THE NORTHEAST DARES INDIA TO REINVENT ITSELF

The attitude of treating the Northeast as an alien territory started with British colonialism. Today, it challenges the independent nation's capacity to fuse its fringes with the mainstream

- PRADIP PHANJOUBAM

The idea of the Northeast is intriguing. It indicates a direction; therefore, it should have remained as an adjectival clause—‘northeast.’ It indeed does, to some extent, but increasingly the hyphen is dropped for it to become a single-word proper noun with many layers of nuanced meanings. Among the many images evoked are of wilderness, exotic customs, pristine landscapes, insurgency, incomprehensible tribal feuds, underdevelopment, etc.

The name also conjures up the picture of a composite geography of eight states, including Sikkim, after this former Himalayan kingdom became a part of India in 1975. In spirit, probably North Bengal/Darjeeling should also be included, as this peripheral extension of West Bengal geographically, culturally, and psychologically shares many affinities with this region.

How did a term signifying a coordinate come to be so intimately associated with the character and personality of a region? The question will necessarily invoke a legacy from British colonial rule. If the anchor of this coordinate were India’s national capital, the region should have been just east and not northeast, for the place lies directly to the east of New Delhi. Obviously, the anchor was different when the region first came to be taken cognizance of on the Indian map, which is after Assam’s formal annexation into British India by the Treaty of Yandaboo, 1826, signed with Burma (Ava kingdom), ending a devastating invasion and occupation of Assam by the latter.

After annexation, this new territory was merged into Bengal and remained so till 1874, when Assam was separated and made a separate chief commissioner’s province. It then constituted almost the entire Northeast, with the exception of Tripura and Manipur, separate principalities. From the then British India capital of Calcutta, Northeast was indeed to the north-east.