NorthEast India – The Forgotten Land
From the Lens of Education and Literature
Author: Raktim Ronojoy Neog
Keywords: Northeast India, Education, Racism, Partition, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim
Introduction
In 2021, a YouTuber named Paras Singh from India’s Northern state of Punjab allegedly made racist comments. Against the former Member of Parliament (MP) Ninong Ering of Arunachal Pradesh. A state in India’s Northeastern region, allegedly terming “Ering as a non-Indian and Arunachal Pradesh, a part of China,” in one of his videos.
Paras was soon arrested by the Arunachal Pradesh police and in response to his racist comments. At least 40 student organisationsorganizations from 8 universities in northeast-India decided to engage in a ‘Twitter storm’ in June 2021. To demand the Central government to compulsorily include a chapter on the history and culture of the region in the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) syllabus. In order to educate the people of other Indian states in a bid to fight racism.
The Northeast and the Mainland India
Northeast (NE) India is made up of seven states, commonly referred to as the “Seven Sisters”. These are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim, which are often referred to as the “Brother” to the seven states.
One of the most ethically, culturally, and linguistically diverse regions in India. However each state has its distinct cultures and traditions, and is connected to the rest of “mainland” India. (As the popular narrative from the perspective of North and Central India dictates.) By a narrow 20-kilometer wide corridor of land, known as the “Chicken’s Corridor”, which is sandwiched between Nepal and Bangladesh.
Racial Attacks
And this incident of an individual from “mainland” India making racist comments or engaging in racism against people from N.E. India isn’t an isolated or a unique one.
It is, in fact, a part of a long chain of similar, disturbing incidents where people from N.E. India have bore the brunt of racism.
- The killing of Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, in Delhi in 2014.
- The revelation by a Nagaland Minister about his experience of racism in New Delhi in 1999. Wherein he was questioned about his Mongoloid looks.
Are just some of the hundreds of incidents of racism faced by the people of N.E. India from “mainland” Indians.
Worse, several of these offences go just unreported. Thus hiding them from the awareness and consciousness of the citizens from non N.E. states. At the core of this problem lies a plethora of political, socio-cultural, economical and historical reasons which dates back to several decades ago. And education has often been seen as a tool to rectify the problem. One of the ever-growing demands has been for inclusion about the information of NE states in textbooks followed in Indian schools. However, no concrete steps for implementing the same has been undertaken till date.
Academic Lacking
In India, academic learnings on how school textbooks can define the ‘national identity’ of different social groups is particularly absent. Identity determination, as formulated by nationalized school textbooks, provides privileges to one identity over the other. This, in turn, impacts the dynamics of race and heterogeneous relations. As it has between India’s “mainland” population and the people of Northeast India. Compelling the latter to become victims of racism in their own homeland.
The notion of national identity is deeply rooted in what is taught in educational institutes in countries across the world. Where the states and their machinery try to enforce singular ideas of a ‘nation’.
Background
To understand the issue further, we need to delve into historical records, which encompass political, socio-cultural and economic factors. The step-motherly attitude of “mainland” Indians towards people of NE India has its roots in the pre-independence era as well.
Bodhisattva Kar, a historian of contemporary Assam, mentions about a curious account of a debate. Between Jawaharlal Nehru and the then Assamese public intellectual Gyananath Bora during Nehru’s visit to Assam in 1937 as Congress president. India’s freedom movement and poverty elimination schemes were priorities of the Congress party’s agenda at that time. Nehru appealed to the Assamese masses to give greater importance to those “national problems” over Assam’s “provincial problems”.
After reaching Assam, Nehru discovered to his astonishment that local public opinion was dominated mostly by the issue of immigration from the then region of eastern Bengal and not by any “national issue”—not even India’s freedom struggle. The separation of Sylhet, a district of South Assam with a predominantly Bengali-speaking population, and the implementation of the Line System to restrict the areas open to settlement by new immigrants topped on the list of concerns of the people that came to see Nehru.
These problems were aggravated when NE India underwent partition during India’s independence in 1947.
The Partition of Northeastern India
The first was the bifurcation of Burma in 1937, which partitioned the tribes of Nagas, Mizos, Manipuris and the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh between two independent administrations. This was done for administrative convenience but the region’s socio-cultural aspects were ignored, which thus had a catastrophic impact on the kinship relations and trade connectivity.
