2 - Becoming a Borderland

Summary

Abstract

Chapter 2, ‘Becoming a Borderland’, discusses the colonial frontier-making project in the Naga Hills, where an ‘Inner Line’ was created to divide the Naga Hills from the plains of Assam, and later post-Independence continuations of these policies, cartographies, and emergency laws. Essentially, where colonial efforts produced a sense of remoteness as being ‘cut-off’ from the plains surrounding Nagaland, post-colonial efforts produced a sense of remoteness as being outside of and cut-off from legal protections and rights.

Keywords: Zomia, highlands, colonization, exception.

‘ILP Identifies illegal immigrants’

Between November and December 2019, Assam was in the midst of one of its most violent periods in recent history as students rallied against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Government's Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB). The BJP claimed the Bill intended to grant Indian citizenship to persecuted religious minorities including Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and Christians who came to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh before 2015 (Times of India, 2020). Critics argued that the Bill was skewed towards allowing Hindus in particular to achieve citizenship in an attempt to import Hindu voters into India and would open the doors to droves of migrants from Bangladesh coming into Assam and its neighbouring states (Times of India, 2019). Aggravating the CAB situation was the ongoing update of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, an official record of legal citizens of India, the first time the Register had been updated since 1955. Critics of the NRC noted that Muslim names had been deliberately left off the list of citizens, and argued that the Register was an attempt to deny citizenship to Indian Muslims who had lived in Assam for generations (Changoiwala, 2020). Taken together, the CAB appeared to be an attempt to import Hindu voters, while the NRC simultaneously stripped Muslims and people with Muslim names of their citizenship. The CAB and NRC were pivotal triggers in a state and a region that has had a tense relationship with the Indian centre for decades, especially regarding migration politics (Mahanta, 2013). Protestors in Assam's capital, Guwahati, blocked GS road, the largest road in the city, and burned effigies of Prime Minister Modi in the surrounding streets and suburbs.