Mexico have different trajectories and responses drawing on the intimate relations between the processes of deifying and demonizing.37 In Assam, KNP had

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had its share of contentious claims in terms of policing the area. Ever since 2013, there had been talk about forming a Special Task Force (STF) in order to combat the actions of poachers and hunters. In response to a petition filed by RTI activists, who claimed that there was a task force of trained, armed paramilitary present within the park, the government issued a response that denied the presence of such a force.38 Most villagers around the park, on the other hand, scoffed at the government’s denials and continued to insist that there were special battalions of police who lived inside the park and were responsible for the deaths of several young men. In doing so, they were rejecting the official narrative of protectors and predators in the area. Therefore, the rhino has emerged as a symbol of empathy for the Assamese middle class even at the cost of the erosion of solidarity for a struggling peasantry.

Rhinos and Poachers: A Tragic, Class Struggle? Primitive accumulation is a violent, soul-​crushing process that is at once, ruthless and rapacious. In his searing description of Marx’s analysis of the process, in relation to the current debates around migration in Europe, Ghassan Hage writes of the manner (and conditions) in which law can be suspended to allow for a colonization of land and resources.39 In doing so, Hage points to creation of ‘racialized class border, which separates (the) two different experiences in the world of national borders’, where borders are no longer the lines drawn on national maps.40 They are, in every sense, the kind of apartheid walls that are reiterated in everyday political discourse. In his seminal critique of policy frames on Northeast India, Sanjib Baruah had made similar pronouncements with regard to the need to close the perceived ‘developmental gaps’ in the region.41 For a place where ideas of citizenship and belonging are often subjected to the twin tests of political violence and economic want, the uncritical acceptance of a developmental discourse that lacks nuance can leave a region with more problems than the ones that policy makers sought to remove.

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The rhinoceros, its protectors, and poacher are therefore locked in a luckless battle. The anti-​immigration rhetoric that seeks to lay the onus of rhino poaching on poor marginalized Muslim farmers has come to coalesce with an aggressive middle-​class idea of the rhino being synonymous with Assamese identity and pride. Both positions, as I have tried to show in the course of this essay are fundamentally and tragically flawed, with very little basis in empirical reality. Yet, it has not posed a problem for the newly elected minister for Environment and Forest in Assam, Pramila Rani Brahma, to pronounce the formation of a new task force to tackle rhino poaching, as well as ensure an even more belligerent policy in dealing with those perceived to be threats to the animal.42 Nor has it managed to deter departmental officers, NGOs, entrepreneurs, some impoverished forest guards, and poor young farmers from profiteering at the cost of the upkeep of the park and its surroundings43.

The Elephant On 30 April 2019, patrons of my gym in Guwahati were glued to the television sets instead of the wall-​to-​wall mirrors. They were following live coverage of the various local TV camerapersons following a young elephant who had strayed into the city in the afternoon. The elephant was subjected to much jeering and heckling from bystanders and shopkeepers. A number of forest guards armed with old rifles were trying to create a safe passage for the elephant, while the police had happily run away. My fellow gym goers were on the elephant’s side of the encounter. One wanted him to knock over a particularly irritating motorcyclist; another urged him to kick a few cars out of the way. ‘Where is this happening?’ someone asked, trying to gauge if we were in trouble. Satisfied that the spectacle was happening considerably further than where we were located, she announced for all of us: ‘It’s not his fault, where will he go if we keep taking over his space in this manner?’ As we made our way back to the treadmills of life, I remember one of the trainers berating a young man for wanting to change the channel. For a moment, the elephant’s suffering created an

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atmosphere of solidarity, even as the crowds on our city’s main street were left with other anxieties about their property. The following morning, I met with a former student who is now a senior official working for an international NGO that deals with conservation in Assam. Our conversation moved to the elephant in the town after barely half a minute. Between us, we counted three aspects of the encounter that would be hard to forget: (a) the jeering crowds; (b) the stoic but helpless forest guards who were trying their best to protect the elephant; and (c) the almost tranquil responses of the young pachyderm, who must have been scared out of its wits. This particular story had a fairly tame end, as the elephant was eventually tranquilized and taken back to be reunited with the herd in the nearby forest. However, as the numbers of human casualties rise in the elephant-​human encounters, it is more likely that there will be a more violent response from people, of the kind that heightens the impermeable nature of the relationship between the two species. In places such as MNP along the Assam-​Bhutan border, organizations such as WWF India have been dealing with such issues for more than a decade now. Rice-​growing farmers along the fringes of the national park had often complained about elephants damaging their crops, as they crossed from one country to another following their corridors. My former student and their office ensured that farmers were compensated for the loss of crops, as well as encouraging them to grow lemon trees as a fence crop so that elephants would find alternate routes to avoid being pricked by the thorns of the lemon tree. The second thing that we spoke about was the unhappy role of forest guards who were meant to escort the elephant away from the city and back to the forest. My student laughed at their predicament: ‘Did you see those old rifles? Do you think they could have shot one of the bystanders in anger?’ she asked. It was true that the forest guards seemed completely out of place, but the elements of the whole interplay were a bit overwhelming anyway. The city had actually extended into forest areas that were part of the elephant corridors. Therefore, such episodes would only increase in the future. However, questions would remain about who were best suited to deal with them: forest guards whose default action was to chase

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people away from forests? Police whose default action was to lock up the source of problems? The third topic we covered that day was about the elephant’s disposition. Until a few years ago, elephants and humans had had a fairly well documented relationship with one another. In South Asia, humans have both revered and exploited elephants for a very long time. Even as late as two decades ago, a person in Assam was considered wealthy if they owned a few elephants. They were a key element in the clearing of forests and establishment of plantations throughout the 19th and 20th century. In many ways, the relationship between humans and elephants was very different to another species that has considerably more sway in Assam today: rhinos. In the following sections of the chapter, I look at the three discursive areas of our conversation—​the jeering crowds, forest guards, and the anthropomorphic dignity ascribed to the elephants—​to outline the possible trajectories of this encounter.

The Jeering Crowd: Counterinsurgency and Atomization of Life Counterinsurgency has been central to the governance of Assam since 1990, when the central government declared President’s Rule and brought in the army to contain the activities of independentist rebels from the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB). Since then, the presence of the army has been ubiquitous in Assam, though its visibility in public spaces has reduced considerably since 2009, when sections of ULFA agreed to talk to the Government of India about their political issues. Two decades of counterinsurgency had resulted in the erosion of trust between the people and the security agencies that included the army, paramilitary, and local police. This condition was further exacerbated by the illiberal use of draconian laws such as the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 that allowed blanket impunity for security personnel who had committed human rights violations in the course of their campaigns against rebels. In effect, this created a social world where communities were perpetually in

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fear of their neighbours and the state in equal measure. Here, I draw inspiration from anthropologist Eleana Kim’s reflective work on the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), where she focuses on a complex set of entanglements between humans and non-​humans that emerge in the course of militarization of particular landscapes. Kim argues that militarized ecologies defy a straightforward moral evaluation of relationships, a view that I find particularly insightful in my own analysis of the relationship that has emerged between elephants and humans in Assam’s militarized landscape.44 Between 1990, when the army was called out, and 2003, when the first of a long series of suspension of operations were signed between the government and various insurgent groups, Assam was subjected to a sustained military crackdown on insurgents, as well as their perceived support base. In conventional counterinsurgency vocabulary employed around the world, this encapsulated the full spectrum of life that included classifying certain areas and lives as dangerous for the nation, subjecting such areas to armed suppression as well as creating trusted networks of support for the state.45 This helped sustain a violent geography, where violence was both routine and spectacular, with death squads and impunity paving the way for the corrosion of solidarity among communities. An important aspect of counterinsurgency was the calibrated introduction of financial rewards and benefits to those who were persuadable to join the government’s efforts. This meant that contracts and business licences were part of a pecuniary package for insurgents who crossed over, leading to many subtle and flagrant forms of intimidation in public life.46 There were two products of counterinsurgency that are important to the story of the elephant: (a) creation of a fearful and aggressive public and (b) evolution of an economy that was marked by threats and rapacity of a wide range of actors. In the interplay between the two, one can also see the emergence of a new range of concerns and processes that impact the lives of both animals and humans in the region. The interplay is a fascinating study of intentions that often erase the history of violence and the atomized world created by counterinsurgency. An important NGO, the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) believes that both elephants and humans are in danger of further

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exacerbating conflicts, as humans expand their cultivation areas resulting in the reduction of foraging spaces for elephants along the Nepal, Bhutan, West Bengal, and Assam corridor.47 Geographer Maan Barua points to the problems that arise when such pleas are addressed to farmers in KNP, where farmers came out in opposition to the government’s efforts to appropriate their farmlands to create elephant corridors.48 On one hand, counterinsurgency placed a very high value on development as a way out of the cycle of political violence. The combination of fear, violence, and constant focus on development created a milieu that was characterized by aggressive display of wealth and power.49 On the other hand, counterinsurgency also encouraged large-​scale movement of young people from villages—​where they were subjected to constant physical surveillance and control by the security forces—​to the urban areas. This was not a condition specific to Assam, as social scientists have pointed out similar processes among indigenous communities in other parts of Northeast India and Southeast Asia.50 This form of displacement and enforced migration adds to the increase of microaggression among marginalized urban youth (mainly men), as well as an increase in punitive actions against the poor in most parts of the developing world.51 Since the turn of the century, the city of Guwahati has grown exponentially to accommodate the migration of youth from rural areas. Guwahati has certain unique geographical features that impact its growth. The old colonial city grew around an axis that included the Dighalipukhuri area, Pan Bazar, and Fancy Bazar. Currently, the Dighalipukhuri area is home to many of the iconic administrative institutions of postcolonial India: High Court and Sessions Courts, District Library, and State Museum. Pan Bazar is a hub that has grown around the Cotton College (now Cotton University), while Fancy Bazar is the traditional commercial area. The city has the river to the north, the state of Meghalaya (where there are a separate set of laws for land acquisition and transfer) to the south, the hills, Amchang reserve forest, and wildlife sanctuary to the east, and the airport to the west. This unique geography prevents the rapid expansion of the city to the south, even though there have been several developmental initiatives such as

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the setting up of universities by private groups who have permission from the Government of Meghalaya. The city’s growth to the east is also restricted because of the presence of Amchang forest, though many migrants have settled in these areas. The wooded hills that ring Guwahati, which once were part of elephant corridors, have now become home to several thousands of settlers from rural Assam, who have moved to these areas following conflicts and natural calamities such as floods and erosion. This has created an unenviable situation for the city’s planners and administrators. Violence against women, where the perpetrators were often young underemployed men, have become commonplace.52 Police stations across the city have also seen an increase of theft and crime over the years, much of which was significantly unrelated to overtly political causes. Once in the city, their precarity increased since they were not likely to have the skills required to acquire white collar jobs, so many ended up working in restaurants and the ever-​growing transport sector, as drivers and handymen. With meagre earnings and no chance of social and economic mobility, young men from such social backgrounds were likely to get into trouble with the law-​and-​order machinery in the city. Daniel Briggs’ work on the London (Birmingham and Manchester) riots of 2011 highlights the role of similar triggers that lead young, unemployed people to occasionally attack symbols of wealth and power that they aspire for, but are seldom able to afford.53 Such conditions are central to the creation of atomized and violent societies, where inequalities often lead to a lack of empathy for neighbours. Hence, it is not surprising that members of such a society would react with fear and violence at the presence of a wild elephant in their midst.54

Forest Guards: Protecting Shadows and Creating Corridors The forest department, like most other departments of the Indian government, has its origins in the colonial bureaucracy. The colonial forest department that emerged in 19th-​century India was one that

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had both commercialization and conservation as part of its mandate. In their seminal work on the use and abuse of nature in India, ecologist Madhav Gadgil and anthropologist Ramachandra Guha point out that the colonial state’s actions of divesting indigenous communities from forests amounted to confiscation and not conservation.55 In Assam too, historians have pointed out that the forest department was a ‘frontrunner in terms of its revenue earnings’ for the colonial state by the end of the 19th century.56 The Assam Forest Regulation Act of 1891 allowed the department to notify large tracts of forest land as areas that were under its control and led to the emergence of conflicts between local communities and the state. In Assam, the department also offered employment to educated young indigenous men like Mohi Chandra Miri (1903–​1939), who in turn were responsible for introducing local concerns into the management of forests in the region. One of Miri’s superiors in Kaziranga was the colonial forester, Andrew Milroy, who at the turn of the 20th century had debated various permutations that allowed for the coexistence of hunting and conservation in and around Assam’s forests and national parks (like KNP).57 An important element of the forest department story is its perception among a wider cross-​section of society in Assam. Since its inception during the colonial period, it has had to defer to local demands for usufructuary rights, leading to polarizing claims over forests in the 1980s and 1990s.58 These claims converge around the parks and reserved forests, but with different social and political consequences. Since the turn of the 21st century, local and national media have often reported on the illegal and financially debatable practices of forest officials who are caught succumbing to inducements by loggers and animal hunters.59 However, within the forest and national parks, forest guards and NGO activists (like my former student mentioned above) enter into a relationship that complicates the popular perception of corrupt forest guards. Most forest guards are recruited from among the local communities and posted in places that may not be too far from the places where they were born and brought up. The lower ranks of the department share a similar social and economic background with the inhabitants of the villages around the

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park. This aspect is important to remember, especially in the case of parks, where there is a regular flow of tourists. Here, forest guards often display stoic benevolence when referring to both human and animals that they share the landscape with. ‘You see, we know that poaching is encouraged by people in the cities, because no one here can afford to pay one thousand rupees for a kilogram of deer meat’, said one of the forest officers at the Nameri Wildlife Range Headquarter. The HQ is situated adjacent to the commercial eco camp that was frequented by tourists from around the state and outside the region as well. In January 2018, I was there to ask permission to cross the Kameng/​Jia Bhoreli River and walk along the Nameri National Park and Forest Reserve that had been used as a corridor for herds of wild elephants in the past. Unlike other places where encounters between elephants and humans had led to the loss in lives of both species, the situation in and around Nameri did not result in many deaths. This was despite the fact that in the decade since I had begun to work on changes in land use and land relations in the area, the forest cover had dwindled on the eastern flank of the river, giving way to small settlements and farms. Across the river, however, there was a thick forest cover, and the hour-​long walk around a small fringe of the park was one of the underrated services that the forest department had started for visitors. As I sat around the office early in the morning, the forest officer dealt with a raucous group of young men, who were impatient that the permission to go across was taking so long. Some of the young men recounted the excesses of the night, goading one another into accepting that they had drunk too much. As they walked out, the forest officer and I shared a moment of camaraderie that came from having to put up with such people: he, as a responsible member of the forest department and I, as one of few other individuals who would have to suffer the group for the next few hours. The forest officer asked if I had put up with them in the nearby resort the previous night. Hearing that I came from the university, he opened up about his misgivings regarding the department’s efforts to earn some revenue by allowing tourists to walk the four-​kilometre trail inside the core area of the park. ‘Look at how these people dress! They want

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to be attacked by wild animals and they are the ones who clamour for bush meat’, he added with a nod towards the group that began to shout the name of the forest guard who was supposed to take them across the river. Having established that the group represented everything that was wrong with a certain middle-​class preoccupation with being around nature, the forest officer began to address the fraught relationship between villagers accused of poaching and his department. ‘We know who they are and how they catch wild animals’, he said, as he took me around a room to show me the crude traps that he said were used by villagers to catch small-​and medium-​sized game inside the forest. I was keen to know if he thought that the villages that I had been working in, around a ten-​kilometer radius from his office, were home to some of those accused of poaching. He said that most of the known poachers were from outside the area, reiterating similar research in other parts of the world, where state agencies have had to come to some kind of collaborative relationship with local communities in order to maintain eco-​tourist facilities.60 He recounted an instance of a person known to him, who used to be a hunter of game in the past but had given it up for easier game. ‘He once killed a buffalo in the neighboring village and sold it to people in Tezpur saying that it was wild venison’, the officer chuckled. However, when we began to talk about the elephant corridor, his views echoed that of many others who lived in the area, regardless of their occupation. He empathized with both species: human and the elephant, since both were in need of land for their survival. Hence, when it came to sharing views about a wider set of issues that impacted the area, there was a wider convergence of views about the need for the forest department, marginal farmers, and wildlife to coexist without getting in each other’s way. This, as one might imagine, was difficult to sustain in a landscape that had a wide river to the south, a tea and forest cover in the middle, and the sharply inclined Himalayas in the state of Arunachal Pradesh to the north. Hence, the story of the corridors and that of the forest department was once again intertwined through various layers of social and economic connections.

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Interestingly, forest officials are not widely visible in reserved forests and protected areas that are part of elephant corridors situated in densely populated areas such as Guwahati city. Their nominal presence as members of the state administration often gets highlighted during evictions of unregulated settlements around the hills surrounding the city. One such instance was the much-​publicized evictions of residents who were living around the Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary adjacent to Guwahati city towards the end of November 2017. Floods and erosions in middle and eastern Assam had displaced most of the over seven hundred families that had settled in the thirty-​seven revenue villages within the Eco-​sensitive Zone (ECZ) that constituted the sanctuary area. Assamese and English media reporting the evictions highlighted the fact that the evictees were indigenous to the state (quite unlike the reception that was accorded to evictees around KNP). One of the main points of discord in the evictions was the role of the forest department, since they were party to the legal wrangling that resulted in the government’s decision to evict the families. The department had been inducted into a petition filed by a conservation group in the High Court. The group was protesting against the loss of habitat for birds in Guwahati and accordingly had held the settlements and revenue villages responsible. In a city that demands casual labour but is unable to offer them affordable housing, forest areas such as Amchang had become difficult but inevitable places for the urban poor to find refuge. However, the area was also important for the Government of Assam, who set up a committee to establish an ECZ within a wildlife sanctuary that had already been systematically reduced by the expansion of Guwahati. The forest department, as many of the evictees would later allege, was complicit in allowing the settlements to come up. Lawyers working with the evictees would also highlight how several government departments were complicit in the eventual evictions, as the land and revenue department were unable to back up the tenurial lease for the revenue villages in the area. The forest department was subjected to particularly harsh criticism because of their involvement in the evictions, even though they had been aware of the circumstances under which the settlements and villages had come up. In the meantime,

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the department also had a commitment to protect the corridors and habitat for wildlife. Hence, they often cited the growing animal–​ human conflicts as their reasons for wanting to keep both species away from one another. Their presence during the wild elephant’s foray into the city on 30 April 2019 could also be read as a testimony to this protectionist aspect of their work.

Elephants and Corridors The Asian elephant had a celebrated role in pre-​colonial and colonial Assam. For the various small state formations that came up in the Brahmaputra Valley between the 13th and 18th century, the elephant was an important animal that could be used for various reasons. Historical accounts of the Ahom kings attest to elephants being given as tribute to the Mughal emperor, as well as being symbols of rank and prestige among the Ahom nobility.61 Most South and Southeast Asian cultures have had some reference to the elephant in religious and profane matters. In Thailand, the white elephant is considered to be an auspicious animal that is always associated with the King’s coronation and rule.62 Similarly, in several Hindu kingdoms of the ancient period such as the Mauryas in South Asia, elephants have been venerated and used extensively to fight wars.63 Elephants have been one of the central, though underreported agents of economic transformation in Assam. The establishment of the tea industry rested upon the clearing of vast swathes of forest areas in the middle and late 19th century. Such a task could only have been possible with the help of elephants, who helped teams of human beings clear the forest to establish the vast plantations along the plains and foothills of eastern and central Assam, including the Barak valley. Much of the descriptions about elephants from this period have to do with their domestication and work. The tea planter and environmentalist, Edward Gee, who was instrumental in sensitizing the newly independent Indian state to the benefits of conservation, wrote about the various roles performed by the kunki (trained elephants). Drawing the reader’s attention to the harsh

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realities of elephant capture and deaths, he wrote about how the Elephant Preservation Act of 1879 helped create an environment where the killing of wild elephants was outlawed by the colonial government. Their killing would be allowed only in very rare cases and in self-​defence and with a wide array of rules regarding the issuing of licences for capture and shooting. Drawing attention to the differences between the cultivator and wild elephants, Gee was prescient in pointing out that the expansion of farming had increased the violent encounters between wild herds and farmers. Praising the people and the Government of Assam for showing great wisdom, Gee referred to the elephant censuses that were begun by the colonial government in 1935 and one that continued into the period of transfer of power into the 1950s. Gee’s account is even more important, as it pointed out the concerns arising from the creation of new nation-​ states with definite boundaries following the disappearance of the British Empire that included the Indian sub-​continent and Burma. This new geography, he argued, was going to be difficult (but not impossible) for elephants to navigate.64 The elephant corridor is a matter of great concern to wildlife conservationists and forest department officials in Assam today. While places such as Guwahati are ringed by corridors that are fast becoming part of the expanding city, other places such as MNP also have a complicated history that explain the manner in which animal–​human entanglements have evolved since Gee’s time. A series of investigations inside MNP during the 1990s highlighted the devastating impact of the conflict on wildlife. In 2005, a UNESCO-​ IUCN report highlighted the devastation of wildlife and ecology inside MNP and underlined the need to involve villagers around the park to manage and rebuild MNP. Providing a history of the insurgency and violence in western Assam, the report underlined the need to rehabilitate the animals inside the park and set up new camps for the guards. MNP was added to the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1992 as the armed conflict escalated and led to the destruction of infrastructure of lives and property inside the park and its surrounding villages. Calling for a close coordination between the villagers around and the park authorities, the 2005 UNESCO-​IUCN

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report noted, ‘ . . . the long insurgency appears to have had significant impacts on the forests and the wildlife population in the park’.65 Over the years, the process of rehabilitation and restoration of MNP has adopted villagers including youth associations and women’s groups to become guardians and partners in rebuilding the wildlife and ecology of the park. In addition, the team members of the MNP rehabilitation programme include former poachers, ex-​insurgents, retired security forces, and students. Yet, these social relations are not restricted within the park. The social bonds among these divergent social and political groups have become networks of support where they undertake activities to restore themselves and create a sense of community. The elephant plays a central role in bringing these disparate communities together. Either as kunkis (working elephants), or as part of non-​domesticated herds, conservation and monitoring elephants and other animals in MNP defines the jurisdictional landscape of the park into distinct ranges; in this case, Panbari, Bansbari, and Bhuyanpara, where both species cohabit in an environment that is fraught with pressure on resources. Within the park, there are 41 working elephants, and the last unofficial census put the wild herd population at 1200. Each kunki has two mahouts allotted to them by the department. As a unit, they are used for a range of work—​monitoring, keeping wild elephants away, an occasional safari—​as employees. The wild herds use the west-​east corridor that traverses the range—​Panbari, Bansbari, and Bhuyanpara—​with significant pockets of human habitation (villages, military garrisons, tea plantations, and resorts) and infrastructure developments (bridges, train tracks and roads). The damage to crops is not usually done by wild herds, who find it easier to stay inside the park’s vast grasslands where there is enough for them to eat. It is usually a few strays, aged between twenty and twenty-​five years, who find their way outside the wired area and into the way of human habitation. However, the forays into human habitation are not random and have a rhythm. The Forest Veterinary Officer says laughingly that there are ‘two elephant seasons: July to November is farm visit and December to March is house visit’. These coincide with the months where paddy is growing in the fields

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and the post-​harvest period when the produce is kept in granaries near individual homesteads in the village. The Forest Department, working with other departments of the government, as well as with some of the conservation organizations have come up with a simplified compensatory process for damage to houses and the rare loss of human life.66 This informal arrangement over the past seven years provides compensation to the villagers for crop loss for one time, even though elephants might have visited the village twice. For forest department officials and the villagers, this is a reasonable outcome of several years of negotiation. ‘We need to convince the raiz (society) to be equanimous to some loss—​let the elephants also eat—​ it is their character’, said the divisional forest officer (DFO), as he explained the contentious nature of compensation around the range. Livelihood practices around MNP are intertwined with the wildlife rehabilitation and protection programs. As such, practices of economically marginalized communities who grow lemons as a livelihood crop exemplify agency of the poor.67 The lemon growing initiative was started by Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) and taken up by other organizations working in the area, who had worked closely with local communities during the 1980s and 1990s, when some of the worst episodes of counterinsurgency was carried out in in western Assam. As the violence abated in the early 2000s, many of the youth who were politically active in the struggles for autonomy, ended up collaborating with conservation groups (such as those listed above) in order to ensure local community support for such initiatives. For instance, nine men from different ethnic groups, in consultation with the conservation NGOs, built an ecologically friendly, budget campsite and resort beside the fringes of the park and the Beki River. The partners continued to do much of the work around the resort themselves, lending a communitarian air to the space. The resort continues to be a hub for tourists and conservationists alike. Similarly, conservation groups such as Aaranyak were instrumental in securing community support for their pygmy hog conservation project that utilized the park as a release site for the endangered animal since 1996. These initial projects during the years of political crisis were important in the

