India Against Itself

India Against Itself PDF Author: Sanjib Baruah
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812234916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
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 from the time 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.

India Against Itself

India Against Itself PDF Author: Sanjib Baruah
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812234916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 from the time 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.

Breaking Worlds

Breaking Worlds PDF Author: Angana P. Chatterji
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578890111
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Breaking Worlds: Religion, Law and Citizenship in Majoritarian India; The Story of Assam chronicles how prejudicial laws and policies are being utilized with impunity to reconstruct citizenship in Assam in Northeast India. The Government of India's stated objective is to replicate "Assam-like" changes to citizenship across the country. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government's pilot implementation has centered on the state of Assam in Northeast India since 2019, with dire impact on its sizeable Muslim population. Majoritarian nationalists claim that various Muslim communities residing in India are in the country "illegally," and are not Indian. The modalities for safe harbor that apply to other communities exclude Muslims. In particular, Bangla-descent Muslims are fabricated as "foreigners" and "outsiders," are the primary targets. If Bangla-descent Muslims of Assam are not Indians, then who are they? Hindu nationalists claim that various Muslim communities residing in India are in the country "illegally," and are not Indian. Bangla-descent Muslims who fail to meet the government's demands to prove their citizenship are faced with the threat of expulsion, exile, and statelessness.Through applied research and methodical analysis, the report spotlights the illiberal citizenship movement ignited by majoritarian forces focusing on two intersecting chronologies: the exclusionary amendments to the law and the implosive situation on the ground that collectively stands to render swathes of citizens effectively stateless. The report identifies communities that are subject to discriminatory treatment. It chronicles the voices, lives, and torment of numerous targeted individuals, including victimized-survivors who have been declared "foreigners" in Assam, separated from their families and detained, and family members of suicide victims, together with summary analyses of cases before the appellate body. The report brings into focus how the laws and policies reordering Indian citizenship are fortifying legal discrimination based on religion, and the impact on vulnerable communities. The report's emphasis on Assam and Bangla-descent Muslims is prognosticative. The report contends that the "citizenship experiment" signals the advance of inestimable, gendered violence and prospective statelessness that stand to devastate millions of lives.

Empire's Garden

Empire's Garden PDF Author: Jayeeta Sharma
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822350491
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
A history of the colonial tea plantation regime in Assam, which brought more than one million migrants to the region in northeast India, irrevocably changing the social landscape.

Nationalist Upsurge in Assam

Nationalist Upsurge in Assam PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Assam (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Contributed articles focussing on the role of Assam in the Indian freedom movement from 1857-1947.

A Century of Protests

A Century of Protests PDF Author: Arupjyoti Saikia
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317325591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Addressing an important gap in the historiography of modern Assam, this book traces the relatively unexplored but profound transformations in the agrarian landscape of late- and post-colonial Assam that were instrumental in the making of modern Assamese peasantry and rural politics. It discusses the changing relations between various sections of peasantry, state, landed gentry, and politics of different ideological hues — nationalist, communist and socialist — and shows how a primarily agrarian question concerning peasantry came to occupy the centre stage in the nationalist politics of the state. It will especially interest scholars of history, agrarian and peasant studies, sociology, and contemporary politics, as also those concerned with Northeast India.

Assam in Indian Independence

Assam in Indian Independence PDF Author: Arun Bhattacharjee
Publisher: Mittal Publications
ISBN: 9788170994763
Category : Assam (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description


The Muslim Question in Assam and Northeast India

The Muslim Question in Assam and Northeast India PDF Author: Monoj Kumar Nath
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000370313
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This book presents a systematic study of the transformation of the specific socio-political identity of the Muslims in Assam. It discusses the issues of Muslims under India’s ‘indigenous secularism’, Hindu nationalism and the rise of majoritarian politics; Muslim immigration into Assam after Independence; the Assam Movement and the shift of Muslims from being a vote bank to an autonomous force in the post-Partition politics of Assam; the role of Jamiat; and the divide between Assamese and the neo-Assamese. It explores the history and contemporary politics of the state to show how they shape the new context of Muslim identity in Assam, where previously an Assamese identity often prevailed over religious and linguistic identity. With the current debates on illegal immigration, the National Register of Citizens of India (NRC) and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019, this book will be a timely addition to the existing literature on Muslim minority politics in Assam and northeast India. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of political science, sociology, political sociology, minority studies, northeast India studies, demography and immigration studies, and development studies. It will interest those concerned with minority politics, communal politics, identity politics, migration, citizenship issues, and South Asian studies.

Becoming Assamese

Becoming Assamese PDF Author: Madhumita Sengupta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317197771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This book explores the making of colonial Northeast India and offers a new perspective to the study of the Assamese identity in the nineteenth century as a distinctly nineteenth-century cultural phenomenon, not confined to linguistic parameters alone. It studies crucial markers of the self — history, customs, food, dress, new religious beliefs — and symbols considered desirable by the provincial middle class and the way these fitted in with the latter’s nationalist subjectivities in the face of an emphatic Bengali cultural nationalism. The author shows how colonialism was intrinsically linked to the assertion of middle class intelligentsia in the region and was instrumental in eroding the essential malleability of societal processes nurtured by the Ahom state. Rich with fresh research data, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of history, political science, area studies, and to anyone interested in understanding Northeast India.

No Land's People

No Land's People PDF Author: Abhishek Saha
Publisher: HarperCollins India
ISBN: 9789390351855
Category : Assam (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
The preparation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam was an unprecedented exercise that sought to establish Indian citizenship of the state's 33 million residents. The process intersected with the already existing parallel mechanisms of

India's North-east

India's North-east PDF Author: Udayon Misra
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198099116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In many senses, India's Northeast has been an enigma to the rest of the country. Beginning with the earliest challenge of the nation-building process in India, this highly diverse and multicultural region has, through its multiple identity movements and militant separatism, thrown up several major issues which have resulted in re-drawing the parameters of the Indian nation-state and helped to re-define the idea of nationalism itself. This selection of essays/commentaries, written over some three decades, analyze the complex processes of the nation-state's engagement with the demands for autonomy/independence raised by the small nationalities of the northeastern region but also focuses on the contradictions and new equations that have been emerging both within these movements and in the State's response to them. The factors behind the rise of ethnic nationalist assertions, the role of civil society, the rise of exclusivist politics and the question of citizens' rights are other issues that figure prominently in the discussions.