The Periphery Strikes Back: Challenges to the Nation-State in Assam and Nagaland

It is the country’s northeastern region, with its complex mosaic of ethnic nationalities at different stages of socio-economic and political growth, that the Indian nation-state is today facing some of its gravest challenges. Time and again, the Indian State has had to work out new strategies and adjustments to deal with the issues thrown up by the different autonomy and secessionist movements of the region. The process of nation-building received its first major jolt when the Nagas, a people virtually untouched by the freedom struggle, expressed their reservations about becoming a part of the newly independent Naga homeland. Today, with its really complex ethnic situation, the backward "colonial" state of the economy, Assam has emerged as the problem state of the Indian Union. This is a study which analyes in detail the socio-historical and political factors which have led to secessionist insurgency in ststes as different secessionist insurgency in state as different as Nagaland and Assam and shows how the future of the nation-state in India depends a lot on the ability to resolve the questions that are being thrown up by the struggles for a Swadin Asom and an independent Naga Lim.