Then in 1947, when the then greater region of Bengal was to be partitioned, the matter rested upon the bifurcation of Sylhet district, with the central question being that if Sylhet was to remain in Assam or to merge with East Bengal. This issue not only brought northeast India into the politics of partition, it also brought tribes and communities of the hills and plains of NE India into the partition question, even though most were not even party to the negotiations.
Aftermath
When partition finally took place, the entire NE region we know today was physically separated from the rest of the country, and remained connected just through the Chicken’s Neck. Partition heavily put the existing system of agriculture and plantations into an array of disorder. According to the Census Report of 1951, it stated that “the far reaching effects of this loss will continue to be felt by Assam as well as India for many years to come. Partition disrupted the natural channels of riverine communication, rail and road networks that linked the hill areas of colonial Assam through the Surma valley and had adverse effects on Assam’s economy.”
Partition also negatively impacted the social and economic aspects of the various tribal communities in the region. The tribal communities such as the Khasis, Jaintias and the Garos suffered heavily as their traditional, cultural and socio-economic relationship with the now newly created East Pakistani districts of Sylhet and Mymensingh respectively were heavily damaged, who were internally divided into Indians and Pakistanis, depending on their area of residence.
Post-independence Sidelining of the NE
These effects continued to be felt for many decades in the post-independence era, and coupled with the apathy and negligence of the central leadership in Delhi, it ensured that NE India remained a backward region for many decades to come. However, this is not to say that Partition and the national leadership’s actions are solely responsible for the problems of NE India.
As Nitin A. Gokhale writes in the ‘Outlook’, the segregation of the Northeast is also much more due to the failure of leadership, resourcefulness and the lack of initiative on part of its own people. For several years, a segment of the leadership and the educated elite class among the states of Northeast have turned into willing collaborators with the ‘exploiter’ class from New Delhi and mainland India. And this process began not today but almost three decades ago.
Systematic Elimination
All these factors also spilled over into the education sector, and ensured that people from mainland India never learned much about the region. In the process, people from other non NE states missed out a lot of crucial knowledge about NE India and its rich socio-cultural and traditional aspects.
The systematic exclusion of Northeast India from national textbooks began in the mid-60s. When leading historians started framing school curriculum as a part of broader nation building project. The exclusion apparently has solidified the inequality between ‘us’ and the ‘others’ – the notion of “mainland” Indians and Northeast Indians. Which can also be statistically verified. The collaborative intellectual and academic dishonesty, deception and lack of political vision and wisdom for an inclusive academic curriculum policy are largely responsible for making Northeast Indians invisible in the eyes of “mainland” Indians. Thereby labeling the former as aliens.12
What have Our Textbooks been Missing?
In 2017, NCERT rolled out a book – ‘North East India: People, History and Culture’. However this book is just a supplementary piece. This supplementary text book has been prescribed for Classes 9 to 12. But due to the already heavy compulsory syllabus and the supplementary nature of the book. It has been made inconsequential, and hence many students skip reading the book.
In India, among other existing disciplines, history textbooks put together by prominent historians are welcomed. Yet they often heavily focus on the ruling dynasties, actively putting forward a two-nation theory. Which is strengthened by the idea of a hierarchical duality of the ‘Hindu majority’ vs the ‘Muslim minority’. Such a narrow-minded projection of Indian history refuses to acknowledge the existence of several other communities from its textual narratives. The histories of marginalized social-cultural groups are also ruled out from such narratives.
The presiding Indian historiography also focuses on its narrative of Indian nationalism. Consistently relating it with anti-colonial movements and uprisings. For instance, the ‘Modern India’ history school textbook chronicles the Revolt of 1857 as India’s first war of independence. Wherein millions of Indians fought gallantly against the British rulers, leaving behind a legacy of a significant chapter in India’s history of freedom struggle. The textbook knowingly disregards the gallant sacrifices made by the people from Northeast India. Gomdhar Konwar, the Ahom prince of Assam; Kiang Nongbah from Meghalaya; Major Paona Brajabashi, the heroic soldier and martyr from Manipur kingdom are a few names to cite.12
Anglo-Manipur War
In New York Times, titled ‘The Manipur Massacre: Blame Put Upon the Government: Despatches Held Back‘, published – May 16, 1891. The author chronicles the event of the public execution of the five top British officials in Manipur. And how the incident led to the Anglo-Manipur War of 1891 — the last Indo-British war in the Indian subcontinent. In the war, the Manipuri forces, under the heroic leadership of Major Paona Brajabashi, were defeated. After the end of the war, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Viceroy of India publicly executed the Commander in Chief. The commander of the Manipuri Army, Bir Tikendrajit and General Thangal were hanged on August 13, 1891. While Jubraj and Prince Angou Sana were transported for life.
