Northeast India : Development, Communalism and Insurgency
Contents: Preface. 1. A theoretical perspective. 2. Socio-political antecedents of insurgency. 3. A peep into the people's mind: Assam and Meghalaya. 4. Meghalaya: the crucible of politics. 5. As people view their world. 6. Assam: the Cauldron of insurgency. 7. Assam: as people see their world. 8. Overview. Index.
"Northeast India: Development, Communalism, and Insurgency represents a pioneer effort in understanding the linkage among the phenomena of development, communalism, and insurgency. Heretofore insurgency has been viewed as pathology of body politic, a prime instance of the breakdown of law and order and a challenge to the legitimate centralized political authority. The present book argues against this partisan view and underlines the fact that to treat it as a problem of law and order is to turn a blind eye to the causes which, when ignored for long, lead to political violence and insurgency.
The cause of insurgency lies in the frustrated aspirations of the people with distinct socio-cultural identities by tardy development; this paves the way for the politicization of traditional socio-cultural referents of identity-formation; this, in turn, paves the way for intense political agitation which eventually graduates into political violence and insurgency if the smouldering discontent is not pacified. The root of insurgency lies in unsatisfied political demands that are considered by the agitators as legitimate.
This is the causal path that Development, Communalism and Insurgency traces in the Northeast, although the theoretical paradigm developed in this study has universal applicability. While developing this theoretical paradigm, the book also focuses on some important aspects of political life and relations in Assam and Meghalaya, the two foci of this study, and probes into the subjective world of the people in these two states.
The combination of these dimensions, the theoretical and the pragmatic has made this study a landmark in the study of the linkage among development, communalism, and insurgency." (jacket)
