India is no exception to internal wars. The Pakistan-backed insurgency
in Kashmir started in 1948, and has not come to an end after fifty years.
The Naga insurgency also started with the dawn of India’s Independence,
entered a distinct military phase in 1954, and is still continuing.
The secessionist insurgencies in Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura, Bodos and
ULFA insurgencies in Assam, and the Sikh insurgency in Punjab started
between 1966 and 1986. Only the Mizo (1966-86) and Sikh (1981-93) insurgencies
appear to have been successfully resolved. Punjab replaced Kashmir as
India’s foremost internal security problem in the Northwest in
1984. The focus from Kashmir could not, however, be totally shifted
because of the persistent political instability in the State and absence
of a lasting guarantee of non-interference by Pakistan. The Pakistan
factor has brought Kashmir into the limelight again since 1989. There
are other numerous smaller militant organisations in Assam, Andhra Pradesh,
Madhaya Pradesh and Bihar that have raised standards of revolt against
the state in some form or the other during the past thirty years. In
Assam alone as many as 12 separate armed ethnic groups, including an
ISI-backed Muslim group, have been active against the state and against
each other during the past ten years.
In terms of political instability that they have caused and the intensity
of military operations they have entailed, the insurgencies in Northeast
India have been as significant as those in Kashmir and Punjab, and some
of them have persisted much longer. In some years of intensive operations,
as many as six infantry divisions of the Indian army and almost similar
strength of para-military forces have been assigned counterinsurgency
roles in the states of Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura, and Assam
directly, and the state of Meghalaya peripherally. China and Pakistan
have assisted Indian insurgents with arms, training and sanctuary. Though
Pakistan ceased to call the shots directly in the geopolitics of the
region after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, its indirect interference
in the Northeast through the ISI has continued till date.
Chinese
support and Pakistan’s malicious interventions, however, cannot
explain political instability in India’s Northeast. These have,
at best, exploited conditions created by policies that preceded the
birth of Pakistan and the emergence of India’s troubled relationship
with China. Critically, these conditions have been exacerbated in independent
India by the uncritical, erratic, though invariably well-intentioned,
perpetuation of the administrative regime and policies inflicted on
the region by successive governments of the British Empire.
It
is these policies, and not the operation of some inevitable dynamic
of disintegration that has fed the widening arc of insurgency and violence
in the Northeast. Walker Connor’s thesis that increased social
mobilisation increases ethnic tensions and is conducive to separatist
demands2 , and Karl Deutsch’s3
belief that social mobilisation may destroy a society which is already
divided by language and culture, have been substantially contradicted
by the post-independence experience of the rest of India. Deutsch writes:
"...the stage of rapid social mobilisation may be expected, therefore,
to promote the consolidation of states whose people already share the
same language, culture, and major social institutions; while the same
process may tend to strain or destroy the unity of states whose population
is already divided into several groups with different languages or cultures
or basic ways of life...."4 But
this is far from the experience of the majority of states – with
their immense linguistic, cultural, racial and religious diversity –
that were forged into the Indian Union after the Empire was expelled
from Indian soil. If the increasing turmoil of India’s Northeast
is to be checked, it is these policies that must be understood and dismantled,
and their consequences progressively reversed.
Historically
speaking, the provisions for the governance of the North-eastern tribal
areas drawn up by the East Bengal Frontier Regulation, 1873, the Assam
Frontier Tracts Regulation, 1880, the Chin Hills Regulation of 1896,
the Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935, and the Constitution
of India have successively thwarted endeavours that India and the ethnic
entities of the North-east have made to work out their terms of peaceful
political association. These laws brought about (1) "Indirect Rule"
by the British in some areas which was aimed at reconstructing the ethnic
identities, (2) "exclusion" of certain areas from the mainstream
Indian polity and the jurisdiction of provincial legislatures. Prompted
and persuaded by western anthropologists, the adoption of anti-assimilation
policies by the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution of India
further aggravated the psychological "exclusion" that the
British measures had brought about in these areas. Further, instead
of bridging the hard divisions along ethnic lines already created, the
preferential policies for the Scheduled Tribes prescribed by the Constitution
of India intensified ethnic mobilisation and increased the probability
of militancy among the groups mobilised by ethnic cohesion. This paper
analyses the recorded processes of these political developments.
Indirect
Rule & The Reconstruction of Ethnic Identity
It
has been said that eighteenth-century India was a geographical, and
not a political, expression. Rupert Emerson thought that the fact of
the British utilizing Indians to conquer India gave some validity to
this view.5 Karl Marx has also noted that India was held in English
thralldom by an Indian army made up largely of Indians and maintained
at India’s cost, and that the political unity of India was imposed
by the British sword and perpetuated by the electric telegraph.6
Yet, when the British left in 1947 at the end of two hundred years of
colonial rule, India had more than a semblance of organic unity, which
cannot be attributed only to the use of force and communication technology.
It is entirely possible, as some devoutly wistful speakers in the British
Parliament asserted on the eve of the Indian independence, that the
British saw an united, viable, and independent India as the true goal
of the imperial connection. But by the middle of August, 1947, they
had destroyed some of the cohesion which they themselves had brought
about in India. In fact, one can see why it was reasonable, even necessary,
for them to create a deep socio-cultural and political cleavage among
the people while building the administrative unity of the sub-continent.
Every single action and political or administrative move made after
1857 was in clear recognition of the fact that their existence would
be precarious without an active socio-political segmentation of India.
Effective preemption of a recurrence of 1857 was an obsession clearly
visible in all policies pursued for the next ninety years.
The
British assault on the national unity of India was made in different
ways7. Saxena projects a Machiavellian calculation
onto a British colonial administration which he thinks was bent on a
programme of divide and rule.8 Some
historians have even blamed the British for using educational institutions
for fostering political separatism amongst the Muslims of India.9
The British analysis of the 1857 mutiny had revealed that the Bengal
army, which had been organized around caste and religious divisions,
was at the center of the mutiny, while the Madras and Bombay armies,
which followed a mixed pattern of recruitment, had remained loyal during
the mutiny. The Peel Commission of 1859 had, therefore, recommended
that "the Native Army should be composed of different nationalities
and castes, and, as a general rule, mixed promiscuously through each
regiment." However, what was actually done was in total contravention
of this recommendation. By the end of the 19th century, the British
Indian army regiments were largely organized along caste and religious
lines and consisted mainly of what the British thought were the martial
races of north India.10 The direct
result of this policy was what a British officer noted with some satisfaction
in the beginning of the present century: "Sikhs in the Indian army
have been studiously ‘nationalized’ or encouraged to regard
themselves as a totally distinct and separate nation. Their national
pride has been fostered by every available means."11
Indians
had absolutely no part to play in the administration of the northeastern
hill tribal areas. A few Bengali clerks, junior engineers, and doctors
whom the British found necessary in the beginning were gradually phased
out and replaced by the newly educated tribals. No Indian member of
the Indian Civil Service was ever posted to any hill tribal district.12
While the Lushai Hills, the Naga Hills and the Frontier Tracts on the
Tibet border (now Arunachal Pradesh), were ‘excluded’ from
the rest of the country by a succession of administrative orders and
enactments, Khasi and Jaintia Hills, Garo Hills, Mikir Hills and North
Cachar Hills fell in the category of "partially excluded"
areas. First, the people living in the settled districts of Bengal and
Assam were prohibited from entering these hills by the introduction
of Inner Line System under the East Bengal Frontier Regulation, 1873.13
This was followed by removal of all outsiders not required by the British
in the hills or considered undesirable under the Chin Hills Regulation
of 1896. Then the operation of most of the general laws of the country
was made inapplicable in these hills by an order under the Assam Frontier
Tracts Regulation, 1880. The Government of India Acts of 1915 and 1919
termed these areas as "backward" and excluded them politically
from the purview of the new provincial legislature and the High Court.
Finally, the Government of India Act of 1935 created a totally new political
status for these areas by excluding them fully from the federal and
provincial legislatures as well as the jurisdiction of the High Court.
Although
the Northeastern hill tribes had been effectively excluded from the
administration of India from 1873 onwards, their socio-cultural exclusion
did not become a vital political necessity for the British until the
first decade of this century. The order issued under the 1919 Act, declaring
these areas "backward tracts", requiring special administrative
measures and direct rule by the Governor, gave the missionaries a synergistic
and unhindered opportunity to proselytize, and the administrators to
reconstruct, the tribal traditions to create a separate ethno-national
identity. The 1935 Act reinforced the status in a more artful manner.
