TERRITORIES of BELONGING Citizenship and Everyday Practices of the State in Bodoland
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TERRITORIES OF BELONGING Citizenship and everyday practices of the state in Bodoland Saba Sharma Department of Geography University of Cambridge This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Hughes Hall April 2019 Declaration This thesis is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution, except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit of 80,000 words of the Degree Committee for the Faculty of Earth Sciences & Geography. 2 Thesis Summary My thesis looks at the construction of citizenship in the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD, or Bodoland for short) in Western Assam, India. The BTAD is an autonomous sub- region within the state of Assam, which in turn is part of a cluster of states in Northeast India. I look primarily at the everyday practices of the state in an ethnically diverse region with a history of separatism, armed militant struggle, and violence between different ethnic groups. Two related strands of difference underlie the notion of citizenship here — the territorialised expression of ethnicity as manifested in the Indian context; and the idea of India’s Northeast as being a space of exception vis-à-vis the rest of the country. As has been repeatedly emphasised by scholars of citizenship, creating citizens is a fundamentally exclusionary process contingent on the process of creating Others. There is no “us” without a “them”. Equally, these categories have always been nebulous and contested, never neatly fitting onto the reality they claim to represent. It is precisely this process of construction and negotiation in Bodoland to which I turn my attention. My understanding of citizenship is developed in the backdrop of Assam’s contemporary exercise of updating its own National Register of Citizens, a process designed to identify illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. Building on the demands of Assam’s sub- nationalist movement in the 1980s, the present-day NRC process has also acquired religious overtones, with the state’s large Bengali-speaking Muslim community being singled out as “Bangladeshis” en masse. This has resonated across Bodoland, where the Muslim community has come into multiple conflicts with the state’s autochthonous group, the Bodos. It is primarily among these two groups that my thesis explores the conflicting practices and ideas of citizenship. I attempt to unpack the role of the state in the shaping of this relationship, including its heavily militarised presence in the region. In doing so, I adopt approaches from the anthropology of the state, i.e., focussing on its everyday character, looking at routine practices, as well as the ways in which the state represents itself in ordinary settings. I explore the tensions between conflicting notions of citizenship in four main ways. First, I look at the historical context of the region, and in particular its evolving relationship with the Indian state. Second, I look at the often-contentious and deeply important politics of land and territory, which have been central to the expression of political identities and politicised ethnicities in the region. Third, I examine electoral and everyday party politics, which provide a window into the many contradictions in the practices and representations of the state and corresponding ideas of citizenship. And finally, I explore the rise of a new politics in India and its impact in the region — the emboldening of right-wing Hindu fundamentalist groups in recent years, and how they challenge ideas of insiders and outsiders as they are understood today. In each of these themes, I look at citizenship not just as it is formalised and expressed in legal terms, but as it is enacted, practiced, resisted and re-appropriated for context. In addressing these issues, I am also exploring the question of how India’s Northeast shapes the national imagination, and whether its confinement to the “periphery” of Indian identity reveals deeper insights into the shaping of India as a nation. 3 Acknowledgments First and foremost, a heartfelt thanks is due to Prof. Bhaskar Vira, for his unending patience, support and encouragement for the PhD and beyond. I could not have hoped for a better supervisor, who has probably read chapter drafts more times than I have, and never failed to provide support, whether intellectual or practical. I would also like to thank the Gates Cambridge Trust, for enabling this PhD with their scholarship, as well as providing additional funding for conferences and academic activities. I also thank the Smuts Memorial Fund and University Fieldwork Fund for allowing me to conduct long, in-depth field research, and the Philip Lake Fund at the Department of Geography and Hughes Hall Travel Grant for enabling attendance at conferences. The Department of Geography provided for an important intellectual and interactive space, both staff and fellow students provided a much needed sense of community. Special thanks to Philip Stickler for producing the maps in this thesis. Thanks also to the Northeast India reading group and its members, especially Prof. Arupjyoti Saikia, whose generosity during his stint at Cambridge was very valuable. I’m grateful for discussions and feedback at various conferences — the King’s India Institute Graduate Workshop, BASAS Conference, RGS Annual Conference in Cardiff, Northeast India Conference in Tezpur, and the Ethnographic Perspectives on South Asian Politics Workshop at Manchester University, and the First and Third Year Conferences at the Department of Geography. Much of what is in this thesis is owed the time I spent in Assam, and all the participants who spent so much of their time answering my naïve questions. A special and heartfelt thanks goes to Ajay and Khoshbub, for their help with research and translation, their willingness to engage in endless discussions of what they rightly called “our” project, and their friendship. A special thanks is also due to Jenny and Sunil and everyone at the ANT, for sharing space on their campus, and Bala and Rhon, and all the animals that lived with us for providing much needed company in what could have been a very lonely journey. I’m grateful to Joshua and the Central Institute of Technology in Kokrajhar, for allowing me to stay on their campus during parts of the fieldwork. Thanks also to Xonzoi, Parasmita, Jila, Abdul and Prof Monirul Hussain in Guwahati for being so generous with their time, and to Dr Melvil Pereira for letting me use the library at the NESRC. I’m grateful also to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Archives, as well as the Assam State Archives, for granting me permission to 4 peruse their records. I’m thankful to the Centre for Equity Studies in New Delhi for the opportunity to work in Assam to begin with. I’m grateful for the company of friends in Cambridge and London in the last three and a half years Thanks also to Ligia aunty and Peter uncle, Gayatri and Roshni for being present and full of cheer through the process. I’m thankful for the support of Vasav, by ways of long breakfasts and Skype calls (among other things), and providing much-needed doses of humour and reality. I am grateful to Sarab (and his wonderfully comfortable couch) for preventing a housing crisis from derailing the writing process, and for being so generous with his space and time. I am grateful to my parents for providing encouragement, support, food-on-demand during my trips home, for always reminding me not to take things too seriously (to no avail, of course), and to my mum especially for proofreading the thesis. I owe a special debt of gratitude for the patient ear, companionship, and conversation of Ambika, who never seems to tire of my long-winded rants. And last but not least, I could not have gotten through the process without the presence and support of Siddharth, who is simultaneously a reader of drafts, a sounding board for whacky ideas, and a crisis hotline. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my intrepid, trailblazing grandmother, who passed away just weeks before its completion. As a student, she never got to submit her own, nearly- finished PhD dissertation, and would have been thrilled to watch me hand in mine. 5 Glossary AASU All Assam Students Union AAMSU All Assam Minority Students Union ABSU All Bodo Students Union ABMSU All BTC Minority Students Union AFSPA Armed Forces Special Powers Act AGP Asom Gana Parishad AIUDF All India United Democratic Front ALRR Assam Land and Revenue Regulation (Act) BJP Bhartiya Janata Party BLTF/BLT Bodo Liberation Tigers Front/ Bodo Liberation Tigers BPF Bodoland Political Front BSS Bodo Sahitya Sabha BTC Bodoland Territorial Council INC Indian National Congress MCLA Member of Council Legislative Assembly MLA Member of Legislative Assembly NDFB National Democratic Front for Bodoland NRC National Register of Citizens NSK Nagarik Seva Kendra (Citizen Service Centre) PTCA Plains Tribal Council of Assam RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ST Scheduled Tribe TLCC Tertiary Level Coordination Committee ULFA United Liberation Front of Assam UPP United People’s Party VCDC Village Council Development Committee VHP Vishwa Hindu Parishad 6 Table of Contents CHAPTER 1.