Dolly Kikon | Sanjay Barbora
Singibil and Athkhel weekly haats (marts) are among several intercommunity markets along the Assam-Nagaland foothills which are significant signposts of a long historical, political and cultural relationship and ties between the Nagas, Ahoms and several other indigenous communities in the Brahmaputra valley. These markets were established in pre-colonial times when Naga elders and the Ahom nobility created such spaces as political and cultural zones to settle disputes, negotiations and trade. However, these spaces are likely to disappear in the near future if the political discourse on the Assam-Nagaland border dispute continues to emphasize on sealing movements of people and trade by demarcating the border as rigid zones. Even as the Government of Assam continues with its new project to equip ex-service men with arms to protect and guard the foothills of Assam, there are series of protests, blockades and ‘awareness’ campaigns being planned out by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chattra Parishad (AJYCP) in several foothill villages within the jurisdiction of the government of Assam. Such measures are signs of an impending emergency and considered to be urgent and exceptional steps to pressurize the government of Assam and Nagaland to settle the dispute. Arming inhabitants in the border villages is reminiscent of other national emergencies such as war, resistance and natural disaster, where the rule of law remains in suspended animation.
Conflicts and violence to settle interstate disputes in the Northeast region are common, but these demands reveal how the creation of borders and boundaries in this region are rooted in a discourse shaped by colonial intervention. Colonial legal framework, which helped establish the plantations, coalmines, and oil as part of an extractive economy in this frontier region, continues to operate in the Brahmaputra valley and along the foothills of Nagaland and Assam. The persistence of colonial laws and deployment of excessive military powers in Northeast India are argued to be exceptional situations where military rationale supersedes civic concerns. The Northeast region of India has been under a state of exception for the last six decades. Given the number of security agencies that operate from this region – whether for protecting the territorial integrity of India or for counterinsurgency operations – one may argue that the region does not require another regulation to arm inhabitants and civilians to protect themselves. However, exceptions such as these expose the contradictions of India’s ongoing efforts to chart out an alternate discourse for the region. Even as there is talk of governmental plans of looking east, several inter-state border disputes in Northeast India with overlapping territorial claims, have exposed the inherent paradoxes of post-colonial state formation in the region.
Since the 19th century, the foothills of the Naga Hills have witnessed series of demarcations of boundaries for plantations, forests and oil exploration. Such activities are not new. Historically, these foothills have been subject to several violent laws and regulations. For instance, the colonial regulation – the Inner Line Permit (ILP) –, which continues to operate in the Northeastern states of Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, originated in the foothills of Naga Hills to specifically guard and regulate the movements of people from the hills to the colonial plantations along the foothills in the 19th century. Therefore, the current understanding of territorial units is largely based on the colonial cartographic techniques and governance. Such colonial techniques based on natural signposts such as trees, rivers and villages, were meant to protect the colonial plantations and administrators in the valley, raise revenue and regulate movements of people. More than four decades later, the national committees set up to settle the Assam-Nagaland border dispute have continued to apply the colonial method, even though the natural signposts have undergone transformations.
Events that pit Nagas against the Assamese have been few and far between in Gelekey on the border between Nagaland and Assam. The area is dotted with tea plantations and gas gathering stations (GGS). The former have been around for over a hundred years and are owned by a mix of corporate houses, non-local proprietors and of late – small tea growers – local people who have converted private and ceiling land into small agricultural holdings, growing tea leaves that are sold to larger estates that have factories. The Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), a public sector company that disinvested in the 1990s, own the gas gathering stations in the area. The foothill areas are also rich in strains of coal. Most of the mines are located on the ‘Naga side’ of the border, while the traders (in coal) are mainly from Assam, though they are compelled to have Naga associates because the lands (and mines) are under the purview of Article 371 (A) that is applicable to state of Nagaland. Between the plantations and gas gathering stations, there are very few industries and agriculture and trading in coal continues to be the mainstay of the local communities. Thus, the livelihoods of local people in Gelekey are deeply intertwined with the two major industries (tea and oil) and marginally with the third (coal). Most families in Gelekey get seasonal employment in these enterprises. Those with land titles along the Assam side of the border can barely eke out a living through agriculture and usually see it fit to lease out land to the tea and oil sector. On the Naga side of the border, both individual and community land leases are unable to deal with the growing impoverishment of the subsistence farming sector and demographic growth. Therefore individuals and collectives have begun to experiment with other forms of earning a living. The money obtained from coalmines and newly planted tea and rubber estates are an important source of income.
