India against itself : Assam and the politics of nationality / Sanjib Baruah.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baruah, Sanjib.

Series:

Critical histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Assam (India)--Politics and government.

Assam (India).

Assam (India)--Ethnic relations.

India--Politics and government--1977-.

India.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 257 pages : maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [1999]

Summary:

In an era of failing states and ethnic conflict, violent challenges from dissenting groups in the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, several African countries, and India give cause for grave concern in much of the world. And it is in India where some of the most turbulent of these clashes have been taking place. One resulted in the creation of Pakistan, and militant separatist movements flourish in Kashmir, Punjab, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Assam. In India Against Itself, Sanjib Baruah focuses on the insurgency in Assam in order to explore the politics of subnationalism.

Baruah offers a bold and lucid interpretation of the political and economic history of Assam since it became a part of British India and a leading tea-producing region in the nineteenth century. He traces the history of tensions between pan-Indianism and Assamese subnationalism since the early days of Indian nationalism. The region's insurgencies, human rights abuses by government security forces and insurgents, ethnic violence, and a steady slide toward illiberal democracy, he argues, are largely due to India's formally federal, but actually centralized governmental structure. Baruah argues that in multiethnic polities, loose federations not only make better democracies, in the era of globalization they make more economic sense as well.

This challenging and accessible work addresses a pressing contemporary problem with broad relevance for the history of nationality while offering an important contribution to the study of ethnic conflict. A native of northeast India, Baruah draws on a combination of scholarly research, political engagement, and an insider's knowledge of Assamese culture and society.

Contents:

1 Theoretical Considerations: The Limits of "Nation-Building" 1

2. Colonial Geography as Destiny: Assam as a Province of British India 21

3. The Making of a Land Frontier: Assam and Its Immigrants 44

4. Cultural Politics of Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism 69

5. Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and the Breakup of Colonial Assam 91

6. Protest Against Immigration, Ethnic Rifts, and Assam's Crisis of Governability 115

7. Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and the Chasm with Pan-Indianism 144

8. "We Are Bodos, Not Assamese": Contesting a Subnational Narrative 173

Conclusion: India Against Itself 199.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [231]-243) and index.

Local Notes:

Given to the Penn Libraries by Margy Ellin Meyerson in memory of her husband, President Emeritus Martin Meyerson.

ISBN:

081223491X

OCLC:

40848455