The
British reluctance to allow Indian elected representatives and civil
servants to play a role in the governance of the north-east extremities
of India raises a host of unanswered questions. It was an uncharacteristically
candid Rev. Michael Scott who wrote: "We cannot evade our share
of responsibility in Britain for all that has led to the present tragedy....It
was Britain’s imperial policy which kept Nagaland isolated from
India and from contact with the people and political movements of India
so that there was very little exchange of ideas or mutual understanding
of the people and their society when India became independent."14
The
British gave the following reasons for formulating the policy of segregating
the hill tribes from the plains of Assam and Bengal : (1) to protect
the plains from raids and plunder by the hill tribals (1873-1900); (2)
to protect the hill tribes from exploitation by the plainsmen (1900-1928);
and (3) to foster an enlightened public policy aimed at cultural survival
of the hill tribes (1928-47). These areas were exempted from the operation
of the Civil and Criminal Procedure Codes and the jurisdiction of the
High Court in Calcutta. The Chief Commissioner became the highest court
of Appeal. The Inner Line kept the plainsmen out of a territory where
such conspicuous departures from the procedures of justice were being
carried out.
A
number of questions arise because the successive reasons, so flagrantly
contradicting the earlier ones, changed every 25 years or so, and betrayed
a total absence of consistency. Were these assertions true, or were
they a mere facade for carrying out political, anthropological and ecclesiastical
experimentation on a scale hitherto unknown in the annals of colonial
rule? Were the British promoting ethno-nationalism or an ethnic identity
which was clearly out of place in a multi-ethnic society like India?
Were they aiming at a future political status for the hill tribes that
would be separate from the Indian political identity? Was there a definite
tendency to fragmentation latent in these insular territorial units
which the British created and left behind?
Indeed,
there was a dichotomy inherent in the policies: while it was necessary
for them to unify India through a federal structure and communication
network, it was also necessary to reconstruct ethnic differences to
promote differentiation as a basis for dividing the opposition to their
rule. For this purpose, the British made a distinction between the areas
with a predominantly homogenous population capable of military mobilisation
under traditional leaders and areas of heterogeneous populations, which
did not possess such capabilities. For the former, they devised the
system of ‘Indirect Rule’15
through native kings, princes, nawabs, chiefs and headmen, and
administered these areas politically through residents, political officers
and superintendents. These areas were generally not included in the
British provinces and, if included, they were excluded from the jurisdiction
of the provincial legislatures. Areas which were brought under the British
rule through treaties with local kings were also ruled indirectly. The
major parts of Northwest Frontier, Kashmir, Sind, Himachal, East Punjab,
Rajasthan, Gujarat, Mysore, Kerala, Hyderabad, Orissa, Manipur, Tripura
and northeastern hills came in this category.
The
policy was highly pragmatic and one which pleased the tax-weary British
citizens.16 According to Gifford,
utilizing the traditional authorities to carry out the orders of an
alien administration established by conquest was the result of an attempt
to acquire great tracts of territory quickly and to rule them "on
the cheap" with badly strained resources and a handful of men.17
The British spent very little or often nothing at all on the administration
of indirectly ruled areas, and salaries of the British officers who
were loaned to the native princes were borne by the native states. More
importantly, the armies maintained by the native states were impressed
for services under the British flag as and when required. These native
armies were used against the Northwest Frontier tribes, the Sikhs, Nepal,
Burma, in the Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion and the two World Wars.
The indirectly ruled areas also provided the British with the best recruitment
grounds for their own army. After the people who had opposed the British
advance had been successfully subdued, they were, by a strange logic
of biological determinism18, "made
to look braver under the British upkeep, as the Imperial masters tried
to turn them into guardians of the Raj". This was done mainly
to "recruit a cheap but dependable and, above all, obedient soldiery
for the Raj".19 They
were called the "martial races", and this construction ministered
to the egos of these "new domesticates of colonialism".20
The
parts of India which did not have homogenous populations constituted
the directly ruled areas of the United Provinces, Central Provinces,
and the provinces of Bihar, Bengal, Bombay, Assam (plains) and Madras.
The devolution of power and establishment of democratic institutions
which followed in the wake of the reforms introduced during the years
1909-1935 benefited these British provinces only, and resulted in the
development of national political parties and the freedom movement during
the last fifty years of the British rule.21
A
number of areas which the British ruled indirectly through native princes
or tribal chiefs upto 1947 have shown a tendency to resist integration
or have challenged the existing terms of association or have been in
the forefront of dissent or open armed defiance of the central authority.
The Nagas and the Mizos were ruled through the tribal chieftains and
headmen, Manipur and Tripura through their respective Maharajas. Jammu
and Kashmir was ruled indirectly through the Maharaja. The Jat-Sikh
heartland of Punjab, which has spawned ethno-nationalism and separatism
among the Sikhs, is co-terminus with the cis-Sutlej area whose Sikhs
helped the British defeat the trans-Sutlej Sikhs and which later constituted
the princely states of Patiala, Nabha, Faridkot, Jind, Malerkotla, Kalsia
and Kapurthala. Others living in the erstwhile indirectly ruled areas
have also challenged the central authority in one way or the other.22
The
British promoted a separate identity, either religious and social or
both, in most of the indirectly ruled areas which ran counter to the
growth of nationalism in the directly ruled areas of the country.23
Encouragement to the development of vernacular literature and discarding
of the more advanced Indian languages and scripts, which was a salient
ingredient of Indirect Rule, prevented Indianization of the hill tribes
of the northeast.24 According to
Gifford, this policy "fostered the tribe over nation and tribal
over national leadership."25 The controlled
environment of the British helped in the reconstruction of the Northeastern
hill tribal ethnic identity, and its internalisation helped aggravate
notions of ethno-identity different not only from the plainsmen of Assam
and Bengal but also other homogenous groups in adjacent parts of the
country with similar racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. The
British thus instilled into the minds of the hill tribes notions of
suspicion and hostility against the plainsmen of India as well as other
ethnic groups surrounding them, and aggravated the ethnic differences
that existed between the hill tribes and the people of other parts of
India. This helped in the "growth of that sentiment of belonging
together and differentiation from others" which Hagopian calls
"nationalism" and holds responsible in some manifestation
for all modern revolutions.26 The
policy of "exclusion" was an exogenous condition causing value
change, and thus became an "accelerator of dysfunction".27
It was a deliberate assault on the future political identity of this
area as well as the future political integration of this area with India.
The
Inner Line was first defined in 1873 to stop hill tribal raids into
the plains. However, within a few years of the British occupation of
these hills, restrictions ceased on the movement of hill tribes, and
they were allowed to fish, hunt and attend markets freely on both sides
of the Line.28 But the plainsmen
were never allowed to enter the hills without a pass. The hill tribals,
whose activities had prompted the creation of the Inner Line Regulation,
were thus exempted from the application of its provisions. And, ironically,
the restrictions applied from now on only to the people of the neighboring
plains districts of Bengal and Assam for whose protection the Line was
initially defined. In the long run, therefore, the Inner Line was neither
designed nor enforced to serve its original purpose. Then what purpose
did it serve? If the Lushai and Naga raids had ceased by 1897, why was
the Inner Line continued as long as the British rule lasted in India?
The greatest benefit from the Regulation of 1873, however, came in a
way in which it was least expected. The Inner Line helped create a controlled
environment in which programs of a more lasting significance could be
undertaken. The hill tribes had been successfully tamed by the end of
the 19th century.29 A question, therefore,
arose about the utility of these economically unviable areas after they
had ceased to be a problem for the British interests in the plains.
The consolidation of power and administration in such areas had to be
cost-effective. Could the Christian missionaries be gainfully utilized
for "civilizing the savages", creating an impregnable Christian
fortress safe from the prying eyes of the neighbouring Hindus and Muslims
and, in the process, promote certain prospects which were nascent but
nonetheless quite manifest in the British policy ?
The
British were aware that these areas had been politically outside the
pale of India or at least had no active association with the mainland
rulers or their regional potentates. Moreover, most hill tribes inhabiting
this region were only marginally familiar with the cultural phenomena
called India, Assam and Bengal. The British were also aware that the
spiritual and cultural identity of India had found virtually no expression
in its political unity30. The sweep of
the larger Indian empires of the last three millennia - Mauryas, Guptas
and Mughals - did not extend to these parts. Moreover, these frontier
hill tribes had arrived too late, and certainly not before the 16th
Century, from western China and Burma to be able to imbibe the new culture.
