In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India by Jelle J P Wouters, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp xxiv + 331, ₹995.
Nagaland politics is probably at its nadir at this moment. The events of the few months before the assembly election, the results for which were declared on 3 March 2018, demonstrate this. Moreover, the formation of a new government was delayed for a few days after the results were declared.
It would be preposterous to treat the results in the recent assembly elections in the three North Eastern states—Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura—as a barometer for the Lok Sabha elections 2019 in these states.
Even if it has scored convincingly in the short run, there is no guarantee that the new government’s problems are over. It will have to keep its own members of legislative assembly happy when a majority of the cabinet ministers are from the smaller parties that are supporting it.
The electoral battle is now concluded in Manipur, and the BJP’s victory is nearly definite, pending a floor test. Even if it has scored convincingly in the short run, there is no guarantee that the new government’s problems are over. It will have to keep its own MLAs happy when a majority of the cabinet ministers are from the smaller parties that are supporting it. There is also the manifesto of one of these parties promising the division of Manipur to form Greater Nagaland, a contentious issue.
A rejoinder to Neville Maxwell's "Olaf Caroe's Fabrication of the 'McMahon Line'" (EPW, 6 August 2016) claims that there are many factual inconsistencies. The author also asserts that Maxwell deliberately silences alternate explanations to his claims.
The clashes in Manipur over three controversial bills passed by the Manipur assembly last year extending the Inner Line Permit System have exposed not just the divisions within Manipuri society between the hill people and those living in the valley, but also the attitude of mainstream Indian media towards such conflicts in the North East. Instead of bringing out the historical underpinnings of the current conflict, the media has preferred to reduce the problem to a binary of two conflicting views.
Delhi's chest-thumping journalists are becoming mere stenographers of power, forgetting to ask questions and interrogate official narratives. A journalist from Manipur recounts the events leading up to and around the 9 June 2015 "surgical strikes" by the Indian Army against insurgents and explains the event in its contexts.
Delhi's chest thumping journalists have become mere stenographers of power, forgetting to ask questions and interrogate official narratives. A journalist from Manipur recounts the events leading up to and around the 9 June 2015 “surgical strikes” by the Indian Army against insurgents and explains the event in its contexts.
The results of the Manipur elections point to an interesting theme paradox - the Congress was voted back to power despite its all-round failure in governance. The voters perhaps felt the need to vote the party back to power in the state contiguous to its reign in the centre, conditioned by incidents in history pertaining to centre-state relations. The rise of the Trinamool Congress as a force in the state and the marginal victories for the Naga People's Front also carried important local messages.
As the events of the past two months have shown, Manipur is now a divided house. The seeds for this division were visible even before the merger of the state with the Indian Union in 1949. Today, in this insurgency-torn state, the liberation that a section of the population seeks is not the liberation another wants. The politics behind the 68-day economic blockade over the issue of revival of the Autonomous District Councils in the hill districts, which further hardened after the state government refused to allow the Naga nationalist leader, Thuingaleng Muivah, to visit his "home" village located in Manipur revealed the complex and antagonistic nature of ethnic aspirations that seem to make the state destined for conflict.
