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Anatomy of homeland and identity politics

In the four months since this correspondent returned to Guwahati on March 1, there has hardly been a day when the Autonomous District of North Cachar Hills, Assam, has not been in the news, almost always for the wrong reasons.

In these four months, at least 52 persons, according to a rough estimate, have been killed in clashes involving ‘insurgents’ fighting for a cause and the security forces, in attacks on the hated ‘other,’ and in internecine clashes involving one’s own kind. The last two categories have meant sequential revenge killings and burning down of countless number of houses — often the humblest of dwellings — which are still on.

Further, train services on a track of engineering marvel with several stunning viaducts and aqueducts passing through the most beautiful landscape have repeatedly come under attack, leading to disruption of supplies to southern Assam whose biggest city, Silchar, is the hub of all rail and road traffic to Tripura, Mizoram and, to some extent, Manipur. Truck traffic in the region has always been a cash cow for the insurgents. Personnel of development projects, the softest of targets, have been abducted for getting ransom from their principals and, when the demand for money has not been met, killed. This is not the North Cachar Hills that one once knew. But then, that was another time.

The violence that of its nature transcends the boundaries of the district, because many of the communities live across the boundaries in the areas of the ‘other,’ is driven by an organisation called Dima Halam Daogah (DHD), meaning Dimasa National Defence Force, founded in the late 1990s. Its stated objective is the attainment of a ‘Dimaraji’ — a ‘homeland’ for the Dimasa, one of the 14 Hill Tribes of Assam. The projected territory of this ‘homeland,’ as in the case of every other exercise of territorial imperative, involves irredentist claims on neighbouring territories. ‘Dimaraji’ would thus include Dimapur and surrounding undefined areas of neighbouring Nagaland, claimed to have been historically part of a once powerful Dimasa kingdom. Indeed, every state in the region that was once part of the composite State of Assam, and some which were never a part of Assam, have such claims on Assam’s territory.

The expression, ‘14 Hill tribes of Assam,’ is slightly misleading, for these include categories like ‘any Kuki tribe’ and ‘any Naga tribe.’ In reality, over 30 tribal communities are recognised as Hill Tribes in Assam. This listing, and the administrative and ideological rationale behind it, was the unique product of colonial imagination. This same rationale lay behind the provision of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution applicable specifically, and only, to the Hill Tribes living in the designated Hill Districts of erstwhile Assam. With the constitution of those districts into Meghalaya (1970-72) and Mizoram (1987) and earlier in 1963, under different circumstances, of Nagaland, the Hill Tribes are now formally recognised thus only in the two Autonomous Hill Districts of Assam: Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills, though they live in every district of Assam, and in every State of the region.

The population composition of both the districts is incredibly complex. This is especially so of the NC Hills district which on official admission is home to 10 Hill Tribal communities, every one of which is also a trans-border community. These include, apart from the majority Dimasa and the next largest Jeme Naga that are currently engaged in a cycle of revenge killing, Hmar, Kuki, Baite, Hranghkhol, Khelma, Jaintia, Karbi and Vaiphei. The district is also home to substantial non-tribal communities indigenous to the region (Assamese, Bengali, Nepali) as well as to Hindi speakers who together have forged that endearing pidgin lingua franca known as Haflong Hindi. At least five of the 10 tribes belong to the broader Kuki family, though under the poisonous impact of ‘homeland’ politics and ‘identity’ mongering, internecine clashes involving Kuki sub-groups are now a given in several areas of the region.

Both the districts are riven by insurgencies of a kind, though as in such insurgencies everywhere in the region, they are split into factions, often described as ‘pro-talks’ and ‘anti-talks.’ For instance, the decision of the United Peoples’ Democratic Solidarity of the Karbi Anglong district to hold talks with the Government of India led to the emergence of the Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Liberation Front, committed to securing self-rule for the Karbi people, the objective of the UPDS as well. Similarly, both factions of the DHD, united in the objective of Dimaraji, have at various points been pro-talks and anti-talks. Both have oftentimes ‘voluntarily’ declared ceasefire or have entered into ceasefire agreements with the administration even while continuing with their violent activities.

This is the situation even now. For instance, the so-called anti-talks faction of the DHD, more fearsomely known as ‘Black Widow,’ headed by its former Chairman Jewel Gorlosa, declared not for the first time a ‘voluntary ceasefire’ on June 6, three days after the arrest of Gorlosa in Bangalore.

However, the ‘ceasefire’ has not affected the continuing clashes between sections of the majority Dimasa — whose cause both factions of the DHD champion — and the Jeme Nagas, the second largest tribal community in the district, with a trans-border presence in Nagaland which shares a long border with the district and Manipur. In a gruesome incident 10 days after the declaration of such a ‘ceasefire,’ 12 Jeme Nagas, including women and children, were killed by persons believed to be Black Widow militants. Inescapably, this incident was both preceded and succeeded by attacks on Dimasa villages by groups of Jeme Nagas.

The violence in NC Hills which is hardly a recent phenomenon only underlines the self-destructing traps that ‘causes’ like self-determination and seeking exclusive ‘homelands’ that are bound to exclude the ‘other,’ in a demographic environment where exclusionary political spaces cannot simply be demarcated, await those pursuing such objectives. The very demographic composition of the NC Hills has made such a search for an exclusive homeland end up in internecine killings and ethnic cleansing of the ‘other.’ Despite all theories to the contrary, such constant pressure on a supposedly weak State probing its capacity to confront these challenges has not in the least enfeebled it. In fact, such ‘challenges’ have only enabled the State to arm itself with even more terrifying instrumentalities of power and coercion.

A relatively novel feature of these developments in the region, in which NC Hills may well turn out to be a pace setter, is the transformation of insurgency into a profitable commercial enterprise, the other side of the struggle for a ‘homeland.’ The raising of resources by looting banks, extortion or contributions from supporters doing well in business and government — who view such contributions as an investment for the future — has now been replaced by insurgents establishing direct links with the State, having a pipeline to the State’s treasury, as it were. In the case of NC Hills, the Autonomous District Council willingly or unwillingly seems to have played the role of a facilitator in securing funds for the insurgency.

Such possible linkages, and leakages, came to the open with the long expected arrest of the Chief Executive Member of the Autonomous District Council (an office corresponding to that of the State Chief Minister) on May 30 for allegedly paying rupees one crore to two persons for facilitating the purchase of arms to the Jewel Gorlosa faction of the DHD.

With an anti-Congress formation comprising the Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC) and the BJP in office in the Autonomous District Council, the State government straightway accused these parties of being in league with terrorists.

However, in an even more dramatic development two years ago, a former Chief Executive Member of the NC Hills Autonomous Council, Purnendu Langthasa, a Congressman, and another former Congress member of the Executive Council, were shot dead on June 4, 2007 while ‘negotiating’ over the demand for Rs. 1.5 crore by the DHD (Gorlosa) — some reports suggested Rs. 3 crore — in return for ensuring the safety of Congress candidates in the elections to the ADC that were to be held on June 12.

Paying insurgents to buy short time peace is not new. Reports that to ensure the peaceful conduct of the National Games in Guwahati two years ago, the government or persons acting for the government paid money to ULFA have never been convincingly refuted. The head of the Bodoland territorial Council, Hagrama Mohilary, recently admitted that he paid Rs. 50 lakh to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland to ensure peaceful polls in the BTC area.

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