Adjacent identities in Northeast India

Abstract

In this article I explore the emergence, or re-emergence, of what I refer to as adjacent identities in response to changing circumstances for many Northeast communities in the last decade. In this paper I argue that it is important to consider seriously the ways in which communities in the region respond to the material and ideational changes to their lives in the present conjuncture by exploring adjacent ways of constructing identity in the face of, but not necessarily directly caused by, changing social, political, and economic circumstances. Massive investment in connectivity, which has transformed the Northeast from a frontier into a corridor, rapid urbanisation in the region, and an increase in migration out of the region have intensified the encounters between communities from the region and so-called ‘mainstream’ India and have brought different ethnic communities into closer daily proximity in the plural urban spaces of the region. The purpose of this article is to recognise adjacent ways of constructing identity in the face of, but not necessarily directly caused by, changing social, political, and economic circumstances. I provide two examples, shared Northeast identity in response to racism and broader ethnic inclusion based on shared cosmopolitanism. The former is a mass category in which virtually anyone from the Northeast can slip into, whereas the second relates specifically to speakers of a common language divided by international and internal borders.

Keywords:

• identity
• change
• Northeast India

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank participants at the Negotiating Ethnicity: Politics and Display of Cultural Identities in Northeast India conference at the Universitat Wien in July 2013 for their feedback and input into the content of this article. This article is dedicated to the memory of Dr Bianca Son Suantak – a friend and inspiration to so many of us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 161.

2. Baruah, “Citizens and Denizens”.

3. McDuie-Ra, “Anti-Development or Identity Crisis”; “Tribals, Migrants and Insurgents”; “The dilemmas of pro-development actors”.

4. Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura.

5. Baruah, Durable Disorder; Hazarika, Strangers of the Mist.

6. Van Schendel, “The Dangers of Belonging,” 36.

7. McDuie-Ra, “Vision 2020 or Re-vision 1958?”.

8. The growth in urban/rural population percentage of each state is only one component of urbanisation. Nevertheless it is the one that does have recent data. According to Census of India 2011 the overall urban population percentage in each of the Northeast states is as follows with the 2001 figure in brackets: Mizoram 52% (49%), Manipur 31% (25%), Nagaland 29% (17%), Tripura 26% (17%), Sikkim, 25% (11%), Arunachal 23% (21%), Meghalaya 20% (19%), and Assam 14% (12%), compared to a national average of 31% (28%). As can be seen growth in urban population is well above the national average in several states, with staggering increases in Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim, and Manipur. These figures are limited as they count the population in urban areas classified as such, usually the ‘class 1’ capital cities in the smaller states and ignores the population that lives in urban areas who are not registered as urban residents, which usually only happened when people buy property. Nor does the data reflect the continual movement between the urban and rural areas and the migration of people to urban areas outside their state of birth – such as someone from southern Manipur moving to Aizawl in Mizoram or outside the region itself to Delhi. However, it is indicative. Available at http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/…/india/Statement1_RU_State.xls

9. Bollens, City and Soul, 13.

10. Chandra, North East Migration and Challenges in National Capital Cities, 10.

11. McDuie-Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi.

12. McDuie-Ra, “The Northeast Map of Delhi”.

13. McDuie-Ra, “The Northeast Map of Delhi”.

14. Lett, “Emic/Etic distinctions,” 382.

15. Banton, “The Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions of the Word Race,” 131.

16. Baruah, “India and its Northeast,” 169.

17. Cf. Reddy, “The Ethnicity of Caste”.

18. McDuie-Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi, 106–107.

19. Jilangamba, “Lets stop pretending there is no racism in India”.

20. Sailo, “The Great `Exodus´,” 1.

21. Gooptu and Sengupta, “North East Exodus: Bangalore businesses facing the impact”; Janardhanan, “NE exodus may hit construction sector”

22. Kikon, “Home is Hardly the Best”.

23. Cf. McDuie-Ra, “Is India Racist?”

24. “Mongoloid People’s Forum,” The Morung Express.

25. Baruah, “The Mongoloid Fringe,” 83.

26. Darieva, “Rethinking homecoming”.

27. Cf. Wettstein, “The Ethnic Fashion Scene in Nagaland”.

28. I use Mizo here simply because, for better or worse, that is the term people in Aizawl use to refer to the population of Mizoram and Mizo communities in other parts of the borderland including across the international border. And I am aware that this is a reproduction of a colonial category later institutionalised in the postcolonial state. The term does not hold, however, when communities from outside the federal state of Mizoram are being cast as illegitimate. For a discussion of the terms and for whom they matter, see Zou, “The Pasts of a Fringe Community,” Pachuau, Being Mizo.

29. Brubaker et al, Everyday Ethnicity, 7. Italics in original.

30. Ibid., 15. Italics in original.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Duncan McDuie-Ra

Duncan McDuie-Ra is Associate Professor in Development Studies at UNSW Sydney. His most recent monographs include: Frontier City to Gateway City: militarisation and liberalisation in Imphal (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), Debating Race in Contemporary India (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), and Northeast Migrants in Delhi: race refuge and retail (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012).

Author’s postal address: Associate Dean Research, Arts and Social Sciences, MB 346, UNSW 2052, Australia.