Probing Legitimacy and its Absence
By K. NARESH SHARMA

There has been steady increase in the number of published works on India’s Northeast by reputed big publishers in recent times. Hassan’s work is a new addition to this ever expanding production of literature on the region. The framework of the book is more or less hinged on Joel S. Migdal’s Strong Societies and Weak States: State Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. The same work by Migdal is based on the premise that there is the existence of “state capability.” Capability includes capacities to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources and appropriate or use resources in determined ways. The capability of state is a dependent variable of state society relationship, the impact of society on state and ability of state leaders in orienting the society towards intended goals. These indicators of capabilities are used in the study of two states of Northeast India – Manipur and Mizoram – by Hassan.

Hassan puts Manipur on the “weak and fragmented society” in the capa-bility scale. To arrive at such an observation, he traces the state formation process of Manipur. Analysing causal factors for the fragmentation of society in the formation state in Manipur is far from a nuanced inquiry. Let us first deal with the missing significant episode in the book, the sidelining the 1948 electoral exercise, perhaps the first post colonial democratic exercise based on Universal Adult Franchise in the history of South East Asia. The elections to the Manipur State Assembly under the Manipur State Constitution Act, 1947 led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy with a popular government much ahead of the first electoral exercise conducted by India in 1951. The government was inclusive in its structure, with representation from all sections of society, both valley and hills. This process of democratization with an inclusive content was de-legitimized in the process of “integration of states” by the Government of India. The intent of de-legitimization was perhaps to recognize the King as the sole inheritor of the land thereby setting a common rationale behind the “integration of princely states” by India. After 15th October, 1949, when Manipur merged into the Indian Union, the assembly was dissolved and Manipur became a Part “C” state under Government of India. The King was replaced by a Chief Commissioner deputed from New Delhi in the state administration system. The impact of this action has been recorded by historians in Manipur. Gangumei Kamei, a historian, for instance, in one of his works says that people felt the introduction of “Chief Commissioner’s rule as the continuation of ‘colonial rule,” a replacement of the white ruler by the brown ruler. The abolition of the constitutional monarchy was the destruction of the symbol of unity between the inhabitants of both the hills and the valley. An initiation towards an inclusive democratic space was replaced by a bureaucratic system. Bureaucracy based on the Weberian model is a “career” bureaucracy through well governed principles. This model of bureaucracy is based on the “rational-choice paradigm” that considers human beings driven more by the desire to maximize utilitarian functions as perceive by “state actors” not “state subjects.”

Second, the contention that the twenty-three years of statehood struggle has led to the fragmentation of the “society” in Manipur. Till the attainment of statehood (1972) there is little evidence to show that Manipur was fragmented on ethnic, religious or cultural lines. The first Chief Minister of the state after attaining statehood was Md Alimuddin, a Manipuri Muslim. Muslims at that point of time constituted just about 2 per cent of the population. And he was a popular leader. Think of a state in India where the one elected to the Chief Minister’s post from a community that constitutes just two percent of the entire population! The core of the body politics practiced then can easily be guessed.

Perhaps, fragmentation of this “body politics” in the real sense can be traced to the introduction of institutional concepts like the Sixth Schedule. As Mary Douglas in her book “How Institution Thinks” observed, for institutions to be sustainable and viable institutions has to originate and reflect the society. Adherences to a supposedly “constitutional” institutions rather than rooting them to the real existing institutions based on traditional “trust and autonomy” in fact paved the way for fragmentation of society. Douglas also further comments that institutions shape the thinking process of society. Here, it is the constitutional institution that performed the task. Provisions of the Sixth Schedule promoted “aspiration as well as fear” among the people of the hills and the valley thereby making it easier for political elites to propagate “ethnization of politics” that has led to fragmentation.
Third, the observation that “weakness” of the civil society has led to the reduction of state capability. The perceived role of a strong civil society is a liberal thought and propagated under neo-liberal paradigm. If, “associationalism” is the basis of the argument put forth by the author, then coming together of people or the creation of civil society organization is to achieving certain personal or community goals. In the process of achieving its goals, civil society organizations may enhance or contest state capability. Robert Putnam’s work of Civil Society in making democracy works in Northern Italy was due to homogenous character of the society. In a pluralistic society like Manipur it will be difficult for a Civil Society to exist that addresses the interests of all sections of society.

Migdal proposed one of the sufficient conditions for creating a strong state. It is “exogenous political forces” that favour concentrated social control. In the case of Manipur, the directions of the Central Government representing “exogenous political forces” have not been able to provide a viable option. An impassionate reading of the situation in the Northeast would indicate that fragmentation of societies in the region is comparatively a modern phenomenon owing to the gaps generated by the representatives of these “exogenous political forces.” Whereas in the case of Mizoram, it is the overarching presence of these forces that have made it look seemingly “stable.” The struggle of Mizo Commoners Union and later on that of Mizo Union against power hiearchy of the semi-feudal local elites benefitted the colonial power structures. The movement launched by the Mizo National Front post the “Mautam famine” and the brutal armed repression the Mizos had to endure tells a completely new story. There is no doubt Hasan’s work is based on the normative acceptance of an already well defined idea of “legitimacy” and “state” but not a comprhensive social history of the two states under discussion. Nevertheless, inspite of inherent limitations in the works, the book is worth reading for its well constructed arguments.