It was also recognized that the Indian culture was nonetheless infectious
and might soon permeate the hills if the hill tribes were not appropriately
insulated against its influence and provided with a preponderant alternative.
The Inner Line Regulation kept the Indian culture and religion effectively
on the other side of the fence while the Christian missionaries were
inducted for proselytization.
The
British declaration in 1917 to bring about democratic reforms in India,
which culminated in the Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935, paved
the way for a little more openness and accountability in the administration
of India. In anticipation of the interest the reforms would generate
among the Indian politicians and intellectuals, the British began a
search for a rational basis for many of their policies. This was in
any case necessary as both the Montague-Chelmsford and Simon Commissions
were open inquiries, and subject to question, discussion and analysis
in the British Parliament and in the media in India and Britain. If
they were unwilling to give up the Inner Line policy, they would have
to find a justification strong enough to withstand the test of whatever
limited democracy was in the offing in India. It had helped them in
the consolidation of rule in this volatile region through exercise,
whenever necessary, of extra-legal punitive powers; it had provided
the insularity necessary for the exercise of such powers in an age of
growing liberalism; and it had allowed total freedom to the Christian
missions to operate in an area of religious void, without competition
from, and antagonism of, other faiths.
How
could the status quo be maintained? There was nothing to prove
that hills and plains had been in a state of permanent hostility and
their continued separation would, therefore, be necessary in the interest
of peace. The hill tribals themselves were too unsophisticated to understand
the logic of ethnic and cultural identity and demand a right to its
protection from neighboring influences. A myth was, therefore, necessary;
a convincing argument had to be built around the theory that, in the
scale of civilization, the hill tribes were behind the plainsmen by
many centuries, and that their separation from each other was necessary
to prevent the exploitation of the tribals, and the destruction of their
culture, by the plainsmen.31
It
was obviously not known to many Indians that tribals were being put
in fear of their own symbols in order to make them conform, and that
Christianity was a "measure of relief approved by the Government."32
However, the British were aware that a policy which either worked so
blatantly against the cultural integration of the country or inveigled
the simple tribals into a new faith by the means of such wiles and deception
would not escape the attention of the Indian nationalists and the new
class of Indian intellectuals bred on the liberal English education
system.33 Moreover, the measure would
have little success in the British Parliament if it did not have a profound
philosophical and humanitarian orientation. It was, therefore, inevitable
that the British administrators would seek to cloak the policy in a
set of principles attributed to the organicists34
who believed that social entities were delicate, and not easily understood,
and more likely to survive and flourish if not too much meddled with.
The
men who conquered and ruled India were diehard imperialists. But there
was a difference between the military officers who led expeditions,
pacified enemies and established the empire and the members of the Indian
Civil Service who evolved the system of governance and ran the Raj.
The latter had an edge over others when it came to devising subtle definitions
to invest imperial compulsions. They were brilliant products of the
British universities, and could put their education to good use. Some
of them wrote and published impressive ethnographic monographs and studies
on tribes that have become classics in their field.35
From the last quarter of the 19th century, some of these outstanding
intellectuals were entrusted with the job of defining the laws for governing
the tribal area. They worked out a subtle middle path between the idealists’
advocacy of ‘self-determination’ for the tribes and the ‘realists’
who demanded their ‘preservation’.36
Henceforth, the hill tribes would be ‘preserved’ to prepare
them for ‘self-determination’ at a future date. A grand alliance
of anthropologists, missionaries and administrators was formed to lay
down the norms for ruling the hill tribal areas in the 20th century.
An enthusiastic officer wrote that it was "the only instance in
history of a body of foreigners who govern an Empire, not for their
own benefit, but for the benefit of the races committed by Providence
to their charge."37
The
fierce defiance of these tribes to the British advance, and the cost
of expeditions in terms of British lives lost38,
made it inevitable that military conquest be followed by a show of friendship
and goodwill, and this led to the establishment of "friendly relations
of permanent character with them."39
The execution of this policy was so successful that a Superintendent
of Lushai Hills gleefully reported that the people of his district would
never "wish to be rid of our presence."40
The milk of human kindness and the balm to heal the bruises was ready:
the missionaries had arrived.
The
Inner Line was instrumental in making the Church-State relationship
more or less symbiotic in the hills. David Scott, who conquered/ annexed
the Brahmputra valley and the surrounding hills and managed these territories
as the Political Agent to the Governor General of India, wrote to W.B.
Bayley, Secretary to the Government of India in 1825, that "nothing
permanently good would be obtained" if the British did not interfere
on behalf of the tribes and prevent them from becoming Hindus. He criticized
the missionaries for paying more attention to the polished natives than
to the "rude tribes who are still in that state of national childhood
which enables the stranger priest to enact the school master and to
teach them what he likes."41
By the end of the 19th century, the missionaries were already on their
way to become "the ecclesiastical wing of the Indian Civil Service."42
They became an integral part of the administration and were often entrusted
with the keys of the government treasury, and sometimes even the armoury,
when the British officers were on tours. In 1924, a Welsh missionary
was nominated to represent the hill tribes in the newly constituted
Legislative Assembly of Assam.
The
fact was that the "superimposed influences running directly counter
to custom"43 were not Hindus or Muslims
of neighboring Bengal and Assam as might have been implied. This function
was being exclusively performed by the Christian missionaries who were
offering "some measure of relief approved by Government" in
the shape of "a message or direction of God."44
The missionaries ordered "their approach to their task as to ensure"
that the "tribes may benefit from a gradual equipment to meet changing
conditions."45 Implicit in the
policy was the hope that the missionaries would soon be able to persuade
the tribals to seek change and that the parameters of the change would
largely be determined by the missionaries themselves. The guiding principle
of the policy was that the transplantation of western European culture
into the Southeast Asian tribal milieu would be far more wholesome and
appropriate than the more organic cultural cross-currents from nearer
home in Assam or Bengal46.
The
mutually supportive relationship between the Church and the State had
some significant strategic aspects too. As long as the missionaries
were allowed a free spiritual run of these hills, they would not question
the means employed by the administration to suppress dissent or punish
disobedience. Even the wide-spread practice of slavery among the Lushais
and some Naga tribes was conveniently overlooked by both the missionaries
and administrators for a long time.47 Extermination
of entire tribal villages and massacre of the chiefs and their families
was frequently resorted to during the course of the military expeditions
against the Chins, Lushais and the Nagas, and this was no different
from the way North American Indians were dealt with by the whites about
the same time.48 Lesser forms of brutalities
were still practiced after the first Christian Missions started functioning
in the Naga Hills in 1840 and in the Lushai Hills District in 1894.
One of the many summary punitive measures frequently adopted by the
British was burning of the villages and of stored grain belonging to
disobedient chiefs and their subjects. This mode of punishment was carried
out until well into the 20th century.49
In
the areas of the present States of Mizoram, Manipur and Tripura in India
and Chin Hills in Burma where Duhlian (language of the Lushai-Kuki-Chin
group of people) is spoken, about 30 villages bear the name of Vaihal,
meaning vai = foreigner and hal = fire. The isolation
imposed on the district was so perfect that news did not travel and
no newspapers in India reported these incidents. To quote an official
report, which did not see the light of day until fifty years later,
"the result was far from decisive. Beyond the burning of a few
villages and destruction of large stores of grain, nothing was done....
Their power, though scattered and temporarily broken, has not been crushed."50
This
particular reprisal was launched when some eastern chiefs had refused
to provide free labour for carrying British stores. The missionaries
apparently saw nothing unusual and reprehensible in either forced labour
or the acts of arson by the administration. On the other hand, the missionaries
persuaded the administrators to exempt those who had become Christians
from forced labour on Sundays. "Officers must use a little tact
so as to strike a happy mean between letting the Christians shirk their
proper share of work," the instructions mentioned.51
Administration
of justice in the hill tribal areas was largely the responsibility of
the tribal chiefs, with only offences against the government, murder
and disputes between chiefs going to the court of the British Superintendent.
The area had been excluded from operation of most of the laws prevailing
elsewhere in India, and the Inner Line Regulation effectively barred
entry of outsiders, including lawyers. Under the Administration of Justice
Rules no lawyers could defend the tribals without the permission of
the Superintendent. The Superintendent could award penalties of death
and imprisonment for life in summary trials lasting a few hours, and
there was no provision for appeal once the sentence had been confirmed
by the Chief Commissioner. This was a new kind of society, different
from the one in which the hill tribals had existed for centuries, almost
a ‘civilization’ started from scratch.
