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Changing Patterns of Ethnic Conflicts in India's Northeast and the ‘Flawed' Peace Process: The Unfinished Business
With the beginning of the involvement of ‘external powers’ in the India’s troubled Northeast (Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Nagaland, and Mizoram), ethnic consciousness gradually developed amongst the people where ethnicity (ethnicism) gradually gave way to conflict among the various communities, against a backdrop of significant poverty and inequalities, impacting dramatically on economy and society. To name a few, we have the ethnic conflicts between the Nagas, Kukis and Meiteis in Manipur, Bodos and Non-Bodos in Assam, the Garos and the non Garos in Meghalaya leading to ‘strategic’ and intensified militancy in the present scenario.
The Peace processes could do no better. There has been a continuous ‘flawed’ peace process in the region providing no solution but encouraging more cycles of violence. The focus of the paper is to explore the dynamics of ethnic conflicts in the region, to examine the engagement of peace process by the Indian state with different communities and to conceptualize ’Peace’ as a trouble more than a solution.
Key words: External powers, India’s Northeast, Ethnicity, Ethnicism, Peace