The Assam-Nagaland border is restive as the State persists with colonial boundaries and policies to continue exploiting the region’s resources.

THE BORDER between Assam and Nagaland along the districts of Golaghat, Jorhat and Sivasagar (in Assam), Wokha and Mokukchung (in Nagaland) is currently at the centre of a conflict between the two state administrations. The conflict has drawn civil society organisations into its orb and reports of local students marching from Assam to Nagaland have been answered by calls by Naga men to resist the proposed march. This comes in the wake of several weeks of tension following clashes near the town of Gelekey in July 2007. Following these clashes, members of the All Tai Ahom Students Union tried to mitigate matters by visiting their Konyak counterparts on July 24, 2007. However, such reconciliatory gestures were drowned in the shrill politics of maintaining boundaries, where politicians and administrators on either side have begun to refer to people as “invaders”, “marauders” and “thugs”. This has further vitiated the situation.

The Singibil and Athkhel weekly marts are among intercommunity markets along the Assam-Nagaland foothills that are signposts of a long cultural relationship between the Nagas, Ahoms and other indigenous communities. These markets were established in pre-colonial times by Naga elders and the Ahom nobility as spaces to settle disputes, negotiate and trade. These spaces are likely to disappear if the political discourse on the border dispute continues to emphasise sealing the movement of people and trade by demarcating the borders as rigid zones. Even as the Assam government continues with its plan to arm ex-servicemen to protect the state’s foothills, there are a series of protests, blockades and “awareness” campaigns being planned by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) in villages within the state. Such measures are signs of an impending emergency and are considered to be urgent steps to pressurise the two governments to settle the dispute. Arming inhabitants in the border villages is reminiscent of other national emergencies, where the rule of law remains in suspended animation.

Conflicts and violence to settle inter-state disputes in the Northeast are common, but these demands reveal how the creation of boundaries is rooted in a discourse shaped by colonial intervention. The colonial legal framework, which helped establish the plantations, coalmines and oilfields, continues to operate in the Brahmaputra valley and along the foothills of Nagaland and Assam. The persistence of colonial laws and deployment of excessive military power are argued to be exceptional situations where military rationale supersedes civic concerns. The Northeast has been under a state of exception for the last six decades. Given the number of security agencies that operate in this region, one may argue that the region does not require another regulation to arm civilians to protect themselves. Even as there is talk of the Look East policy, several border disputes in the Northeast have exposed the inherent paradoxes of post-colonial state formation in the region.

Since the 19th century, the foothills of the Naga Hills have witnessed a series of demarcations of boundaries for plantations, forests and oil exploration. The current understanding of territorial units is largely based on colonial cartographic techniques and governance. Such techniques were based on natural signposts and were meant to protect the plantations, raise revenue and regulate movement of people. More than four decades later, the national committees formed to settle the Assam-Nagaland dispute have continued to apply the colonial method, even though the natural signposts have undergone transformations.

Events that pit Nagas against the Assamese have been few in Gelekey, situated on the Nagaland-Assam border. The area is dotted with tea plantations and gas gathering stations owned by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. The former have been around for over a hundred years and are owned by a mix of corporate houses, nonlocal proprietors and, of late, small tea growers. The foothill areas are also rich in strains of coal. Most mines are on the Naga side while the traders are mainly from Assam, though they are compelled to have Naga associates because the land is under the purview of Article 371 (A) that is applicable to Nagaland. Thus, the livelihoods of the people of Gelekey are deeply intertwined with the two major industries (tea and oil) and marginally with the third (coal).

Those with land titles on the Assam side can barely eke out a living through agriculture and usually see it fit to lease land to the tea and oil sector. On the Naga side, both individual and community land leases are unable to deal with the growing impoverishment of the subsistence farming sector and demographic growth. Therefore individuals and collectives have begun to experiment with other forms of earning a living.

There are a few events that stand out, like dots waiting to be connected, in the whole affair that led to the so-called clashes. On January 23, 2007, Nilikesh (Dul) Gogoi, a resident of Gelekey and a popular figure among both Naga and Assamese inhabitants, and his colleague Bholu Gogoi were executed by CISF personnel as they were returning from Anakhi village. The deaths caused widespread anger and the testimony of the surviving colleague showed that the official “encounter” version was nothing but a farce. On May 29, 2007, the Assam Police killed a young Naga man — S. Alemmongba — who was responsible for looking after the welfare of casual workers in his brother’s tea garden near Gelekey. The official version stated that Alemmongba tried to attack the police with a machete. Witnesses said that about 18 policemen entered the area, slapped the victim a few times, pushed him to the ground and shot him point-blank. Two empty casings of Kalashnikov shells and scores of eyewitness accounts confirm the gormless quality of the police version. In another incident, armed Nagas entered a village near Gelekey and killed two persons and burned livestock. The last event was widely reported in the press. Organisa tions like AASU and AJYCP called for an economic blockade of Nagaland. The security apparatus and politicians in Dispur made sympathetic noises and seemed outraged by the action they attributed to “Naga miscreants”. LOCAL FIGURES like Nilikesh Gogoi and S. Alemmongba represent the disruptive voices in the border transformation.

They disturb the neat script of pliable natives who, once corrupted and coerced into being part of the extractive economy, begin to act as local points-persons for further exploitation of the region. Instead, with their alternate agenda of creating economic enterprise out of local resources and their constant claim to the pre-colonial eco - nomy of indigenous control over resources, they go against the very logic of corporate privatisation of land. Though it is near impossible to attribute a sinister plot to their deaths, both events are united in the largescale anger they generated. It was as if people had momentarily forgotten their ties to the oil and plantation economy and mour n - ed for the death of those who called for alt - ernatives. Yet, these protests did not change realities. If anything, the violence reiterates the continuing stranglehold of events that are beyond the communities’ control. In the past few decades, Naga and Assamese rebels allegedly traversed the foothills to training camps in the hills.

In response, the State has positioned armed personnel along the foothills. In addition, given the history of counterinsurgency, the area is dotted with informers and spies who are part of any social setting in places that have witnessed protracted armed conflict and are important elements in fostering a political climate of suspicion and fear. Anthro - pologist Talal Asad says suspicion occupies a space between law and its applications and “incorporates margins of uncertainty”. The uncertainties in places like Gelekey are compounded due to legal provisions that allow security agencies to operate with impunity. These borders are considered disturbed areas and fall not only within the Armed Forces Special Powers Act but also under several security regulations that protect plantations and oil installations. In a milieu rife with ambiguities, the manner in which the State and civil society organisations are seeking to establish order is dangerous. The disregard for local histories and communitarian memories has always been an impediment to conflict resolution here. If the marts at Singibil and Athkhel do not reopen soon, the symbols of the last vestiges of a pre-colonial social formation and polity will have given way to the military-industrial complex’s vision of change along the border areas. It is not a very promising vision for the future for the people who live along the border and for the larger ethical politics of respect for peoples in the region.

Barbora is the programme director of Panos Institute South Asia in Guwahati.
Kikon is a researcher at Stanford University, United States.

Sep 01, 2007

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