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| From the Editorial Desk: |
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At the turn of the twenty-first century when, on one hand, the world seems to be more connected and the old boundaries of the nation-state permeable, there is also a corresponding increase in the number of nation-states or nations-in-the-making, on the other. The seemingly contradictory trend of a porous national boundary co-existing with a rigidification of nationalistic assertion was a prominent feature of the politics of the century gone by. For example, post-World War II marked by the outbreak of nationalist struggles in the colonised part of the world was almost simultaneously followed by the emergence of contesting (sub)nationalist movements from within the recently de-colonised nations. The present issue of the Eastern Quarterly, ‘NATIONAL QUESTIONS: TRAJECTORIES AND PREDICAMENTS’, is an attempt to understand this pervasive and arresting idea of ‘nation’. The processes of nation-making have come to be a source of group affiliation as well as pride and, simultaneously, conflicts amongst peoples in the context of the South Asian sub-continent in general and in that of the Northeast in particular. |
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| But as other social formations are nationalised, populations included within, divided or dominated by the new India, are ethnicised, as if they formed a natural community. Thus, in a sense, modern India is a product of ‘internal colonization’; it has been, to some degree, colonized or colonizing, and sometimes both at the same time. However, the collective homogenous imagination in Indian nationalism was wounded in 1947, when two nations came into existence with a bloodied history. Within the Indian nationalist historiography, the ‘betrayal’ by the ‘enemy within’ finds its recurring manifestations since the time of the independence. The rise of ‘contesting nations’ from within the Indian nation highlights the ‘unfulfilled desire’ of a unified national self. Manash Bhattacharjee examines the dimensions of this ‘unfulfilled desire’ in the first article, ‘In Nehru’s Shadow: Between India and Politics’. He examines the issue of nation formation in the Indian context by looking at the biography of Nehru as a part of the biography of the Indian nation. He argues that the ‘idea of India’ that Nehru had conceptua-lised was an ‘inward voyage’ to seek an ‘independent classification’ as a mark of ‘resistance and self-evolution’ of the Indian self. As Bhattacharjee points out, in the way Nehru imagined India, it was ‘represented in a self-critical as well as self-evolutionary manner,’ which dissolves and transcends the dichotomy created through Orientalism. Through different moments in the history of Indian nationalism, Bhattacharjee highlights the in-built character of violence, forceful tactics at the cost of the unity of the country and relations between communities. He argues that the political aspirations of religious and other groups have not been solved through the ‘individualist thrust in Nehru’s understanding of society’ and his suspicious and restless attitude towards cultural groups. The statist language of protection and reservation was not merely what marginalized groups were seeking. Bhattacharjee further argues that though the Nehruvian cultural idea of India is pluralistic, the reigning political idea of the nation was distinctly ‘individualist and unitarian.’ In a way, nation has been idealized as the ultimate form of collectivity constituting group life. While the state mobilizes the people, economy and politics in the name of nation, the marginalized and dissenting, too, use the nation as the currency of their alternative mobilizations. The second article by A. Noni Meetei, ‘Multiple Nationalisms in Manipur: A Historical Time and its Reproduction’ extends the argument of the ‘idea of India’ to understand the ‘dissenting form’ of ‘national aspirants’ from within. Meetei points out the absence of official narrative of the idea of India in the northeastern frontier and the presence of political opposition towards the consolidation of the Indian Union. By looking at Manipur as a case in point, he asserts that the ‘non-consented consensus’ arrived at in Shillong in September 1949 (when the titular King of Manipur Maharajah Bodhchandra was compelled to sign on the dotted line for the merger of Manipur) left a question mark on the legitimacy of nation-building process. He further argues that the process of Indian ‘integration’ began with an ‘authoritarian accent’. But he also notes a tragic counterpoint: that of the ‘dissenting nationalism’ in Manipur turning inwards and fragmenting what was once a historically bonded groups of people with a shared cultural experience. But it remains an important question if the shared historical and cultural relations between social groups in the Northeast are always internally generated. Sajal Nag deals with this question in his article ‘Assamese Nationality Question’ by tracing the historical context in the colonial policies which governed Assam. Colonial capitalism which transformed Assam created ethnic social bounda-ries between Assamese and Bengalees. The resultant conflicts between the two populations from the time of colonialism spawned the ‘signs of develop-ment of nationalities.’ The economy-based conflict between the two communities generated ‘through a process of meticulous politicization and socialization’ transformed into a social movement to create an Assamese nationality. Nag also points out the fissures that exist between the ‘ethno-nationality’ communities against the process of ‘Assamesisation’. He further traces the origin of the largest ‘tribal’ group, the Bodos’ political assertion to the fear of the salience of emergent Assamese nationality in a multi-ethnic Assam. The intensity and growth of mainstream Assamese nationalism also reinforced the formation and forging of various political groups based on ‘tribal’ identities. |
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| The issue of formation and forging of national political identities out of ethnic propulsion could be looked into the histories of other nation-making processes, for instance the Naga movement, which debatably is the oldest of such examples in the Indian sub-continent. In the fourth article, ‘Challenges and Predicaments of Naga Nationalism’, H. Srikanth and C.J. Thomas locate the case of Naga nationalism within the ‘multi-nationality nation state of India’, in which the Indian national movement failed to touch the people in the northeastern region. To some extent, the Naga movement was also mediated by the ‘British colonial’ experience. The development of tea plantations during colonialism brought the Nagas in conflict with the British, which, in turn, brought about the ‘unification of several Naga-inhabited areas’ along with modernity. The imagination of the Nagas as a nation was made possible through these modern institutions. The ‘nascent Indian State’ instead of handling the issue with maturity, took to militaristic means to suppress the movement for Naga nationhood, which further strengthened the cause of Naga movement. The authors argue that the continuation of ‘tribal identities’ mark the impediments to the imagination of a homogenous community amongst the Nagas, making it a classic example of ethnic nationalism. In the KALEIDOSCOPE section, Deepa Manjuri Devi’s article ‘Body and Soul in Meitei Worldview: An Ethnographic Interlude’, seeks to explore the conceptual understanding of ‘body’ and ‘soul’ in everyday life in the ‘traditional medicine’ and the ordering of social relationships among the Meiteis. She looks into how the creation myth, rituals and the cosmological world of the Meiteis reveal the matrix that binds different levels of thought and practices. In her endeavour, Devi’s exploration, to some extent, touches the debate over the relation between the ‘being’ and the ‘essence’. In the second article, ‘Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny’, Soyam Lokendrajit examines Amartya Sen’s idea in the crucible of politics of identity in Northeast India representing a mosaic of ethnic communities at different stages of development. He argues that violence revolving around the ‘social mathematics of permutation and commutation of ethnic identities’ renders it all the more ominous. Terming Sen’s project on individual identity as based on the freedom of choice, Lokendrajit sees that this choice is inextricably tied with inheritance or facticity. Reflecting upon the situations driven by violence-related identity politics, the Lokendrajit highlights the limits of conceiving any idea of ‘choosing identity’ without involving the ‘facticity of violence’, which, in fact, limits the freedom of choice. Lastly, in TAKE TWO, Prabhat Patnaik critiques the preceding theme articles of Eastern Quarterly on the political economy of Manipur in his ‘The North-East and Development’. Without mincing words, he expresses surprise that there was little discussion on the critical aspects of the political economy like devolution of resources and decision-making to local self-government institutions. We hope the current issue of the Eastern Quarterly would trigger fruitful inquiry and debate. We, however, regret the inordinate delay in the publication of this issue due to inadvertent technical problems. |
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