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manner in which the state began to view post-​conflict reconstruction in the region, especially since they dealt with the issues of violence and displacement. Yet, humans and elephants alike have experienced violence and displacement. In Assam, communities acknowledge that they have displaced elephants from their habitats. Therefore, when elephants enter the villages in search of food, residents say that animals were forced to do so because of their ‘hungry stomachs’ and underline feelings such as hunger and poverty as sufferings that humans and elephants alike experience.68 Piers Locke also invites us to pay attention to the, ‘ . . . mutual entanglements of their (human-​elephants) social, historical, and ecological relations’.69 For Locke, the behavioural patterns of humans and elephants influence social relationship and personalities as well. Similar to human beings, notes Locke, elephants are social beings and have the ability to recognize one another, appreciate one another, develop deep feelings, and grieve when they lose friends and relations.70 Interestingly, this aspect is reiterated in the relationship between the mahouts employed by the forest department and the kunkis in MNP. Higher officials in the park often complained about absenteeism of employees when they went home for leave. Those who had asked for a day or two would invariably stay home for longer periods. However, most mahouts came back earlier, even before their leave time had lapsed, because they worried about the elephant under their care. Were they being fed enough of the department-​rationed menu of salt, paddy, lentils, and black salt? Did they receive their liver extract mixed with wheat and the deworming tablets during the lean winter season? Most mahouts in the Bansbari range chuckled as they said that such worries brought them back to their camp even before the leave had run out. The pressure to develop parts of the elephant corridors for tourism, or even the extension of agriculture has affected the corridors in various ways. In addition, the careless introduction of new cash-​making plant species, such as tea and more recently bombax, has also impacted the elephant corridors in significant ways. Bombax was introduced as a quick-​fix plant by a local match factory owner in Bijni town (located just south of MNP), who had convinced the forest

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department that this would be a good idea. The rapidly growing trees depleted the quality of the grassland along the corridor, thereby forcing the elephants to look elsewhere for food. However, through the various encounters between elephants and humans around MNP, one could see that a disparate set of circumstances resulted in the evolution of a fragile acceptance and adaption from both species. The various local conservation and livelihood NGOs around MNP, along with the members of the forest department, had arrived at a negotiated balance whereby compensatory mechanisms had aided the acceptance process for local villagers. In addition, the introduction of sustainable local plants—​like lemons—​both as fences (against elephants) and income generators, has resulted in a comparatively better outcome for elephants in that region.71

Comparisons The experiences in MNP show a marked difference from what has transpired in KNP over the past decade. KNP was never much of a theatre during the insurgency/​counterinsurgency period of the 1990s and early 2000s. MNP, on the other hand, was a major refuge for insurgents throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The story of the national parks following the difficult years of counterinsurgency has been one that sought to leverage their value for tourists, even as local communities around the park remained poor and, in many cases, have had to migrate elsewhere in search of better livelihoods. The two parks offer a case of contrasts and comparisons beyond the obvious. In both, the forest department has been in a difficult position with respect to its dealings with local communities. In KNP, the presence of wealthy investors and their resorts attest to the fact that local communities, especially the subsistence farmers, are not really among the big money earners. However, over time, following contests over usufructuary rights over land, a few have managed to get involved in the tourist industry though a large number are left outside it and to fend for themselves. The difference in MNP has been the involvement of local people in the rejuvenation of the park, even

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as the political struggles for autonomy have resulted in some form of cautious collaboration between the forest department and local communities. It is through the stories of the rhino and the elephant in the two places that one can throw some light on emergent relationships between animals and humans in the region. The rhino’s evasive relationship with poor marginalized farmers on the fringes of militarized national parks is poised for a transformation under a hyper-​nationalist, developmentalist regime. The uncritical celebration of the rhino has resulted in the militarization of the parks and its neighbouring farms, problematizing an already difficult relationship between subsistence farming communities and animals. In ignoring the violence that is being perpetrated, ostensibly for the protection of the animal, there arises a parallel risk of the hardening of borders between both animal and human, as well as between different classes of humans in Assam. While animals do seem to provide moral examples in modern and pre-​modern cultures, the rhino-​human relationship in Assam—​mediated as it is by an increase in violence—​is emblematic of the wider instances of inequalities and contestations that exist in the contemporary social world in Assam. In the case of the elephant, one needs to see the transformation of the relationship as a reflection of changes in the political economy, as well as the introduction of new mechanized technology. Where the elephant was once considered a symbol of wealth and status for the privileged, the animal and its erstwhile owners have come upon hard times. Already, advocacy groups working on conservation issues have begun to conduct research on the losses incurred by farmers due to the damage suffered as a result of wildlife incursions into farmlands. Such compensatory mechanisms are altogether missing in urban centres. However, they may emerge as new areas of interest for businesses, banks, administrators, and advocacy groups working towards mitigating the outcomes of developmental excesses, as well as the increasing friction arising out of contact between wildlife and humans in the region. In analysing the relationship between animals and humans in Assam, one is confronted with certain themes that emerge from earlier times, but in more diverse ways. Geographers and geologists

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working on the region have anticipated an increase in confrontation between wildlife and humans within a very special geographic space. Here, they claim, geology will always prevail as water, soil, and rock find different ways to move or settle. Wildlife will continue to look for higher ground, even though their numbers may reduce over time. Humans, on the other hand, have not been able to make appropriate decisions about adapting to ongoing transformations, in political, social, and geological sense.72 In the following chapter, I look at the manner in which society in Assam has responded to these challenges by focusing on different places that humans have chosen to live in, in an attempt to find sustenance for themselves.

5 Commune and (Relief) Camp Finding an Appropriate Frame When writing about Assam, one of the difficulties that I am always confronted is the idea of scale. Where does one look for answers to big questions on politics, personhood, and social transformation? Most often, the answers to such questions begin with big institutional settings—​courts, civic bodies and organizations, political parties, or universities (to name a few)—​and incorporate a formidable array of evidence about the manner in which Assam has changed over the decades. Therefore, the answers concentrate on the kind of tangible changes that one can place as evidence for the arguments they make. The analysis of conflicts that rely on episodes and responses by civil society and the state would have one believe that the situation has become worse since the 1980s and 1990s. There has been a sharp increase in conflicts that involve communities; the numbers of internally displaced persons—​especially those caused by conflicts—​are perilously close to some of the worst cases around the world, according to organizations such as the Norwegian Refugee Council supported Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.1 In a parallel process, the urban growth in Assam is marked by large-​scale investments in urban infrastructure (by both the state and private capital). However, there has been inadequate attention on the urban form as a subject of research in the region.2 One tends to focus on matters that are already visible and manifested overtly in the public domain. How does one then account for the changes that are not often written about, or those that offer counterintuitive narratives to the ones that we are trained to look? In this chapter, Homeland Insecurities. Sanjay Barbora, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780192855329.003.0005

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I reflect on some of the processes that I have been involved with, in an attempt to find some quieter, less obvious analytics to explain events in the past two decades; the first marked by intense political violence by the state, the other by a developmental overdrive that made communities confront one another across the state. I argue that moving forward on these big questions requires a commitment to peacebuilding from below and to reconciliation. Both processes, I show, are not impossible and require an amplification of grassroots attempts at addressing the outcomes of intractable problems such as natural disasters and conflict-​induced displacement that cause disruption of lives and livelihoods. Here, I draw heavily from two separate interventions in social anthropology (and social sciences) that have helped me look for something universal in the particular episodes of everyday life. These do not often appear in our analysis of politics. Anthropologist Joel Robbins’ provocative essay that appeared in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2013 forced social scientists to confront the issue of being able to separate our empirical observations from value judgements in the course of research, a traditional Weberian task that has had to undergo several changes.3 He further draws on the analogy of the drunk looking for his lost ring under the light of the lamp, even though the ring may be elsewhere, to drive home the point that our disciplines have insidiously moved us to look for answers in places that we already know we will find them. From this suggestive vantage, I reflect on the quotidian but reaffirming instances of solidarity and cooperation that escape attention. The second intervention that deeply influenced me is the idea of decoloniality that has been propounded so poignantly and persuasively by Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh.4 I am specially drawn by Mignolo’s invocation of the intimate connections between coloniality and narratives of modernity, where ‘coloniality is shorthand for the coloniality of power’.5 In spelling out that coloniality is not equal to colonialism, Mignolo urges researchers to reflect on the kind of political operations of power that the latter leaves behind. Colonialism, he reminds us, is related to domination, subjugation, and the transfer of populations from one politically and militarily

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stronger part of the globe to another that is relatively weaker in all aspects.6 When such a colonization is buttressed over time by the insistence on borders and invocations of national identity, they become entwined in a need for colonized collectives to prove that they are as modern, or perhaps even more so than their neighbours.7 This reinforces the idea of borders and has a singularly debilitating effect on social and political discourse. Mignolo and Walsh’s depiction of the evidence of coloniality in political discourse emerging in the racial, sexual, religious, aesthetic, and other borders8 is particularly instructive for my own understanding of Assam after the turn of the 20th century. Assam, especially between 1979 and 2020, has witnessed an unprecedented upsurge in political violence, where public anger from below was met with an oppressive and brute force from above. The ramifications of such violence and its capacity to corrode democratic institutions and social structures were highlighted throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century.9 Therefore, my own attempts are not aimed at embellishing earlier analyses, but to reflect on the manner in which the act of being political itself has become fraught with expectations and positions that were variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups. In the three decades of insurgency that produced a retaliatory and disproportionate violence from the state, political actors and their positions underwent inversions that are hard to explain. In this world of inversions, poets became pamphleteers, the mundane became exceptional, and it seemed as though politics acquired other lives outside its location in law, authority, and institutions. Like many of my colleagues and fellow travellers, I too had begun to believe that perhaps the formal ceasefires that began in early 2000 and continued into 2009 were signs of inevitable change, where Assam’s radical constituency had begun to tire of violence and had accepted that there were wars that could never be won.10 Yet, while one tried to come to terms with the suddenness of changes, one also had to confront the transformation of everyday life that had come with the years of conflict. In this chapter, I attempt to seek clarity on how violence and the access to tools that allow its perpetuation shaped political discourse

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in contemporary Assam. I realize that Assam is no different from other parts of the world that has seen its share of wars and internecine killings. I will interrogate Carl Schmitt’s notion of the political, where he reiterates that ‘it would be ludicrous to think that a defenceless people has nothing but friends, and it would be a deranged calculation to suppose that the enemy could perhaps be touched by the absence of a resistance. . . .If a people no longer possess the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only weak people will disappear’.11 In Assam, violence has not done away with the weak. On the contrary, they have appeared in various forms: battered, bruised, and defiant. I focus on three episodes, two of which I was personally part of and the third that I construct from media reportage, in order to draw a picture of the social and political space that define Assam today. The first episode is about a commune in eastern Assam, which drew its members from a generation of women who were radicalized in socialist and feminist politics in the 1990s. My involvement with the commune and its members dates back to 1999. It was just after the core group from among them decided to approach the villagers for some community land to set up their weaving and lodging units. The women of the commune were well known to students’ union and human rights activists, as they were at the forefront of mobilizing the local community against army and paramilitary atrocities, as well as intervening in the many cases of violence against women that had become routine in the region. The second episode focuses on a riverine island, or char, as they are known in Assamese. My visits to the area began during the unprecedented floods of 2012 and continued over the years, since the village and its inhabitants were drawn into tragedies—​both human and natural—​that necessitated a deeper engagement for me. The third episode draws from media reports following a brutal clash in the autonomous district of Karbi Anglong between armed militia that left many Dimasa and Karbi people dead and others displaced in 2006. Taken together, these episodes and locations highlight the persistence of a colonial relationship between the various communities that inhabit Assam and the state that they look to for resolution of conflicts. The episodes also focus on the

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manner in which old and new forms of precarity have come to impact interpretations of culture, society and politics in Assam.

Kakopathar and the Women’s Commune The mud walls of the commune were unable to keep the January chill of eastern Assam from entering the house. Ten of us who had just driven up to the Progressive Women’s Front (locally called the Mancha) office and community house were tired and cold. The office-​cum-​house was both a domestic and workspace, complete with a kitchen that had an earthen stove and a sparingly used gas stove. On one end of the house, the activists of the Mancha had a mud room with two weaving looms where they occasionally wove stoles, wraparounds, and shawls sold to sympathizers and other activists who visited the commune. Between the kitchen and living room was a room where a child—​whose age was masked by the dark and a swathe of quilts—​slept, oblivious of the guests in the house. As they began to instruct our group about where we would billet for the night, the members of the Mancha related the prevailing conditions in the area to those of us who had arrived from all parts of the Northeast. On 26 December 2011, three young men were picked up by the army and killed near a small town in Tinsukia district of eastern Assam. A fact-​finding team of human rights activists, students, and women’s groups and local intellectuals organized a quick visit to the area to talk to relatives of the victims and local activists about the growing cases of extrajudicial executions in eastern Assam. By December 2011, a significantly large faction of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) had decided to join the peace process initiated by the organization’s leadership, who had spent some time in jail and were conditionally released so that they could talk to the government. For many of the members of the fact-​finding team, it had been a time of confusion and fatigue. The contentious decades that lead to the winter of 2011 had been divisive. The human rights movement was transformed; its activities had begun to lay grounds for peace

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talks between the government and an embattled guerrilla constituency, to preserve some notion of dignity and fair play in what would become an inevitable war of patience between guerrilla leaders and suave, sophisticated bureaucrats. The mass arrests of guerrilla leaders and the all-​too-​quick transformation of thirty years of armed struggle between ULFA and the security agencies had left many of us with a sense of intellectual languor. The fact-​finding following the murder of the three young men was both an attempt to seek justice and to find remnants of political solidarity that we had enjoyed in the past. Under such circumstances, it was a relief to reach the women’s commune. The non-​descript road leading to the commune could have easily been missed in the dark. Yet, we did manage to get there. As the evening turned to night, our talk meandered to a time when the Mancha activists were the only non-​armed, radical, Assamese nationalists who were able to mobilize the local people against excesses committed by the Indian Army in the area. These activists had mobilized thousands of angry villagers after the army murdered Ajit Mahanta on 5 February 2006. He was a poor farmer who lived not very far from the precincts of the commune. Mahanta’s death led to an outpouring of anger as people blocked the newly made highway. On 10 February 2006, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel shot dead nine protestors, whose memorials—​we were told by one of the activists who had just put the sleeping child back to bed—​were constructed beside the highway. ‘We also killed an Indian policeman’, said a man who had participated in the protests, referring to the event where local people had surrounded a section of the CRPF, corralled an unfortunate soldier and allegedly hacked him to death. One of the women activists, clearly uncomfortable with the public announcement, said that the circumstances leading to the death of the soldier was very murky and that her comrades and she had had nothing to do with it. Clearly, there was a censuring of the male activist’s memory of the events. The conversation moved to the three young men who were killed. The visitors were given a detailed account of the class and ethnic politics of the district, along with the manner

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in which the police and paramilitary organizations had become more brazen in their ability to step outside their law-​and-​order work and indulge in extrajudicial encounters for promotion and money. Come morning and we found ourselves squatting in the kitchen, as Maini—​one of the older members of the Mancha—​bustled around a hearth, heating water and passing on biscuits to the child, who had been asleep the previous night and was now waddling around the mud and bamboo kitchen as though she owned that space. Another activist walked in with a duck and asked if any of us knew how to kill and clean it. They were planning an early brunch for the team before leaving for the police station, where the three bodies had been kept after the encounter. One of us volunteered and soon the duck was killed, cleaned and brought back in pieces. ‘We built this (commune) in 1999, after a few of us decided to leave the organisation’, Maini said. She was among the eight members who had formed the core of the Mancha, when they left the ranks of the ULFA. That year, many ULFA cadre were leaving the organization and joining the ranks of surrendered ULFA (or SULFA) renegades. This was partly due to the stepping up of operations against the insurgents—​a process that included killing their innocent families and friends—​as well internal dissention among those who had chosen to pick up arms against the Indian state. Those who surrendered were immediately dragged into the murky world of counterinsurgency operations in Assam. Various security agencies, including the Indian Army, CRPF, Border Security Force, Assam Rifles, as well as the civilian police saw former insurgents as easy bait. In any case, the Unified Command Structures legally shielded all these agencies, and their actions in pursuance of national security were above question. Some of the people who surrendered were also all too keen to catch up with the good life they thought they had missed out on. They soon amassed wealth and power and had become symbols of the self-​aggrandizing class of bullies who controlled local politics for almost a decade. They made no effort to hide their proximity to power and the administration, as well as the security forces. They saw little need to do so either.

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Therefore, the women’s decision to leave the bush was understandable. What was counterintuitive was their decision to move into this particular village and begin old-​ style, consciousness raising work with the local communities in the area. Their political work ranged from intervening in domestic disputes, to mobilizing villagers against arbitrary violence and threats of the army and police. Eschewing traditional mores, the women lived together and asked the local xatra for some land that they then cultivated. Much of it required hard work during the paddy cultivation season, where the eight women whose ranks were to grow steadily, did all the work by themselves. They borrowed oxen and hand tillers from richer members of the village and encouraged the gradual sharing of scarce resources such as these. Although not a cooperative, the village had begun to take kindly to the work, actions, and ideology espoused by these women. It did not matter that all men were required to leave the premises of the commune at an appropriate hour in the evening or that those women who married were also asked to leave the physical space of the community house. Most of the married activists lived in houses adjoining the commune. Even though the principles of marriage and private property were discouraged within the community, those who opted to be married, or to start families and own property continued to participate in the daily activities of the Mancha. They also had to put up with scores of informers and spies, who had become ubiquitous in most rural areas of eastern Assam. Mamon, one of the younger members of the Mancha, spoke of the numerous occasions when people from outside the village would come and show interest in their work. ‘It is not as if the army does not know what we do’, she said. ‘Yet, they continue to send people to harass us and to see if we are hiding activists in our midst’. In recent times, there had been police spies to see if any Maoists of the fabulously named Upper Assam Leading Committee (UALC) had lived in the commune.12 Mamon laughed at the outrageous manner in which the spies had snooped around the village. Her reaction to government and media-​induced stories about an infiltration of Left-​ wing extremists in the area was one of disdain. Like others in the

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commune, she felt that the government was over-​stating its obsession with Maoists, mostly because it could no longer afford to harp on about ULFA. ‘This is rebel land and it has always been so’, Maini said, as she washed and soaked the raw duck pieces in a basin of water. ‘Even this xatra is not like the usual ones that expect women to be bound within the confines of the house’, she continued. She was referring to the legendary Moamaria xatra, which had raised the banner of rebellion against the Ahom kings in the 18th century. Even though the xatra have had to move several times in the course of intervening two hundred years, its followers were quick to draw parallels between their ancestors and themselves. It helped that like their ancestors, the present-​day followers of the xatra belonged to the Moran community. These continuities were reassuring at a time when the idea of rebellion had taken a military and political beating. As the early morning chill began to lift and the team made way for the police station, conversations turned to local politics and the future plans of the commune in the area. ‘Sir had spoken to us after he came out of prison’, said one of the activists, referring to ULFA’s chairman, Rajib Konwar (who is more popularly known as Arabinda Rajkhowa, his nom de guerre). ‘He asked us to support the peace process and that is what we have been doing even before’, she added. This was true as the women of the Mancha. They were instrumental in getting different organizations in their area to form the Peoples’ Committee for Peace Initiatives in Assam (PCPIA) in 2004–​2005, long before ULFA’s leaders had decided to parley with the Government of India. ‘Everyone has moved on now and no one feels the need to talk about anything else but peace’, said an older member of the collective but without any rancour. She was referring to the various self-​ styled leaders of ULFA who had begun talks with the government at different levels. These leaders had small, sometimes large, bands of young men to look after. They were responsible in ensuring that no untoward event breaks the fragile and unwieldy ceasefire that existed between the government’s various armed agencies and the equally divided rebels.

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When one of us suggested that the Mancha ought to tap the local elected representatives for some funding, at least to ensure that they had more yarn and cotton for weaving their fabrics, they politely laughed him off and changed the subject to something less contentious. One of them explained that their ideals were still intact. They could neither take money from the government nor could they give up their struggle to rid their local community of gender discrimination. They had to ensure that people kept alive the idea of a free Assam, where the right to self-​determination would be guaranteed to all communities. As they stood outside their community house and posed for a photograph with the fact-​finding team, one could not help but wonder if this spirit was an anachronistic throwback to a more self-​confident nationalist past in Assam, where women were capable of shaping political discourse. In their threadbare winter clothes and worn-​out shawls, Mancha members embodied an ethical worldview that was hard to emulate but easy to admire. As the fact-​finding team moved out of the commune, it made a stop at Kakopathar. Activists of ULFA’s 28th Battalion were commemorating the life of Bhimkanta Buragohain, the eighty-​year-​old mentor to many ULFA activists, who had died about a week ago. The battalion had known to be the organization’s most active armed wing troubling the army and police for decades. From its bases in eastern Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and even Burma, the battalion’s cadre had ambushed military convoys and laid down improvised explosive devices (IED) wherever it could. It had also raised money from the various tea plantations and oilrigs that were spread all over Assam. In short, ULFA’s 28th Battalion was everything that a clandestine armed national liberation movement could ask for: a unit that was capable of fighting and raising money while they were at it. However, by 2008, it had grown weary of bearing the brunt of the India’s military operations in the heartland of ULFA’s support base. Its commanders, Mrinal Hazarika and Prabal Neog, were arrested as they were trying to move in and out of Assam. From their prison cells, they began secret negotiations with police and army officials in order to push ULFA’s political leadership to take up the government’s

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offer of peace talks and a cessation of hostilities. For this, they were allowed to leave their prison cells and meet their cadre and supporters to ensure that their peace negotiations receive some form of popular support. These activities elicited outrage from the leadership in exile and left many ULFA supporters in eastern Assam in a state of confusion and dismay. This was compounded when a major section of the exiled leaders were themselves detained and sent back to India, where they too spent time in prison before being released to participate in peace negotiations. Relations between the 28th Battalion and ULFA’s pro-​talks leaders were frosty and Bhimkanta Buragohain’s death served to underline the growing differences between the two peace-​seeking constituencies of ULFA. ULFA cadres affectionately called Bhimkanta Buragohain—​ Mama. During the Bhutan government’s operations against ULFA in 2003, he had been arrested and living in jail since then. A man naturally given to displays of emotion and warmth, he evoked memories of avuncular figures that dot Assamese folklore. When the other ULFA leaders were brought to Guwahati’s central jail in 2009, it almost seemed as though the entire leadership and Mama were going to be able to work out a dignified solution to the long years of conflict. However, Mama died soon after he was released on parole. His death symbolized the end of an era not just for ULFA activists, but also for those who thought that ethics, politics, and negotiations were not an unnatural mix in contemporary world. Mama was from the Ahom community of eastern Assam. Hence, his comrades—​especially ULFA leaders from the Sibsagar district—​decided to bury him in a moidam as was done for Ahom nobility in the past. This raised several questions in the local media and among ULFA cadre as well. Many asked if it was befitting to narrow down the significance of a great man like Mama and make him an icon of Ahom revivalism. The 28th Battalion’s prayer meeting embracing all religions for Mama was one of the responses to the moidam burial. The prayer meeting was organized in a big field, where plain-​ clothed activists of ULFA and other armed groups from the region, such as the Dima Halam Daoga and National Democratic Front of Bodoland, were also present. On the field were several large tents,

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where people and mourners came to sit and wait their turn to display their culturally specific way of remembering an old rebel. In truth, the occasion was also used as an event to signal presence of various ethnic communities who live in eastern Assam. Hence, Adivasis did their Jhumur dance and left the field to sit under a tent, while Vaishnavites sang hymns and ushered in Bodo dancers. Every few minutes, a big vehicle would draw up towards the grounds raising a puff of dust and bleary-​eyed men with barely concealed guns jutting from their hips would stumble out to survey the scene. Every now and then, a man would step up to the microphone and announce the names of the new people who had come to pay respects to Mama. Mrinal Hazarika himself welcomed the fact-​finding team. Upon hearing that there were Naga activists present, Prabal Neog ambled over, chewing a wad of tamul-​pan, a pistol peeping out conspicuously from his hip holster and made small talk in Nagamese with the activists. ‘Etiya toh peace talks kori ashe nah . . . sabo, kinaka hobo ashe’, he said to our team member, Kitovi. In English, this would translate as: ‘Now I am engaged in peace talks . . . let’s see how it goes’. This laconic response actually summed up the contrasts between the Mancha and those who were going to talk to decide the trajectory of talks with the Indian government. This encounter, all of it occurring within twenty-​four hours, had all the melancholia and exhaustion associated with middle-​class aversion to protracted wars that happen in places that seem remote. Yet, in the juxtaposition of material, moods, and moments, there was also the realization that counterinsurgency in Assam had indeed created a world where violence had resulted in disempowering people in many ways. It is not as if one is attempting to reduce lived experiences—​of the activists in the commune, or the former insurgents waiting to enter into peace negotiations—​to binary pairs such as power and incapacity, domination and resistance, and so on. One is merely trying to assert that the violence of counterinsurgency operations created an environment where every act of dissent was resistance, and armed resistance formed one of the discrete acts that fell within the spectrum that was created. If one were to look at different

