India and Its Northeast Exception: from Frontier to Forefront
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Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2015 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2015 India and Its Northeast Exception: From Frontier to Forefront Akshita Manjari Bhanjdeo Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2015 Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, and the South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Recommended Citation Bhanjdeo, Akshita Manjari, "India and Its Northeast Exception: From Frontier to Forefront" (2015). Senior Projects Spring 2015. 118. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2015/118 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. India and Its Northeast Exception: From Frontier to Forefront Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College by Akshita Manjari Bhanj Deo Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2015 Dedication In my last year of high school, while aimlessly searching for something on the Internet, I came across a Google image of a Manipuri woman sitting on the side of the street in New Delhi. For some reason I stopped on the picture and tried to figure out who she was. With piercing black eyes and wiry thin hair cascading down her shoulders wrapped in a white shawl she looked so frail and delicate. On leaning closer I could discern the letters on the signboard she was sitting beside, it read, “Repeal AFSPA”. I would later come to hear about her as the Iron lady of Manipur, Irom Chanu Sharmilla. Who has shown more strength, courage and resilience than the dozen military officers who stood watching her silently protest that cold day in New Delhi. Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my adviser Sanjib Baruah for his unwavering support throughout the course of all my four years at Bard, and especially my senior year. You were the first professor I ever had in college, and after my first class with you my first semester. I knew I wanted to be a political science major. Thank you for being patient with me and always meeting me with a smile. Your positive attitude was one of the reasons I was able to express myself and think outside of the box, and through our conversations I feel I have acquired some of your passion for the politics of the northeast. It will now forever be a region of South Asia close to my heart. I would also like to thank Peter Rosenblum and Laura Kunreuther. Peter, thank you for reminding me to breathe in our meetings. You always put senior project in context to why I initially chose human rights in the first place and for that I will always be grateful. Laura, I wish I had taken more of your classes, because I learnt how to put myself in the project just enough to be passionate and motivated, but have a distance to give it room to formulate and stand strong on its own. I am so grateful to have learnt so much from the three of you, both in the classroom and outside of it. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Michelle Murray and Manishka Kalupahana, outside of my board members; you both have been in different ways very influential in my Bard undergraduate life and looked out for me, I cannot thank you enough for that. I would also like to thank my parents, Rashmi Rajyalaxmi Bhanj Deo and Praveen Chandra Bhanj Deo for being the biggest pillars of support and strength to me throughout my life. You both always taught me to be curious and question things and to look beyond what meets the eyes. I am blessed by having you both in my life, you gave me the wings to dream and I never looked back. To the rest of the people who contributed to my project, I will miss out a lot of you but know that in small and big ways you made sure I was supported and loved throughout my Bard life. To the 84 Broadway kids who took me under their wing, and the 40 East Market kids, who I cannot imagine not coming home to, Thankyou. A special thanks to Christina and Jonathan for putting up with me, literally. Oliver, Hannah, Lucas and Jimmy for always being up for an adventure, you four have been there for some of the best days of my undergraduate life, Wagwon! Also Kathu, Dami, Amanda, Diego, Vittor, Katya, Violeta, Farah, Louis, Mark, Myschyf and especially Lara and Pepe. You are my home away from home, and my family forevermore. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: THE NORTHEAST REGION ......................................................................... 9 History Of The Region ........................................................................................................... 10 State Formation of The Northeast Region ............................................................................. 17 Laws: Inner Line Permit ......................................................................................................... 24 Laws : Armed Forces Special Powers Act ............................................................................... 30 Army Response on AFSPA ...................................................................................................... 33 Legal Representation of AFSPA .............................................................................................. 35 Present State of AFSPA ........................................................................................................... 37 CHAPTER 2: NORTHEAST AND THE INDIAN MEDIA ............................................... 40 Importance of Media in Influencing Policy ............................................................................ 40 Media Case: Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) Television Advertisement ................................ 42 First Media Coverage: KBC advertisement ............................................................................. 49 Second Media Coverage: Nido Taniam murder in India's Capital ........................................ 54 Third Media Coverage: Exodus of northeasterners from mainland cities ............................. 68 CHAPTER 3: COMPARING POLICIES REGARDING NORTHEASTERNERS IN THE MAINLAND ........................................................................................................................... 76 Bezbaruah Committee ............................................................................................................. 76 Security Tips Booklet .............................................................................................................. 81 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 88 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 92 1 Introduction “Another India, the most diverse part of a most diverse country, very different, relatively little known and certainly not too well understood, once a coy but now turbulent and in transition within the Indian transition.”1 B.G Verghese2 3 The states that comprise the eastern most part of India, collectively known as the northeast, are Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland, and Sikkim. For the purpose of the this paper the state of Sikkim will be omitted due to its unique state formation within the union of India, which differentiates it from the other northeastern states, also known as the ‘seven sister states.’ 1 Cited in Haokip, Thongkholal, India’s Northeast Policy: Continuity and Change (November 12, 2010). Man and Society: A Journal of North East Studies, Vol. VII, pp.86-99, pg87 Winter 2010. 2 BG Verghese (21 June, 1927 - 30 December, 2014) was a senior Indian journalist. He started his career in journalism with the Times of India and was later Editor of the Hindustan Times (1969-75) and Indian Express (1982-86). 3 Government of India, Home Ministry: Map of the North East of India. 2 Prior to British colonization, the northeast region was a diverse trading and migratory route between the Indian subcontinent and its neighboring countries in Southeast Asia. For most of its history it was treated as a frontier area, part of a single unit comprising Assam and the princely states of Manipur and Tripura. The British administrative governing system had a threefold frontier: an administrative border, a frontier of active protection and an outer or advanced strategic frontier.4 The British only established direct rule in the administrative border, while treating the other regions as excluded areas that comprised a majority of tribal populations.5 This had an adverse affect on the inroads of governmental institutions and democratic infrastructures of the modern Indian state. Post independence the Indian state continued to use British colonial era laws such as the Inner Liner Permit and Armed Forces Special Powers Act to control the region, which