Government
of India Act, 1935
The
Joint Committee of the British Parliament, which was asked to report
on the White Paper based on the recommendations of the Simon Commission,
Indian Franchise Committee, and the third session of the Indian Round
Table Conference,52 met on October
16, 1933 to examine J. H. Hutton (the then Deputy Commissioner of Naga
Hills, Kohima) and his memorandum, and to take the evidence of Sir Samuel
Hoare, Secretary of State for India, during the next two days.
The
proposals made in the White Paper, in so far as northeast India was
concerned, were: Naga Hills, Lushai Hills and the Frontier Tracts of
Balipara, Sadiya and Lakhimpur would be totally excluded areas; North
Cachar Hills, Garo Hills, Mikir Hills, and Khasi and Jaintia Hills would
be partially excluded; the excluded areas will have no representation
in the federal and provincial legislature, and the partially excluded
areas would be represented in the provincial legislature only. The totally
excluded areas would be administered by the Governor of Assam, and the
provincial ministers will have no constitutional right to advise him
on matters of administration of these areas. Only the Governor will
have the power to extend application of laws made by federal or provincial
legislatures to the totally excluded tracts; the budget for these tracts
would not require approval of any legislature, and no questions would
be asked, or subject relating to these areas discussed, in the provincial
legislature without the sanction of the Governor. More importantly,
the jurisdiction of the High Court in Calcutta would be withdrawn from
these areas. The same in every respect applied to the proposed partially
excluded areas, with the exception that the provincial legislature was
to have the power to vote the budget, discuss the administration of
these areas, and enact laws. The jurisdiction of the High Court was
to extend to the partially excluded areas, but the laws were to come
into effect only with the assent of the Governor.
In
a slight disagreement with the Government of India, the Government of
Assam wanted all these areas to be totally excluded, and Hutton was
deputed to London to appear before the Joint Parliamentary Committee
to present the case of Assam. The arguments advanced by Hutton in his
memorandum were radically different from those advanced in the White
Paper. He made a very strong plea for a total exclusion of all the hill
tracts of Assam, Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bengal, some tribal areas
of Bihar, Madras, Bombay and the Central Province, Lahaul and Spiti
in the Punjab Himalayas (now in Himachal Pradesh), Andaman and Nicobar
Islands, and the north-western hill tracts of Burma53.
Briefly,
the reasons given by Hutton in his evidence for advocating total exclusion
were (1) the tribes in these areas were much fewer numerically, and
representation in an elected body will carry no effective weight; (2)
their interests were alien if not actually antagonistic to the interests
of their more ‘civilized neighbours’, and will, therefore,
always be liable to be sacrificed to those of the majority; and (3)
the aboriginals (this is Hutton’ s word) themselves, although inarticulate,
were in several areas conscious of the dangers of inclusion in the autonomous
provinces and definitely desired self-determination and the preservation
of their traditional culture and manner of life.
Hutton’s
memorandum stated: "Wherever aboriginal areas come within the scope
of the activities of the High Courts, actions which are perfectly correct
according to aboriginal standards are liable to be punished as contrary
to law. Thus, quite recently, a Bhil was convicted and sentenced for
effecting a marriage by capture, which is a recognized form of Bhil
marriage and which would undoubtedly have been acquiesced in by the
society in which he lived, had there been no possibility of moving Courts."
Hutton
was obviously talking cultural relativism54,
a philosophy which assumes that every culture generates its own value
system, and that all beliefs and codes of behaviour derive from the
particular social environment, and that each culture should be understood
and appreciated on its own terms. He was justifying his opposition to
the application of Indian laws (which ironically were made by the British
without similar considerations for social/cultural environment of other
parts of India) to the tribal areas on the ground that any facet of
behaviour, belief or custom may be judged only in terms of the value
system in which it is found, there being no absolute scale of values
applicable to all societies. What is moral in one culture might be immoral
or ethically neutral in another.
Indian
members of the Joint Committee were Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Sir Hari Singh
Gaur, Dr. Shafaat Ahmed Khan, M. R. Jayaker, N. M. Joshi, Sir Pheroze
Sethna, Zafrulla Khan and Sir Abdul Rahim – an array of legal and
other luminaries of contemporary India and members of the Viceroy’s
Council. Consultations with the Indian members of the Viceroy’s
Council before enacting the Government of India Act of 1935, which was
virtually a Constitution of British India, was necessary in the absence
of any other representative Indian opinion. It was also politically
necessary, since the process of reforms which this Act signified had
been boycotted by the Indian National Congress. But, unfortunately,
the Committee’s examination of the Secretary of State for India
and Hutton was nothing more than a procedural formality. It was a perfunctory
democratic gesture, and almost a farce. Evidently, the Indian members
of the Committee were acting under severe limitations. As members of
the Viceroy’s Council, they could at best raise objections in the
circumscribed manner of dissenting members of the Treasury Bench of
the British Parliament unless, of course, they were willing to resign
their memberships on moral grounds. But what induced such eminent people
as Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Sir Hari Singh Gaur and M. R. Jayakar to capitulate
in the presence of Hutton and end up demonstrating their ignorance of
the subject matter before the Committee is not very clear. Nevertheless,
to those untutored in modern Indian history, Hutton’s examination,
and the subseqeunt debate in the British House of Commons would sound
like the unscripted version of a modern television situation comedy.
Sir
Hari Singh betrayed his ignorance of current anthropological thinking
which Hutton had used in the argument to support his case for exclusion.
He sought to rebut Hutton’s contention in the manner of a lawyer
contradicting his opponent as a matter of habit rather than compulsions
of reflection and thought. Hutton had criticised the High Court’s
inability to decide matters bearing on cultural diversities by application
of ordinary law. Hari Singh implied that Hutton had the audacity to
make a contemptuous suggestion about the High Court, a normal reaction
of an Indian lawyer not yet quite accustomed to the privileges of the
British Parliament.
Hari
Singh said: "The High Courts say that it is against common morality
and the freedom of man that a man should run away with a girl and seize
her by force and that society should tolerate that as a marriage, and
you say that the High Courts were wrong in punishing the man because
he used force in obtaining a wife ?"
Hutton
went on to reinforce his argument by citing a specific case: "The
trouble comes in when you stereotype the law and do not allow a case
like that to be settled by custom. I quote a definite case later on
from Assam. Everybody knows what happened there. The man ran away with
a girl because he could not pay the price demanded by her parents, and
the parents brought a case in Court pro forma simply in order
to save their faces. Everybody was horror-struck when the man was sentenced
to penal servitude for life."
At
this juncture, Sir Hari Singh fell prey to ethnocentricism, a tendency
to evaluate other cultures in terms of one’s own, the very evil
that cultural relativism was fighting against. He said: "I am horror-struck
if a man runs away with a girl without her consent, whether the father
was reconciled to it or not. I would still regard the man as guilty
of abduction."
Hutton
had trapped his opponent and ended his statement with a brief: "On
paper."55
On
the same issue of tribal customary law, Hutton disposed of Dr. B.R.
Ambedkar in a similar manner. Ambedkar asked: "Cannot they plead
tribal law as their customary law ?"
Hutton:
"No; it is not recognised by the High Court."
Ambedkar:
"The High Court would recognise any custom. It is not necessary
to establish that it is a Hindu or a Mohammedan custom. If there is
no law laid down in that sense, the custom would govern. Ordinarily,
that would be the thing. I am not speaking with first hand knowledge."56
It must have been a matter of some satisfaction to Hutton to know that
one of the most eminent jurists of India did not know have "first
hand knowledge" about his own country and its laws.
Hari
Singh: "At the present moment, every member of the aboriginal tribe
when he leaves the village and comes to the town becomes a member of
the Hindu community... they take part in the daily life of the Hindus
and mix with them, and they are not regarded as depressed classes at
all."
Hutton:
"They are usually regarded as depressed classes when they become
Hindus."
Hari
Singh: "Not the Gonds ?’
Hutton:
"In Bihar and Orissa, certainly."
Hari
Singh: "That may be so, but in the Central Provinces the Gonds
and the Bhils are not regarded as depressed classes."
Hutton:
"Are they not ?"57 The discussion
ended there.
It
appears that, somewhere along the line, perceptions of the government,
missionaries and anthropologists had become totally integrated. This
aspect of colonial culture in one shape or the other was in evidence
contemporaneously around the world. The Indian Reorganization Act of
1934 of USA and the ‘exclusion’ clauses of the Government
of India Act, 1935 had great similarities; not the least of them was
the influence of two personalities, John Collier and John Hutton, on
their respective legislation. But, in their conceptualisation, the two
laws were poles apart. Collier was driven by moral compulsions to provide
urgent reparations to the American Indians for centuries of brutalities
against them; Hutton was providing anthropological and moral bases for
an immoral political deed.