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ends of the spectrum, it would be difficult to place the women activists of the Mancha and the pacified gun-​carrying militants on the other. Such an invocation does not allow one to look at ways in which groups and individuals choose to act in particular circumstances, in reaction to the social and physical world created by violence around them.13 If anything, the ends of the spectrum would have to be outcomes borne from political experiences generated by the actors’ involvement with violence associated with counterinsurgency. This is an issue that one will return to below. Moreover, it reflects Hannah Arendt’s cautionary note that ‘ . . . (to) substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power’.14 This quote captured the many paradoxes of the moment. For the Government of India, forcing factions of small armed groups to enter into negotiations on unequal terms might seem like victory of its counterinsurgency strategy. However, in order to ensure that the victory seemed significant, the government had to allow the (ostensibly) defeated some semblance of power to conduct their political events in public. Interestingly, in many instances insurgents who came to negotiate with the government did so under opaque terms. Many were offered lucrative contracts and business licenses, while others were forced into fighting long, difficult criminal cases that were filed against them. Very often both possibilities were presented to the individual insurgent at the moment of surrender, and when they chose the more lucrative path, they ended up participating in the coercive political economy of doing business in conflict areas. In large part, this was due to the government’s inability to overcome its insistence on a mode of negotiation that included closed door meetings with leaders and some amount of populist welfare towards the constituencies that these leaders sought to represent. It is as if Arendt’s slim text were a prophesy for the predicament in Assam, where even as violence (as exercised by those who wanted to resist the Indian state) challenged forms of power; it was incapable of creating a universal political field for addressing grievances and sorrows of its constituents and those it was exercised upon. While it may be tempting to see the emergence

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of ethnic politics in Assam as the outcome of the limits of political violence against the Indian state, one is also forced to consider the fact that certain groups, like the women in the Mancha, are not drawn into it. Instead, they remain autonomous from the ethnic political field created by violence. Those who retained the implements of exercising violence—​and this includes the government’s armed forces—​are not able to erode the arrangement of power, especially since peace is not a political goal that appears anywhere in the negotiation process. If anything, the existing peace processes and their beneficiaries have accentuated the inversions created by counterinsurgency violence of the 1990s and early 2000. Peace is no longer seen as an inviolable peoples’ right, or a foundational prerequisite of life without war and ‘a constituent element in an interactive and mutually reinforcing triangle formed by development, peace and democracy’.15 It is seen as a moment where a classic Marxian primitive accumulation can take place, with state collusion. Here is where the idea of a spectrum regains its importance: those who have benefited materially from peace (processes and ceasefire alike, since both are born from counterinsurgency), on one end and those who have not, on the other. The turn of century economic transformation of Assam (and the Northeast) is a prime example of how this form of primitive accumulation has benefited an uncanny array of actors, all of whom have been complicit in the perpetuation of certain forms of violence, while disavowing other forms of political action. The sprawling malls of Guwahati built on floodplains, multi-​storeyed apartment complexes in different towns of the Brahmaputra valley, luxury vehicle showrooms in the smallest of towns and the rise of a speculative land market controlled by shadowy businesspersons, bear testimony to the fact that Assam’s economic transformation and its choice of beneficiaries have not been accidental. Civic protests and political dissent are no longer the order of the day. Instead, urban Assam’s mass of under-​employed, semi-​educated young men have taken the place of the conscious rural peasant (or worker), in their capacity to resort to violent methods to retain a power that they never had.16

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Floods, Climate Change, and Being from Barpeta Mozidbhita is a char17 that is close to Balikuri non-​cadastral (NC) village in Mandia block in Barpeta district. It is, in many ways, a typical settlement of the itinerant poor in Assam. According to the 2011 census figures, Mandia is largest rural block in Barpeta district, which covers 587.06 square kilometres with a national highway (NH 427) running through it. It also has the highest number of households at 65,511. There are no major industries in Mandia and of the 109,270 workers enumerated in the census, a little more than half are engaged in agriculture. The remaining male working persons are engaged in daily wage work and petty trade (Census of India 2011). Situated approximately twenty kilometres west of Barpeta town and across the Beki River, Mozidbhita (in 2018–​2019) had 208 households, a significantly smaller number than the 296 who had moved to the current char around four years ago. The families had moved due to the erosion of their land and homesteads by the river. They had come from four neighbouring villages: Mozidbhita, Tapajuli, 4 No. Bhera and Balikuri NC (non-​cadastral). In the summers, monsoon rains along the flood plains and in neighbouring Bhutan always bring vast quantities of water to the district. In 2004, engineers and administrators of Bhutan’s Kurichhu dam, situated upstream on the River Beki released water, causing unprecedented floods in Barpeta.18 The annual monsoon-​induced floods make it imperative for government departments and aid workers to generate civil engineering related data for their work. Mozidbhita would qualify to be included as a part of the increasingly vulnerable spaces of human habitation that is likely to be affected by rising levels of water on the planet, both due to climate change and human-​induced follies such as construction of faulty embankments and dams.19 Houses in the chars like Mozidbhita are built on land that is usually raised with extra soil from elsewhere. During the floods, the raised earth provides refuge to cattle and people alike. Once the ground has been adequately elevated, they are constructed with a

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combination of bamboo, mud and corrugated tin. This makes them extremely cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer. However, such materials are easy to come by. Although there are three primary schools registered in the area, one was lost due to land erosion in 2018. Children are taught in Assamese in these schools. Most of them struggle to complete high school as they have to go to nearby Balikuri or further to complete their middle elementary and higher elementary levels. Most families in the char grow bao rice and jute during the summer, and vegetables and lentils during the winter months. Since 2015, local families have had access to high-​ yielding variety (HYV) seeds and fertilizers for their winter vegetables and some families use both abundantly. Almost every existing household has cows and buffaloes, which they used to sell in times of distress. Since the Hindu-​nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed a government in 2014, the price of cows has decreased, and they cannot make a profitable sale anymore. Three shallow tube wells are used to water vegetables in winters. During the summer, these tube wells are almost always inundated by floodwater from the Beki River. In winter, the river is situated two hundred metres away; a distance that is rendered redundant in the summer when the river spreads across the plains in every direction, making settlements such as Mozidbhita look like tiny, marooned rooftops and homesteads waiting for relief and rescue. The families here have two major sources of income: daily wage, and sale from the jute and vegetable farming. These incomes are seasonal. In some years, certain families earn more doing daily wages than from farming. The average income for a family of five would be approximately six thousand rupees per month, but this is never steady and medical expenses are very high. Social scientists use a variety of terms to describe the motivations of people who live in such adversarial spaces. Most often, they are seen to be people escaping the reach of the State,20 or those who are given to deterministic fatalism, for wanting to risk their lives in the face of natural disasters of calamitous proportions.21 Both descriptions come to mind during the floods, as the jute plants struggle to stay above the surging water, livestock scramble to the cramped

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raised land, and shallow pumps and latrines disappear under the water. One of the most stable and safe buildings in the area is the Parag Kumar Das Char Library, named after one of Assam’s best-​known journalist and human rights activist, who was assassinated by a death squad for his forthright views on the right to self-​determination for the people of Assam. For many Assamese intellectuals, Parag Das embodied a fiercely autonomous political spirit that was symptomatic of struggles for self-​determination in the region.22 The library was started in 2015 by left-​leaning activists from the area as a statement of their political beliefs. The activists had requested their comrades and sympathizers in urban Assam to donate books that would be useful for children, with an expressed request for materials published in Assamese. Instead, many of the books on the four wooden shelves are in English and range from children’s novels to computer software guidebooks. They are stacked against corrugated tin walls, where there is a bullhorn microphone dangling on a shelf, ‘to warn people when the river starts breaching the banks at night’, according to one of the activists who lives in the area. The activists’ group has been working in the area since 2015 and has among them graduates of social work and other humanities subjects. Educated in some of the reputed universities and institutes in Assam, they zealously promote development of the char areas and focus mainly on education, health, and livelihood issues. Other than English, the activists are keen that children in the char area learn Assamese, a language that frequently lands older, unlettered residents vulnerable when they travel to parts of eastern Assam to work in the brick kilns. Their inability to speak a particular tonal form of Assamese allows local student groups to exercise everyday acts of microaggression on the migrant communities.23 This humiliation rankles the activists, driving them to focus on issues of poverty with greater passion. Their debates with other developmental NGOs as well as internal discussions have made them concentrate on the flood as a particularly universal experience for the people of the char, one that requires a similar collective remedial effort. Raising the plinth of the houses is an obvious engineering innovation that

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they feel will help reduce a cascading effect on vulnerabilities for the people. In 2019, only a few homes survived the rising waters of the Beki despite having raised plinths. Once again, many families were forced to move towards the highway and neighbouring areas where they lived in make-​shift camps until the waters had receded. ‘It is difficult to access these areas’, said Rajib,24 a social worker employed with a non-​governmental organization working on developmental issues and based in Guwahati (situated approximately hundred kilometres away). Along with his team, he was surveying the swathe of land that had been inundated by floodwaters. They were distributing tarpaulin sheets, drinking water, and medicines to hundreds of families who had to leave their homes. Rajib and his colleagues were worried about a possible outbreak of disease as well as the high mortality of animals reported during and after the floods. The camps, they say are necessary for survival. Nevertheless, they are also testimony to a series of damaging side effects on those who are forced to live in them for weeks. For people of the chars, the camps are disorienting places where they have little control over their lives. It takes a mental and financial toll on women and men alike as they spend weeks without work, and access to their jute, bao rice and livestock. Women are especially vulnerable as they adjust to a life with strangers with whom they have to share toilets and living space. Rajib’s colleagues, like the activists in Mozidbhita, are always concerned about the rising levels of dropouts and child marriages among the char dwelling communities. These have a bearing on the NRC process. Working with the local activists of the library, Rajib shares his concerns about the number of children and women whose names had been left out of the NRC and wondered if char habitation had anything to do with their exclusion from the first draft. Chars are partly the outcome of a colonial history of raising embankments in agricultural lands that were rich in revenue earnings, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. Historian Rohan D’Souza draws on archival material from the period to show how the draining of rivers and diversion of water by civil engineers was key to the creation of a particularly oppressive feudal order in eastern India.25 Following the transfer of power in 1947, the newly independent

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Government of India dedicated resources towards expanding irrigation and protecting agricultural and grazing areas from flooding. In Assam too, changes in hydraulic flows led to far-​reaching changes and conflicts in a wider area; causing floods in some, aridity in others and always resulting in the gradual movement of people from one place to another.26 Swiss geographer Christine Bichsel noted similar conflicts following the collapse of the legal and political order in the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. In her detailed account of the conflicts in the Ferghana valley, she writes about the pressures that local communities have to endure, once the centralized water-​sharing regimes disappeared and were replaced by antagonistic communities that acted as if on behalf of their national governments.27 The aridity of the Central Asian region and the water-​soaked ecology of the South Asian chars, therefore, have one feature in common. They force their inhabitants to be resilient, where people are constantly adapting to their landscapes in order to make a living and where water determines the production cycles of the land. In the chars, however, water remains the most significant source of wealth as well as the biggest threat to human life.28 Significantly, they become part of a regional and global debate on climate change, especially with regard to how little say they have in decision-​making processes in their engagement with the adaptive regimes.29 This poignant point is most visible during the floods, when people are forced to leave home and flee to a higher ground. In 2019, newspaper reports from Assam noted that many people refused to leave their inundated homes for fear of losing documents that would jeopardize their NRC status.30 Unlike the episode described earlier (Kakopathar), where local communities were engaged in layered ways with the state and (former) insurgents, the people of Mozidbhita had little power to assert their claims over political and social space. Factors such as language and location also added to their precarity. Many of the people from the chars speak a dialect that people in the areas that they go to for work—​mainly to urban areas such as Guwahati and the brick kilns of eastern Assam—​associate with Bengali that is spoken in

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certain districts of Bangladesh. Young activists who identify with their Miya identity feel that this is unfortunate, as it privileges linguistic nationalism of the Assamese and Bengali kind.31 For women and men leaving places such as Mozidbhita is fraught with difficulties, usually involving microaggression from those who think they are undocumented workers from Bangladesh. Such incidents add to the overall insecurity for many internal migrants who live on lands that are likely to be flooded for a significant part of the year. The manner in which certain people can be marked out in conflicts is a recurring matter in Assam and has a wider impact on social and political life, as is highlighted in the following section.

From the Media Archive of an Ethnic War On 17 October 2005, a passenger bus carrying the usual load of passengers was winding its way to Diphu, the district headquarters of Karbi Anglong district in Assam. It was stopped near Charchim—​a village where the ethnic Karbi dominate—​by a group of armed men. They asked all the non-​Karbis to step out and many did, while the Karbis—​unable to be rid of their markers such as clothes and language—​remained on the bus. One Karbi woman, who was the mother of two young children quickly got rid of her pekok—​a sheet of embroidered cloth worn on the upper part of the body by women in Karbi Anglong and associated mainly with the Karbi community—​and lied, saying that she was Garo, as were her two little children.32 That probably saved her life, as twenty-​two Karbi women and men were hacked to death on the bus. One wonders what went through the minds of the passengers who were asked to step out of the vehicle. Did they feel a sense of outrage that their fellow passengers were about to be butchered? Did the relief of being out and therefore less likely to be dead, make them grateful? What were the emotions of those who were responsible for the killings? The magazine report cited above, went on to provide a tragic but curious series of allegations and denials by those who claimed to speak for the victims and their alleged perpetrators.

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Tung-​E Nonglda, the publicity secretary of the predominantly Karbi armed opposition group—​United Peoples Democratic Solidarity (UPDS)—​said that the killings were carried out by a faction of the predominantly Dimasa armed opposition group, Dima Halam Daoga (DHD). In response, the chairman of the DHD, Dilip Nunisa said that his group, engaged in a ceasefire with the Government of India, was in no way responsible for the killings and that it was probably the handiwork of a breakaway faction called the Black Widows. The magazine report also mentioned that Nonglda and Nunisa were roommates in college. How does one begin a conversation on politics here? And who is best placed to start it? Could it be the desperate woman, lying to save herself and her children? Or could it be those who sought to represent the dead? Or the one-​time college roommates now locked in battle for territory? Or should it be the state, with its legal aid and enforcement agencies? I am not sure where the conversation has to begin, but it is clear that it has to start soon. When we recognize the enormity of the silence that accompanies our attempts at speaking to power, we will be left with no options but to begin talking in a different tongue. For, is it not ironical that it is only when college roommates choose to engage with the long arm of law and our country’s famed constitution, they find themselves flailing at each other with machetes and daos. There is little doubt that this tragedy is compounded by a lax, lazy political vocabulary that emanates from confident constitutional certainties, where every solution for dissent is either the big coercion trick, or the insidious co-​option treats. There are but two lessons to draw from the different experiences of the manifestation of political violence by movements and organizations (including, of course, the state) in Assam. The first is crystalized in what Roman senator and antiquity’s best-​known historian, Gaius Cornelius Tacitus, was reported to have said about the Roman Empire: ‘To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation, and they call it peace’.33 Tacitus was speaking about the character of the Roman state and the people who were empowered to man the various military and political organs of ancient Rome. Those who have watched and studied the

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Indian state’s dealings with the various movements and dissenters in Northeast India would vouch for a similar trajectory in contemporary times. The second is more closely tied to those who claim to pick up arms for the different peoples of the region. It echoes the Irish nationalist poet, William Butler Yeats, who pensively asked if we will be able ‘to hold in a single thought reality and justice’ when we are doing politics. Yeats, forever a melancholic poet who wished to see an end to the colonial exploitation of his country by its more powerful neighbour, was always wistful in his reflections on politics. When one looks at the manner in which expressions of dissent have so readily been co-​opted into mathematical calculations of constitutional proportions, one is forced to confront the expediency of justice in most of the armed conflicts for homelands and autonomy. Maybe, Tacitus was right. Experiences of autonomy and homeland movements in Assam and other states of Northeast India tell us that we might just be riding into a dead-​end peace. This is true of most states in the region, but Assam, being the most populated, ends up looking like the state that has much more to be evasive about. The past decade of relative peace has brought with it a relentless search for wealth and power, where local governments and the political entrepreneurs that they work with have attempted to capture resources for themselves. In turn, they have had no qualms about leasing out community-​controlled resources to the corporate sector.34 All of this has been part of the repertoire of resolving the knotted roots of armed conflicts in the region. Generations of beneficiaries of such resolutions are still in the making, as we debate the direction and trajectories of an earlier generation’s attempts at negotiating the balance of power between kin communities and the Indian state. It is not clear if they will rubbish the earlier generation for standing up to an undemocratic state, or they too will follow rebellious paths. If they do, they would be well advised to bear Yeats’ caution in mind: They have to be able to hold both reality and justice in one single thought. It would be a difficult task, because reality is fraught with compromise that is borne from engaging with a political vocabulary that cannot bear to let college roommates be.

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There is a saturating quality to any engagement with violence. That pernicious untruth, about violence and its capacity to expand by itself, is Arendt’s word of caution to the reflective writer and citizen in this engagement. It is an advice that one has to allow to settle, especially at times when the air around is thick with contrary views. However, when violence acquires an intimacy that is both disconcerting and (contradictorily) reassuring, it has the ability to distort one’s capacity to reason. This can be disconcerting because of the inherently undemocratic qualities that accompany such worldviews. They can also be reassuring because they reaffirm some tragic sense of community of sufferers, where both researcher and informant can find easy answers and explanations for their suffering. Once again, one is confronted with the essence of Schmitt’s formulation: Can one think of other realms where violence has allowed for alternate states, or imaginations of power to exist? Media, lawyers, and researchers often pressed this question to insurgent leaders when they were in jail. When visitors would call on Mama (Bhimkanta Buragohain) in Guwahati jail, they found him ready to talk about everything under the sun: the price of pork, haphazard urbanization, poetry, and other seemingly random things. He barely alluded to the conflict and the part that he had played in it. Once, when I went to meet him, he asked me about the short obituary that I had written for Khodao Yanthan, an old associate of A. Z. Phizo and the former vice-​president of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim. In my obituary, I had passingly wondered how Khodao had managed to straddle the political world of Naga politics, his personal renunciation of power, and his life in the village, spent mainly in the company of his cats. ‘Who do you think looks after the cats now?’ Mama asked, somewhat conspiratorially. I do not remember what I said, but for the first time, I heard Mama talk about how the conflict had affected him. ‘You know, that was what I thought about most when the army burned down my house in the village all those years ago’, he continued, barely above a whisper. He had adopted several cats and dogs in his native village in eastern Assam and his only thoughts were about who would look after them now that their house was burned

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down. ‘I am sure that the villagers looked after them’, he said, almost as though he needed to reassure himself. He repeated himself once more, before switching back to Khodao’s death. ‘Tell me what happened after?’ he demanded from me. I did not know, as I had not gone for Khodao Yanthan’s funeral and related to Mama an apocryphal story attributed to the deceased Naga elder. Apparently, in what would be his last public appearance as a radical Naga nationalist, Khodao had torn apart a hundred-​rupee note and declared his formal renunciation from politics. ‘You are all chasing Indian paper money’, he was supposed to have said to a bewildered, perhaps humbled crowd who had gathered at Kohima’s famous football grounds. Mama shook his head and said: ‘I think we are headed down that road’. Would Mama have renounced politics because he saw no end to false choices that violence has placed before the people he sought to liberate? Again, I am not sure. In another meeting with an activist friend, just a week before he died, Mama—​then released from jail—​ was supposed to have said that he would go back to the bush if the organization demanded it from him. It sounds plausible that he would have said something like that. In the interplay of politics and violence in Assam, he saw the rituals of peace of what Walter Benjamin described as the ‘necessary sanctioning, regardless of all other legal conditions, of every victory’.35 If, as Benjamin again claimed, that violence ‘as a means is either lawmaking or law-​preserving’,36 then Mama’s inability to distance himself from its consequences reflects the kind of political realities that have assumed a spectral place in contemporary Assam. It is indeed a debilitating choice to make for any eighty-​year-​old guerrilla leader. One thus returns to the question that haunts any investigation and analysis of violence and its effects on any society: Is it possible to resolve some of our conflicts non-​violently? Walter Benjamin seems to think that courtesy, sympathy, peaceableness, and trust are their subjective preconditions.37 The problem, however, is attempting to locate these preconditions in a society battered by conflict and haunted by a mirror world of spies, informants, perpetrators, and victims, whose lives collide every day. Unfortunately, Assam is a

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distressing interplay of Potemkin-​like stage, where the state is constantly invoking new forms of violence, or a palimpsest upon which the most depressing scripts can take shape, over and over again. The irony is that the erosion of hope for justice has come from the spaces that once articulated it most vociferously: civil liberties organizations, peace negotiators, insurgents who wrote poetry, and peace negotiators.38 In other parts of the world—​notably Latin America—​the experiences of anti-​authoritarian political struggles have succeeded in liberating some space for citizens, though this has resulted in the simultaneous erosion and expansion of democracy.39 Where once the (authoritarian) State was capable of policing and disciplining its citizens, a radical but bitter engagement of the alliance of workers created a contemporary situation, where those who were able to exercise violence are able to dictate more than their share of power. Assam’s experience has been quite the opposite. There is no indication that the long years of political violence have exacted any democratization of law, or notions of justice. The state continues to monopolize violence, though other distinctive forms of violence have emerged from within the ranks of the urbanized unemployed and their rural counterparts. This is in consonance with a particular brand of accumulative economy, where the state’s ability to control violence is completely relegated to the realm of counterinsurgency, other spaces being peripheral to its concerns.40 Politics was interestingly poised leading up to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. The particular form of insurgency that began in the late 1970s was seen by many to be part of an antiquated way of doing politics.41 It was also a time when various civic organizations and political bodies made a concerted attempt to engage with constitutional authorities and political leaders in New Delhi. The Peoples’ Consultative Group, Bodo Peace Forum, Sanmilita Jatiya Abhibartan (Integrated National Conference), and other efforts to parlay with the Government of India had given one the hope that one could address the issues raised over the past few decades in a just and dignified manner. Instead, one was confronted by a constitutional rigidity that did not allow for any utterance of grievances, grief, or hurt caused by the three decades of counterinsurgency.42

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For many, it has been this intransigence on the part of the government that has seemed more severe in the creation of new, distinctively inchoate forms of violence. It would therefore be useful to go back to what Mignolo had outlined in his insightful advice to those resisting and writing about decoloniality: There is no master plan and no privileged actors for decoloniality. There are, certainly, scales in the intensity of colonial wounds. Decoloniality is a multifaceted global enterprise in the hands of the people who act and organise themselves/​ourselves as decolonial thinkers, actors and doers. If coloniality is all over, decolonial praxis shall be over as well.43

There does seem a semblance of hope in the midst of the relentless exercise of power over the poor and marginalized. Ironically, this is a hope that emanates from those who obdurately hold on to a form of politics that having engaged with violence chooses to not employ its implements and accoutrement at all. It finds material shape in the world of threadbare shawls and spirit of solidarity of socialist women, or the labour of people displaced by floods and forced to work in fields and brick kilns; people who are simply unable to compartmentalize their lives into the legal and civic spheres. The idea of justice that emerges in spaces like the Mancha, or from the chars, is one that engages with politics and social practice on a daily basis. In their myriad tasks and roles, the women are able to hold on reality and justice in one single thought (or deed). If one were to revisit the political spectrum of beneficiaries and victims of counterinsurgency, they (along with the constituencies that sustain their politics) would be the ones that gained nothing from the financial largesse that came in the way of those who were willing to bend a little. It would be easy to place them within a category of romanticized icons of a bygone era. This would be tragic, as it would constrain the radicalism of their agency and the vastness of their political universe, where they refuse to ‘compromise’.44 In contemporary Assam, where most people associated with radical armed politics of the 1990s have left the village and settled in comfortable apartments, it is women of the Mancha and their kind, who

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stay on to look after the metaphoric cats and dogs left behind in the villages by old insurgents. They are, in the spirit alluded to by Yeats, reminders of the contradictory world of inversions in the political struggles of heroic women (and a few men) that we have inherited from the various conflicts in Assam. If the idea of prefigurative politics—​made popular by adherents of the Occupy Movements across the world—​was to create a better, more intimate version of the world we want to see as part of a larger politics of change, then the commune in Kakopathar has much to offer by way of alternatives. In a short time, it had created a microcosm of sharing societies based on mutual respect, consensus, and ethics.

