"The earliest record of Northeast India is in the writing of Huen Tsang in the 7th century. So people have been going there for many centuries. The notion that people of only one ethnicity have lived in one place is really not true. Closer examination blows up this idea. It is an idea that has come with modernity. Modern identity and the modern idea of the nation state and the following nationalisms have been problematic in places that have deep and intertwined diversity like the Indian subcontinent. Maybe it made sense in a specific part of Europe in a specific time but the idea has been devastating for us. It led to the Partition but it did not end there. We have had insurgency after insurgency. Pakistan too has had the same challenge. Bangladesh is perhaps the only country that comes closest to that original idea.
Northeast India has a history of separatist insurgencies that spring from the history of the place. The issue of identity, of belonging, is very complex. As a Bengali growing up in Shillong it was a very difficult topic of conversation. In fact, there was no conversation. The first book, 'Insider, Outsider; Tales of Belonging and Unbelonging in India's North East set it in motion. That concentrated more on Assam as the largest state in the region. This book focuses on the other states too.
When putting this book together, we were not looking for atrocity propaganda. The intention was to encourage an internal dialogue within the different communities of the northeast. Hopefully, people read these pieces and understand others' histories and look at their own histories too"
- Samrat Choudhury, co-editor, 'But I Am One of You; Northeast India and the Struggle to Belong' talks to Manjula Narayan about the many perspectives on a range of issues presented in this book including the decommissioning of the Gumti dam to aid ethnic reconciliation in Tripura, the Meitei Pangals or Meitei Muslims from Manipur, the Northeastern experience of being othered in New Delhi, Marwaris in Shillong during a dangerous time, and the Nepali speaking people of the different states of the Northeast, among others.
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