Author: Udayon Misra
Publisher: Indian Institute of Advanced Study
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 276
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8185952744
Description
This study analyzes in detail the socio-historical and political factors which have led to secessionist insurgency in states as different as Nagaland and Assam and shows how the future of the nation-state in India depends a lot on the ability to resolve the questions that are being thrown up by the struggles for a Swadin Asom and an independent Naga Lim.
It is in the country's northeastern region, which its complex mosaic of ethnic nationalities at different stages of Socio-economic and political growth, that the Indian nation-state is today facing some of its gravest challenges. Time and again, the Indian State has had to work out new strategies and adjustments to deal with the issues thrown up by the different autonomy and secessionist movements of the region. The process of national-building received its first major jot when the Nagas, a people virtually untouched by the freedom struggle, expressed their reservations about becoming a part of the newly independent republic and launched an armed struggle for an independent Naga homeland.
But it the secessionist movement in Assam which seems to pose a much more serious challenge to the nation-state, especially inv view of the fact that the Assames has had centuries of Socio-cultural interaction with the rest of the sub-continent and had played a major role in the national struggle. Today with its really complex ethnic situation, the insurmountable problem of influx and demographic change and the backward 'colonial' state of the economy, Assam has emerged as the problem state of the Indian Union.