6 Conclusion In 2019, several paradoxical events that transpired through the decade in Assam had acquired a sense of closure. By 2010, there had been a transformation of the insurgencies that had begun in the last quarter of the 20th century. The state’s ability to engage with sections of the armed groups by bringing a few to the negotiating table and offering them a spectrum of economic and political options to leave arms, while continuing to militarize other less obvious areas of civic life, had resulted in the creation of a particularly interesting milieu. For instance, the presence of the army in rural Assam had become less pronounced than it was earlier, especially between 1990 and 2006. However, this did not lead to a greater dialogue what had transpired during the most brutal years of counterinsurgency. Instead, the theatre of conflict moved to other spheres, most significantly to ideas of development that involved the state’s tendency to engage experts, assess revenue-​making capacities of natural resources, and clamp down on dissenting voices. The conflicts over land and resources did not find a place in reconciliatory dialogue and were instead subjected to greater coercion by both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments in the state. The protests against the proposed big dams in Arunachal Pradesh, as well as evictions of peasants from government land are examples of this process. For historians looking at the period (2010 to 2019) in Assam, an engagement with Max Weber’s magnum opus, Economy and Society would be a useful primer. Dwelling on the many contradictions of his time, Weber attempted to understand how incongruities were the defining feature of his time in Germany: the conservative Lutheran elite of the Bismarck era that coexisted with self-​confessed agnostics Homeland Insecurities. Sanjay Barbora, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780192855329.003.0006

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who were public about their secular views; the iron cage of German bureaucracy that coexisted with deeply liberal ethos of the German university. In accepting these paradoxes for what they were—​the spirit of the times—​Weber was able to animate other levels of inquiry about modern society. The chapters of the book were pushed by similar questions about how to make sense of a rapidly changing world, where politics, economy, and society were being transformed at a pace that had left older interpretations very far behind. So too in Assam, the pacification of the armed insurgencies was not in itself an end to conflict. In fact, since 2012, conflicts in western Assam especially in the Bodoland Territorial Region, [that was earlier called Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts (BTAD)] had resulted in thousands of people displaced from their villages and many casualties in terms of human life. The other persistent issue was that of undocumented immigration, but until the mobilization of opinion against the judicial and administrative discrepancies that emerged during the updating of National Register of Citizenship (NRC) process, it had remained under the surface of causal factors leading to conflicts. This is not to suggest that the immigrant and outsider were erased in political discourse in Assam during the early decades of the 21st century. Far from erasure, the violence that was part of identity politics was transferred onto erstwhile neighbours with very tragic consequences. The 1990s had been a transformative period in Assam’s political history, with several assertions of identity, as well as demands for social justice among the various communities of the state. In this process, the demands for detection, deletion, and deportation of undocumented immigrants had been relegated by most political actors—​including students unions and armed groups—​to a matter that was to be taken care by the government as it was part of the understanding that was arrived through the Assam Accord of 1985. The pivot of political discourse had shifted to other matters in the 1990s: self-​determination, autonomy, and land and resource alienation. The insecurities that emerged from these issues were, in turn, responsible for the state’s recalibration of its perceived adversaries making it a very difficult hermeneutic loop for social scientists attempting to address the political changes in the state of Assam.

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Autonomy One of the first casualties in process has been the debate around autonomy that had animated political mobilization and discussion in the 1990s. As a student and researcher, this was an issue that I had immersed myself in during that period. My PhD research, conducted between 2002 and 2006, compared the trajectories of settler-​indigenous conflicts in the two districts of Nagaon and Karbi Anglong. I was intellectually inspired and guided by Swiss anthropologist and indigenous rights advocate Danilo Geiger’s notion of the persistence of frontiers in modern nation-​states.1 Between 2002 and 2005, Geiger had painstakingly put together a disparate group of professors and PhD scholars who were trying to understand settler-​indigenous conflicts in South and Southeast Asia as the residues of colonial empires that had survived into the late 20th and early 21st century. It was a compelling idea in 2002, when he proposed the study group based out of the University of Zurich’s department of social and cultural anthropology. The study group began with a discussion on the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s idea of a frontier mentality that brought with it a tension between pioneering and control in politics and society in the United States.2 The research group tweaked Turner’s thesis with a discussion on Geiger’s essay ‘Turner in the Tropics: the frontier concept revisited’. Here, the case studies of the different contributors drew on the experiences of indigenous (or to use the awkward Indian term: tribal) communities and their relationship with settlers in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Northeast India, and the Philippines, showing the layered manner in which postcolonial states had taken on some of the attributes of the American frontier. Sanjib Baruah, one of the mentors in the study group, drew on some of the cultural implications of the frontier argument to show that the Indian state was nationalizing space through developmental activities and extending the institutions of the state through a federalist idea.3 The frontier thesis received further heft with three seminal works. Willem van Schendel’s work on the Bengal borderlands and his case for studying the borderlands of South, Southeast, and

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East Asia outside the areas that they were relegated to. This was instrumental in the evolution of an active Asian Borderlands Study Network.4 His work laid the foundation for James Scott’s seminal book on state-​making and escaping the state in the uplands of Burma (bordering Northeast India).5 The third book that contributed to the growth of the frontier idea was Friction, Anna Tsing’s pathbreaking thesis on the tragedy of the commons and forms of primitive accumulation in Suharto’s Indonesia.6 It was in this intellectual milieu that I began to analyse the kind of conflicts that had taken place in late 20th-​century Assam, asking myself if there was some correlation between notional and actual control over natural resources (including land) and conflicts. As part of a wider discussion on autonomy that was hosted in Uppsala University in 2004 and 2005, as well as with Ranabir Samaddar at the Calcutta Research Group, several practitioners and researchers (I among them) set about trying to articulate what had led to violence in the struggles for autonomy in our part of the world. The tropical frontier thesis built on a critique of Frederick Turner’s 19th-​century American one that had the underlying assumption colonization of seemingly empty spaces. Our study group and I took great pains to draw attention to the fact that the idea of open spaces erased histories of indigenous communities by more dominant and technologically advanced settlers. Under such conditions, we argued, ethnic conflicts in Northeast India could actually be seen as violent expressions for autonomy by communities that felt were being dispossessed of their resources (especially land) and under threat of being disenfranchised by a more populous demographic group.7 However, this was a thesis that did not sit easily with one’s conscience, especially when the victims, survivors, and perpetrators were from the same social class. Tucked away in the layers of the cultural arguments explaining the frontier, one had to re-​engage with the manner in which the Indian state had instrumentalized movements for autonomy. Between 2000 and 2019, the government of Assam notified as many as three territorial councils under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution—​ Bodoland Territorial Council (formed in 2003), Dima Hasao

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(formed in 1951 and renamed in 2011), and Karbi Anglong (formed in 1951 and renamed in 1976)—​that has provisions for territorial autonomy and control over administrative departments; six statutory autonomous councils—​Rabha Hasong Autonomous Council (formed in 2005), Mising Autonomous Council (formed in 1995), Tiwa Autonomous Council (formed in 1988), Deori Autonomous Council (formed in 2005), Thengal Kachari Autonomous Council (formed in 2005), and Sonowal Kachari Autonomous Council (formed in 2003)—​that have some executive powers over certain departments in their area. Additionally, the government had announced the formation of thirty-​three development councils for major ethnic groups living in Assam.8 The government’s propensity to grant autonomy—​territorial and cultural—​ought to have addressed some of the anxieties that had emerged from the frontier political discourse. However, in the absence of any dialogue on the issues that drive these anxieties, the autonomous arrangements seemed to flounder in their ability to sustain peaceful coexistence between different ethnic communities that called the place home. Instead, the legal and political grounds on which autonomy had been granted were destructive for their ability to prevent reconciliation and dialogue between the different communities that lived in the autonomous area. Every election to the councils was marked by animosity and distrust among the political parties, their candidates, and supporters, mirroring the kind of contentious events that one might witness during parliamentary and assembly elections. For instance, the only Member of Parliament (MP) from the BTAD area for the last two elections (since 2014) had been the former ULFA insurgent Naba Sarania, who was able to consolidate the non-​Bodo votes in an electoral process that was always fraught with tension. The Bodo Territorial Council, on the other hand, had always been controlled by the Bodo Peoples Front, whose candidates came from a limited pool of Bodo leaders and a few non-​Bodo politicians who are mainly from the Bengali Hindu and Adivasi communities.9 It is as though these autonomy arrangements, some of which emerged from movements for sovereign homelands, have not been

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effective in addressing social and political aspirations of the various groups of people who live within the territory. The optics of their functioning have also been an interesting aspect of the overall story of the councils. Bereft of fiscal sureties and political guarantees from the state government, most of the arrangements have fallen short on many counts. In 2005, Ranabir Samaddar had laid out five broad rules of minimal justice that autonomous movements and arrangements ought to address. They were: (a) the principle of compensation for past injuries; (b) the principle of supervision; (c) the principle of custodianship to balance between the state and the dissenting community; (d) principle of guarantee against future erosion of autonomy; and (e) the principle of innovation towards federalizing the political society.10 In their current form, it is hard to see how the autonomous arrangements have kept pace with these principles. Part of the problem lies with the fact that the demands for autonomy are premised on the concept of a 19th-​century land frontier that has transformed very rapidly. Today, Assam is the most densely populated state of the Northeast at 398 persons per square kilometre, which is slightly higher than the national average. Leaving aside the two hill districts of Dima Hasao and Karbi Anglong, much of the population are sandwiched in the two valleys (Brahmaputra and Barak). It is therefore difficult to visualize the manner in which the frontier thesis will play out in Assam in the 21st century.

Migrants Migration and migrants were almost absent in the civil and political rights discourse of the 1990s and early 2000s. As an advocate for the protection of human rights of all citizens during the counterinsurgency years, I was part of fact-​finding teams to various parts of the Brahmaputra valley and the two hill districts in Assam. The conflicts that had claimed lives of community members were always infused with some grievance against neighbours. Whether it was the conflicts that claimed lives of Dimasa and Hmar people (2003), or Karbi and Kuki villagers (2004), or the clashes that claimed lives

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and displaced Garo and Rabha people in Goalpara (2011), the idea of an interloper within the area was ubiquitous. These narratives were heightened when communities that had historical roots outside the region—​such as the Adivasis and Muslims of Bengal origin—​were involved. Yet, this was also a peculiar time when many young persons were leaving the land and seeking work elsewhere in the country. In many ways, this process presented a counternarrative to social science scholarship of the 20th century that saw the region as a repository for every transient community that moved between South and Southeast Asia, or within the former British dominions of India and Burma. The implications of this were profound on social science researchers, as well as journalists and politicians, since it meant recalibrating a narrative that had been foundational in explaining the conflicts in Assam. One of the first books on the subject actually emerged as an uncanny urban geography of New Delhi in 2011—​ Duncan McDuie-​ Ra’s detailed ethnography of neighbourhoods and people in the Lal-​Dora areas of New Delhi.11 In his prescient monograph, McDuie-​Ra wrote about how dissimilar groups and individuals from the Northeast bonded together when sharing experiences of racism on the streets, food and everyday violence, showing a poignant view of cosmopolitanism that the migrants from Northeast India carry with them in places such as Delhi.12 These notes were immediately discernible following the exodus of migrants from the Northeast in 2012, just after the tragic violence in western Assam.13 The vulnerability of the migrant as well as the difficult worlds and work that they endure have since been explained at great length by anthropologists Dolly Kikon and Bengt Karlsson in their recent work, where they followed migrants from the region to their places of work in metropolitan areas of southern and western India and back to their homes in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, and Nagaland.14 These works were instrumental in helping me make sense of what is happening in contemporary times around the city where I work and live: Guwahati. As rural incomes from farming have consistently gone down, young women and men from villages across the

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Brahmaputra valley have had to look for work elsewhere. My own engagement with the process was anchored in a very thought-​ provoking meeting with the mother of a person who had left for Iran and was imprisoned there. Then again, the rural is a stratified place, and many are unable to leave beyond the district or block in search of work. For many, leaving home for work could mean the coal mines in Meghalaya or Nagaland, or the brick kilns across the state.15 For those with greater financial means, it could mean moving to Bangalore and other cities in south India, where informal and formal networks are constantly looking for semi-​skilled and unskilled workers. Their lives in the process are fraught with vulnerabilities. Even in my own neighbourhood, the anxieties and insecurities of seasonal agricultural workers in places such as Mayong are real, and it is not as if there are too many alternatives that are being presented to them by the state. Instead, there is an insidious effort to introduce divisive ideas into the rural and peri-​urban areas, where religious organizations have taken on welfare work. Coming back to the conundrum about frontiers, migration, and demographic change, Assam’s dense land-​human ratio, as well as the difficult political situation, are not likely to be attractive incentives for people to migrate to the state. However, over the years and especially in the past decade, there has been an expansion of a very busy market in acquisition and transfer of agricultural land. Many farmers who live in easy access to roads and cities that are within a radius of forty kilometres feel that selling their land or ensuring that it is reclassified from agricultural to commercial land would be a more viable option in the short run. However, this process also bares open other possibilities, where regional migrants—​mainly agricultural workers—​who are often as poor as those migrating, are quick to take on farming work for short term leases. The length of the lease and the need for cash often combine to push the agricultural migrants to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides to increase the volume of their crop. Moreover, for most people who are able to afford schools for their children, farming is perhaps the last livelihood option due to the lack of farmland and low returns. This is an area that will require

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greater attention for social scientists who are doing research on migration, so that the new areas of friction may be brought to light.

Animal–​Human Conflicts The diminishing farmlands are not immediately discernible for another important set of opinion makers, for whom migrants and migration are responsible (in part) for the dwindling forests. For a place that has been mired in conflict and the state’s inability to disentangle contentious claims made by human beings over finite land, the land–​ animal conflict has been one of the visible outcomes of both counterinsurgency and the government’s developmental discourse that seeks to expand the possibilities for agriculturalists to look for other livelihoods that are capable of greater economic returns, yet without the kind of physical investment needed for agriculture. For media professionals and social scientists looking at conflicts in Assam, it is difficult to avoid the numbers of deaths that have been the result of conflicts between animals and human beings, or as a result of anti-​poaching campaigns by the government’s various departments that include the forest, police, and the newly constituted task force to protect the rhino. These efforts converge at a time and place that has three elements that I alluded to in Chapter 4. In Assam, geology, humans, and wildlife coexist at a time when the transformations to the ecosystem are far too fast for either one to make it through on its own. This is not specific to Assam alone, as similar developments have taken place in other parts of the Indian subcontinent in the past two decades. There have been some very significant contributions to social anthropology by researchers who have worked at the intersections of conservation, livelihoods, and ecological history in India. Annu Jalais’ work on the relationship between tigers and humans along the Sundarbans in deltaic Bengal has been a very important intervention in paving the way for the study of non-​humans in the social sciences.16 To this, one can add two other important contributions to the study of human–​animal relationships in all their

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complexities. Radhika Govindrajan’s recent work on multispecies relatedness in Uttarakhand, where humans and animals are constantly crisscrossing each other’s paths, as the government pushes for more development in a fragile ecosystem and agriculture becomes commercially unviable for small farmers, has been a stirring nudge towards adopting different lenses to look at old problems.17 At the same time, the upcoming works of geographer Maan Barua, whose focus on elephants and their constant struggle to keep pace with the changing landscape that they share with human beings, have complicated a straitjacketed understanding of conservation and wildlife-​ based livelihoods in Assam.18 I have benefited greatly from my interactions with Yamini Narayanan in reflecting on the non-​human layers of the entangled world of humans (in Assam). Her work on how animals become entangled in nation-​building projects has been of immense help to me, as I struggled to find a plausible link between the manner in which one non-​human species is privileged over others in the mediated world of advertising, policy-​making, and conservation.19 It was an epiphanic process for me to engage with the difficult world of conservation in Assam, beset as they are with several problems regarding the protection of some of the planet’s most endangered species. As I figured out what has been obvious to two generations of conservationists—​that the presence (or absence) of certain species in a particular landscape are indicative of the wider health of that particular ecosystem—​I was forced to revisit the blind spots of my research on human suffering. The years of militarization were brutal not just for human beings in Assam, but they traumatized several generations of non-​human species with whom we share a fragile place and an equally fraught peace. Hence, I found myself engaging with fascinating new work that brought together the seemingly unrelated outcomes of militarization on the local ecology. I have followed Eleana Kim’s new research on the greening of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the Korean peninsula and have found her central argument—​the state’s ability to transform violent places into counterintuitive, celebratory spaces that distract from the history of unresolved conflicts—​a very compelling one.20 It is through these engagements

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that I attempted to understand the manner in which Assam’s physical landscapes, its forests, and paddy fields had changed for both humans and non-​humans who continued to live there.

Communes, Communities, and Climates of Crisis In the final chapter, I returned to some of the places that embodied the devastation of environmental and political conflicts. The women’s commune in Kakopathar, Mozidbhita village in Barpeta, and the jails that hold political prisoners, I feel, were emblematic of a different sensibility that one needed to grapple with in order to make sense of the immense changes that had taken place in Assam in the past two decades. Each place had an epistemological history of its own from a sociological perspective. The commune had been the focus of many studies on utopian societies, significantly those that evoked a place of hope. Here, I have been inspired by Steven Lee’s excursions into utopian experiments and aspirations that emerged during the early Soviet period (until they were quite tragically crushed by Stalinist purges).21 Lee’s reflective and melancholic travel through a puzzlingly hopeful and soul-​crushing moment in the political history of socialist solidarity in the 20th century that connected a wide spectrum of left-​wing, third world revolutionaries to the USSR, was my cue to think about the present as though it would be an artefact of the future. As I was thus inclined, the final month of the second decade of the 21st century saw Guwahati erupt in anger against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act [CAA] that was passed in both houses of the Indian Parliament on 10 December 2019. Barring natural disasters such as the annual monsoon waterlogging, living in Guwahati can be a siloing experience where one’s isolation from others seems almost welcome. There are stock moments when the city comes to a standstill, and they usually involve religious festivals, Bihu, cloudbursts, and rainstorms that cause the roads to be waterlogged. The 24 × 7 satellite TV stations that recycle news in Assamese are perhaps the

190  Homeland Insecurities

only common denominator that tries to keep as many citizens connected to the goings on in the city. On 11 December 2019, when a group of students began to march from their college down the main arterial street to the Dispur secretariat protesting against the government and the CAA, one was not overly concerned about how it would impact everyday life and most citizens went about their work as they would have done on any other day. The demonstrating students were joined by other people and as they began shouting anti-​ government slogans outside the state’s secretariat, they were joined by government officials from inside. For those reporting on the march, this was a remarkable moment that had not happened in several decades in Assam. As the television channels telecasted images of police pushing and beating back some of the protestors, the entire city came out into the streets in a synchronized and spontaneous moment of collective anger. By the evening, thousands of students around Gauhati University came to the Jalukbari flyover, blocking traffic and shouting anti-​government slogans. In other parts of the city, angry people began to burn tyres and placed them in the middle of main roads. One of the most affected areas was along the waterfront at Uzan Bazar, where the locality’s youth had placed scores of burning tyres along the road. The location was significant because it led to the governor’s house and the residence of Assam’s Chief Minister who, as the television channels had reported, was at the airport. He remained there for several hours, as the police and security apparatus tried to contain the crowds. There was no violence directed against any community or individual, and all the anger was targeted against some of the most powerful persons in the state (the Chief Minister and his cabinet colleague, the Finance Minister) and the country (the Prime Minister and the Home Minister), who were completely out of reach in every conceivable way for the protestors. Against this backdrop, the government called out the army and blocked internet services in the entire state. These efforts did not deter people from gathering in large numbers in Guwahati and other cities across the Brahmaputra valley the following day. In the absence of internet connectivity, the televisions

Conclusion  191

began to perform a particularly important task of disseminating hyper local information to citizens of Guwahati on the imposition of legal limitations to public assembly across the city. Nevertheless, many viewers and even those who were not watching TV made their way across the city to congregate at the Latasil field next to the Gauhati High Court. Since public transport was not running and people were afraid to bring out their vehicles, they walked and made their way across the by lanes of the city, avoiding any police patrol along the way. Near Uzan Bazar, they were surprised to see four army trucks and military personnel waiting to prevent them from entering the field. The army had not been called out to perform such policing duties in urban areas for the past two decades and their presence brought back disturbing memories of the counterinsurgency years. For those born at the turn of the century, this seemed like a new but not entirely unexpected turn of events. After a few hours of tussle between the citizens, the police and military, the citizens managed to break into the field and conduct at least two and half hours of public speeches, sloganeering, and protests against the CAA and the state. Tragically, on 12 December 2019, two young men were shot by the police as they were returning from or taking part in the protests in Guwahati. The following day, thousands of citizens from various walks of life and from different age groups met for a day of protests at the Chandmari field, defying curfew orders by the administration. As I made my way around the vast crowd, greeting friends and relatives who I had not met in many months, I realized that there couldn’t possibly be one commanding reason or instruction that had brought such a motely group together. Older protestors, in their late seventies and early eighties, who had come from old age homes in the city, said that they were appalled by the trajectory that the current government had embarked upon. As people born before 1947, they said that they were sad to see the reversal of ideals of the freedom struggle, where the government of their time took great pains to celebrate the powerful spirit of independence by respecting the rights of citizens. Yet others, in their sixties, were out protesting because the spate of governmental egregiousness disregard for civil liberties in Kashmir and now in Assam, reminded them of the Emergency

192  Homeland Insecurities

that was declared in 1975. For middle-​aged persons like myself, the presence of the army on the streets was a reminder of the brutal years of counterinsurgency. For many of the youth, especially those who were born after the 1990s, this simply seemed like an assault on their sense of dignity. In the midst of this cacophony, one saw a few disparate images of what the future of Assam as a lived space could possibly be. On 12 December 2019, a helicopter also circled over the Latasil crowd, drawing loud jeers and angry gestures. As the helicopter flew away, the crowds saw at least four drones hovering above them, leading most of the young people to point their middle finger in the universal gesture of offense towards the drones. In that dramatic moment, I felt as though the many insecurities of the past two decades were coming to some dramatic close. In Assam, the struggles for autonomy and political mobilization against migration had resulted in the militarization of society and the state. This process was brutal and painfully draining, as it involved pitting people and communities against each other. The figures of the camouflage wearing army man, the stentorian police officer (or forest guard) and the wily, compromised local informer in the village were instrumental in the making of the counterinsurgency for the past three decades. With the coming of drones and helicopters, the state seemed to have found an elevated vantage point to conduct its containment of dissent in contemporary Assam. In his provocative book on Israel’s architecture of surveillance and colonization, Eyal Weizman shows the manner in which military ends defined and created developmental and political space in the country.22 The chapters of this book are hopeful that the situation in Assam is not as dismal as the existential realities in Palestine. As one has shown in the preceding chapters, despite the difficult political conditions, there is still a greater connection between ordinary people and the state in Assam, with the government constantly resorting to populist measures to reach out to the masses. Most politicians who are elected into the legislative assembly have to ensure that their constituencies are not neglected, especially in the matter of receiving government support and subsidies. Roads, houses, toilets, fertilizer, rural ambulances, and new primary schools coexist

Conclusion  193

uneasily with lack of support prices for agricultural produce, high infant mortality rates, and diminishing jobs for the young. Hence, the protests against the CAA seemed to have opened up old questions that animated social science discourse in Assam while adding radically new elements for us to ponder over. It is in the manner in which one is able to balance the two—​reflect on old questions, while looking at new lenses—​that we might find a meaningful explanation for the kind of journey that the various species (human and non-​ human) have undertaken in the past two decades in Assam.

