It has long been understood that any goal of strengthening federalism in India by utilising the existing state boundaries will create fissures between communities and ethnic groups. Stronger federalism, after all, involves effective devolution of powers and a greater say for the federal units in the allocation and management of resources, and any perception of injustice in that process can quickly create divisive tensions. More effective federalism allows India to evolve as a democracy – but this does not mean that one can ignore the very real challenges the process will present.
Although the world largely sees a 'New Delhi vs Northeast' dichotomy, the seven states of the Northeast are a simmering cauldron of inter-community and inter-state issues. The creation of several states on the basis of ethnicity has papered over the existing cross-border spread of communities. The fragility of such an arrangement has been starkly exposed over the last two months, as communal fissures have come to the surface due to the matter of 'territoriality'. Longstanding resentments between the largely Meitei inhabitants of the Imphal Valley and the population of the surrounding hills, consisting of various ethnic groups such as the Naga, Kuki and others, have boiled over. The Naga, who constitute the majority of Manipur's hills-people, have allied themselves with the demand for a Greater Nagaland (Nagalim), which would include parts of Manipur, as well as areas of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and even Burma. Further to the west, Meghalaya and Assam are locked in a tussle over the village of Langpih, where several Assam-supported Nepali-speaking villagers were killed in late May, allegedly by the Khasi of Meghalaya.
The way out of this complex tangle cannot be found by burying one's head in the sands on the banks of the Brahmaputra. New Delhi, which has in the past fanned and exploited such ethnic tensions to its advantage, can at best be expected to come and try to douse the fire – which, to its credit, it has been trying to do. But any longer-term resolution must have the local parties to the conflict come together to talk and find amicable solutions. This is certainly easier said than done, but it is nevertheless the only real solution. The reliance on New Delhi's intervention as the regional overlord is hardly the sustainable solution. Civil-rights groups, the media and the intelligentsia in the Northeast are already working with the political parties and the insurgent groups to address root problems and find a middle path on ethnicity and territoriality. With the impetus of recent events, this process now needs to be strengthened.
Homegrown harmony
We need to be clear that the redrawing of state boundaries is a drastic action bound to lead to violence, and in the current situation would clearly create more problems than it would solve between the states of the Northeast, as with the nation state. But doing nothing would only allow wounds – including the new ones, in Manipur, Nagaland and elsewhere – to fester; eventually, those fissures would widen to swallow all prospects for peace in the foreseeable future, and the current suspended animation would seem like a blessed period in comparison. There is now a hiatus among Northeast commentators in the barrage of criticism against New Delhi, and this should be taken as a positive turn of events, to the extent that it indicates that lasting resolutions need to be sought within the Northeast itself. But rather than looking to mediation focused on immediate issues, we believe the civil society in the Northeast must prioritise seeking to develop empathetic inter-connections between the area's states and communities. There are many ongoing efforts towards this, with the Naga Hoho and other civil-society groups having held talks with Meitei groups over the past decade and a half. But this has not yet proven sufficient to bridge the divide between communities.