Pahi Saikia - Ethnic Mobilisation and Violence in Northeast India

Pahi Saikia

First published 2011 in India
by Routledge
912-915 Tolstoy House, 15-17 Tolstoy Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001

Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
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First issued in paperback 2015

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2011 Pahi Saikia

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-66005-2 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-69301-1 (hbk)

Disputes between Georgia and two of its regions, Abkhazia and Ajaria, in the 1990s led to considerably different outcomes while the Abkhazians became embroiled in a full-blown civil war with the state of Georgia, the Ajarians remained conspicuously calm. Similarly, in 1967-70, while the Igbo and Hausa-Fulani regions engaged in a violent confrontation with the Nigerian state, the adjoining Yoruba territory prevented such hostilities and stayed relatively peaceful. Variations such as these have been a recurring theme in the study of contentious politics along ethnic lines. Despite similarities in historical and structural experiences, some ethnic groups are able to avert violence, while others turn to highly disruptive forms of contention to secure their goals related to group rights, cultural recognition, and political and territorial autonomy. What accounts for these variations? Why do some ethnic groups seeking cultural and political autonomy engage in extraordinarily high-risk violent movements, while others respond with relative quiescence? It is precisely an interest in these significant questions that began my journey with this book. I was struck by the huge number of new volumes on contentious politics and violent ethnic mobilisation that crowd the shelves of libraries and bookstores. A thorough research through these, nevertheless, revealed that only a few books can be found on Indias northeast that have actually dealt with these issues. The main purpose of writing this book is to fill up this particular gap in literature by providing an alternative set of explanations to understand some of the potentially destabilising tensions that have raged since the late 1970s and 80s in Indias northeast.

Although a host of explanations exist on the cause of these variations in contentious politics, this study tends to adopt a process-oriented approach while incorporating theoretical perspectives borrowed from contentious politics besides rationalist and social psychological assumptions of ethnic violence. At the most general level, this book makes the fundamental claim that although the desire for material ends does play a crucial role, it is the emotional struggle over the relative status of group identity and core ethnic symbols that affords a group the necessary mobilising potential for collective action. Beyond this, a well-crafted analytical framework that includes the mobilising structure, the organisational resources and state responses is developed to understand the correlation between the mobilising process and the outcome of ethnic movements. The utility of this framework is demonstrated through a comparison of three tribal minority ethnic groups in the northeastern part of India, where one group seeks to create a separate ethno-federal territory through high levels of sustained violent insurgent actions, another employs relatively low levels of violence for a shorter duration, while a third group advances moderate claims and resorts to relatively peaceful contentious actions. Further, the level of ethnic violence is determined by the consistency and extent of state accommodation of ethnic demands, and the nature of state repression. The study indicates that consistent and timely state accommodation is most conducive to the containment of violence, and widespread rather than targeted repression produces support for higher levels of anti-state violence.

The analysis finds that popular support and participation are crucial to shape the trajectories and strategies of ethnic movements. What leads to variations in the level of popular following across cases, is the availability of vertical networks, the degree of commitment, legitimacy and effective communicative strategies adopted by decentralised activist organisations. This, in turn, generates collective mobilisation and produces the mechanisms for the sustenance of violent rebellion.

I accumulated numerous debts from a large number of people who contributed in different ways to formulate my arguments. I benefitted enormously from a wide range of people whose support indeed brought this work to fruition. First and foremost, my supervisor Prof. Narendra Subramanian deserves my gratitude for his generosity with his time, immense patience and invaluable advice at every stage of writing and doing the research. I am grateful to him not only for enkindling an interest in the subject of ethnic mobilisation, but also for guiding me on how to think about different patterns of contention, for stressing the value of posing important questions and, most significantly, for teaching me how to find answers to those questions. Prof. Stephen Saideman deserves sincere thanks for providing different perspectives on the literature while taking his course titled Ethnic strife and World politics, and for offering the opportunity to participate and gain insights from the seminars and talks held from time to time by the Montreal Research Group on Ethnic Conflict. I owe immense thanks to Prof. Khalid Medani for his encouraging words and valuable comments that sharpened my analysis. I must also thank Prof. Sunita Parikh, Washington University, and Prof. Matthew Lange, McGill University, for their invaluable comments and suggestions on my draft.

Apart from the guidance of these scholars, I was extremely fortunate to have been taught by Prof. Filippo Sabetti, Prof. Michael Brecher, Prof. Philip Oxhorn and Prof. Barbara Haskel, who imparted to me the basic knowledge to carry out social science research. I also express my appreciation to the staff of the Department of Political Science, especially Tara, Helen and Angie, and the Humanities and Social Science Library at McGill University; Indian Council of Historical Research library, Guwahati, Tribal Research Institute library, Guwahati, and Assam State Archive library, Guwahati. I am very much grateful to Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Program whose financial support allowed me to undertake this project.