Notes Chapter 1 1. I use the term overdetermination in as close a manner that French philosopher Louis Althusser intended for it. I believe that it is impossible to discount the three decades of militarization from any materialist analysis of politics, economy, and society in Assam. The political impulse and institutional response for the government of India’s policies for Assam (and Northeast India) cannot simply be explained by processes such as resource extraction, or manipulation of public opinion about immigration. These activities happen against a charged backdrop of militarization of legal foundations of governance and seep into the most intimate aspects of everyday life. 2. Here, I draw from the seminal works of Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts, who critique a growing concern with environmentalism at the turn of century. Sifting through case studies from different parts of the world, Peluso and Watts argue that political and social conditions were as important as economic and ecological ones in the analysis of environmental conflicts. See Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts, eds., Violent Environments (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). In doing so, they initiated a fruitful discussion on the ways through which political action and environmental concerns come into being. This has animated the study of resource conflicts in much of Asia and Africa. See Matthew D. Turner, ‘Political Ecology and the Moral Dimensions of “Resource Conflicts”: The Case of Farmer-​Herder Conflicts in the Sahel’, Political Geography 23 (2004): 863–​889; Nancy Lee Peluso and Christian Lund, ‘New Frontiers of Land Control: Introduction’, Journal of Peasant Studies 38, no. 4 (2011): 667–​681; Christian Lund, ‘Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa’, Development and Change 37, no. 4 (2006): 685–​ 705; Nancy Lee Peluso and Peter Vandergeest, ‘Political Ecologies of War and Forests: Counterinsurgencies and the Making of National Natures’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101, no. 3 (2011): 587–​608. 3. Anand Pandian, A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2019). 4. Assam Public Works (APW) comprised a group of people who were close to sections of the Assam police and came into existence in the year 2000. Its main aim then was to denounce supporters of the United Liberation Front of Assam

196 Notes (ULFA) and other secessionist armed groups active in Assam. Their work focused on a sustained media campaign against human rights organizations that were critical of the government’s counterinsurgency campaign. In ideological terms, their role in the early 2000s might be best compared to that of right-​ wing, anti-​communist militia that were propped up by the United States and their client regimes in Latin America. Unlike their Latin American examples, APW were not armed and worked within the confines of the law for their anti-​ ULFA campaigns. However, in 2014, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) questioned their main office bearer for his connections with the ponzi-​scheme proponents, Sarada. The Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha (United Alliance of Assam) is a conglomeration of various organizations representing indigenous communities in Assam. One of their considered positions on the NRC is to have the cut-​off date for NRC taken back to the date the Yandabo Treaty (24 February 1826) was signed between the East India Company and the Kingdom of Ava (Burma), following which Assam was ceded to the Company. 5. Sanjib Baruah, ‘Stateless in Assam’, The Indian Express, 19 January 2018, https://​ indian​expr​ess.com/​arti​cle/​opin​ion/​natio​nal-​regis​ter-​of-​citiz​ens-​5030​603/​ (accessed 1 December 2020). 6. Suraj Gogoi, Gorky Chakraborty, and Parag Jyoti Saikia, ‘Assam Against Itself: A Reply to Sanjib Baruah’, South Asia @LSE Blog, 21 March 2018, https://​blogs. lse.ac.uk/​southa​sia/​2018/​03/​21/​assam-​agai​nst-​its​elf-​a-​reply-​to-​san​jib-​bar​uah/​ (accessed 1 December 2020) 7. Arkotong Longkumer, ‘The Power of Persuasion: Christianity, Hindutva and the Discourse of Religion and Culture in Northeast India’, Religion 47, no. 2 (2017): 203–​227. 8. Brendan O’Leary, ‘Mission Accomplished? Looking Back at the IRA’, Field Day Review 1 (2005): 217–​246. 9. Mahmood Mamdani, ‘Settler Colonialism: Then and Now’, Critical Inquiry 41, no. 3 (2015): 596–​614. 10. See Sanjib Baruah, ‘The Partition’s Long Shadow: The Ambiguities of Citizenship in Assam, India’, Citizenship Studies 13, no. 6 (2009): 593–​606; Sanjib Baruah, ‘Fantasies of Development and the Democracy Deficit in North East India’, Eastern Quarterly 5, no. 1 (2008): 61–​65. 11. Baruah, ‘Stateless in Assam’. 12. Matthew Hull, Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2012). 13. In popular discourse, as well as in media debates, legacy is usually attributed to wealth and social capital. In India, legacy is often the wealth (material or otherwise) that important people leave behind for others. In other parts of the world, the idea of a legacy is something of immense value that is bequeathed by persons with wealth to their offspring. Ivy League colleges in the United States have legacy students who get admitted because their parents are alumni of the

Notes  197 institution. In Assam, the idea of a legacy is turned on its head, as ordinary. Often, impoverished persons (mostly women) are asked to find a definitive connection to a person who had existed as a voter, or a property owner, in the past. 14. See Hiren Gohain, ‘National Register of Citizens’, Economic & Political Weekly 53, no. 49 (2018): 4–​5. 15. See Sajal Nag, ‘National Register of Citizens: Old Divides and New Fissures’, Economic & Political Weekly 53, no. 46 (2018): 15–​17; Ditilekha Sharma, ‘Determination of Citizenship through Lineage in the Assam NRC is Inherently Exclusionary’, Economic & Political Weekly 54, no. 14 (2019): 1–​8; Nazimuddin Siddique, ‘A Response to Hiren Gohain: The NRC Is a Product of Xenophobia in Assam’, Economic & Political Weekly 55, no. 14 (2020): 1–​6. 16. See Akhil Gupta, Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012). 17. It would be hard to find an exact figure to the numbers who committed suicide because their names were not included in the NRC draft. The media and advocacy groups varyingly put the number around fifty. Zamser Ali of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) said it was fifty-​one by June 2019. See www.bbc.com/​ news/​world-​asia-​india-​48754802 (accessed 1 December 2020). CJP also has a section dedicated on their website to cover these tragic deaths. See www.cjp. org.in/​tag/​nrc-​suicides (accessed 1 December 2020). Government officials dispute such figures. As one might expect, such positions obfuscate from the issue at hand. Even if there were other reasons for a person to take their own life, the NRC created a milieu of uncertainty that pushed many to take such drastic steps. 18. Social activists and scholars in the region dispute the idea that the BJP had Hindu voters in mind when it enacted the CAB. They argue that the constituency that was being cited as the beneficiaries of the bill by the party—​the Dalit Bengali Hindu in the Barak valley—​especially those escaping persecution in Bangladesh, were not likely to avail of a blanket amnesty for having come to India without proper documentation. Their reiteration that the government attempts to ensure that new migrants be distributed across the country rings hollow in the face of evidence that smaller states (especially in the Northeast) will be left to bear the burden. For more details, see Raiot Collective, ‘Why Hindutva Inspired Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 Needs to be Opposed’, Raiot.in, 7 May 2018, www.raiot.in/​why-​hindutva-​inspired-​citizenship-​ amendment-​bill-​2016-​needs-​to-​be-​opposed/​(accessed 1 December 2020). 19. ‘Citizenship Bill: Chakma and Hajong Communities in a Spot’, The Hindu, 14 January 2019, https://​www.thehi​ndu.com/​news/​natio​nal/​citi​zens​hip-​bill-​cha​ kma-​and-​haj​ong-​comm​unit​ies-​in-​a-​spot/​arti​cle2​5994​563.ece (accessed 1 December 2020) 20. Paula Banerjee and Anasua Basu Ray Choudhury, ‘Introduction: Women in Indian Borderlands’, Journal of Borderland Studies 27, no. 1 (2012): 27–​29;

198 Notes Sanjib Baruah, ‘A New Politics of Race’, India International Centre Quarterly 32, no. 2/​3 (2005): 163–​176; Nel Vandekerckhove, ‘ “WE ARE SONS OF THIS SOIL”: The Endless Battle Over Indigenous Homelands in Assam, India’, Critical Asian Studies 41, no.4 (2009): 523–​548. 21. Sanghamitra Choudhury, Women and Conflict in India (New Delhi: Routledge, 2016). 22. Coincidentally, two recent books, anchored in colonial Burma, have appeared to allow one to make sense of what is going on in contemporary Assam (and its transnational neighbourhood). Amit R. Baishya’s translation of Debendranath Acharya’s novel Jangam, detailing the harrowing escape of Burmese–​Indian farmers and sharecroppers from Burma into Assam during World War II, show how twentieth-​century decolonization was a violent process that disrupted the lives of many and led to transfer of population from one part of the British Empire to another. See Debendranath Acharya, Jangam: A Forgotten Exodus in which Thousands Died, trans. Amit R. Baishya (New Delhi: Vitasta Publishing, 2018). Anthropologist Anand Pandian and his grandfather M. P. Mariappan’s evocative book—​titled Ayya’s Accounts—​of the latter’s life journey, part of it as an evacuee from Burma, also details the trials of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times and circumstances. See Anand Pandian and M. P. Mariappan, Ayya’s Account: A Ledger of Hope in Modern India (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014). 23. Ghassan Hage, Alter-​politics: Critical Anthropology and the Radical Imagination (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2015). Also, Chapter 4 of my book explores this phenomenon in greater detail, with a critical look at how non-​humans enter into the resource debate in tragic ways. Assam’s famed wildlife is dependent on the state’s dwindling forest reserves and wetlands that are being appropriated by corporate interests and also by subsistence farmers. As the number of encounters between animals and humans increase, we see how the issue of race and ethnicity return to the debates on conservation in Assam. 24. Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’, trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–​40. 25. Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’, 23–​24. The traditional Weberian idea of the state’s monopoly over violence has been revised considerably since the late twentieth century. I draw on a genealogy of critical work on state violence in social anthropology and political science that include seminal works by Veena Das and Deborah Poole, Anthropology in the Margins of the State (Santa Fe and Oxford: School of American Research Press and James Curry Ltd., 2004); Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Sanjib Baruah, Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2005); Ujjwal Kumar Singh, The State, Democracy and

Notes  199 Anti-​Terror Laws in India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2007); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); and more recently, Santana Khanikar, State, Violence and Legitimacy in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018). 26. Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, ‘Introduction’, In Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World, ed. Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1–​38. 27. See Makiko Kimura, The Nellie Massacre of 1983 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2013); Sanjay Barbora, ‘Uneasy Homecomings: Political Entanglements in Contemporary Assam’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 38, no. 2 (2015): 290–​303. 28. The Kuki–​Naga conflict occurred between 1993 and 1998. Researchers state that the origins of the violence lay in taxation and territorial claims of rival armed underground groups, as also in merging differences between traditional forms of authority and emerging educated elite. See Lucy Zehol, Ethnicity in Manipur: Experiences, Issues and Perspectives (New Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1999); Thongkholal Haokip, ‘The Kuki-​ Naga Conflict in Light of Recent Publications’, South Asia Research 33, no. 1 (2013): 77–​87; David Hanneng, ‘The Kukis of Naga Hills: Rethinking Kuki-​Naga Relations in Light of Kukis Contribution to the Early Naga Movement’, Journal of North East India Studies 8, no. 2 (2018): 44–​63. 29. The Adivasi–​Bodo conflict that began in 1996 has been repeated since in 2014 as well. Researchers attribute this to the contest over migration and resources in the north bank of the river Brahmaputra. See Uddipana Goswami, Internal Displacement, Migration and Policy in Northeast India, East West Center Working Papers 8, 2007. One of the recurrent themes that emerge from clashes in this area is the impasse arising out of negotiations for territorial autonomy by Bodo political groups. Non-​Bodo communities have coalesced around their opposition to the granting of more powers to the Bodoland Territorial Council. 30. Wasbir Hussain, ‘A New Rebel Turf War’, Outlook, 8 April 2003, https://​www. outlo​okin​dia.com/​webs​ite/​story/​a-​new-​rebel-​turf-​war/​219​704 (accessed 1 December 2020). 31. According to political analysts and commentators, this conflict was the outcome of irreconcilable differences between different groups vying for political space within the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council, as well as allegations of kidnapping and torture of other communities. See Selawar Bey, ‘The Recent Karbi-​Kuki Clashes in Assam’, Liberation 10, no. 9 (2004), http://​www.arch​ive. cpiml.org/​lib​erat​ion/​year_​2​004/​janu​ary/​The%20Rec​ent%20Ka​rbi-​Kuki%20 Clas​hes%20in%20As​sam.HTM (accessed 1 December 2020); Bibhu Prasad Routray, ‘Assam: Karbi-​Kuki Clashes’, South Asia Intelligence Review 2, no. 37

200 Notes (2004), www.satp.org/​satporgtp/​sair/​Archives/​2_​37.htm#ASSESSMENT3 (accessed 1 December 2020) 32. See Sushanta Talukdar, ‘Violence in the Hills’, Frontline, 18 November 2005, https://​frontl​ine.thehi​ndu.com/​other/​arti​cle3​0207​231.ece (accessed 1 December 2020); Wasbir Hussain, ‘Turf War in A Time of Truce’, Outlook, 17 October 2005, https://​www.outlo​okin​dia.com/​webs​ite/​story/​turf-​war-​in-​a-​ time-​of-​truce/​228​968 (accessed 1 December 2020) ; Tom Mangattuthazhe, Violence and Search for Peace in Karbi Anglong, Assam (Guwahati: North Eastern Social Research Centre, 2008). 33. See Banajit Hussain, ‘The Bodoland Violence and the Politics of Explanation’, Seminar, no. 640 (2012): 37–​40; Udayon Misra, ‘Bodoland: The Burden of History’, Economic & Political Weekly 47, no. 37 (2012): 36–​42. 34. See Biswajyoti Das, ‘Tribal Clashes Uproot Thousands in NE India’, Reuters, 6 January 2011, https://​in.reut​ers.com/​arti​cle/​idINIn​dia-​539​7862​0110​ 106 (accessed 1 December 2020); Jaikhlong Basumatary, ‘The Rabha-​Garo Conundrum’, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, 25 September 2013. https://​arch​ ive.claws.in/​1082/​the-​rabha-​garo-​conund​rum-​dr-​jaikhl​ong-​bas​umat​ary.html (accessed 1 December 2020). 35. Samir Kumar Das, ‘Peace Sans Democracy? A Study of Ethnic Peace Accords in Northeast India’, In Beyond Counter-​Insurgency: Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India, ed. Sanjib Baruah (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), 232–​262. 36. Bethany Lacina, ‘Rethinking Delhi’s Northeast India Policy: Why Neither Counter-​Insurgency Nor Winning Hearts and Minds in the Way Forward’, In Beyond Counter-​Insurgency: Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India, ed. Sanjib Baruah (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), 329–​342. 37. Walter Fernandes and Gita Bharali, Uprooted for Whose Benefit? Development Induced Displacement in Assam, 1947–​2000 (Guwahati: North Eastern Social Research Centre, 2011). 38. Arupjyoti Saikia, ‘Forest Land and Peasant Struggles in Assam’, Journal of Peasant Struggles 35, no. 1 (2008): 35–​59. 39. Sanjay Barbora, ‘Ethnic Politics and Land Use: Genesis of Conflicts in India’s North-​East’, Economic & Political Weekly 37, no. 13 (2002): 1285–​1292; Sanjay Barbora, ‘Violence, Agrarian Change and Politics of Autonomy in Assam’, In Geographies of Difference: Explorations in Northeast Indian Studies, ed. Melanie Vandenhelsken, Meenaxi Barkataki-​Ruscheweyh, and Bengt G. Karlsson (New Delhi: Routledge, 2017), 128–​139. 40. Dolly Kikon and Bengt G. Karlsson, Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 41. Duncan McDuie-​Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi: Race, Refuge and Retail (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012).

Notes  201 42. Yasmin Saikia, Fragmented Memories: Struggling to be Tai-​Ahom in India (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004), 69–​74. 43. See Kikon and Karlsson, Leaving the Land; I use the phrase ‘traditional homelands’ to denote places where individuals have lived as family units for more than two generations, usually with strong links to agriculture, either as farmers or as owners of land who employ seasonal labour. This constituency has been the backbone of political mobilization since the 1980s and 1990s, one that has added to the normalization of a homeland discourse in the state, see Sanjay Barbora, ‘Autonomous Districts and/​or Ethnic Homelands: An Ethnographic Account of the Genesis of Political Violence in Assam (North-​East India) Against the Normative Frame of the Indian Constitution’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 15, no. 2/​3 (2008): 313–​334. 44. See Hiren Gohain, ‘Onya ek praborjon (Another Kind of Migration)’, Asomiya Pratidin, 12 December 2015, p. 5; Bidyut Sagar Boruah, Angshuman Gogoi, Gaurav Rajkhowa, and Ankur Tamuli Phukan, ‘Proborjon xomporkat eti prastabona Dr. Hiren Gohain-​ r nibondhor aat dhori: xamilmalarahe sthitabosthar bahiroloi juwa xombhob (A Proposal to Rethink Migration through an Engagement with Dr. Hiren Gohain’s Article: Only through Unity the Impasse can be Broken)’, Asomiya Pratidin, 21 January 2016, p. 5. 45. Derick A. Fay, ‘“Keeping Land for Their Children”: Generation, Migration and Land in South Africa’s Transkei’, Journal of South African Studies 41, no. 5 (2015): 1083–​1097; Jason Robinson, ‘Fragments of the Past: Homeland Politics and the South African Transition 1990–​2014’, Journal of South African Studies 41, no. 5 (2015): 953–​967; Hylton White, ‘A Post-​Fordist Ethnicity: Insecurity, Authority, and Identity in South Africa’, Anthropological Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2012): 397–​428. 46. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/​ La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987). 47. Nandita Haksar, The Exodus Is Not Over: Migrations from the Ruptured Homelands of Northeast India (New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2016). 48. Fernandes and Bharali, Uprooted for Whose Benefit? 49. Arupjyoti Saikia, A Century of Protests: Peasant Politics in Assam Since 1900 (Delhi: Routledge, 2014). 50. Bodhisattva Kar, ‘Historia Elastica: A Note on the Rubber Hunt in the North-​Eastern Frontier of British India’, Indian Historical Review 36, no. 1 (2009): 131–​150. 51. Amalendu Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam, 1826–​1947 (New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House, 1977). 52. Dolly Kikon, ‘Portraits of a Place: Reflections about Fieldwork from the Foothills of Northeast India’, In Geographies of Difference: Explorations in Northeast Indian Studies, ed. Melanie Vandenhelsken, Meenaxi Barkataki-​ Ruscheweyh, and Bengt G. Karlsson (New Delhi: Routledge, 2017), 72–​88.

202 Notes 53. Arupjyoti Saikia, ‘Jute in the Brahmaputra Valley: The Making of Flood Control in 20th Century Assam’, Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 5 (2015): 1405–​1441. 54. Peter Custers, ‘Maulana Bhasani and the Transition to Secular Politics in East Bengal’, The Newsletter 55 (2010): 12–​13. 55. Jayeeta Sharma, Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). 56. Sanjib Baruah, ‘India and its Northeast: Another Big Push Without a Take-​Off ’, In Northeast India: A Place of Relations, ed. Yasmin Saikia and Amit R. Baishya (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 45–​67. 57. James Ferguson, The Anti-​ Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). 58. Jens Lerche, Alpa Shah, and Barbara Harriss-​White, ‘Introduction: Agrarian Questions and Left Politics in India’, Journal of Agrarian Change 13, no. 3 (2013): 337–​350. 59. Nirmal K. Chandra, ‘Farm Efficiency under Semi-​Feudalism: A Critique of Marginalist Theories and Some Marxist Formulations’, Economic & Political Weekly 9, nos. 32–​34 (1974): 1309–​1331. 60. Utsa Patnaik, ‘Class Differentiation within the Peasantry: An Approach to Analysis of Indian Agriculture’, Economic & Political Weekly 11, no. 29 (1976): 82–​ 101; Ashok Rudra, ‘Class Relations in Indian Agriculture: I’, Economic & Political Weekly 13, no. 22 (1978): 916–​923. 61. Christine Bichsel, Conflict Transformation in Central Asia: Irrigation Disputes in the Ferghana Valley (New York and London: Routledge, 2009). 62. Kaberi Kachari Rajkhowa, Issa-​Annisar Swotteu Kisu Kotha (A Few Tentative Words to Share) (Guwahati: Alibaat, 2013); Dixita Deka, Underground: Lives, Activism and Representation of Women in ULFA, Unpublished MPhil thesis (Guwahati: Tata Institute of Social Sciences, 2017). 63. Personal communication with families of activists conducted between 2000 and 2005. 64. Jatiya Vidyalayas are part of a larger political and social project that came to fruition in 1994. Its origins lie in the fact that the Government of Assam allows schools to be set up by private trusts and associations, as a continuation to colonial times when the state was unable to provide schools in far-​flung areas. Until the 1980s, Assamese education was the preserve of state-​run schools, where students supposedly did not have access to quality education. The Assam Jatiya Vidyalaya project involved several activists of the Assam Agitation who felt that affordable, good-​quality private education ought to be provided in Assamese as well. The presence of a Jatiya Vidyalaya in a particular area is often a testimony to many things at the same time. For one, it shows local community mobilization for education, as these schools are provided with a common curriculum in Assamese. Secondly, it also signifies the presence of a fairly large

Notes  203 number of persons who wish to send their children to Assamese-​medium schools, as English-​medium schools are either too expensive or not present in the area. Third, and most importantly, they are also markers of a particular kind of Assamese nationalist ideals of expanding children’s knowledge in the language that they probably speak at home. Therefore, for a person to showcase a Jatiya Vidyalaya in a place is to also make a point that they have foregone other options such as a madrassa (that most poor Muslims send their children to), English-​medium schools, or state schools. 65. James Ferguson, ‘How to Do Things with Land: A Distributive Perspective on Rural Livelihoods in Southern Africa’, Journal of Agrarian Change 13, no. 1 (2013): 166–​174. 66. Paula Banerjee, Borders, Histories, Existences: Gender and Beyond (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2018). 67. Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Making of a National Festival: Bihu in Colonial and Post-​ Colonial Assam, Unpublished PhD dissertation (Kolkata: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Jadavpur University, 2018). 68. Ganesh Gurung, Karin Astrid Seigmann, Sanjay Barbora, Susan Thieme, and Vineetha Menon, ‘Migration Matters in South Asia: Commonalities and Critiques’, Economic & Political Weekly 43, no. 24 (2008): 57–​65.

Chapter 2 1. Baidew means elder sister in Assamese. 2. BTAD has been rechristened as Bodo Territorial Region (BTR) following the 27 January 2020 peace agreement between the Government of India, Government of Assam, National Democratic Front for Bodoland, All Bodo Students’ Union, and United Bodo People’s Organization. 3. This is a fairly long debate that began with the notion of tribes as proto-​Hindu groups (G. S. Ghurye), or as communities that had long challenged incorporation into caste society (Verrier Elwin) around the 1940s. Both positions have had an important impact in scholarship and political mobilization around the subcontinent, especially in India. The Government of India’s official position on such groups is largely influenced by the manner in which groups are able to politically mobilize around a set of archaic criteria laid out by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in consultation with the Anthropological Survey of India. Scholars and activists have criticized and co-​opted this process in equal measure, depending on where they stand with respect to a set of ideas pertaining to the indigenous/​tribal debate. This debate received a more comprehensive analysis with Virginius Xaxa’s seminal essay on the need to recognize tribes as indigenous communities in India, Virginius Xaxa, ‘Tribes as Indigenous People of India’, Economic & Political Weekly 34, no. 24 (1999): 1519–​1524; and Bengt Karlsson’s

204 Notes insightful intervention on the political locations of the indigenous/​tribe debate in India, Bengt G. Karlsson, ‘Anthropology and the “Indigenous Slot”: Claims to and Debates about Indigenous Peoples’ Status in India’, Critique of Anthropology 23, no. 4 (2003): 403–​423. 4. John Harriss, The State, Tradition and Conflict in the North Eastern States of India, Working Paper No. 13 (London: Crisis States Programme, London School of Economics, 2002); Virginius Xaxa, State, Society and Tribes: Issues in Post-​colonial India (New Delhi: Pearson and Longman, 2008). 5. Baruah, Durable Disorder; Sanjay Barbora, ‘Autonomy in the Northeast: The Frontiers of Centralised Politics’, in The Politics of Autonomy: Indian Experiences, ed. Ranabir Samaddar (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005), 196–​ 215; Samir Das, Conflict and Peace in India’s Northeast: The Role of Civil Society, Policy Studies 42 (Washington: East-​West Centre, 2007); Ranabir Samaddar, Emergence of the Political Subject (New Delhi: Sage Publishing, 2010); Ranabir Samaddar, ‘Introduction’, in Government of Peace: Social Government, Security and the Problematic of Peace, ed. Ranabir Samaddar (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 1–​17. 6. Baruah, Durable Disorder; Vandekerckhove, ‘We Are Sons of this Soil’. 7. Christian Lund’s idea of a ‘rupture’ is particularly important in the case of Assam. Lund describes ruptures as open moments that allow us to observe the tussles within the state apparatus, which groups are contesting one another to take control over resources, and how institutions engage with changing moments. I feel Assam is entering such a moment. The colonial enclave economy dependent on tea and oil is clearly past their prime with limited opportunities for jobs and increasingly conflicts are over bringing in new areas under tea cultivation and oil drilling. Furthermore, insurgencies against the state that demand secession or greater autonomy have also gone into the quietist phase. All of this adds to the many possibilities that the future offers, and much will depend on the nature of emerging social movements and the concerns that shape political discourse. Autonomy, I argue, will continue to reappear in different forms. See Christian Lund, ‘Rule and Rupture: State Formation through the Production of Property and Citizenship’, Development and Change 47, no. 6 (2016): 1199–​1228. 8. Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Hiren Gohain, ‘Cudgel of Chauvinism’, Economic & Political Weekly 15, no. 8 (1980): 418–​420; Amalendu Guha, ‘Little Nationalism Turned Chauvinist: Assam’s Anti-​Foreigner Upsurge 1979–​80’, Economic & Political Weekly 15, no. 41–​43 (1980): 1699–​1720; Monirul Hussain, The Assam Movement: Class, Ideology and Identity (New Delhi: South Asia Books, 1993); Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Sanjib Baruah, ‘Citizens and Denizens: Ethnicity, Homelands, and the Crisis of Displacement

Notes  205 in Northeast India’, Journal of Refugee Studies 16, no. 1 (2003): 44–​66; Baruah, Durable Disorder. 9. The Assam Agitation (1979–​1985) is also referred as the ‘Anti-​Foreigners Movement’ in contemporary Assam. This easy slippage from one to the other is very problematic. It suggests that the Assam Agitation was a one-​dimensional, anti-​Muslim, anti-​Bengali political event that was aimed at the disenfranchisement of a particular class of peasantry who had their roots in erstwhile East Bengal. Records of the time, the author’s personal memories of participating in civil disobedience as a child, as well as media archives of the times, show that there was a wide spectrum of grievances that were aired during the course of the six years of the movement. Protestors in eastern Assam were as frequently protesting about the drilling of oil, as they were about the addition of people to the electoral rolls. Similarly, various communities and ethnic groups in places such as Gohpur, Nellie, and Darrang confronted one another in an effort to claim land for themselves. 10. Peluso and Watts, Violent Environments. 11. For further details, see https://​wptbc.assam.gov.in/​port​let-​innerp​age/​bodol​ and-​terr​itor​ial-​coun​cil (accessed 1 December 2020). 12. They include: (1) Agriculture; (2) Soil conservation; (3) Animal husbandry and veterinary; (4) Dairy development; (5) Fisheries; (6) Forestry and wildlife; (7) Market and fairs; (8) Cooperative; (9) Panchayat and rural development; (10) Land revenue and disaster management; (11) Welfare of Plains Tribes and Backward Classes; (12) Irrigation; (13) Water resources; (14) Small-​scale industries; (15) Handloom and textile; (16) Sericulture; (17) Roads and bridges; (18) Other transport services; (19) Tribal Research Institute; (20) Tourism; (21) Economics and statistics; (22) Food and civil supplies; (23) Legal metrology; (24) Education; (25) Sports and youth welfare; (26) Art and culture; (27) Lottery; (28) Cinema and theatre; (29) Library services; (30) Museum and archaeology; (31) Health and family welfare; (32) Water supply and sanitation; (33) Urban development; (34) Information and public relations; (35) Labour and employment, including industrial training institutes; (36) Excise; (37) Social welfare and nutrition; (38) Printing and stationary; (39) Registration of birth and death; and (40) Relief and rehabilitation (not yet transferred from state government). 13. ‘Mohilary Tables Rs 462 cr BTC Budget’, The Assam Tribune, 19 July 2016, https://​www.proqu​est.com/​docv​iew/​180​5286​347/​939​16AF​CFD1​D475​7PQ/​1 (accessed 1 December 2020). 14. Nazimuddin Siddiqui, ‘Bodo Territorial Area District Elections 2015: A Discussion’, Economic and Political Weekly 50, no. 31 (2015): 1–​5; Monjib Mochachari, ‘NDFB Movement: An Examination of the Role of Civil and Political Organisations in Peace Process’, Unpublished paper, n.d.