Earlier
in the year, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru had issued a strong indictment of
the White Paper in the Indian press. "A great part of the document
," Sir Tej said while emphasising that the White Paper had the
most hostile reception in India, "seems to be drawn up more with
a view to placate that section of the British Conservatives who are
frankly opposed to any advance of the Centre, and cannot think of India
otherwise than in terms of perpetual tutelage." Leading industrialists
of India like Sir P. Thakurdas, G. D. Birla, Walchand Hirachand and
Lala Sriram condemned the White Paper in a joint statement which said
that they were "disappointed to find it is not capable of satisfying
even the most moderate section of Indian public opinion." The distress
of the Indian National Congress, which had boycotted the Simon Commission,
was articulated all over the country. Nehru recorded a few years later
that "the Excluded Areas are outside the ken of our provincial
ministries, and, strange to say, they are even more cut off from us
now than they were before the advent of provincial autonomy."58
The
Government of India Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1935,
and became law the next year. The House of Commons debates on Clause
91 of the Bill dealing with the excluded and partially excluded areas
are an extremely readable commentary on the variety of imperial, preservationist,
liberal, often swashbuckling and sometimes fatuous and irresponsible
opinions that constituted the highlights of the British legislative
process during 1930s.
Lord
Eustace Percy struck the first honest note when he said: "at the
present moment neither the Statutory Commission nor the Joint Select
Committee nor His Majesty’s Government have been able to give the
House sufficient guidance for a decision upon this most important matter."
This
was preceded by a speech by Mr. Cadogan who, as a member of the Simon
Commission, had visited Naga Hills. While laying the amended Sixth Schedule
which specified the areas to be excluded in the House of Commons, he
said that the hill tribals had "a very shrewd suspicion that something
is being done to take away from them their immemorial rights and customs.
This is the way they put it to me. They said, ‘We hear that a black
king is going to come to rule over India. If that is so, for goodness
sake, do not let it be a Bengali, because we loathe the Bengali.’
They ended by saying that they much preferred Queen Victoria."59
Colonel
Wedgewood set the tone for paternalists and pseudo-preservationists
by declaring that "the backward tribes of India should remain under
the British control, and should not be controlled by the Governors of
the various Provinces....They must be developed from themselves and
not by being converted from good Nagas or whatever they are into bad
Hindus....The best hope of the backward tribes everywhere are the missionaries."
He informed that he had had an infinity of letters from India urging
that Indians should be allowed to look after these people and stating
that they would look after them as well as any Englishman could. He
said: "It is impossible to say that any other race on earth can
look after them as well as we can....There is no reason why we should
hand them over to civilisation."60
Samuel
Butler, Under Secretary of State for India, advanced different reasons
for excluding these tribes from the rest of India: "some honourable
Members who have had the opportunity perhaps of meeting them in a shooting
expedition know that they would do their best to provide any honourable
Member with game, either large or small, and by their general sportsmanship
and their attractive character they would endear themselves to any honourable
Member."61
The
sarcasm was obvious and it focused on those aspects of administration
which had escaped the official record but not the contemporary literature.
Books on the Raj had already described the "pleasure dome"
syndrome of British district administrators in India, some of them spending
an inordinately large part of their time hunting and fishing, and wishing
that the game would go on for ever.
Later
in the debate, when confronted with a discordant array of opinions,
Butler was more honest and thought it would be disastrous to take any
step which would alienate the public opinion of the advanced communities
in India. What he said proved to be prophetic: "Let us look to
the future. If at this moment we decide a ring-fence policy and segregate
as many areas as we can, we put off to a later date the chance of assimilating
the backwards areas in the general polity of India."62
That
the exclusion of these areas was necessary for, among other reasons,
preservation of a grand zoological park or a playground was recurrent
in the debate. Sir W. Smiles said, "the courage of these people
is extraordinary. They will go out with elephants to catch wild elephants,
and when they have caught a wild elephant they will jump down and slip
a noose over his front leg and get the animal between two others. In
their understanding of elephants some of these tribes lead the whole
world. For that and many other reasons, it is essential that we should
protect these people."63 But
Winston Churchill, though opposed to the idea of electoral reforms in
India, thought "that the whole process in which you are engaged
means a great retrogression and decadence in the standard of administration
in India to which you have consented." According to him, it was
inconceivable that Indians who were considered capable of looking after
the law and order of the country could not be entrusted with the welfare
of the tribes.64 For once, at least, Churchill
was on the side of the Indians.
Earl
Winterton believed far more in assimilation than in isolation: "I
do not think you want to turn areas into modern Whipsnades65
where you have picturesque survivals and where Englishmen are able to
go out and say, ‘This is a most interesting ethnological race of
people divided by 500 or 1000 years from the rest of India’."66
The
House of Commons, however, could not come to a decision on the Sixth
Schedule which contained a list of areas classified as excluded and
partially excluded, and the Government of India was authorised to determine
these areas by an order of the Viceroy-in-Council. On January 31, 1936
a draft Order-in-Council was laid before the British Parliament for
ratification, and on March 3, 1936 an order was finally issued declaring
Naga Hills, Lushai Hills, North Cachar Hills, and the three Frontier
Tracts of Sadiya, Balipara, and Lakhimpur as Excluded Areas, and Mikir
Hills, Garo Hills, and Khasi and Jaintia Hills as Partially Excluded
Areas. The order came into force in April 1937. The Excluded Areas were
deprived of representation in the Federal and Provincial legislatures.
The Inner Line Regulations, now re-validated by an order under the new
Act, was to continue to apply to these hills. While these areas remained
in the province of Assam, the provincial ministers had no constitutional
right to advise the Governor on matters of administration; the budget
for these areas was not required to be approved by the legislature;
no subject relating to these areas was to be discussed in the legislature
without the sanction of the Governor; no law passed by the Federal or
the provincial legislature was to apply to these areas without the permission
of the Governor; and jurisdiction of the High Court stood withdrawn
from these areas. The Partially Excluded Areas differed from the excluded
areas in three main respects: first, they were allowed representation
in the provincial legislature; secondly, the Inner Line Regulation did
not apply to these areas; and thirdly, the provincial legislature could
discuss the administration of the partially excluded areas and approve
expenditure on their administration. These areas were placed under the
jurisdiction of the High Court, but the operation of the provincial
and central laws here required the assent of the Governor.
William
Gallacher67 told the House of Commons
when the draft Order was discussed: "I listened carefully to the
very clear and very soothing explanations of the Under Secretary respecting
his attitude to the aborigines, and the protection that is offered to
them. The honourable Member for Brigdeton (Mr. Maxton) and myself once
occupied adjoining cells in a prison in Scotland, and there was a governor
there, with all kinds of officials, to protect us from going wrong in
any way. We were excluded. We were aborigines. If there were any real
understanding of this question, instead of keeping the aborigines in
excluded areas and appointing all kinds of officials to protect them,
all our power and wealth ought to be directed towards bringing the aborigines
into line with the general development that is going on in India."68
This reflected the sentiments of the contemporary Scottish and Irish
members of the British Parliament, who had a measure of identification
with the Indian predicament.
The
Indian National Congress condemned the order in its 1936 Faizpur session
and called it yet another attempt to divide the people of India into
different groups and to obstruct the growth of uniform democratic institutions
in the country.69 There was widespread
resentment in Assam, partly because it implied that the people of Assam
were not competent to be entrusted with the responsibility of looking
after the welfare and administration of the hill tribes.70
Towards
a New Constitution
On
May 16, 1946 Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced to the House of
Commons his Government’s recommendations regarding the basic form
the new Constitution of India should take. He recommended that, among
other things, the Indian Constituent Assembly should appoint an Advisory
Committee to report "upon the list of fundamental rights, clauses
for protecting of minorities, and a scheme for the administration of
tribal and excluded areas."71
This
Advisory Committee, set up in January 1947, appointed a sub-committee
which was designated as the North-East Frontier (Assam) Tribal and Excluded
Areas Sub-Committee with Gopinath Bordoloi, the Prime Minister of Assam,
as its chairman, and Rev. J. J. M. Nichols-Roy (Khasi tribe), Rupnath
Brahma (Bodo, a plains tribe), Mayangnokcha (Naga tribe), B. N. Rao,
and A. V. Thakkar as its members.
