South Asia in Motion. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. xii, 278 pp. (Table, map.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-1-5036-1128-3.
In the Name of the Nation is a study of the history and politics of colonial and post-colonial northeast India, which the author describes as an “invented” region (25–46). The book begins with a geopolitical introduction followed by the colonial intervention of insulating the region, the construction of non-Indianness of the locals, the segregation of hill/plains, and even mooting the idea of secession of the region from India. Post-Partition, the region was an imputed frontier space plagued by Naga secessionism and Chinese invasion. An insecure post-colonial Indian state had to retain some of the former colonial devices, while introducing new measures like the Sixth Schedule, to ensure domestic security. The creation of small states and institutions, like the North Eastern Council, was used to integrate the region into the national body; however, “these factors combine[d] to produce a persistent perception among the people that they [were] exploited and alienated from the national mainstream” (45), which led to further confrontation between the state and region. A beleaguered Indian state, rather than trying to resolve the crisis, tried to manage it through controversial instruments like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA). Instead of integrating the northeast, the AFSPA further alienated it. The perception of “otherness” of the northeast was reinforced not just through the militarization of the region and a “deficit of democracy”—in which elections become a mere tool to secure legitimacy for the existing political order—but also through regular racial attacks on migrants from the northeast in Delhi and Bengaluru in more recent times. In fact, the use of the AFSPA (177–182) has been shown quite correctly in the book as the most significant disconnect between state and people as well as the otherness of India and northeast India. A pertinent question a reader might ask regards how, since the AFSPA has been withdrawn from most parts of the region (2022), does that alter the otherness of the northeast vis-à-vis the Indian state?
Another major crisis in the region, according to the author, emanated from the alleged infiltration of Bangladeshi (formerly East Pakistan) nationals and their acquiring citizenship. The roots of such “illegal migration” is traced to the reduction of Assam into what the author calls a “settlement frontier” during the colonial period (50). The author shows how the fearful prospect of immigrants becoming a demographic majority over the Indigenous people in Assam tried to be resolved through the interventions of voluntary organizations like Asom Sahitya Sabha (Assam Literary Conference) and the assimilation of the migrants into na-asomiya (neo-Assamese). The book describes how the contention of S. L. Shakdher, Chief Election Commissioner, about the presence of foreign nationals on the electoral rolls of Assam sparked the long anti-foreign national movement. The author also shows how such a contestation over citizenship eventually culminated in the compilation of the National Register of Citizens and the frequent Bodo-Muslim riots in recent years.
Baruah’s study offers rich information on northeast India. Although it devotes more space to the state of Assam, other states also find wide coverage. Through this study, the reader obtains a nuanced coverage of the political development of northeastern India. The author can be credited for contextualizing individual political developments in each of the states of the region into a pattern for the region. It is, however, the interventions of the author that are likely to be controverted and interrogated by readers. For example, while the book rightly locates the construction of the so-called otherness of the people of the northeast to colonialism, it does not do the same for the Muslims in the region. Secondly, the migration of Bengali Muslim farmers from East Bengal was seen as a source of tension both in colonial and post-colonial Assam, but the colonial state as the sponsor of this migration is elided. Sufficient to say, the book rightly shows that the fear of Muslim dominance was a dominant theme of political mobilization in Assam, but what is missed is that this was already a contentious subject long before 1947 as part of rising communal politics in India. The book lacks a quantitative substantiation of issues like migration, demographic transformation, illegal infiltration, and so forth; mere textual narrations on controversial issues reduce the book’s authority.
The alternative ideas the book toys with could add to the controversiality of the book, e.g., the suggestion of the trial of Assamese insurgents under a criminal justice system rather than “military metaphysics” (181). Baruah discusses lessons for the Indian state and change in the trajectory of politics in Assam, but avoids a discussion of the possibility of a peoples’ uprising against the Indian state at such a hearing. The proposed inclusion of armed resistance as acts of citizenship on par with voting for “re-making the nation-state” (190–191) might also be questioned. The author interprets high voter turnout in elections (178–179) as popular approval of policies by the Indian state and describes the rampant proxy voting in Nagaland (182–184) or the involvement of the underground groups in the election processes (182) as a façade of Indian democracy. The defeat of Irom Sharmila in the election, post-abandonment of her anti-AFSPA fast unto death, is attributed to the people’s perception of a “compromise” (185).
The core argument of the book is the disconnect between an unempathetic Indian nation-state and an othered northeast India. There is a palpable tone of victimhood in the book, which begins with its title. Although it is not unfounded—as has been astutely documented by the author—it demonstrates the post-colonial Indian nation-state as the perpetrator, while completely ignoring the role of the colonial state in northeast India, which the author himself highlights in the concept of invented region. In the Name of the Nation is a study of the general crises that post-colonial societies experience in general; northeast India is no exception. Unfortunately exonerating the colonial state by delinking the contemporary developments from colonial transformation does not allow for any meaningful understanding of such a turbulent region as northeast India.
Anindita Ghoshal
Diamond Harbour Women’s University, Kolkata