206 Notes 15. For a place that had seen much violence between different communities, the presence of only Muslim and Bodo local representatives was explained as a necessity arising from the immediate conflict that had taken place in 2012. 16. Vandekerckhove, ‘We Are Sons of this Soil’. 17. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, ‘Ethnography on a Colonial State: Postcolonial Anthropology and the Violence of Abstraction’, Ethnography 4, no. 2 (2003): 147–​ 179; Sanjib Baruah, Durable Disorder; Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2009); Yengkhom Jilangamba, ‘Beyond the Ethno-​ Territorial Binary: Evidencing the Hill and Valley Peoples in Manipur’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 38, no. 2 (2015): 276–​289. 18. Saikia, A Century of Protests. 19. Baruah, India Against Itself. 20. Walter Fernandes and Sanjay Barbora, ‘Introduction’, in Land, People and Politics: Contest over Tribal Land in Northeast India, eds. Walter Fernandes and Sanjay Barbora (Guwahati: North Eastern Social Research Centre and International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs, 2009), 1–​15. 21. Franck Billé, ‘Skinworlds: Borders, Haptics, Topologies’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36, no. 1 (2018): 60–​77. 22. ‘No Information on BTAD Population Status: Govt’, The Assam Tribune, 13 March 2015, https://​www.proqu​est.com/​docv​iew/​166​2466​347/​FDA​7E1F​6C14​ 34B4​1PQ/​1 (accessed 1 December 2020) 23. Udayachal was the name of the territorial unit that was demanded by the political party, Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) in 1966. PTCA sought the consolidation of the lands belonging to tribal people in the plains of Assam so that they too could enjoy the kind of autonomy and control over land transfers as the tribal people of the hills. 24. Sarmah’s assessment of the constitutional safeguards and the context in which they evolved are comprehensive, but they do not deal with the dynamics of social movements within such regimes. Bhupen Sarmah, ‘The Question of Autonomy for the Plains Tribes of Assam’, Social Change and Development 1, no.1 (2002): 86–​103. 25. ‘Framing of the Sixth Schedule’, Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council Website, http://​khadc.nic.in/​acts_​rule​s_​re​gula​tion​s_​bi​lls/​misc/​Fram​ing%20 of%20the%206th%20S​Ched​ule.pdf (accessed 10 August 2019). 26. Ajay Roy, The Bodo Imbroglio (Guwahati: Spectrum Publishers, 1995), 61 27. Barbora, ‘Autonomy in the Northeast’. 28. Homeland struggles in Northeast India have drawn upon support from ethnic kin who live across federal and international boundaries. This was most pronounced in the case of the Mizo and Naga peoples. The Mizo struggle ended with a peace accord, where the Government of India gave more powers and pecuniary benefits through the creation of the federal unit of Mizoram. However,

Notes  207 this had the effect of dissimulation of the aspirations of other Mizo-​speaking communities that participated in the struggle. Similarly, the Bodo movement has had to contend with the aspirations of a wider cross-​section of Bodo-​ speaking people, who do not necessarily live in the BTAD. They have very little to contribute to political discourse on autonomy in the current milieu. Their contributions to Bodo culture and the struggle for autonomy seem to have given way to hard political calculations on electoral issues within the BTC. 29. The demand for a separate state is a contentious one even within the Bodo political community. Leaders like Hagrama Mohilary, who heads the BTC, are willing to let the demands slide when it suits them and settle for more fiscal autonomy. Student groups such as the ABSU are consistent in their demand for a separate state and see themselves as inheritors of the struggle that was begun by Rupnath Brahma and carried forward by Upendra Brahma. Armed groups like the National Democratic Front of Bodoland are currently split vertically into three factions, at least one of which continues to call for a sovereign Bodoland, free from Indian rule. 30. Nani Gopal Mahanta, ‘Politics of Space and Violence in Bodoland’, Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 23 (2013b): 49–​58. 31. Ivana Maček, Sarajevo Under Seige: Anthropology in Wartime (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 32. Danielle Drozdzewski, ‘Knowing (or Not) about Katyń: The Silencing and Surfacing of Public Memory’, Space and Polity 16, no. 3 (2012): 303–​319. 33. Bertil Lintner and Michael Black, Merchants of Madness: The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden Triangle (Chang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009). 34. Thomas Benedikter, The World’s Modern Autonomy Systems: Concepts and Experiences of Regional Territorial Autonomy (Bolzano and Calcutta: Institute of Minority Rights, EURAC Research and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2009). 35. Mahanta, ‘Politics of Space’. 36. Joel Robbins, ‘Beyond the Suffering Subject: Toward an Anthropology of the Good’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19, no. 3 (2013): 447–​462. 37. Country Information on India at Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre Website, http://​www.inter​nal-​displ​acem​ent.org/​countr​ies/​india (accessed 1 December 2020). 38. Nausheen H. Anwar and Sarwat Viqar, ‘Research Assistants, Reflexivity and the Politics of Fieldwork in Urban Pakistan’, Area 49, no. 1 (2017): 114–​121. 39. Veena Das, ‘Trauma and Testimony: Implications for Political Community’, Anthropological Theory 3, no. 3 (2003): 302. 40. Zaira Lofranco, ‘Negotiating “Neighbourliness” in Sarajevo Apartment Blocks’, in Migrating Borders and Moving Time: Temporality and the Crossing of Borders in Europe, eds. Hastings Donnan, Madeleine Hurd, and Carolin Leutloff-​ Grandits (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 42–​57.

208 Notes 41. Vazira Fazila-​Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 42. Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Paul Brass, The Production of Hindu-​Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2003); Paul Brass, Forms of Collective Violence: Riots, Pogroms and Genocide in Modern India (Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2006); Kimura, The Nellie Massacre. 43. Nel Vandekerckhove and Bert Suykens, ‘“The Liberation of Bodoland”: Tea, Forestry and Tribal Entrapment in Western Assam’, South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies 31, no. 3 (2008): 450–​471; Nel Vandekerckhove, ‘The State, the Rebel and the Chief: Public Authority and Land Disputes in Assam, India’, Development and Change 42, no. 3 (2011): 759–​779; Mahanta, ‘Politics of Space’. 44. To cite a few examples, Sandeep Joshi, K. Balchand, and Sushanta Talukdar, ‘Crack Down on Ring Leaders, Centre Tells Assam’, The Hindu, 25 July 2012, https:// ​ w ww.thehi ​ ndu.com/ ​ news/ ​ natio​ nal/ ​ c rack- ​ d own- ​ on- ​ r ing- ​ l ead ​ e rs-​ cen​tre-​tells-​assam/​art​icle​3683​459.ece (accessed 1 December 2020); Vembu, ‘Assam Riots: Fruits of Living in Denial over Bangladesh Influx’, Firstpost, 25 July 2012, https://​www.firstp​ost.com/​india/​assam-​riots-​fru​its-​of-​liv​ing-​in-​ den​ial-​over-​ban​glad​esh-​inf​l ux-​390​536.html (accessed 1 December 2020); Gardiner Harris, ‘As Tensions in India Turn Deadly, Some Say Officials Ignored Warning Signs’, The New York Times, 28 July 2012, https://​www.nyti​mes.com/​ 2012/​07/​29/​world/​asia/​after-​tensi​ons-​in-​ind​ias-​east-​turn-​dea​dly-​cla​ims-​offici​ als-​tur​ned-​a-​blind-​eye.html (accessed 1 December 2020); Betwa Sharma, ‘In Assam, Grim Aftermath to July Riots’, The New York Times, 2 August 2012, https://​india.blogs.nyti​mes.com/​2012/​08/​02/​in-​assam-​grim-​afterm​ath-​to-​ july-​riots/​(accessed 1 December 2020); Ratnadip Choudhury, ‘The Butchers of Kokrajhar’, Tehelka 9, no. 31 (2012). https://​web.arch​ive.org/​web/​201​2092​8094​ 125/​http://​www.tehe​lka.com/​story​_​mai​n53.asp?filen​ame=​Ne040​812B​utch​ers. asp (accessed 1 December 2020); Balbir Punj, ‘Assam Violence a Fallout of Vote Bank Politics’, The New Indian Express, 5 August 2012, https://​www.newin​dian​ expr​ess.com/​magaz​ine/​voi​ces/​2012/​aug/​05/​assam-​viole​nce-​a-​fall​out-​of-​vote-​ bank-​polit​ics-​393​869.html (accessed 1 December 2020); Times News Network, ‘A Distraught Tribal: The Genesis of Assam Ethnic Violence’, The Economic Times, 12 August 2012, https://​econom​icti​mes.ind​iati​mes.com/​news/​polit​ics-​ and-​nat​ion/​a-​dis​trau​ght-​tri​bal-​the-​gene​sis-​of-​assam-​eth​nic-​viole​nce/​arti​cles​ how/​15458​830.cms?from=​mdr (accessed 1 December 2020); Subir Bhaumik, ‘New Massacre Fears Grow in “India’s Bosnia” ’, Al Jazeera, 5 January 2015, https://​www.aljaze​era.com/​featu​res/​2015/​1/​5/​new-​massa​cre-​fears-​grow-​in-​ ind​ias-​bos​nia (accessed 1 December 2020).

Notes  209 45. There were a few notable examples of engaged and critical journalism in English during the 2012–​2014 conflicts, such as Saba Sharma’s reports. See Saba Sharma, ‘The Carnage in Kokrajhar’, Kafila Collective, 4 May 2014, https://​kaf​ila.onl​ine/​ 2014/​05/​04/​the-​carn​age-​in-​kokraj​har-​saba-​sha​rma/​ (accessed 1 December 2020); Saba Sharma, ‘Divide and Misrule’, Caravan, 1 February 2015, https://​ cara​vanm​agaz​ine.in/​persp​ecti​ves/​div​ide-​and-​misr​ule (accessed 1 December 2020); and Saba Sharma, ‘Eating Beef in Kokrajhar, Assam: A Field Researcher’s Food Diary’, Scroll.in, 14 April 2017, https://​scr​oll.in/​arti​cle/​834​113/​eat​ing-​ beef-​in-​kokraj​har-​assam-​a-​field-​rese​arch​ers-​food-​diary (accessed 1 December 2020). These were some rare examples of the journalist/​reporter inserting oneself into the reporting of the conflict. Sharma’s pieces were notable in their unwillingness to find a villain from either community. They instead focused on the challenges of peacebuilding in the area. She looked at sharply divisive matters such as social boycott and enforcement of food taboos with a sympathetic, but humorous eye giving readers a much-​needed nuanced view of the conflict. 46. Nandini Sarma notes ‘feelings of alienation among the tribals’ as the cause for ‘the present atmosphere of violence and extremism’. See Nandini Sarma, ‘Roots of Tribal Problem in Assam’, The Assam Tribune, 14 June 2007, 6 . For the 2008 violence, Sazzad Hussain traces the origin to a bandh called by ‘a least known organisation . . . in some areas of Darrang district in August when the bandh supporters went on a rampage’. He further expands, ‘The failure of the Indian police and internal security agencies against the growing menace of Islamist terrorism and their alleged presence in the East Bengali Muslim dominated areas of Assam to annex the State to a greater Bengali Islamic homeland are also the elements responsible for the latest ethnic or communal conflagration of north-​ central Assam’. Certain sections of the vernacular press, constant overlooking of the foreigner’s issue and its growing communalization, New Delhi’s neo-​liberal economic policies, and religious fundamentalism are among other causes for the violence that Hussain notes. See Sazzad Hussain, ‘Why Communal Violence in Assam?’ The Assam Tribune, 17 October 2008, 6. . Pointing to the 2012 violence, Manmohan Das warns that ‘this time, the peculiarity is that it is not ethnic clash nor clash between the Bodos and the non-​Bodos as many like to say but between the infiltrators who have been occupying government vacant lands, forest lands, wetlands and also lands belonging to original inhabitants by hook or crook inside the legally prohibited tribal belts and blocks’. He adds to the demographic rhetoric by expanding ‘their number has been swelling because of their high birth rate and new waves of immigrants’. He attributes the return of normalcy to the fatigue of the two warring sides apart from government intervention and warns ‘the permanent solution of this burning issue cannot be expected so easily without curing the root causes’. See Manmohan Das, ‘The Genesis of Violence in BTAD’, The Assam Tribune, 7 September 2012, https://​w ww.proqu​est.com/​docv​iew/​103​8191​482/​63E​8307​9879​3485​8PQ/​1

210 Notes (accessed 1 December 2020) ; R. Dutta, ‘Pressure on Land Main Cause Behind Clashes: MHA’, The Assam Tribune, 30 July 2012, https://​www.proqu​est.com/​ docv​iew/​103​0017​164/​98E​4EF2​126F​44F7​EPQ/​1 (accessed 1 December 2020); ‘Gadit Tuli Horonarthi Burok Pothiaidile Xanti Guri Nahai (Peace Will Not Return if Infiltrators Are Sent Off In Vehicles)’, Asomiya Pratidin, 1 September 2012; Hiranya Saikia, ‘Ethno-​Exclusive Politics Affecting Assam’, Times of Assam, 18 September 2012, https://​www.times​ofas​sam.com/​exclus​ive/​ethno-​ exclus​ive-​polit​ics-​affect​ing-​assam/​(accessed 1 December 2020); Ajit Patowary, ‘Politics of Ethnic Cleansing Driving Factor Behind NDFB (S) Violence’, The Assam Tribune, 26 December 2014, https://​www.proqu​est.com/​docv​iew/​164​ 0350​412/​355​583C​4B91​4468​3PQ/​38 (accessed 1 December 2020) 47. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, ‘Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland’s Conflict, and its Agreement 2: What Critics of Consociation Can Learn from Northern Ireland’, Government and Opposition 41, no. 2 (2006): 249–​277. 48. Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 49. Hylton White, ‘A Post-​Fordist Ethnicity: Insecurity, Authority and Identity in South Africa’, Anthropological Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2012): 397–​428. 50. Canadian historian and journalist Michael Ignatieff invoked Sigmund Freud’s expression ‘narcissism of minor differences’ to explain such processes, where groups that seem similar in every possible way to outsiders, overplay and over-​ emphasize minute differences among them to justify forced separation. He was writing in the context of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia where Croats and Serbs fought one another in trenches foregoing relatively recent memories of living together and invoking instead the contentious politics of a much longer past that stretched back several hundreds of years. 51. Walter Fernandes and Sanjay Barbora, The Socio-​Economic Situation of Nagaon District: A Study of its Economy, Demography and Immigration (Guwahati: North Eastern Social Research Centre, 2002). 52. Timothy McVeigh, ‘Between Reconciliation and Pacification: The British State and Community Relations in the North of Ireland’, Community Development Journal 37, no.1 (2002): 47–​59. 53. Vandekerckhove and Suykens, ‘The Liberation of Bodoland’. 54. Harsh Mandar, ‘Assam’s Tragedy’, The Hindu, 25 August 2012, http://​www.thehi​ ndu.com/​opin​ion/​colu​mns/​Harsh​_​Man​der/​ass​ams-​trag​edy/​art​icle​3820​732. ece (accessed 1 December 2020). 55. Bijay Shankar Bora, ‘Bodos Oppose Land Grant to Patanjali’, The Tribune, 28 August 2016, http://​www.tribu​nein​dia.com/​news/​nat​ion/​bodos-​opp​ose-​land-​ grant-​to-​patanj​ali/​286​573.html (accessed 1 December 2020). 56. Parismita Singh, Peace Has Come (Chennai: Context, 2018).

Notes  211

Chapter 3 1. Haksar, The Exodus Is Not Over. 2. Michael Hutt, Unbecoming Citizens: Culture, Nationhood, and the Flight of Refugees from Bhutan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Willem van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia (London: Anthem Press, 2004); Abid Qaiyum Suleri and Kevin Savage, Remittances in Crises: A Case Study from Pakistan, Project Report Series #10 (Islamabad: Sustainable Development Policy Institute, 2006); Susan Thieme, Social Networks and Migration: Far Western Nepalese Labour Migrants in Delhi (Münster: LIT, 2006); Gurung et al., ‘Migration Matters’. 3. McDuie-​Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi. 4. Dolly Kikon, ‘Home Is Hardly the Best’, The Hindu, 20 August 2012, https://​ www.thehi​ndu.com/​opin​ion/​op-​ed/​home-​is-​har​dly-​the-​best/​art​icle​3796​017. ece (accessed 1 December 2020) ; Haksar, The Exodus Is Not Over. 5. Banerjee, Borders, Histories, Existences; Boruah et al., ‘Proborjon xomporkat eti prastabona’; Nandini Ramamurthy, Employment Relations, Flexibility and Organisational Strategies: Understanding Labour Market Outcomes of Hotel Industry in India, MPhil Dissertation (Guwahati: Tata Institute of Social Sciences, 2017). 6. See Michael Jackson, The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration and the Question of Well-​being (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). 7. One such news had to do with two Indian employees of a Goa-​based firm who were stuck in Iran since December 2013. Apparently, the two had been sent by their parent company in India to fix power turbines in Iran. The two technicians were soon embroiled in a trade dispute between the Indian and Iranian companies that was completely beyond their control. They were not being allowed to leave Iran, and their families had filed a writ petition against the Indian government and the parent Goa-​based company. See http://​www.thehi​ndu.com/​ news/​natio​nal/​modi-​urged-​to-​s ec ​ure-​rele ​ase-​of-​ind​ian-​work​ers-​held-​in-​ iran/​art​icle​6119​373.ece (accessed 1 December 2020). 8. Jackson, The Wherewithal of Life, 149. 9. Baruah, India Against Itself. 10. Sarmah, ‘The Question for Autonomy’. 11. Amalendu Guha, ‘East Bengal Immigrants and Bhashani in Assam Politics: 1928-​ 1947’, Proceedings of the Indian Historical Congress 35 (1974): 348–​365. 12. There has been stellar analysis of the personal and official papers of political leaders such as Gopinath Bordoloi and (to an extent) Sir Syed Saadullah of the Congress and Muslim League, respectively. Historians such as Amalendu Guha and Nirode Barooah have analysed the roles of the leaders of both the parties and their views on immigration. In doing so, they have managed to bring out

212 Notes the nuances that are typical of nationalist concerns in Assam—​and by this, I refer to Assamese nationalism—​especially when confronted by an Indian nationalist position on citizenship that is incapable of accommodating nuances. 13. See Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 14. Weiner, Sons of the Soil. 15. Myron Weiner, ‘The Political Demography of Assam’s Anti-​ Immigrant Movement’, Population and Development Review 9, no. 2 (1983): 279–​292; Bhawani Singh, Politics of Alienation in Assam (Delhi: South Asia Books, 1985); R. Gopalakrishnan, ‘Geographical Aspects of a Crisis in Brahmaputra Valley (Assam)’, The Indian Journal of Political Science 47, no. 3 (1986): 366–​381; Sanjib Baruah, ‘Immigration, Ethnic Conflict, and Political Turmoil—​Assam, 1979-​1985’, Asian Survey 26, no. 11 (1986): 1184–​1206; Dipankar Gupta, ‘The Indispensable Centre: Ethnicity and Politics in the Indian Nation State’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 20, no. 4 (1990): 521–​539. 16. Sujit Choudhury, ‘Assam: Quest for Homogeneity’, Mainstream 25, no. 7 (1986): 11–​14. Baruah, ‘Citizens and Denizens’; Apurba Kumar Baruah, Social Tensions in Assam Middle Class Politics (Guwahati: Purbanchal, 1991); Manorama Sharma, Social and Economic Change in Assam: Middle Class Hegemony (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1990). 17. Amalendu Guha, ‘Little Nationalism Turned Chauvinist: Assam’s Anti-​ Foreigner Upsurge, 1979-​ 80’, Economic & Political Weekly 15, no. 41–​ 43 (1980): 1699–​1720; Hiren Gohain, ‘Once More on the Assam Movement’, Social Scientist 10, no. 11 (1982): 58–​62; Hussain, The Assam Movement; Monirul Hussain, ‘Nationalities, Ethnic Processes, and Violence in India’s Northeast’, in Peace Studies: An Introduction to the Concept, Scope and Themes, ed. Ranabir Samaddar (New Delhi, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2004), 292–​315. 18. Lopita Nath, The Nepalis in Assam: Ethnicity and Cross Border Movements in the Northeast (Kolkata: Minerva Associates, 2003). 19. It would be impossible to accede to a mono-​lingual state in the Northeast. The states that were carved out of the colonial province of Assam were conglomerations of the domains of the indigenous hill tribes. Thus, Khasi hills, Jaintia hills, and Garo hills, home to various tribes other than the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo, together formed the state of Meghalaya. 20. Right of linguistic minorities to conserve their language and script. 21. Right of linguistic minorities to administer their educational institutions. 22. Right of linguistic minorities to recognition of their language in the state. 23. Right to submit representation in any of the languages used in the Union of India.

Notes  213 24. Devaki Gopinath, The Twelfth Report of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities in India for the Period July 1969 to June 1970 (Allahabad: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 1971). 25. Baruah, India Against Itself, 52 26. See Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–​ 1991 (London: Abacus, 1995), 202–​207. 27. Dennis Rumley and Julian V. Minghi, eds., The Geography of Border Landscapes (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 4. 28. Arup Jyoti Das, ‘Bangladeshi Imagination’, Asomiya Pratidin, 22 September 2008, http://​kamru​psa.blogs​pot.com/​2009/​04/​bang​lade​shi-​imag​inat​ion.html (accessed 1 December 2020) . 29. Ernesto Laclau, ‘Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity’, October 61 (1992): 83–​90. 30. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 31. See Hiren Gohain, ‘The Assamese Do Not Really Know the Guests They Have Welcomed With Open Arms’, The Wire, 20 May 2016, http://​thew​ire.in/​37461/​ the-​assam​ese-​do-​not-​rea​lly-​know-​the-​gue​sts-​they-​have-​welco​med-​with-​ open-​arms/​(accessed 1 December 2020) 32. Anwesha Dutta, ‘The Politics of Complexity in Bodoland: The Interplay of Contentious Politics, the Production of Collective Identities and Elections in Assam’, South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies 39, no. 2 (2016): 478–​493. 33. Most struggles of indigenous communities in present-​day Assam that go back to the consolidation of republican democracy in India in the 1950s and 1960s were focused on demands for economic, social, and political autonomy. In Assam, these movements gained greater traction among the young, educated indigenous groups in the 1980s and 1990s especially after the anti-​foreigner agitation in the 1980s. They usually began by articulating recognition of indigenous cultural rights of communities, expressed in a renewed interest in language, cuisines, material culture, and control over resources. Over time, when confronted by perceived neglect by the state, they began to take a radical turn to arms and violence. Also see Sanjay Barbora, ‘Ethnic Politics and Land Use’. 34. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/​La Frontera. 35. McDuie-​Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi. 36. Kikon and Karlsson, Leaving the Land. 37. John Paul Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation (Delaware: Good Books, 2014). 38. Nani Gopal Mahanta, Confronting the State: ULFA’s Quest for Sovereignty (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2013a).