On June 23, 1891, the New York Times further reported the Anglo-Manipur conflict was a significant war fought on Indian soil, leading to a series of aching problems among British officials which resulted in the resignation of Sir J.E Gorst, the Under Secretary of the India Office.
The Phulaguri Unrest
Also, the Phulaguri Uprising of 1861, in Phulaguri, Assam, is another important event. When the British government banned the cultivation of poppy in 1860, it destroyed the local economy of the tribal areas as the consumption of opium was considered to be the highest in the area. Furthermore, the government also levied heavy land taxes upon the cultivators, which was beyond their paying capacity. This only led to ever-increasing discontent among the cultivators, and led to furious clashes between armed farmers and colonial police forces in 1861.
The Uprising of 1893
The Patharughat Uprising in Assam was also a similar incident. In 1893, when the British rulers increased the agricultural land taxes by 70 – 80 percent in Assam, it led to a massive protest by unarmed farmers in the Patharughat village in Assam, on January 28, 1894. The colonial police opened fire, which led to a bloodbath.
Jaintia Rebellion
The Jaintia Hills Rebellion of 1861 was another significant event in Indian history. A historic uprising in Jaintia Hills started from December 28, 1861 under leadership of Kiang Nangbah, who engaged in a war with imperial British forces after the latter desecrated an indigenous religious ceremony. Other than that, imposition of heavy taxes by British created unrest amongst Jaintias who rose in fierce rebellion in 1862. In the unequal battle that followed, hundreds of Jaintias were eliminated and Kiang Nangbah was captured and hanged publicly on December 30, 1862.
Thus, the Anglo-Manipur War, the uprisings of Phulaguri and Patharughat, and the Jaintia Hills Rebellion were important historical events in India. It’s disappointing that our history textbooks only mention about it in passing and that too while projecting it as border clashes between British India and Burma (Myanmar).
Moreover, in India, there are almost 5,000 communities from a variety of races. Northeast India includes 50% of India’s empirical social-cultural diversity in this culturally heterogeneous set-up. The ethnicity, socio-culture, customs and traditions, language, beliefs and practices, attires, cuisines, and lifestyles represent the unique history of about 45 million people. Yet, the people of NE India are almost completely invisible in the social-cultural narratives of nationalized school textbooks.
End Note
An immediate effect of this erasure has undermined and threatened the identity of Northeast Indians. This almost well-structured erasure reflects a bankruptcy of elitist and dominant scholarly practices. That serves to approve a hegemonic version of what Indian nationalism and historiography stand or ought to stand for. From the perspective of racial aspects, the Mongoloid feature of Northeast Indians has not found an acceptable place in the common imagination. As well as the narratives of the rest of India – the cultural mold of the Aryan-Dravidian phenotypes. Northeast Indians are often mistaken, and targeted, as citizens of East and Southeast Asia, and more brazenly, as Chinese. The such misconception of identity has led to innumerable cases of racial attacks in the country.
In the process, a lot of Northeast Indians face psychological trauma and fright. Often finding themselves stuck in undesirable situations in their own country. We often see moral policing and hatred against Northeast Indians for their ‘Un-Indian’ and “Chinese” lifestyles and Mongoloid facial features.
Thus, educating Indians in non-NE states through the inclusion of lessons and chapters about NE India. Textbooks are one of the crucial measures in the efforts to end racism against NE Indians. Racism is wholly against the fundamental aspects of democratic principles, practices, and values of unity in diversity that India often boasts of. This essay thus calls for immediate acknowledgment and recognition of racial antagonism and prejudices. So that we demolish the distinction and notion of “mainland” Indians and Northeast Indians. And begin to see us as one entity while respecting our diversities.
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