Opinion There’s a lot in a name: Use of the term ‘northeast’ doesn’t do justice to the complex history of the region’s states

Its use has generated complex images, assumptions, beliefs and cultural justifications about the “region” and its peoples. It often leads to essentialised constructs of collective identities located at the margins of the nation-state.

In its colonial origins, the “northeast” was a “frontier” inhabited by “the wild peoples of farther India” who are culturally outside Bharat.

The adoption of the term by the post-colonial state was essentially in the recognition of its transitory conflict-mediating and order-keeping functions in a politically unsettled region. Yet, after 75 years of a post-colonial afterlife, there is nothing to suggest that we are anywhere near a shift in our understanding of the term (or its constituents).

The identity of the “northeast” is still shaped primarily by its oppositional relationship with other parts of the country. As an imagined community of contrast, the “northeast” remains a shorthand for Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim.

There is no agreement on what unifies the constituents of this construct. Some commentators observe that there is no single criterion — culture (however defined), language, religion, ecology, economy, or agriculture — that unifies the region. Yet, it is treated as a distinctive “cultural zone” that predetermines all political, economic, and cultural actions.

The tropes of “backward”, “underdeveloped”, “culturally isolated”, or “historically distant” are used to mark its peculiarity from other parts of the country. The exceptionalism that underlies such a view is reproduced through exclusive region-wide planning bodies, separate ministries, legal regimes, and region-specific area studies centres.

In treating the constituents as part of a monolithic structure, the metaphor treats them as homogenous, self-contained frozen entities bereft of individual histories that are rich, dynamic, and complex.

Each state has a separate history, culture and identity that cannot be reduced to a singular metaphoric cultural “geist”. Knitting together such varied and diverse cultural and spatial geographies only consolidate prejudices and fetishise the stereotypical binaries of the “northeast” and “mainland”.

In treating the northeast as different, we essentialise the history and identity of the various states and their peoples. We consider them too unique and incomparable and, therefore, believe that they must be studied only by identity specialists. Within such a patronising area studies framework, the constituent areas and peoples will always strive to “catch up” with an elusive imagined “mainland”.

Is Assam “marginal”, “backward”, and “distant” in comparison to other states? Is the history, society and politics of Manipur, Mizoram or Meghalaya best appreciated through a capacious general category, “northeast”? Shouldn’t we interrogate if the viability of “northeast” as a convenient label to fix and construct a “regional” identity has outlived its purpose?

Some novel structural and institutional innovations in administering and accommodating peoples and cultures may have been affected as a result of the use of this category. But we cannot continue to treat all the states as a single unit of analysis. When we are decolonising the past, it is imperative to appreciate the colonial genealogy of the category that homogenises peoples, cultures and histories.

The continued use of the term “northeast” as a flattened imagery distorts not only its constituents’ complex social and cultural tapestry but also their deeply entangled historical links with other parts of the country. It misrepresents the political, cultural and historical richness of the individual states. While we are at the cusp of a new India, it is time to unthink the productive potential of this spatial metaphor and liberate the constituent units from this category of contrast.

The writer teaches Political Science at the University of Delhi.