214 Notes

Chapter 4 1. Rajeev Bhattacharya, ‘RSS Wants Citizenship Amendment Bill Shelved for Now after Widespread Protests in Assam’, The Wire, 15 July 2018, https://​thew​ire.in/​ polit​ics/​rss-​temp ​orar​ily-​shel​ves-​citi​zens​hip-​amendm​ent-​bill-​after-​wid​espr​ ead-​prote​sts-​in-​assam (accessed 1 December 2020). 2. I am grateful to Dr. Pijush Dutta of WWF India for sharing this information with me. 3. https://​www.times​nown​ews.com/​mir​ror-​now/​in-​focus/​arti​cle/​num​ber-​of-​rhi​ nos-​poac​hed-​in-​ass​ams-​kazira​nga-​low​est-​in-​ten-​years-​park-​direc​tor/​535​629 (accessed 1 December 2020). 4. https://​w ww.hin​dust​anti​mes.com/​india-​news/​239-​rhi​nos-​kil​led-​in-​assam-​ since-​2001-​most-​kil​led-​in-​kazira​nga/​story-​Gd3​8sVw​vSgt​tWaI​i1Zs​CYP.html (accessed 1 December 2020). 5. Peluso and Watts, Violent Environments; Elizabeth Lunstrum, ‘Green Militarization: Anti-​ Poaching Efforts and the Spatial Contours of Kruger National Park’, Annals of Association of American Geographers 104, no. 4 (2014): 816–​832; Daniel Brockington and David Wilkie, ‘Protected Areas and Poverty’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 370, no. 1681 (2015): 1–​ 6; Caitlin E. Craven, ‘Refusing to be Toured: Work, Tourism and the Productivity of “Life” in the Columbian Amazon’, Antipode 48, no. 3 (2016): 544–​562; Francis Massé and Elizabeth Lunstrum, ‘Accumulation by Securitization: Commercial Poaching, Neoliberal Conservation, and the Creation of New Wildlife Frontiers’, Geoforum 69 (2016): 227–​237; Rosaleen Duffy, ‘We Need to Talk about the Militarisation of Conservation’, Green European Journal, 20 July 2017. www. greeneuropeanjournal.eu/​we-​need-​to-​talk-​about-​militarisation-​of-​conservation (accessed 1 December 2020) 6. Mr. Rajkumar Thakuria is a middle-​aged Internet sensation, adept at making short films about issues that are in the public domain. His films depict the police, security personnel, and law-​preserving agencies as heroes and make no claims for nuance in the story line. The rhino theme film is titled ‘Animal Killer’ and can be viewed at https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​NfxJ​WdzO​8dk (accessed 1 December 2020). 7. As reported in the Business Standard, 31 March 2014. The piece was reported by the Press Trust of India, and the newspaper version carried the headline—​ ‘People in Assam Govt. Conspiring to Eliminate Rhinos: Modi’. See http://​www. busin​ess-​stand​ard.com/​arti​cle/​pti-​stor​ies/​peo​ple-​in-​assam-​govt-​con​spir​ing-​ to-​elimin​ate-​rhi​nos-​modi-​114​0331​0066​1_​1.html (accessed 1 December 2020). 8. Mrinal Talukdar, Utpal Borpujari, and Kaushik Deka, Secret Killings of Assam: The Horrific Story of Assam’s Darkest Period (Guwahati and New Delhi: Nanda Talukdar Foundation and Human Rights Law Network, 2009 ).

Notes  215 9. ‘Horns of a dilemma’, reported by Danish Raza, photographs by Arun Sharma in The Hindustan Times on 31 January 2016, http://​www.hin​dust​anti​mes.com/​sta​ tic/​kazira​nga-​rhino-​poach​ing/​(accessed 1 December 2020). 10. The RTI appeal was filed by the legal advocacy group Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) in September 2014. 11. Ever since the 1990s, ‘surrenders’ have had a special meaning for political commentators, human rights activists, and media professionals in Assam. In the course of its counter-​insurgency war against insurgents, the state—​including the police, paramilitary, and the army—​had constituted a very controversial system of surrenders for rebels. In return for surrendering arms, former rebels would be given lucrative business deals and contracts, as well as immunity/​impunity from criminal prosecution. See Sanjay Barbora, ‘Road to Resentment: Impunity and Its Impact on Notions of Community in Assam’, in Landscapes of Fear: Understanding Impunity in South Asia, eds. Patrick Hoenig and Navsharan Singh (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2014), 110–​127. 12. Compensation for livestock lost to tigers and leopards was considerably easier to come by. Government bodies such as the National Tiger Conservation Authority (Project Tiger), as well as international non-​governmental organizations (INGOs) such as World Wildlife Fund (WWF), work closely with the forest department as well as park authorities when cases of attacks on livestock are reported in the vicinity of the parks. WWF, for instance, is known to pay INR 10,000 to owners of cattle who can prove that wild cats from the park had taken away their livestock. Some professional conservationists argue that these compensatory programmes are prone to being manipulated by crafty people, who knowingly keep scores of old, near-​dying cattle ‘just so the tigers may pick them up’ (said Mr. Saha). Cursory investigations into the material conditions of those who claim compensation, as well as those who provide the money seem to suggest that claimants remain poor. WWF or Project Tiger, on the other hand, have not been pauperized by these compensatory efforts. 13. Hiren Gohain’s views are précised here, since he responded to the article critiquing his original position. In explaining his views, Gohain underlined the puzzle that continues to nag students of economics: Why do people leave home for poorly paid jobs, when the same jobs could possibly be created in the place of origin? See Gohain, ‘Onya ek praborjon’. 14. See Boruah et al., ‘Proborjon xomporkat eti prastabona’. The authors’ views are précised here. They raised important questions about the agrarian transformation in Assam, pointing out that the archetype of the peasant no longer existed, giving way instead to a migratory labourer with very few specialized skills. They felt that placing the onus of this transformation on the migrating peasant was unfair. 15. In Land’s End, Tania Murray Li brings to light a situation that seems to connect much of the developing world but speaks specifically to the situation in places

216 Notes where land (for subsistence farmers) was thought to be in abundance. She argues that even though much of the young on the planet are unemployed or underemployed, certain categories of people are rendered more vulnerable (than others). Taking on modernization theorists, she shows how in places such as Central Sulawesi (Indonesia), subsistence farmers are unable to secure alternatives to agriculture, even as they realize that their capacity to earn a livelihood through farming has become untenable. They are also unable to transform into workers in manufacturing (or mining) sectors because those jobs do not exist in scales that are able to replace subsistence farming. See Tania Murray Li, Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014). The situation in Assam is much the same, with a generation of people who are migrating to other parts of India for work. 16. Mahesh Rangarajan, ‘The Raj and the Natural World: The Campaign against “Dangerous Beasts” in Colonial India, 1875–​1925’, in India’s Environmental History: Colonialism, Modernity and the Nation, eds. Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2012), 95–​142. 17. Natasha Nongbri, ‘Elephant Hunting in Late 19th Century: North-​East India’, Economic & Political Weekly 38, no. 30 (2003): 3189–​3199. 18. Saikia, A Century of Protests. 19. Gunnel Cederlöf and K. Sivaramakrishnan, eds., Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods and Identity in South Asia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). 20. Arupjyoti Saikia, ‘Kaziranga National Park: History, Landscape and Conservation Practices’, Economic and Political Weekly 46, no. 32 (2011): 12–​13. 21. Mayuri Gogoi, ‘Kaziranga Under Threat: Biodiversity Loss and Encroachment of Forest Land’, Economic & Political Weekly 50, no. 28 (2015): 2616–​2617. 22. Gogoi, ‘Kaziranga Under Threat’. 23. Maan Barua, ‘Circulating Elephants: Unpacking the Geographies of a Cosmopolitan Animal’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 39, no. 4 (2013): 559–​573. 24. Maan Barua, ‘Volatile Ecologies: Towards a Material Politics of Human-​ Animal Relations’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 46, no. 6 (2014): 1462–​1478. 25. Annu Jalais, ‘Unmasking the Cosmopolitan Tiger’, Nature and Culture 3, no. 1 (2008): 25–​40. 26. Robert Cribbs, Helen Gilbert, and Helen Tiffin, Wild Man from Borneo: A Cultural History of the Orangutan (Honululu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014). 27. K. Sivaramakrishnan, ‘Crafting the Public Sphere in the Forests of West Bengal: Democracy, Development and Political Action’, American Ethnologist 27, no. 2 (2000): 431–​461.

Notes  217 28. Shivashish Thakur, ‘Convicted Rate of Arrested Rhino Poachers Poor’, The Assam Tribune, 29 September 2015, https://​www.proqu​est.com/​docv​iew/​171​ 7308​955/​792​C44D​5168​A495​8PQ/​1 (accessed 1 December 2020) . 29. Nandini Sundar, Abha Mishra, and Neeraj Peter, ‘Defending the Dalki Forest: “Joint” Forest Management in Lapanga’, Economic & Political Weekly 31, no. 45/​46 (1996): 3021–​3025. 30. Vandekerckhove and Suykens, ‘The Liberation of Bodoland’. 31. D. N. Dhanagare, ‘Joint Forest Management in UP: People, Panchayats and Women’, Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 37 (2000): 3315–​3324; Debnarayan Sarkar, ‘Joint Forest Management: Critical Issues’, Economic and Political Weekly 44, no. 4 (2009): 15–​17. 32. As reported in The Sentinel, 9 February 2016. In India, the chief secretary has an elevated position with the bureaucracy and carries considerable power and clout. For the High Court to take up the issue with its fraternal institution in governing the state was a significant step. 33. Editorial in The Assam Tribune, 8 May 2015. 34. For more details on the Department of Environment and Forest, Government of Assam, see https://​envir​onme​ntan​dfor​est.assam.gov.in (accessed 1 December 2020). 35. Lynn Meskell, ‘The Nature of Cultures in Kruger National Park’, in Cosmopolitan Archaeologies, ed. Lynn Meskell (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 89–​ 112 . 36. Geographer Elizabeth Lunstrum (2014) draws a connection between the extensive use of paramilitary forces, technology, military hardware, and killings of poachers who challenge the sovereignty of the State, in conservation efforts. Her descriptions resonate with what is currently going on in Assam. See Lunstrum, ‘Green Militarization’. 37. Jake Kosek, Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). 38. Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) memo no. KNP/​FG-​439/​RTI-​ Act/​Pf/​General. I am grateful to activists of the Human Rights Law Network for making this information available, as well as for filing the RTI application. 39. Ghassan Hage, ‘État de Siège: A Dying Domesticating Colonialism’, American Ethnologist 43, no. 1 (2016): 38–​49. 40. Hage, ‘État de Siège’, 43–​44 41. Sanjib Baruah, Post Frontier Blues: Towards a New Policy Frame for Northeast India (Washington: East-​West Center, 2007). 42. R. Dutta Choudhury, ‘Protecting Rhinos Top Priority: Brahma’, The Assam Tribune, 31 May 2016, https://​www.proqu​est.com/​docv​iew/​179​2400​841/​FE0​ 2CC1​F462​047C​BPQ/​1 (accessed 1 December 2020). 43. On 14 June 2016, the Assam Police arrested a District Forest Officer and found large sums of money, animal skin, and ivory in his house. See https://​www.

218 Notes proqu​est.com/​docv​iew/​179​6326​271/​D41​418D​B8E9​34F8​APQ/​25 (accessed 1 December 2020). 44. Elena Kim, ‘Toward an Anthropology of Landmines: Rogue Infrastructure and Military Waste in the Korean DMZ’, Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 2 (2016): 162–​187. 45. Ben Anderson, ‘Population and Affective Perception: Biopolitics and Anticipatory Action in US Counterinsurgency Doctrine’, Antipode 43, no. 2 (2010): 205–​236. 46. Barbora, ‘Road to Resentment’. 47. Wildlife Trust of India has a campaign that is aimed at educating conservationists, policy makers, and the ordinary public about the importance of elephant corridors in the South Asian quadrangle that includes the Terai area of Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and India. For more details, see https://​www.wti.org.in/​ proje​cts/​right-​of-​pass​age/​(accessed 1 December 2020). 48. Barua, ‘Circulating Elephants’. 49. Barbora, ‘Road to Resentment’. 50. McDuie-​Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi; Kikon and Karlsson, Leaving the Land; Li, Land’s End. 51. Loïc Wacquant, ‘The Militarization of Urban Marginality: Lessons from the Brazilian Metropolis’, International Political Sociology 2, no. 1 (2008): 56–​74. 52. On 9 July 2012, a young woman was assaulted by a group of inebriated men as she was leaving a bar in Guwahati’s G.S. Road in the commercial heart of the city. The assault was filmed by a journalist and a cameraman, who were also involved in abetting the assault. This was telecast live and repeated in the various 24-​hour channels in the city. Citizens’ groups were very critical of the government, leading to interventions by various bodies like the National Commission for Women. 53. Daniel Briggs, ‘Frustration, Urban Relations and Temptation: Contextualising the English Riots’, in The English Riots of 2011: A Summer of Discontent, ed. Daniel Briggs (Hampshire: Waterside Press, 2012), 27–​41. 54. Here, I draw from Yamini Narayanan’s work on violence against women in New Delhi. See Yamini Narayanan, ‘Violence Against Women in Delhi: A Sustainability Problematic’, Journal of South Asian Development 7, no. 1 (2012): 1–​22. Narayanan employs the concept of equity and the intersections of class, urban geography, and caste in making women more vulnerable in the city. This concerns equity, social justice, and impacts on access to spaces for other species is something that she extends to her work on dogs and cows in urban India. Her work on inter-​species relationships, as well as the social costs of unsustainable expansion of cities by marginalizing the poor, has guided my own questions about human–​animal conflicts in Assam. See Yamini Narayanan, ‘Street Dogs at the Intersection of Colonialism and Intersectionality: “Subaltern animism” as posthuman critiques of Indian cities’, Environment and Planning D: Society

Notes  219 and Space 35, no. 3 (2017): 475–​494; Yamini Narayanan, ‘Cow Protection as “Casteist Speciesism”: Sacralisation, Commercialisation and Politicisation’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41, no. 2 (2018a): 331–​351. 55. Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Penguin, 1995). 56. Saikia, ‘The Kaziranga National Park’. 57. Saikia, ‘The Kaziranga National Park’. 58. Vandekerckhove and Suykens, ‘The Liberation of Bodoland’. 59. Many of the instances of bribery and corruption seem petty, especially since people perceive that the department is sitting on disproportionate wealth. The news reports, however, are very scathing in their indictment of the officer who is caught accepting bribes. For more details, see www.thehindu.com/​ news/​national/​other-​states/​Assam-​forest-​officer-​arrested-​for-​graft-​animals-​ skins-​ seized/​ article14422112.ece (accessed 1 December 2020) and, www. telegraphindia.com/​states/​north-​east/​5-​year-​jail-​term-​for-​forest-​officer/​cid/​ 1426448 (accessed 1 December 2020). 60. Steven M. Alexander, Mark Andrachuk, and Derek Armitage, ‘Navigating Governance Networks for Community-​ Based Conservation’, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 14, no. 3 (2016): 155–​164; Ken Vance-​Borland and June Holley, ‘Conservation Stakeholder Network Mapping, Analysis and Weaving’, Conservation Letters 4, no. 4 (2011): 278–​288. 61. Amalendu Guha, ‘The Ahom Political System: An Inquiry into the State Formulation Process in Medieval Assam (1228–​1714)’, Social Scientist 11, no. 12 (1983): 3–​34. 62. Antonio Rappa, The King and the Making of Modern Thailand (London: Routledge, 2017). 63. Thomas R. Trautmann, Elephants and Kings: An Environmental History (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2015). 64. Edward Gee, ‘Wild Elephants in Assam’, Oryx 1, no. 1 (1950): 16–​22. 65. UNESCO and IUCN, Report on the UNESCO-​IUCN Mission to the Manas World Heritage Site, India, http://​whc.une​sco.org/​arch​ive/​2005/​mis​338-​2005. pdf (accessed 1 December 2020) 66. Villagers get INR 10 to 12,000 for the destruction of a house (usually made of bamboo and mud). In the rare event of the death of a human by an elephant, the department pays the victim’s next-​of-​kin a sum of INR 400,000. 67. Emma Noëlle Hosking and Marcela Palomino-​Schalscha, ‘Of Gardens, Hopes and Spirits: Unravelling (Extra)Ordinary Community Economic Arrangements as Sites of Transformation in Cape Town, South Africa’, Antipode 48, no. 5 (2016): 1249–​1269. 68. Sushrut Jadhav and Maan Barua, ‘The Elephant Vanishes: Impact of Human-​Elephant Conflict on People’s Wellbeing’, Health and Place 18, no. 6 (2013): 1356–​1365

220 Notes 69. Piers Locke, ‘Explorations in Ethnoelephantology: Social, Historical, and Ecological Intersections between Asian Elephants and Humans’, Environment and Society: Advances in Research 4, no. 1 (2013): 79–​80. 70. Locke, ‘Explorations in Ethnoelephantology’, 79–​97. 71. Dolly Kikon and Sanjay Barbora, ‘The Rehabilitation Zone: Living with Lemons and Elephants in Assam’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 4, no. 3 (2021): 1121–​1138. 72. Dulal Goswami and Partha J. Das, ‘Hydrological Impact of Earthquakes on the Brahmaputra River Regime, Assam: A Study in Exploring Some Evidence’, My Green Earth 3, no. 2 (2002): 3–​13.

Chapter 5 1. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre figures for Northeast India for the year 2015 are comparable to the kind of displacement that occurs in some areas of the world that have seen well-​documented conflicts such as the Central African Republic. For more details, see http://​www.inter​nal-​displ​acem​ent.org/​ publi​cati​ons/​india-​coun​tryw​ide-​respo​nse-​urgen​tly-​requi​red-​to-​addr​ess-​chro​ nic-​inter​nal-​displ​acem​ent (accessed 1 December 2020). The report states that in the period between 2014 and 2015, western Assam alone accounted for ‘at least 346,000’ newly displaced persons due to conflict. 2. Urban studies are catching up as an area of inquiry for social science students. Some of the oeuvres are best captured in the special issue of The Newsletter that is published three times a year by the International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden. The Summer issue of 2017 had special section devoted to ‘Learning to Love the City in Northeast India’, edited by Duncan McDuie-​Ra, where he argued for further reflection on how cities of the region occupy such a central part of our research as social scientists. This is despite the fact that most of our work suggests that we work in rural settings, among village communities undergoing changes, or tribal groups engaged in sustainable agriculture. For more details, see https://​iias.asia/​the-​new​slet​ter/​new​slet​ter-​77-​sum​mer-​2017 (accessed 1 December 2020). 3. Robbins, ‘Beyond the Suffering Subject’. 4. Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018). 5. Walter D. Mignolo, ‘What Does It Mean to Decolonize?’ in On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, by Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018), 140. 6. Mignolo, ‘What Does It Mean to Decolonize?’ 116. 7. WalterD.Mignolo,‘TheConceptualTriad:Modernity/​Coloniality/​Decoloniality’, in On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, by Walter D. Mignolo and

Notes  221 Catherine E. Walsh (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018), 135–​152. 8. Catherine E. Walsh and Walter D. Mignolo, ‘Introduction’, in On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, by Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018), 1–​12. 9. Baruah, India Against Itself; Baruah, Durable Disorder; Udayon Misra, The Periphery Strikes Back: Challenges to the Nation-​State in Assam and Nagaland (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, 2000). 10. The first round of ceasefires between the government and insurgent groups began with the Bodo Liberation Tiger Force, which then morphed into a political party in 2003. Soon, other groups such as the Dima Halam Daoga, Adivasi Cobra Force, United People’s Democratic Solidarity, and smaller formations also signed suspension of operations with the Indian army and entered into separate ceasefires with the government. The two biggest armed groups, United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and National Democratic Front for Bodoland (NDFB), were forced to negotiate terms of peace when most of their leaders were captured and sent back to Assam from Bangladesh in 2009. 11. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007), 53. 12. There is a tragicomic aside to the Maoist story in Assam. Among the ‘most wanted’ Maoists is a canny activist, Aditya Bora. In the 1990s, he remained on the fringes of the human rights movement, choosing instead to observe and occasionally disrupt meetings. A confirmed dissident, he had taken to farming after marrying a human rights activist. He was even awarded the ‘Best Scientific Farmer’ by the administration in Dibrugarh district of eastern Assam. However, Bora disappeared from public view, only to emerge in a fierce encounter with the police in Saranda forest in the Odisha-​Jharkhand border, where he was allegedly sent by ULFA to train Maoists in the use of arms in February 2011. He spent a brief while in jail and was then released on bail. He jumped bail and from accounts in the media (with strong inputs from the police, undoubtedly) is now no longer interested in scientific farming and disrupting human rights meetings but intends to overthrow the entire Indian state with a handful of others who jumped bail with him. Aditya Bora is like a human palimpsest, upon which the state is able to inscribe all manner of subversive intent and action. 13. Michael Given, The Archaeology of the Colonized (London and New York: Routledge, 2004). 14. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (San Diego: Harvest Brace and Company, 1970), 53. 15. I am grateful for Anupama Roy in alerting me to this possibility. In its clarification, I hope to have shed some more light on the outcomes of the past few decades of war and the current, oft-​forgotten peace processes and ceasefires.

222 Notes 16. This is most evident from episodes of wanton violence upon women in Guwahati. On 24 November 2007, Laxmi Orang—​an activist of the All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam (AASAA)—​and several Adivasi activists were brutally attacked, some even hospitalized in Guwahati. Orang was stripped, kicked, and beaten by irate bystanders and shopkeepers who disrupted an AASAA rally in the city. On 9 July 2012, several inebriated young men molested a woman coming out of a bar in a busy road in Guwahati. This act was filmed by a television cameraman and reporter and subsequently shown over and over again to an outraged audience. Both instances, as well as the ones that go unreported, involve young men. Many of these men are first-​or second-​generation city dwellers, having come to the city to escape poverty, natural disasters, violence, and in search of some form of employment. They seldom have regular jobs and constitute the core of what many economists, for the lack of a better terminology, call the informal sector, underemployed youth. Two decades ago, they would have been part of a lumpen proletariat, but their connections to different shades of power make it difficult to retain such certain categories in contemporary times. 17. Chars are seasonal river islands that are found along the Ganga–​Brahmaputra Rivers, especially when they flow in the flood plains. For a better part of the 19th and 20th century, agricultural communities in the Bengal delta region that encompasses present-​day Bangladesh and parts of India and Myanmar were involved in claiming these fertile seasonal areas for winter cultivation. 18. https://​www.downtoearth.org.in/​news/​natural-​disasters/​floods-​affect-​over-​30-​000-​ in-​assam-​56023 19. Nigel W. Arnell and Simon N. Gosling, ‘The Impacts of Climate Change on River Flood Risk at the Global Scale’, Climate Change 134, no. 3 (2016): 387–​ 401; Yukiko Hirabayashi, Roobavannan Mahendran, Sujan Koirala, Lisako Konoshima, Dai Yamazaki, Satoshi Watanabe, Hyungjin Kim, and Shinjiro Kanae, ‘Global Flood Risk Under Climate Change’, Nature Climate Change 3 (2013): 816–​829. 20. James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009). 21. Abdul Baqee, People in the Land of Allah Jaane: Power, Peopling and Environment: The Case of Charlands of Bangladesh (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1998). 22. Baruah, India Against Itself. 23. Hafiz Ahmed, president of the Char Chapori Sahitya Parishad, raises similar concerns in his explanatory interview with journalist Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty in an online journal. Following allegations by Assamese nationalist intellectuals that members of the Mia community—​a pejorative term once used for char Muslims, which some are now attempting to appropriate—​were portraying all Assamese people as xenophobic, Ahmed explained their position in

Notes  223 great detail. He speaks about the Mia community’s resolute efforts to integrate with mainstream Assamese society by drawing on all manner of real and tenuous links from the past. He also rues the lack of effort among the mainstream Assamese—​of every religious colour—​to understand the deeper political significance of the Mia community’s dilemmas in contemporary Assam. See Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, ‘Interview | There is a Conspiracy to Show Bengal-​Origin Muslims as Anti-​Assamese: Hafiz Ahmed’, The Wire, 23 July 2019, https://​thew​ ire.in/​rig​hts/​hafiz-​ahmed-​assam-​miyah-​poe​try (accessed 1 December 2020). 24. Names of all interviewees and respondents have been changed to protect their identities (unless otherwise stated). Personal interview with Rajib taken on 19 July 2019. 25. Rohan D’Souza, Drainage, River Erosion, and Chaurs: An Environmental History of Land in Colonial Eastern India, History and Society New Series 84 (New Delhi: NMML Occasional Paper, 2015). 26. Sanjay Barbora, Peasants, Students, Insurgents and Popular Movements in Contemporary Assam, Policies and Practices 97 (Kolkata: Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2018). 27. Bichsel, Conflict Transformation in Central Asia. 28. Kuntala Lahiri-​ Dutta, ‘Chars: Islands that Float Within Rivers’, Shima: International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 8, no. 2 (2014): 22–​38. 29. Kasia Paprocki, ‘Threatening Dystopias: Development and Adaptation Regimes in Bangladesh’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108, no. 4 (2018): 955–​973. 30. ‘Assam Flood Victims Go Back to Fetch NRC Documents, Some Refuse to Leave Homes’, Scroll.in, 17 July 2019, https://​scr​oll.in/​lat​est/​930​834/​assam-​flood-​vict​ ims-​go-​back-​to-​fetch-​nrc-​docume​nts-​some-​ref​use-​to-​leave-​homes (accessed 1 December 2020). 31. I draw from an intervention made by Dr. Shalim Hussain at a screening of a film on the Nellie massacre of February 1983 in Guwahati on 3 September 2016. A local research centre screened a documentary film by Subasri Krishnan called What the Fields Remember, on the memories of the people who had survived the Nellie massacre. In the discussion following the screening, Hussain made a thoughtful intervention to say that the ‘Bengali-​Muslim’ tag that was used throughout the film was not an appropriate one. He suggested that the word Mia be used instead, eliciting some pushback from a largely progressive audience for whom the word had pejorative connotations. Explaining his position, Shalim said that the standardization of Assamese and Bengali had been detrimental to a host of communities who spoke dialects and versions of the standardized languages, since nationalism dictated the privileging of language (over dialect).