This
sub-committee visited Naga Hills and Lushai Hills more than six months
after these hill tribes had declared their willingness to join India.
Meanwhile, about a million people had died and many millions had become
refugees in the wake of the partition of India and Pakistan. The tales
of horror and bloodshed which reached these hills revived old apprehensions
and fears, infused largely by the British, about the Indian ability
to govern a multi-racial and multi-religious society. By the time the
hillmen or their leaders were plunged into the maelstrom of Constitution-making
in 1947-49, their hopes, aspirations and contentions were severely divided72
73 74
75
Northeastern
Hills and the Constituent Assembly
The
British Cabinet Mission Plan had grouped Assam with Bengal for the purpose
of deciding upon the provincial constitution in the Constituent Assembly.
The Assamese saw this as a sinister move as it involved infringement
of the basic principle of provincial autonomy76
and quite justifiably provoked sharp reaction in the Brahmaputra valley.
Implicit in this grouping was also the fear of Assam falling automatically
into the partition plan. It was in the interest of the Nagas and other
hill tribes to join Assam on this issue. On the eve of independence,
Sylhet district had a predominantly Muslim population, and the districts
of Kamrup, Goalpara and Nowgong had sizeable Muslim population made
up mostly of immigrant Muslims from East Bengal. This had created a
precarious balance which could be tilted in India’s favour only
by an unambiguous stand by the hill tribes. But after the Naga and Mizo
weight had been pulled initially to the mutual advantage of Assam and
the hill tribes, and the subsequent Sylhet referendum resulted in a
more or less linguistically homogenous province of Assam77,
these hill tribes began to be taken for granted.
These
initial ‘integrationist’ overtures of the hitherto excluded
tribes of Naga Hills and Lushai Hills were certainly a shot, though
of inadequate potency, in the arm of young India. But the immediate
result of the Naga National Council and Mizo Union resolutions of 1946
desiring union with a free India was to make the Congressmen in Delhi
and Assam complacent. It is true that more urgent questions concerning
the partition and its bloody aftermath deserved immediate national attention.
But the politicians in Delhi did not realise that in 1945-46 both the
wooing of the hill tribes by the Assamese Congressmen and the hasty
move of the hill tribes to remain in India was prompted more by a strong
desire of both to keep themselves out of Pakistan than the Assamese
concern for the hill tribes or the latter’s love for Assam and
India.78
No
serious attempt was subsequently made by the Assamese or the national
leaders to involve the hill tribal leaders in the process of Constitution-making,
particularly in the deliberations about the future administration of
the tribal areas which they, as the affected party, thought was their
right79. It was, therefore, natural that
the Nagas and Mizos, irked by the perceived Indian apathy, saw themselves
under no compulsion to close their options after the possibility of
inclusion in Pakistan had been warded off. In fact, none of the north-east
Indian tribes have closed these options to this day, and have frequently
questioned the Indian desire to take them for granted. In 1986, even
the Hindus of Assam joined the band of these discontented ethnic entities.
The
process of Constitution-making in Delhi was, according to these tribesmen,
a situation reminiscent of the British times when civilised men drew
up plans for safeguarding the interests of the "primitive"
tribes, even if these plans were divorced from what the tribes may have
wanted for themselves. Mayangnokcha, a Naga, was nominated as a member
of the Bordoloi Sub-Committee80, and two
Nagas and two Mizos were co-opted as members during the Sub-Committee’s
tour of these districts. Most Naga and Mizo politicians understood the
difference between the status of a member of the Constituent Assembly
of India and one of its many sub-committees. What piqued them more was
that another hill tribe, the Khasis, had Rev. J. J. M. Nichols-Roy81 as
their representative in the Constituent Assembly. Moreover, the fear
that the Constituent Assembly would impose a pattern of administration
on the hill tribes without giving them an opportunity to determine its
structure helped to bring about a radical change in the thinking in
the hills. When the Sub-Committee visited the Lushai Hills in April,
1947 and Naga Hills in May, 1947 they found the political situation
quite different from what it had been a year ago.
In
February, 1947 the Naga National Council changed their earlier stand
and, in a memorandum addressed to the British and Indian Governments,
demanded an interim government of their own for ten years at the end
of which they would be free to choose a desired form of government.
By a subsequent memorandum, they clarified that the ten-year interim
government would be a government by the Nagas having all legislative,
judicial and executive powers supported by a guardian power providing
financial and defence arrangements. The first memorandum also stated
that they would not accept the new Constitution of India as it was drawn
up by people who had no knowledge of the Nagas.82
Obviously,
there were a great many influences at work and the use of the last British
Deputy Commissioner’s official residence for the meetings of the
Naga National Council during 1947 was not altogether innocuous. The
visit of Sir Andrew Clow, the last British Governor of Assam, to Naga
Hills during the same month when this memorandum was submitted, was
also viewed with some suspicion. During its visit to Kohima in May,
1947, the Bordoloi Sub-Committee found that the Naga National Council
was predominantly a body of Naga government officers, with two of them,
Kevichusa and Lungalong, acting as their representatives. The Naga National
Council reiterated their demand for independence on the expiry of ten
years spent under a "guardianship" government. This was not
accepted by the Sub-Committee, and their report was more or less one-sided
as the one Naga member, Mayangnokcha, gave a dissenting note, a co-opted
member, Kezehol, vetoed the report, and Aliba Imti Ao, the Secretary
of the Naga National Council, refused to sign the final report after
having agreed to sign the draft. The integrity of India was beyond the
terms of reference of the Sub-Committee and the deadlock was, therefore,
inevitable.83
The
report found that the hill people had acquired some political consciousness
and "perhaps not without instigation by certain elements, this
consciousness has even instilled ideas of an independent status...".84
Both the Chairman and the Secretary of the Sub-Committee later disclosed
their perceptions about who these instigators were. Bordoloi said: "We
are really pained to learn that the former Governors of Assam and their
supporters have been advocating in England and in other places for a
Crown Colony to be formed with the entire hill regions of Assam and
the northern hill regions of upper Burma. After going through the administrative
files, I have fully come to understand that the then rulers in Delhi
made a plan to form such a Crown Colony because they foresaw the possibility
of such a colony. The separatist tendency was firmly rooted in the minds
of the hill people."85 The report
recommended that because "the atmosphere, particularly in these
Excluded areas, is one which is not to be found elsewhere", they
must be treated separately from the rest.86
Strangely and ironically enough, and for reasons which were not quite
clear, the views of the British Parliament, which enacted the Government
of India Act of 1935, and the Indian Constitution-makers in 1946-49
had converged on the "exclusion" idea!
The
atmosphere in May 1947 was one of defiance in Naga Hills, and the political
deadlock created by the visit of the Bordoloi Sub-Committee gave credence
to reports that a section of Nagas were planning to declare their own
independence on August 15, 1947. Nehru despatched Sir Akbar Hydari,
the first Indian Governor of Assam, to Naga Hills in June, 1947 to resolve
the impasse and help avoid a confrontation with the Nagas on the eve
of Indian independence. After three days of negotiations, Sir Akbar
thrashed out an agreement with the Naga National Council. Charles Pawsay,
the last British Deputy Commissioner, who had avoided meeting the Bordoloi
Sub-Committee the previous month, suddenly emerged now to assist the
Governor in negotiating and drafting this agreement. His inclinations
regarding the political future of the Nagas were well known, and he
succeeded in helping an inexperienced and credulous, though a venerable
old, Governor create more problems than he could solve. This agreement
was doomed from the beginning.
The
ninth and the last clause of the agreement said: "The Governor
of Assam as the Agent of the Government of the Indian Union will have
a special responsibility for a period of ten years to ensure the due
observance of this agreement; at the end of this period the Naga National
Council will be asked whether they require the above agreement to be
extended for a further period or a new agreement regarding the future
of the Naga people arrived at."
There
was already a view prevalent in Assam and Delhi that the ninth clause
of the agreement with the Governor was not a promise of self-determination
after ten years. But the Nagas lost no time in removing any ambiguity
that might still have been there in its wording. On August 14, 1947,
a day before the independence of India, a section of Nagas celebrated
their own independence. The same day the Naga National Council informed
the Government of India by a telegram that "Naga Hills cannot be
considered part of the Indian Union until heads of proposed agreement
between the Governor of Assam and the Naga National Council are accepted
to the letter for execution, with the clause 9 modified as ‘at
the end of this period the Nagas will be free to decide their own future’."
By
June, 1948, the Nagas also had an apprehension that the provisions of
the agreement had been superseded by the draft Constitution of India.
