THE term “North-east” has
become a cliché, wedged in the national imagination
as an antinomy that elicits accusatory admonishment as well
as paternalistic charity. While official strategists-turned-social
scientists, in an attempt to erase historical memories, accuse
the “region” of being responsible for its contemporary
crises, policy planners and “development specialists”
argue in favour of more material endowments to the “region”
to offset its deficits and enable its integration with the
“mainstream”, without any appreciation of the
dynamics between embedded identities, institutional templates
and a share of the development entitlements.
But is there a common collective identity that can be termed
“North-east”, a regional identity that has communal
margins that erase their identities as separate states in
the federal state of India? Why do we not refer to the other
parts of the country with similar “regional” references
that is a collective entity? Is this reference to congeries
of states collectively as “North-east” a justified
designation or is it a political and economic euphemism emerging
from the dilemmas of the antinomy?
The “region” of “North-east”
is perceived as a crucible where conflicts emerging from mismanaged
diversity are open to investigation for politico-ethnographic
documentation and where policy initiatives intended to moderate
diversity are provided a locale for arranged experimentation.
In other words, it has become the novel focus of advocates
and promoters of varied hues. Accordingly, we have area-study
specialists often self-designated as “North-east experts”
mapping the “specialities” of the “region”;
post-colonial ethnographers inspired by a reformulated orientalist
prism involved in deciphering an authentic essentialist core
of the diversity in the “region”; development
experts proposing common blueprints for progressive economic
“growth” of the “region”; activists
of all shades interrogating state-sponsored initiatives as
attempts to effect forcible loyalty of the “region”;
and actors and institutional managers of the state oblivious
to the gradations and materiality of plurality and diversity
propose initiatives for a collective standardised “regional”
transformation.
What we find portrayed eventually is a
“North-east” that is collectively either a “paradise
unexplored” — when one needs to sell it to an
orientalist customer, or more typically as “conflict-ridden”
— when the state needs to strategise non-democratic
initiatives to contain violent defiance. In both these connotations
there is an implicit suggestion of an essential “core”
that the “region” commonly possesses and reflects.
The implicit assumption is that there is an innate, natural,
uncontested and fixed content through which the “region”
can be represented and also reproduced. In the sense of the
“paradise unexplored”, the “region”
evokes an exoticised mystery that is arcane and enigmatic.
A tangible expression of such exoticisation is revealed in
the increasing vulnerability of “North-east” women
in cities like Delhi due to their exotic features that often
conjures images of desirability and explains the rising crime
graph against them or even in the observation of fashion designers
that “North-eastern” girls evoke an exotic sensuality
that would be so much appreciated by the gaze of the fashion
world.
Contrarily, in the sense of the “conflict-ridden”
connotation this incomprehensible mystery evokes a political
suspicion that becomes the dominant rhetorical trope for justifying
“normalising” and “controlling” efforts
of the “periphery”, revealed in the execution
of laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the
choice of former Army generals and Intelligence officials
as governors whose loyalty is only to the “Centre”.
Even scholars representing the region, regardless of their
scepticism about such collective designation called “North-east”
and their belief that such descriptions do not evoke any historical
memory or collective consciousness, attempt to replicate this
collective misnomer by incredulously suggesting that this
“region” is evidently allied by a “durable
disorder” or a “periphery” that is able
to “strike back”. A “disorder” in
a “periphery” that innumerable ethnic groups ensconced
within a common geographical typography but at varied stages
of historical and political evolution collectively experience
and express in their attempts at locating their social and
political relevance within a shared national self-consciousness.
The experience of common ambiguities and anxieties that ethno-cultural
groups engaged in asserting and recovering their selfhood
confront in the process of their negotiations with the state
or with proximate ethno-cultural groups in the “region”
is another astute expression of this commonness.
As such this common predicament of “collective
disorder” supposedly provides the “region”
its identifiable essence and erases the bewildering heterogeneity
of ethno-cultural identities and groups in the constituent
states, necessitating a shared designation and standardised
prescriptions.
Nonetheless, we may hazard the suggestion that without much
clarity about what constitutes this “North-east”,
we have incorporated a number of separate states within a
homogenising conceptual grid and forcibly provided it with
a collective identity that fails to express the diversity,
ethos and autonomy of each of the constituents. The hangover
of an essentialist frame wedded to a patronising attitude
girded within a perception of violent yet esoteric societies
has possibly imbued this collective frame called “North-east”
its referential basis, incongruously reinforced and internalised
by a conditioned repetition.
The upshot of such a collective misnomer
is that the “region” has become a rigmarole of
proposals and procedures, intentions and initiatives too chaotic
and standardised to reflect their impression on the separate
constituents and their specific requirements. It may be worthwhile
that we refocus our approach towards the individual states
of the “region” and view them not as a common
cultural artefact or a collective commercial entity but as
federating states of India, each distinctive and irreplaceable.
Courtesy : The Statesman |
Home | About Us | Contact
Us | Site Map | Feedback