224 Notes 32. Wasbir Hussain, ‘Say Karbi & You’re Dead’, Outlook, 7 November 2005, https://​ www.outlo​okin​dia.com/​magaz​ine/​story/​say-​karbi-​youre-​dead/​229​133 (accessed 1 December 2020). . 33. From Chapter 30 of De vita etmoribus Iulii Agricolae (On the Life and Character of Julius Agricola), by Tacitus (translated by William Peterson). 34. There is an instructive story from neighbouring Meghalaya, where a convenient constitutional fiction allows for a legal pluralism that celebrates community control over resources. Meghalaya is also a state where it is almost impossible for non-​tribal communities to own and transfer property. Even then, there is a sense of disquiet among the indigenous communities of the state. Since September 2013, civic groups including various non-​governmental organizations (NGO) have been demanding the imposition of the colonial-​era Inner Line Permit (ILP) to secure rights and resources for the indigenous communities; in this case, Khasi, Garo, Jaintia, and other communities recognized within the scheduled tribes list in the state. On 1 October 2013, I sat in a small shop in a village called Mowgong, not far from Shella. The village comprised Khasi-​and Sylheti-​speaking communities. As I sat talking to four boys, who switched from Assamese, Khasi to Bengali in their conversation, the ILP debate seemed distant and discordant. The boys were daily wage earners who pointed to the hills above us and said that even though the big mining companies were offering them very high wages to blast limestone out of the hills, they felt unable to work there. Above us, the hills and verdant forests were torn apart with explosives to quarry limestone for the French company, LaFarge’s cement factory in neighbouring Bangladesh. This was as ironic a situation as one can report: young, unemployed, multi-​lingual Syhleti and Khasi teenagers refusing to be part of an exercise that involved wanton destruction of their environment, while well-​ heeled Khasi and Jaintia contractors from Shillong showed no qualms about transporting the minerals to Bangladesh. 35. Walter Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, Translated by Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 283. 36. Benjamin, Reflections, 287. 37. Benjamin, Reflections, 289. 38. I find myself implicated here in the invocation of a personal frame at the beginning of the essay. As a member of the human rights movement that later morphed into the peace constituency comprising as many as twenty-​eight students’ ethnic and democratic organizations, I took part in several fact-​findings and campaigns to restore rule of law in Assam. Our adversarial audience was the Indian state apparatus and those associated with it. Frequently, we cautioned armed groups who had entered into ceasefires with the Government of India that winning the peace was infinitely more difficult than winning the war. Ceasefires rendered amorphous the earlier fixed worlds of activists and oppressors; insurgents and entrepreneurs; journalists and propagandist.

Notes  225 39. John Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunction of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 40. This is exemplified in the state’s inability and unwillingness to address issues of violence perpetrated by security forces, as well as those who have access to political power. Not a single security person accused (by victims and their families) of extrajudicial executions, rape, and torture has been indicted in Assam. 41. Udayon Misra, ‘Assam: Peace Talks or the Fall of the Curtain on ULFA?’ Economic & Political Weekly 46, no. 9 (2011): 10–​12. 42. In what has to be the most telling instance of this process, the Government of India has still not engaged with the ULFA’s requests for knowledge about the whereabouts (or fate) of their officers and cadre who had disappeared in the Indian Army aided operation of the Bhutanese Army in 2003. This was one of the first issues that the pro-​talks leaders had raised in their discussions with the government in New Delhi. However, no information was made available to the public (and one suspects, to the pro-​talks leaders as well). 43. Mignolo, ‘What Does It Mean to Decolonize?’ 125. 44. ‘Compromise’ is a word that appears a lot in conversations among the women of the Mancha. It appears as something they were not able to do. In that sense, many activists have ‘compromised’ and followed more comfortable trajectories since the late 1990s. It is not as if the women are envious or resentful of these choices: They merely assert that these choices were not for them. I thank Dolly Kikon and Parismita Singh for meticulously recounting their long discussions with the activists in January 2014.

Chapter 6 1. Danilo Geiger, ‘Turner in the Tropics: The Frontier Concept Revisited’, in Frontier Encounter: Indigenous communities in Asia and Latin America, ed. Danilo Geiger (Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2008), 75–​215. 2. Frederick J. Turner, ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’, in Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893. (1894): 197–​227.. 3. Baruah, ‘Nationalising Space’. 4. Willem van Schendel, ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20, no. 6 (2002): 647–​668; van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland. 5. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed. 6. Anna Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). 7. Barbora, ‘Autonomous districts’.

226 Notes 8. https://​assam.gov.in/​gov​ernm​ent/​410 (accessed 1 December 2020). Interestingly, almost every ethnic group has been covered under the development councils. These include the Gorkhas, Hindi and Bengali speakers, and Adivasis as well. Muslims from the char areas are notably absent from this list. 9. The BTC in 2019 have two non-​Bodos in the fourteen-​member council. Both were members of the BPF. Mr. Jagadish Sarkar, the elected member in charge of soil conservation, transport, and cooperation, was elected from an unreserved constituency (Mudwibari). Mr. Shyam Sundi, the elected member in charge of fishery, animal husbandry and veterinary, and labour and employment, was elected from Pachnoi Serfang (non-​ST) constituency. 10. Samaddar, The Politics of Autonomy, 25. 11. Lal Dora areas came into existence in Delhi in 1908 during the British era. It was a red line in municipal maps delineating the village population from nearby agricultural land for revenue records. Testifying to the existence of villages in the vicinity of Delhi, and now within the city itself, Lal Dora areas are spaces where villagers can build houses and establishments without following the regular bylaws of the city. The rents in such places are much cheaper than in other parts of the city. 12. McDuie-​Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi. 13. Haksar, The Exodus is Not Over. 14. Kikon and Karlsson, Leaving the Land. 15. Andrew W. Lyngdoh, ‘17 Trapped in Meghalaya Mine, Says Man Who Survived Collapse’, The Telegraph, 18 December 2018. https://​www.tel​egra​phin​dia.com/​ north-​east/​17-​trap​ped-​in-​meghal​aya-​s-​ksan-​mine-​says-​man-​who-​survi​ved-​ colla​pse/​cid/​1679​258 (accessed 12 December 2019). See also Dolly Kikon, Living With Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019). 16. Jalias, Forest of Tigers. 17. Radhika Govindrajan, Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018). 18. Maan Barua, ‘Nonhuman Labour, Encounter Value, Spectacular Accumulation: The Geographies of a Lively Commodity’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42, no. 2 (2017): 274–​288; Maan Barua, ‘Animal Work: Metabolic, Ecological, Affective’, Fieldsights, 26 July 2018. https://​cula​nth.org/​fiel​dsig​hts/​ ani​mal-​work-​metabo​lic-​eco​logi​cal-​affect​ive (accessed 1 December 2020); Maan Barua, ‘Animating Capital: Work, Commodities, Circulation’, Progress in Human Geography 43, no. 4 (2019): 650–​669. 19. Narayanan, ‘Cow Protection as “Casteised Speciesism” ’; Yamini Narayanan, ‘Cow Protectionism and Bovine Frozen-​Semen Farms in India’, Society & Animals 26, no. 1 (2018b): 13–​33.

Notes  227 20. Kim, ‘Toward an Anthropology of Landmines’. 21. Steven Lee, The Ethnic Avant-​Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 22. Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007).

Homeland Insecurities: Autonomy, Conflict, and Migration in Assam Sanjay Barbora https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855329.001.0001 Published: 2022

Online ISBN: 9780191945458

Print ISBN: 9780192855329

END MATTER

Bibliography  Published: March 2022

Subject: Migration Studies

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Homeland Insecurities: Autonomy, Conflict, and Migration in Assam Sanjay Barbora https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855329.001.0001 Published: 2022

END MATTER

Index  Published: March 2022

Subject: Migration Studies

Online ISBN: 9780191945458

Print ISBN: 9780192855329

Index For the bene t of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. 2012 exodus 23–2477–78185 Acharya, Debendranath 198n.22 Adivasis 1943–4457–5962–6369–7072–73101–2161–62182–83184–85222n.16 agriculture 2123262829–3031–3236–3952–5357–5887102–3119121129–30146–47148166185–88 agrarian politics 2128–30374957–58107 irrigation 31168–69 Ahom 22–2324–26142159161 Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Yuva Morcha 92–93 All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam 222n.16 All Assam Plains Tribal League 56 All Assam Students Union 4792–93 All Assam Tribal Students’ Organisation 47 All Bodo Students’ Union 485673–74207n.29 All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) 46–4752 Althusser, Louis 195n.1 Ambedkar, Bhimrao 55 Anderson, Ben 135 Anwar, Nausheen 64–65 Anzaldua, Gloria 23–24105 Apartheid 6975 Arendt, Hannah 163–64 Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 75134–35 Arunachal Pradesh 12–131451–52140160179 Asom Jatiya Yuba Chatra Parishad 3372–73 Assam Agitation (1979-1985) 118–1945 Association 15 Public Works 3195–96n.4 Sanmilita Mahasangha 3195–96n.4 Australia 1588 autonomy 3–45–81314–1544–455562–63102–3181–84 Autonomous Councils 5450Sixth Schedule autonomous hill districts 10–11183–84Sixth Schedule Baksa district 31–3243465260 Banerjee, Paula 1538–3977–78 Bangladesh 8–1012–1316–178690–91169–70 Baqee, Abdul 166–67 Barak valley 10–1112–1315142–43 Barpeta district 165–68 Barbora, Sanjay 18–19212339–40455056–5770–7177–78115–16135–36146–47168–69182 Barooah Pisharoty, Sangeeta 167–68 Barua, Maan 123–24135–36146187–88 Baruah, Apurba Kumar 88–89 Baruah, Sanjib 38151828–2945495085–8688–8990131153167181–82 p. 246

Basu Ray Choudhury, Anasua

15

Basumatary, Jaikhlong 19 Beki River 127165–66167–68 Benedikter, Thomas 62–63 Bengal (East) 1315–1626–27455287–88209–10n.46 Benjamin, Walter 174–75 Bey, Selawar 19 Bharali, Gita 2024 Bharatiya Janata Party 12–1346–4773–7485–8696166179

Bhashani, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan 1626–2787–8890 Bhatiali 26–27358699–100 Bhattacharya, Rajeev 107–8 Bhaumik, Subir 67 Bhutan 31–324351–5257–5869–71107–9133135–36161165175–76 Bichsel, Christine 31168–69 Billé, Franck 51 biopower 18 Black, Michael 60–61 Bodo Bodo Sahitya Sabha 56 Liberation Tigers Force 4656–5760–61221n.10 Peoples Front 183 Bodoland Territorial Area Districts 4950–515253–5457–72107–8180183 Territorial Council 46–4756–5760–6171183 borders 6–9151723–2438–3943516577–7890103131148152–53181–82 Bordoloi Committee 13 Borpujari, Utpal 112 Boruah, Bidyut Sagar 119 Bourdieu, Pierre 91 Brahma, Pramila Rani 132 Brahma, Rupnath 207n.29 Brahma, Upendra 207n.29 Brahmaputra River 148–49168–69222n.17char Valley 10–111314–1524–27507787–8990–91120–21142–43190–91 Brass, Paul. 65 Briggs, Daniel 137 British empire 1516–1724–276588142–43181–82 Brockington, Daniel 109–10 Buddhists 12–13 Buragohain, Bhimkanta 160–62173 bureaucracy 9–1011126–27137–38179–80 Burma 16142–43160181–82 canal 29–3031–3236 Cederlöf, Gunnel 121–22 Central Reserve Police Force 96–97156 Chakma 12–13 Chandra, Nirmal K. 29–30 Chandrapur 93–9497–102 char 26–2786–87165–70176222n.17222–23n.23 Char Chapori Sahitya Parishad 222–23n.23 Chatterjee, Partha 69 Chief Minister Samagra Gramya Unnayan Yojana 100–1 Chirang district 31–3244465269–70 Choudhury, Sanghamitra 15 Choudhury, Sujit 88–89 Citizens for Justice and Peace 197n.17 Citizenship Amendment Act 7–8912–1316–1785–86189–93 colonialism coloniality 152–53176 colonization 51–5290121–22131152–53182192–93 decoloniality 176 Comaro , Jean 49 Comaro , John 49 Communist Party of India 4–524–25

p. 247

con ict armed 5–6141519–2045–4656–5775112130–31134–35143–44153–56159160–64170–73180 environment 1–2404549121–22123134–35137–38140142–44146187–88 ethnic 19–204549–5162–6365–6988–89105–6170–77182 reconciliation 48–4959–6071–7275151–52183 resolution 15172 survivors 495158–6063–6569–70 Constituent Assembly 3954–55 counterinsurgency 51109–10112128–29134–37147–48157–59162–64175–77184–85187190–92 Cribbs, Robert 124 Custers, Peter 26–27 D’Souza, Rohan 168–69 Darrang 67–688791–9295–96 Das, Arup Jyoti 90–91 Das, Partha J. 148–49 Das, Samir Kumar 19–20 Das, Veena 1864–65 Deka, Dixita 34 Deka, Kaushik 112 democracy 5114796104–5124164175183 Deori, Bhimbor 56 Dhanagare, D. N. 126 Dirks, Nicholas B. 88 Dimasa 19101–2153–55170–71184–85 displacement 1519–202452–5363–6477–78105–6135–37145–46151–52 documents 5–68–1017–1822–2365–6779–808191126–27169–70180–82 land users’ certi cate 9–1060–61 legacy 9–10196–97n.13 Doyang Tengani 20–21 Du y, Rosaleen 109–10 Dutta, Anwesha 104–5 Dutta, R. 209–10n.46 Eco-Development Committee 115–16126 elephant corridors 117–18123126–27133–34135–37140–47 employment 9–1059105–6118–19137–38 ethnic identity 1314–1618–2227334546–4748–5762–6364–6568–6988–91104–5116–17163–64170– 77182–83 militia 19–21535961–62153–55 Fact- nding 67151155–56160161–62184–85 Ferguson, James 2937 Fernandes, Walter 20245070–71 oods 152026–2730–3134–355057–58124136–37141–42164165–70176 Foreigners Act 8 Foreigners (Tribunal) Order, 1939 8 forest Department 546069–707195–96113–16117–18122–23125–29137–42143–48 reserve 120136–37138–40141 Gadgil, Madhav 137–38 Gauhati High Court 126–27141 Gee, Edward 142–44 Geiger, Danilo 181–82 gender 23–243438–39137153–55160168176–77189 Gilbert, Helen 124 Given, Michael 162–63 Gogoi, Angshuman 119

Gogoi, Bismita 52 Gogoi, Mayuri 121–23 Gogoi, Suraj 3 p. 248

Gohain, Hiren

10–11234588–89101–2119

Golaghat district 20122–23 Jail 114–15 town 113–14126–27 Good Friday Agreement 69 Gopinath, Devaki 89–90 Goswami, Dulal 148–49 Goswami, Uddipana 19 Govindrajan, Radhika 187–88 grazing areas 31–323637535760126–27 Guha, Amalendu 25–264587–89142 Guha, Ramchandra 137–38 Gupta, Akhil 11 Gupta, Dipankar 88–89 Gurung, Ganesh 39–4077–78 Guwahati 137164185–86189–92 Hage, Ghassan 13131 Hajong 12–1343–44101–2 Haksar, Nandita 23–2477–78185 Hanneng, David 19 Hansen, Thomas Blom 18–19 Haokip, Thongkholal 19 Hardt, Michael 18 Harris, Gardiner 67 Harriss, John 45 Harriss-White, Barbara 29–30 Hobsbawm, Eric 90 Holston, John 175 homelands 14–152123376078–79104–6118–19140172183–84 Hosking, Emma Noëlle 145–46 Hull, Matthew 9 Hussain, Banajit 19 Hussain, Monirul 4588–89 Hussain, Sazzad 209–10n.46 Hussain, Wasbir 19170 Hutt, Michael 77–78 Illegal Migrants (Determination) Tribunal (IMDT) 1983 6–7 Indian National Congress 4–5165587–8895–96111–12179 Indian People’s Theatre Association 38–39 indigenous 14–1544505478104–5107–8121126135–36137–38141181–84203–4n.3 Inner Line Permit 172 Ireland 5–668–6971 Irish Republican Army 5–6 Irrigation 29–3031168–69 Jackson, Michael 78–7984–85 Jadhav, Sushrut 146 Jalais, Annu 187–88 Jatiya Vidyalaya 35 jobs.  See employment Joint Forest Management 115–16126 Joshi, Sandeep 67 K. Balchand 67 K. Sivaramakrishnan 121–22

Kakopathar 155–64176–77 Kant, Immanuel 84 Kar, Bodhisattva 24–25 Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council 122–23182–83 district 19122–23170–71181–82184–85 Karlsson, Bengt G. 2123105135–36185203–4n.3 Kaziranga National Orchid and Biodiversity Park 21–22 National Park 112–25126–27129–31135–36137–38147–48 Khanikar, Santana 18 Kikon, Dolly 212325–2677–78105135–36146–47185–86 Kim, Elena 117134–35 Kimura, Makiko 18–1965 Koroma, Sewa 84–85 Kosek, Jake 130–31 p. 249

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Kyrgyzstan 31 Lacina, Bethany 19–20 Laclau, Ernesto 90–91 Lady Curzon 120–22 Lahiri-Dutta, Kuntala 169 law 7–816–175175112114–15127–28130–31134–35153156–57174Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act; Citizenship Amendment Act; Foreigners Act; Wildlife Protection Act Lederach, John Paul 105 Lee, Steven 189 Lerche, Jens 29–30 Li, Tania Murray 215–16n.15 light-touch policy 14 Lintner, Bertil 60–61 Longkumer, Arkotong 3–4 Lund, Christian 1–245 Lunstrum, Elizabeth 109–10130–31 Lyngdoh, Andrew W. 185–86 Maček, Ivana 58–59 Mahanta, Nani Gopal 5762–6365105–6 Mamdani, Mahmood 6–74965–67 Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti (MASS) 3079 Manas National Park 108–9133143–44145–49 Mandar, Harsh 71–72 Mangattuthazhe, Tom 19 Massé, Francis 109–10 Mayong Bazar 91–9293–97 Mbembe, Achille 17–18 McDuie-Ra, Duncan 2177–78105135–36151–52185 McVeigh, Timothy 71 media 96–97103107–8110–11114–15119126–27129138–39141153–55158–59169170–77187 memory 58–596574–7588118–19161–62 Menon, Vineetha 39–4077–78 Meskell, Lynn 130–31 Mia 37–3886–87167–68169–70 Mignolo, Walter D. 152–53175–76 militarization 77–78109–10112130–31134–35148155–57188–89190–91192 Minghi, Julian V. 90 Misra, Udayon 19153175–76 Mizoram 12–13206–7n.28 Mochachari, Monjib 46–47

Mohilary, Hagrama 46–4756–5760–61 Morigaon 78–8191–93 Muslim Assamese 31–35 Bengal origin 26–2732–3334–3551–5358–5971–7385–93103–4107–8Mia Nag, Sajal 10–11 Naga Hills 5–68–920 plebiscite 4–69 Nagaland 4–61420153160185–86 Nagaon 30–3170–7179–808795–96114–15122–23181–82 Nalbari 31–3234–353744102–3 Narayanan, Yamini 137188–89218–19n.54 Nath, Lopita 88–89 National Democratic Front for Bodoland 67–68134–35153 National Institute of Bodology 47–49 national parks.  See Wildlife parks National Register of Citizens 134–1722–2395–96168–69180 National Textile Corporation of India 97–98 Negri, Antonio 18 Nellie 18–194565223n.31 Nepal 16–1739–4077–78108–9135–36 Nepali-speaking community 10–1148–4952–536069–7088–89 p. 250

Nongbri, Natasha

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Northern Ireland 68–697188 Numaligarh Oil Re nery 117–18 Orang, Laxmi 222n.16 O’Leary, Brendan 5–668–69 Pakistan 4–58964–6577–7882 East 68–9165257–58 Palestine 1688192–93 Palomino-Schalscha, Marcela 145–46 Pandian, Anand 2–3198n.22 Paprocki, Kasia 169 Parag Kumar Das Char Library 167–68 partition 810–1114–151620–2188–90121 Patnaik, Utsa 30 Patowary, Ajit 67–68 Peluso, Nancy Lee 4045 Peoples’ Committee for Peace Initiatives in Assam (PCPIA) 159 Peter, Neeraj 126 Phizo, Angami Zapu 5173 Plains Tribal Council of Assam 56–57 plantation tea 1315–162124–2627–29121–22142–43160 rubber 24–25118–19 Prabajan Virodhi Manch 22–23 R. Gopalakrishnan 88–89 Rabha 141947–4852–53101–2182–83184–85 Raiot Collective 197n.18 Rajkhowa, Gaurav 119 Rajkhowa, Kaberi Kachari 34 Ramamurthy, Nandini 77–78 Rangarajan, Mahesh 120–21 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 95–96107–8 research assistants 64–65 Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI) 24–25

Right to Information (RTI) 114–15130–31 rhino 40107–12116117–18120–32 Robbins, Joel 62–63152 Robinson, Jason 23 Routray, Bibhu Prasad 19 Roy, Ajay 56–57 Rumley, Dennis 90 Saikia, Arupjyoti 2024–2526–2750121–22137–38 Saikia, Parag Jyoti 3 Saikia, Yasmin 22–23 Samaddar, Ranabir 45182183–84 Samdrup Jongkhar 43–4457–58 Sarania, Hira 60–61183 Sarma, Himanta Biswa 100–1 Sarma, Nandini 67–68 Sarmah, Bhupen 54–5587 Savage, Kevin 77–78 Scheduled Tribe 44224n.34.Sixth Schedule Schendel, Willem van 77–78181–82 Schmitt, Carl 153–55173 Scott, James C. 166–67181–82 Seigmann, Karin Astrid 39–4077–78 self-determination 5–6102–3104–5160167180 settler-colonial 6–7141788181–82 Shah, Alpa 29–30 Sharma, Betwa 67 Sharma, Ditilekha 10–11 Sharma, Jayeeta 28 Sharma, Manorama 88–89 Sharma, Saba 209n.45 Siddique, Nazimuddin 10–1146–47 Singh, Bhawani 88–89 Singh, Parismita 75 Singh, Ujjwal Kumar 18 Sixth Schedule 13–1444–4554–55122–23182–83 South Africa 697588130–31 Stepputat, Finn 18–19 Suleri, Abid Qaiyum 77–78 p. 251

Sundar, Nandini

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Suykens, Bert 6571126138–39 Syed Saadullah 1626–2787–88 Sylhet 1686 Tai Ahom 22–23 Talukdar, Mrinal 112 Talukdar, Sushanta 1967 Tamuli Phukan, Ankur 38–39119 technology 9–1128–30148 Thieme, Susan 39–4077–78 tholuwa 37–38 Ti

n, Helen 124

Tinsukia district 155–64 Tiwa 1492–93182–83 Trautmann, Thomas R. 142 Tsing, Anna. 181–82 Turner, Frederick J. 181–82 Udayachal 54 Uni ed Command Structure 157

United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) 3033–3460–61105–6134–35153155–56157–59160–62175–76183 Vandekerckhove, Nel 1545496571126138–39 Varshney, Ashutosh 65 Viqar, Sarwat 64–65 Wacquant, Loïc 91136–37 Walsh, Catherine E. 152–53 Watts, Michael 4045 Weiner, Myron 4588–89 Weizman, Eyal 192–93 White, Hylton 2369 wildlife parks 2040108–10119–20129130–31137–39147–48 Protection Act 114–16125–26127–29 Wilkie, David 109–10 World Wildlife Fund 108–9117–18126–27133 xatra 158–59 Xaxa, Virginius 4445 Yanthan, Khodao 173–74 Zehol, Lucy 199n.28