These fears were sought to be allayed by the Governor, Sir Akbar Hydari,
personally when a Naga delegation visited him in Shillong for clarification.87 But
Bordoloi informed the Naga National Council on November 9, 1949 that
the agreement had not been accepted by the Government of India. Sir
Akbar Hydari was beyond embarrassment or recrimination as he had already
died in December, 1948. But the greatest casualty in this episode was
a spirit of trust so necessary for the political integrity of an infant
India.
Meanwhile,
a more significant development took place in Naga Hills. Angami Zapu
Phizo, who had collaborated with the Japanese in Burma during World
War II, and had been subsequently imprisoned by the British when they
re-occupied Burma, returned home. He later joined T. Sakhrie in a delegation
to Delhi in July 1947. They met Mahatma Gandhi to apprise him of their
desire to be independent and, in his characteristic manner, the Mahatma
assured them that the "Nagas have every right to be independent....
Personally, I believe you all belong to me, to India. But if you say
you won’t no one can force you." In reply to a question if
Government of India would use force against the Nagas to join India,
Gandhi said, "No, not if I am alive. I will go to Naga Hills and
say that you will shoot me before you shoot a single Naga."88
The
situation in Lushai Hills was not very different. But unlike the Nagas,
who are known for tenacious adherence to a decision taken by their leaders,
the Mizos are romantics, often given to endless disputation and controversy.
Naga nationalism was an act of deliberate choice, successfully welding
together over twenty disparate and warring tribes speaking different
languages, which were often incomprehensible to each other. The tribes
inhabiting Lushai hills, on the contrary, were a more homogenous lot,
speaking one main language or its one or two regional dialects, and
had attained the highest level of literacy among all the hill tribes
by 1947.89 That there were sharp political
divisions among the Mizos on the eve of Indian independence was symptomatic
of the quest for a micro-identity that marked the various Lushai and
non-Lushai clans constituting the broader Mizo identity. Politics was
taken so seriously that it often permeated the business of the Church
Assembly.90 The growth of Christianity
and education, coupled with an ambience of relative peace and serenity91
and denial of political activity or expression, had turned the Mizos
inwards. The last two decades of the British rule saw the growth of
Mizo cultural life. People wrote diaries, letters, poetry, composed
songs, collected and published their folk-tales, translated English
poetry, novel and drama into their language, refined their tribal dance
forms and handicrafts, indulged in Christian revivalism, and worked
out a synthesis between modern Christianity and their old tribal beliefs.
Mizo
opinions were largely divided between those of the Hmars supported by
other non-Lushai groups who were against, and those of Lushais who were
in favour, of the continuance of the institution of tribal chieftains,
and their desire to live in India or outside of it was partly influenced
by this predilection. The Lushais’ desire to retain the institution
of chieftainship was influenced by their self-interest : the majority
of the Chiefs were from the Lushai clans. The Hmars, a related Indo-Tibetan
tribe but not one of the Lushai clans, had been more or less outcasts
during the heyday of the Lushai chiefs. But the higher level of education
amongst the Hmar leaders rendered their political skills more sharpened
and focussed than those of the Lushai leaders. The opposition to the
authority of the chiefs92, and later their
total abolition, was one of the main political planks of the Mizo Union
Party when it came into being in 194693.
It is often said that the emergence of this party also brought an inherent
dichotomy in the Mizo temper to the fore: appeal to ethnic identity
and tradition contrasted with a desire to throw out the chiefs who expressed
that tradition.94 But, in fact, these
two streams of thought were an expression of division of the Mizo society
between Hmars and Lushais.95
In
January, 1946, MacDonald, the Superintendent of Lushai Hills, thought
it was still possible to keep the Mizos out of India when he organised
a District Conference to draw up a Constitution.96
This appealed to the Lushais because MacDonald talked of a land which
would include some parts of Burma and have access to the sea in the
Bay of Bengal.97 The Conference consisted
of 40 members, 20 representing an electoral college of 350 chiefs and
20 representing commoners. The Mizo Union Party joined the first meeting
but, as expected, boycotted the second meeting held in 1947.98
The Party believed that abolition of chieftainship was possible only
within a democratic India and not in a political unit dominated by the
protagonists of the chiefs.
In
its first general assembly held on 24 September, 1946, the Mizo Union
adopted a resolution to join India. But in early 1947, the Mizo Union
itself split after Pachhunga was ousted from its Presidentship, and
divided itself into two distinct groups, one advocating merger with
India and the other calling for independence. The majority of the Mizo
Union members, however, remained in the official party headed by Khawtinkhuma
which stood for merger with India.
Before
their visit to the district, the Bordoloi Sub-Committee invited Khawtinkhuma
and Vanlawma99 as co-opted members,
but there was a last minute change and Saprawnga replaced Vanlawma.
The reasons behind the choice of Saprawnga, who was a founder member
of the Mizo Union and the most prominent member of the party from south
Lushai Hills, were obvious: he was the most outspoken champion of union
with India. No wonder Bordoloi trusted him more than he trusted Vanlawma.
The
Bordoloi Sub-Committee invited both wings of the Mizo Union, MacDonald
representing the District Conference, which was weighed heavily in favour
of the chiefs, and several others for evidence when they visited Aizawl
in April, 1947. Pachhunga and Vanlawma did not talk of independence
and supported the District Conference. MacDonald also showed a more
sober approach and suggested a constitutional body elected by the district
for the management of their affairs. Rev. Zairema, a mercurial churchman
and Thanhlira, editor of an influential paper, demanded autonomy for
the Mizos within India. Bawichhuka of the Mizo Union asked for an adequate
representation of the Mizos in the Assam Legislative Assembly as a precondition
for joining Assam.
The
Mizo Union Party’s official memorandum demanded: (1) amalgamation
of all Mizo kindred groups living in contiguous areas in Cachar, Manipur,
Tripura, Chittagong Hill Tracts, and Burma;(2) internal legislative,
executive and judicial functions to be entrusted to a Mizo National
Council within the framework of Assam; (3) the new area should be called
Mizoram; (4) the Central Government should provide liberal grants for
the development of Mizoram until the Mizos become financially independent;
(5) these demands would be reviewed after an expiry of ten years and
the Mizos will have the option to secede from India if they so desired
at the end of this period.100
In
reply to a question from the Sub-Committee if he thought the Mizos could
exist as an independent nation, MacDonald said they might join Burma.
This, to the imaginative Mizo psyche that had been somewhat perturbed
at that moment by the flat and spiritless opinions expressed by the
Mizos before the Bordoloi Sub-Committee, struck as an exciting proposition.
Three months later, in July, 1947, Lalbiakthanga, the Vice-President
of the Mizo Union, formed a new party, the United Mizo Freedom Organization,
with the help of Lalmawia, who had recently retired from the Burmese
army. Most of the Mizo Union members of Pachhunga group, with the exception
of Pachhunga and Vanlawma, joined the new party, which stood for union
with Burma.
Nevertheless,
the accredited leaders of all political parties of Lushai Hills met
on August 14, 1947, the eve of Indian independence, under the Chairmanship
of L.L. Peters, the Superintendent, and endorsed the "ten year"
clause of the Mizo Union memorandum. On August 15, 1947, the day of
India’s independence, a procession planned by the Mizo Union to
celebrate the occasion did not take place as there was some apprehension
of violence by other groups. The Indian flag could not be hoisted after
the lowering of the Union Jack because the new Indian tricolour most
conveniently failed to arrive on time.101
The
North East Frontier (Assam) Tribal and Excluded Areas Sub-Committee
(Bordoloi Sub-committee) submitted its report to the Advisory Committee
on Fundamental Rights, Minorities, Tribal Areas etc. of the Constituent
Assembly on August 25, 1947, ten days after India’s independence.
The Committee, among other things, recommended the formation of autonomous
District Councils having legislative, judicial and executive powers
to administer local tribal customary laws, primary education, land,
village forests, village and town management, agriculture, etc. They
also recommended regional councils for tribes other than the main tribe
in the autonomous districts. The Sub-Committee also considered it necessary
that representation of the hill tribes in the Assam Legislative Assembly
should be guaranteed by statutory provision. But while agreeing that
only tribals would represent the hill districts, they rejected the demand
for weightage in the representation for hill tribes102.
