Ethnic mobilisation for decolonisation: Colonial legacy (the case of the Zo people in Northeast India)

Abstract

This article attempts to communicate the methodological tension between subjectivity and objectivity by recording the aspiration of communities who are problematised both by colonialism and the modern nation-state. It highlights how colonial policy and practice contribute to the postcolonial imbroglio in Northeast India. It delineates how British colonial cartography always gave priority to 'administrative convenience' in the demarcation of boundaries, resulting in the division of ethnic community. It argues that Northeast India and the Indo-Burma borderland are not yet decolonised, as the government of India, without any rearrangement or alteration, adopts the colonial administrative boundaries, which divided ethnic communities. Neither the State Reorganisation Act (1956) nor the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act (1971) fulfilled the aspiration of the segmented communities in the northeast, as they did in the mainland. The article also argues that the responses of the government of India towards the problems in Northeast India react to the manifested symptoms of the deep-rooted political problem rather than getting to the crux of the problem to find a solution. © 2013 Copyright © 2013 Taylor & Francis.