Embracing, integrating the North East

Articles of Faith

A recent article by young law student Thangminlal (Lalcha) Haokip in Round Table India asks a provocative question: Is there space for the North-Eastern identity in student politics in Indian universities? Drawing on his own experience and of others from the North-East hill tribes, he finds that the four main streams of political thought in mainland university politics (Hindu right-wing, feminism, Marxism and Ambedkarite) offer little to the peoples of the North-East hill tribes. Not for lack of trying, he points out -- their concerns, worldviews, positions and articulation are all entirely alien to those from India’s geographical margins.

This is a superbly written and thought-provoking article and has found broad agreement among those from the region. Haokip extends his argument to Indian politics in general -- none of the major streams of political thought have found a way to reach out to and create a space for the North-Eastern identity in the larger Indian politics. The Congress and BJP may have won a lot of seats and elections in the region, but this has been the result of horse-trading and coalition-building, a pragmatic rather than a principled accommodation.

How did the framers of the Constitution think about the issue of creating space for the North-Eastern identity within the larger Indian identity. Areas of the North-East (they were not all distinct states then) were to be governed by the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. These provisions give such regions a form of autonomous government, creating district councils and regional councils for the areas covered by the Schedule. They are like the tribal areas in the rest of India, which are covered under the Fifth Schedule, with a key difference: Fifth Schedule areas are notified and under the executive supervision of the Union government; Sixth Schedule areas are under the state governments.

As with the Fifth Schedule, the Sixth Schedule is also the result of the tireless efforts of a remarkable gentleman who has been somewhat forgotten: Reverend JJM Nichols Roy. A member of the Khasi tribe of what is now Meghalaya, he was the only representative of all the North-East hill tribes in the Constituent Assembly. He, like Jaideep Singh Munda for the Adivasis, was a firm advocate of the tribal way of life finding its own space under the Constitution.

Unsurprisingly, then as now, provisions of the Sixth Schedule were met with fierce resistance by members of the Constituent Assembly, most notably those from Assam who seemed to think that Naga hill tribes (among others) were head-hunting “primitives” who needed to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into “modernity” by the Indian State. Rev. Roy, however, responded to this outpouring of bile with calm and reasoned points.

As someone who believed in the Indian State and the principles of fraternity and equality it chose to espouse, Rev. Roy defended the culture of the hill tribes as one which was arguably superior in many ways to the culture in the Indian plains. He argued that the way forward for Indian peoples, whether of the plains or of the hill tribes, was to put themselves in the other’s shoes and understand their ambitions and aspirations with empathy and love, not fear or disgust. He believed that the compromise in the Sixth Schedule was a great way to preserve local culture and unify India and give the two groups of cultures an opportunity to live with each other harmoniously.

Rev. Roy’s vision, however, is still to be fulfilled. At the political level, mainland India is still unwilling to put itself in the shoes of the North-East peoples and engage with them as equals, preferring violence and intimidation to empathy and understanding. This approach extends to the average individual also. The Indian State and people of the rest of the country have made little effort to understand the cultures and ways of living of the North-East. This has taken a sinister turn now when they are called offensive names and attacked by mobs as has happened following the outbreak of Covid-19.

Even as more and more people from the North-East move to settle in mainland India, there’s a need perhaps to think beyond a pragmatic, grudging accommodation and think of ways to embrace the peoples of the North-East. While anti-racism legislations might help discourage some of the worst behaviours directed toward them, it is also incumbent on the Indian government and civil society to find ways to engage politically, culturally and socially with the North-East peoples on a large scale. That is the only way Rev. Roy’s vision will be fulfilled.