Frontier tribes and nation states: infrastructural intersection at the Indo (Naga)-Myanmar borderland

Abstract

ABSTRACT Frontier tribes, inhabiting the Indo (Naga)-Myanmar border, are at the fringe of the nation-states. They remain outside the radar of connectivity and development. The international boundary line demarcated during the colonial rule, pierces through the middle of many villages. This was reinforced by the post-colonial Indian and Myanmar States, thus deepening the contestation between state and tribal society(s). The Indo (Naga)-Myanmar borderland, elicits the case of nation-state construction as opposed to what Lefebvre posits geographical space, as ‘socially constructed’. The distortion of tribal land and territory in the forms of fencing and securitization amounts to the denial of a tribe’s agency and erasure of their shared history and social relation. The paper charts out the ramification of the colonial state making project in the contemporary frontier tribes. It unfolds the contestation, presence and absence of the state in the borderlands and posits for development with justice.