Contested Borders and Borderlands in Northeast India: (IL)Legitimate Claims of Naga Identity Assertion

Abstract

Borders are not to be understood merely as lines where one society or state ends and another begins, but they reflect of how societies get constituted and configured through them. Societies do not constitute borders, but borders constitute societies. The article revisits the northeast as a ‘borderland’, as a land with many visible and invisible borders. It is an attempt to probe into the complexities of ethnic boundaries by the enforcement of arbitrary dividing lines without cognisance of the local context. The article also endeavours to set a discourse on the proposed Naga ‘Framework Agreement’ (FA) which requires a deep-seated understanding of its historicity and unique cultural identity. It intends to question the possibility of Nagas nurturing a common supra-national or transnational structure that offers an accepted platform to their life patterns and customs. Very crucially, the article also attempts to explore the several nuanced exemplary models seen elsewhere, amongst those geographically bordering people with analogous but delicately diverse cultures.