Speech of the Nation and Conversations at the Margins of the Nation-State

Abstract

This essay focuses on the issues of voice and representation, especially of people at the margins of the postcolonial nation-state. I ask what happens to political conversation and dialogue in situations of foundational inequality between two speaking positions, where the inequality has been engendered by the way in which the epistemic and political category of the nation-state has emerged. I place this discussion in the context of India's Northeast, which has seen a history of failed political conversations. These issues of representation and voice resonate with larger debates within postcolonial and transnational studies.

• Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)
• democracy
• gender
• law
• Northeast India
• postcolonial nation-state
• representation

Notes

1 For a related argument, see Ophir et al. (2009).

2 For a related argument, see Chatterjee (1998).

3 Phizo claims to have secretly taped the conversation between him and Desai. This taped conversation has since been documented as an important part of the Naga nationalist resistance (Haksar and Luithui 1984).

4 For an extended reading of the protest, see Bora (2011).

5 The SSSC is a coalition of some seventy organizations, including the National Alliance of People's Movement, Khudai Khidmatgar, Asha Parivar, Gandhi Global Family and Jagriti Mahila Samiti.