This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Explaining Divergent Outcomes of the Mizo and Bodo Conflicts in the Ethno-Federal Context of India’s Northeast Saikia, Smitana Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). 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Sep. 2021 King’s College London Explaining Divergent Outcomes of the Mizo and Bodo Conflicts in the Ethno-Federal Context of India’s Northeast Smitana Saikia A thesis submitted to the King’s India Institute of the King’s College London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February, 2017 1 Declaration I declare that the thesis presented for examination for the Mphil/PhD degree of the King’s College London was composed by myself, that the work contained herein is my own except where explicitly stated otherwise in the text, and that this work has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification except as specified. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Citation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. The thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 85,742 words. 2 Abstract The thesis is a comparative investigation into the varying outcomes of conflict between two cases of identity movements and armed struggles- those of the Mizos and Bodos- in India’s Northeast region. The Mizo case is considered as an example of successful ‘ethnic accommodation’ while the Bodo conflict in the state of Assam continues to pose serious challenges to the stability of the region. The study seeks to understand the role that the architecture of asymmetric federal arrangements in the region played in contributing to the variation in outcomes between the two cases. The thesis presents an account of longue durée processes of state formation that have contributed to the shaping of ethnofederal institutions in the Northeast. The thesis situates Northeast India in a political geography historically characterized by low population densities and the presence of two crucially linked topographies- hills and valleys – in which control over people rather than territories were the focus of successive rulers. It demonstrates that the high costs of rule and rising geopolitical concerns of the British government in its eastern frontier in the early 20th century, resulted in the institutionalization of fixed boundaries in the hill areas of the region. This, the thesis argues, facilitated the shift from a historically fluid hill-valley dynamics into more rigid and reified categories. These developments in turn determined the nature of identities, social cleavages and the ways in which political entrepreneurs subsequently deployed them in their struggle for power in each case. Using this framework, I thus show that divergent colonial and post-colonial state formation processes in the areas now known as Mizoram and Bodoland (in Assam), determined by the position of the two ethnic groups in the transformed hill-plains dynamics, are fundamental to understanding the research puzzle. The thesis demonstrates that colonial territorial institutions in the hill areas of Assam had a direct bearing on the construction and mobilization of the ‘hill tribe’ identity of the Mizos and were reflected in the architecture of postcolonial institutions of territorial autonomy accompanied by special rights for Mizos as well as minorities within these hill regions in the Northeast. As opposed to this, Bodos, by virtue of their plains- dwelling status were not considered suitable candidates for territorial forms of autonomy after independence. This difference, the thesis argues, is crucial to analyse the subsequent variance in the conflict outcomes in the Mizo and the Bodo cases. In the latter case, a movement for recognition of a territorialised identity eventually led to the creation of a Bodoland Territorial Council, but unlike Mizoram, absence of any safeguards for local minorities within this institutional arrangement further aggravated the conflict. Based on extensive elite interviews and field observations, conducted in Mizoram and Assam over the course of 12 months, I thus analyse the effects of longer term 3 historical processes of state formation on the strategies employed by political actors in the present and their impacts on ethnic conflict or accommodation. In conclusion, the thesis reflects on the limits of ethnofederalism as a general solution to ethnic conflict in India’s Northeast, and discusses the distinctiveness of the region within the wider context of Indian federalism. 4 Table of Contents Declaration……………………………………………………………….. 2 Abstract…………………………………………………………………... 3 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………….10 List of Maps, Figures and Tables……………………………………….. 12 List of Acronyms……………………………………………………........13 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………….15 1.1 The conflicts at a glance……………………………………………22 1.1.1 Mizoram: From insurgency to constitutional politics…………..22 1.1.2 Bodoland: Limits of asymmetric federalism……………………23 1.2 Existing Literature….……………………………………………….26 1.3 The Argument of the Thesis..……………………………………….32 1.3.1 ‘Territoriality’ and identity formation: a conceptual framework……………………………………………………………….32 1.3.2 The argument: Varying conflict outcomes as a result of state formation processes……………………………………………..35 1.4 Research Design……………………………………………………..40 1.5 Components of Fieldwork……………………………………….......46 1.5.1 Archives………………………………………………………….48 1.5.2 Interviews………………………………………………………...49 1.5.3 Focus Groups…………………………………………………….52 1.6 Thesis Structure………………………………………………………54 5 2. Literature Review………………………………………………………59 2.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………59 2.2 Federalism and ethnic conflict……………………………………...61 2.2.1 Ethno-federalism and conflict in India………………………….63 2.3 Instrumentalist approaches to ethnic conflict……………………….70 2.3.1 Instrumentalist explanation to conflict through ‘ethnic outbidding’……………………………………………………….73 2.4 Constructivist theories of ethnic conflict…………………………….76 2.4.1 Role of Institutions………………………………………………..81 2.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………...82 3. State formation in India’s Northeast……………………………………..85 3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………..85 3.2 State formation in the Northeast till late 19th century………………..88 3.2.1 Non-territorial forms of political control in India’s Northeast…..88 3.2.2 State formation processes in the Northeast………………………90 3.2.3 Hills-Plains relations in India’s Northeast……………………….93 3.3 Hills-plains interaction as a crucial element of state formation……...97 3.3.1 Continuities in state formation processes in early colonial period…………………………………………………………………….103 3.3.2 19th century colonial footprint in the Northeast front……….…...108 3.4 Separating the hills from plains: Assam during late 19th colonial rule……………………………………………………………………….111 3.5 Reasons for hardening of the hill-plains binary in the early 20th century……………………………………………………………….113 6 3.5.1 Commercial and revenue concerns…………….………………….113 3.5.2 Northeast frontier and the geopolitics of the region………………116 3.6 Conclusion…………………………………………………………….121 4. Territorialized identity and autonomy in the hills of the Northeast: The Mizos…………………………………………………………………………124 4.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………124 4.2 Formation of territorialized identities and new class of elite: Lushai (Mizo) Hills……………………………………………………….126 4.2.1Territorial identities………………………………………………...126 4.2.2 Proselytization, class of new elite and construction of an inclusive Mizo identity……………………………………………………134 4.3 Genesis of territorial autonomy in the hills of Northeast………...........139 4.3.1 Separating hill tribes from plains people: A caste-tribe divide……139 4.3.2 Protection of hills and their gradual integration within Indian body politic…………………………………………………………………144 4.4 Territorial autonomy arrangements after independence: Sixth Schedule for the Hills……………………………………………………….151 4.5 Conclusion………………………………………………………………156 5. Identity formation and autonomy in the Assam plains in the early 20th century: The Bodos……………………………………………………………158 5.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………….158 5.2 The making of the modern Bodo-Kachari identity…………………….160 5.2.1 Identities and social relations in 19th century Assam valley……….160 7