As Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura celebrate statehood day, a look back at the birth of the Northeast

Arbitrary colonial boundaries predefined statehood

The British made inroads into the region in the 19th century, when the East India Company sided with the Ahom king in the Brahmaputra Valley, and helped win the Anglo-Burmese war between 1824 and 1826. The pairing subsequently acquired complete control over present-day Assam, Manipur, Cachar (in Assam), and Jaintia (in Meghalaya), as well as Arakan province and Tenasserim in modern-day Myanmar.

Assam was ruled as part of the Bengal province until it was carved out into a separate province in 1874. It was ruled as part of Bengal again between 19045 and 1921, with the separation of administration following protests. During this period, the British also annexed the hill kingdoms of the Khasis with Assam following the Anglo-Khasi war of 1823-33, the Cachar kingdom in 1832, and the Jaintia kingdom, comprising Bangladesh’s Sylhet region and parts of Meghalaya, in 1835.

The colonial administration also sought to establish a clear division between the occupants of the Assam plains and the hill tribes, passing the Inner Line Regulation in the late 19th century. This boundary was perhaps the most arbitrary in its formation, with the British casually extending the Line to include new tea, coal tracts, or valuable forest areas.

The colonisers ultimately established a binary division separating the people of the hills from the dwellers in the plains. They sought to exploit a difference in the perception of the hills and the plains, thus categorising the hill tribes as ‘Excluded Areas’ and ‘Partially Excluded Areas’ in the 1935 Government of India Act.

The Inner Line regulation ensured British subjects could not access the Excluded Areas, including the Naga and Lushai districts, while the Partially Excluded Areas, including the Garo, Khasi-Jaintia and the Mikir Hills districts. The latter enjoyed close economic and political contact with the Assam plains, but prohibited the plains dwellers from acquiring land in these regions.

The North East Frontier Tracts (comprising present-day Arunachal Pradesh and part of Nagaland) were carved out in 1914 and were located between the ‘settled districts’ of Assam (most of present-day Assam and Sylhet), and the international border with Tibet and Burma.

Post Independence, pragmatic admin concerns

At Independence, 98% of Northeast India’s borders became international, with China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan as neighbours. The idea of a Northeast India was thus born of the postcolonial Indian state’s attempts to transform this imperial frontier space into the national space of a “normal sovereign state.”

The Indian state sought to introduce a new governance structure that would replace the administrative setup of a colonial frontier province with a focus on national security. Amidst the many discussions in the Constituent Assembly was the political structure of the state of Assam. Indian leaders like Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri, the state’s representative in the Assembly, argued for the assimilation of the hill states with the plains of Assam. This issue was settled by the 1950s, as the move to make Assamese the official language of the state gained momentum.

However, the tribes wished to retain some of the protections they had received during colonial rule. Thus, the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution was framed, allowing for Autonomous District Councils to administer the tribal areas. The North East Frontier Agency (which was renamed in 1954) and parts of present-day Nagaland came under a separate set of rules, with these areas being administered directly from New Delhi, and the Assam governor acting as the agent of the President of India.

However, India’s war with China in 1962 unleashed a new wave of state-building in the Northeast, with the NEFA at the centre of this conflict. After India’s humiliating defeat in the war, Jawaharlal Nehru’s policy of indulging the British legacy of isolating the region was discarded. In its immediate aftermath, the state of Nagaland was created a year later. This introduced a new structure of governance in the frontier province.

Manipur and Tripura, which were ruled indirectly as princely states during colonial times, were made into Union Territories in the 1950s and 60s. With the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act of 1971, they became full-fledged states with formal institutions in 1971. Meghalaya and the union territory of Mizoram were carved out of two previously autonomous districts within Assam. The NEFA became the union territory of Arunachal Pradesh. Both Mizoram and Arunachal would be granted full statehood in 1987.