There are a few events that stand out, like dots waiting to be connected, in the whole affair that led to the so-called clashes. On January 23, 2007, Nilikesh (Dul) Gogoi, a resident of Gelekey and a popular figure among both Naga and Assamese inhabitants along the border, and his colleague Bholu Gogoi were executed by personnel of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), as they were returning from Anakhi village after dinner. The deaths caused widespread anger among people in Assam and the adjoining villages in Nagaland and the testimony of the surviving colleague showed that the official version (put out by the state) claiming in turns that this was a routine encounter, then changing to a mistake and eventually ending with a flurry of compensation packages to the families of the victims, was nothing but a farce. On May 29, 2007, Assam Police Battalion personnel killed a young Naga man – S. Alemmongba – who was responsible for looking after the welfare of casual workers in his brother’s small tea garden near Gelekey. The official version stated that Alemmongba tried to attack them with a machete and they were compelled to fire upon him. Witnesses working in the fields said about eighteen policemen entered the area, slapped the victim a few times, pushed him to the ground and shot him from a point blank range. Two empty casings of Kalashnikov shells and scores of eyewitness accounts confirm the gormless quality of the Assam police’s version of events. The last event that needs immediate mention is the one where some armed Naga persons entered a village near Gelekey and killed two persons and burned livestock. The reaction to the third event has been widely reported in the press, but it bears repeating here. Organisations like AASU and AJYCP called for an economic blockade of Nagaland. The security apparatus in the area and politicians in Dispur, made sympathetic noises regarding the action and seemed outraged by the violent action that they attributed to “Naga miscreants”.
Local figures like Nilikesh Gogoi and S. Alemmongba represent the disruptive voices in the border transformation. They disturb the neat script of pliable natives who, once corrupted and coerced into being part of the extractive economy, begin to act as local points-persons for further exploitation of the region. Instead, with their alternate agenda of creating economic enterprise out of local resources and constantly laying claim to the pre-colonial economy of indigenous control over resources, they go against the very logic of corporate privatisation of land. Though it is near impossible to attribute a sinister plot to their deaths, both events are united in the large-scale anger that they generated in the area. It was as if people had momentarily forgotten their ties to the oil and plantation economy and mourned for the death of those who called for alternatives. Yet, these protests did not change the realities on the ground. If anything, the recent round of violence only reiterates the continuing stranglehold of events that are beyond the control of communities who live along the border.
In the last few decades, Naga and Assamese rebels allegedly traversed the foothills on their way to training camps in the hills. In response, the state has positioned armed personnel along the foothills. In addition, given the history of counterinsurgency, the area is also dotted with informers and spies who constitute the clandestine community that is part of any social setting in places that have witnessed protracted armed conflict. They are important elements in fostering a political climate of suspicion and fear. Anthropologist Talal Asad says that suspicion occupies a space between law and its applications. He argues that, “all judicial and policing systems on the modern state presupposes organized suspicion, incorporate margins of uncertainty”. The uncertainties in places like Gelekey are compounded due to legal provisions that allow security agencies to operate with impunity. These borders are considered as disturbed areas and fall not only within the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958) but also under several security regulations, which protect the plantations and oil installations. In a milieu rife with ambiguities, the manner in which the state and civic organisations like the student and youth, bodies are seeking to establish order along the border is dangerous. The disregard for local histories and communitarian memories has always been an impediment to conflict resolution in the region. If the marts at Singibil and Athkhel do not reopen soon, the symbols of the last vestiges of a pre-colonial social formation and polity will have given way to the military-industrial complex’s vision of change along the border areas. It is not a very promising vision for the future for the people who live along the border, as well as for a larger ethical politics of respect for peoples within the region.