The draft Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which reduced
the recommendations of the Sub-Committee into a constitutional framework,
was discussed by the Constituent Assembly of India on September 5-6,
1949.103
The
discussion generated a lot of heat in the Constituent Assembly and a
passionate defence of the draft by its framers. At the very outset,
Brajeshwar Prasad introduced an amendment to make the hill tribal areas
Centrally administered territories instead of their inclusion in Assam,
and went on to question the ability of Assam to administer these areas:
"I am very serious when I suggest that it is necessary in the interest
of the country that these areas should form part of the Centre...I am
opposed to handing over the administration of the tribal areas into
the hands of the provincial government.... in Assam, the conflicts between
the Ahoms, and the Assamese, the Bengalis and the Muslims and the Mongoloid
races have assumed proportions of which probably we the members of the
House are not fully aware... Is it right, is it safe, is it strategically
desirable, is it militarily in the interests of the Government of India,
is it politically advisable, that the administration of such a vast
tract of land should be left in the hands of the provincial government,
especially in a province where there is no element of political stability?
.... I know the problems in Assam are too complicated and are beyond
the economic resources of the province to tackle..."104
While
defending the relevant provisions of the draft, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was
at a loss to clarify as to why it was necessary to have some of the
hill tribal areas administered as part of the State of Assam and some
(the three frontier tracts of Balipara, Sadiya and Lakhimpur) administered
centrally by the Governor acting under the President of India: "It
is very difficult to leave part of the Province to be governed by the
Governor of the province and part of the province to be administered
as a centrally administered area....there are what are called certain
"frontier areas", bordering on the autonomous districts. It
has been provided in this Schedule that so far as the administration
of these frontier areas of Assam is concerned, the Governor would be
acting under the President."105
It
is not clear by what ingenious and yet unexplained logic similar border
areas in northeast India were placed under different constitutional
arrangements. In terms of political geography, a "frontier"
is a zone of contact and "boundary" a definite line of separation.106
The "frontier area" has been defined as the area between two
social systems or, in the colonial context, between two world-empires.107
The British used the word "frontier" to generally describe
an area beyond which they had no, or somewhat loose, political control.
Areas which were potentially part of the British scheme of expansion
were also known by this term.108
It
is possible that Dr. Ambedkar had a strictly legal process in mind whereby
zonal frontiers develop into linear boundaries to differentiate the
modern state from its predecessor. If so, the principle of "frontier"
applicable to the hills on the Tibet or Chinese border applied equally
to the hills on the Burma border. In that case, administration of all
such areas should have been devised along the same lines for the sake
of uniformity. But the dangers of this legal interpretation ought to
have been clear to him : it was tantamount to acceptance of the principle
of "frontier" rather than "boundary" by a sovereign
India. If, on the basis of this premise, Dr. Ambedkar was implying that
the constitutional arrangement with regard to what is now Arunachal
Pradesh had to be left somewhat inchoate and amorphous because India’s
borders with Tibet or China were not defined, his assertion was hardly
in India’s national self-interest.109
Kuladhar Chaliha of Assam objected to the creation of the autonomous
district councils, partly because he was against the hill tribes running
the administration and partly because, according to him, such autonomy
would encourage separatism: "The Nagas are a very primitive and
simple people and they have not forgotten their old ways of doing summary
justice when they have a grievance against anyone. If you allow them
to rule us and run the administration, it will be a negation of justice
or administration and it will be something like anarchy.... If you see
the background of this schedule you will find that the British mind
is still there. There is the old separatist tendency and you want to
keep them away from us. You will thus be creating a Tribalistan as you
have created a Pakistan."110
Rohini
Kumar Chaudhuri attacked the idea of autonomous district councils on
the ground that the councils would hamper assimilation of tribals with
the rest of India and perpetuate their isolation: "We want to assimilate
the tribal people. We were not given that opportunity so far. The tribal
people, however much they liked, had not the opportunity of assimilation....
If this Constitution is adopted, those disabilities will continue....
Do you want an assimilation of the tribal and the non-tribal people,
or do you want to keep them separate? If you want to keep them separate,
they will combine with Tibet, they will combine with Burma, they will
never combine with the rest of India, you may take it from me.... This
autonomous district is a weapon whereby steps are taken to keep the
tribal people perpetually away from the non-tribals, and the bond of
friendship which we expect to come into being after the attainment of
independence would be torn asunder. During the British days, we were
not allowed to introduce our culture among those people. Even after
the British have gone, we find the same conditions in the new constitution
of Dr. Ambedkar....I most respectfully request the members of the House
who do not belong to Assam to take more interest in this province of
Assam. It is important that the honourable members do so and agree to
the formation of a Committee, an intelligent Committee, to let them
go round those areas and see things for themselves...You will find that
this hatred on the part of the tribals is a thing invented by interested
persons. Formerly, there were inter-marriages between the tribals and
non-tribals. This hatred is being continued by interested persons."111
Brajeshwar Prasad also thought that the district and regional councils
will lead to the establishment of another Pakistan.112
Gopinath
Bordoloi defended his Sub-Committee’s recommendations regarding
creation of autonomous district councils as the only way to check separatist
tendencies which had been encouraged by the British: "During the
war, the then rulers and officers developed in the minds of these tribal
people a sense of separation and isolation and gave them assurance that
at the end of the war they will be independent States managing their
affairs in their own way. They were led to believe that the entire hill
area would be constituted into a province.... You might possibly have
read in the papers that plans were hatched in England in which the ex-Governors
of Assam evidently took part to create a sort of kingdom over there."113 But
he also admitted the possibility of force having been considered as
a method of integrating these areas with India: "People of this
area were already suffused fully with these ideas of isolation and separation.
The most important fact that presented itself before this Committee
was whether for the purpose of integration the methods of force , the
methods of the use of the Assam Rifles and the military forces should
be used, or a method should be used in which the willing cooperation
of these people could be obtained for the purpose of governing these
areas....The point therefore that presented itself to us was whether
we should raise in them a spirit of enmity and hatred by application
of force or whether we should bring them up under the broad principle
of government by goodwill and love....If therefore Gandhian methods
are to be followed, there is no alternative but to adopt the course
which we have thought was the best method."114
The
virtual tour de force came from Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri who questioned
the knowledge and credentials of the members of the Constituent Assembly
to draft the Sixth Schedule: "In truth, Sir, I have no information
worth the name about the tribal areas and at the same time I shall say
that none of my honourable friends here, not even the Honourable Premier
of Assam (Bordoloi) has much of an information about the tribal areas
in India. The reason is not due to the negligence or indifference...the
Honourable Premier, when he was the Premier before independence came
to India, had not the right to visit the tribal areas; he did not have
free access to these areas and he could have gone there only with the
permission of the Governor.... I do most regretfully observe that what
Dr. Ambedkar is doing in regard to this Schedule VI is that he is closely,
absolutely closely, following...the British method. He is wanting to
perpetuate the British method...This action on his part is due more
to ignorance than to intention.....None of these persons, I assert with
all the emphasis that I can command, neither my honourable friend Mr.
Munshi, neither Dr. Ambedkar, nor my honourable friend the Premier of
Assam, have any intimate knowledge of the affairs going on in the tribal
areas."115 Chaudhuri was right
in so far as the knowledge and understanding of the more eminent of
the constitution-makers regarding the north-eastern tribes was concerned.
Even
if the logic of Brajeshwar Prasad, Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri and Kuladhar
Chaliha was highly subjective and not focussed quite sharply on the
constitutional issues involved, the subsequent events in Naga and Lushai
Hills showed that the worst fears expressed by them about the District
Councils came true. It was far from responsible constitution making
on the part of Dr. Ambedkar to have brushed aside their apprehensions
so lightly. The insistence that restructuring of the system, which is
implied in all constitution-making, could only be done along certain
pre-conceived lines, and could ignore other informed opinions, made
the debate itself quite irrelevant116.
The
greatest faux pas was, however, yet to come. Winding up the
debate, Dr. Ambedkar gave the raison d’etre for the autonomous
district councils, and informed the Assembly that they were conceived
on the lines of reservations created by the United States for the purpose
of Red Indians: "....the position of the tribals of Assam, whatever
may be the reason for it, is somewhat analogous to the positions of
the Red Indians in the United States as against the white emigrants
there. Now, what did the United States do with regard to the Red Indians
? So far as I am aware, what they did was to create what are called
Reservations or Boundaries within which the Red Indians lived. They
are a republic by themselves. No doubt, by the laws of the United States
they are citizens of the United States. But that is only a nominal allegiance
to the Constitution of the United States. Factually they are a separate,
independent people. It was felt by the United States that their laws
and modes of living, their habits and manners of life were so distinct
that it would be dangerous to bring them at one shot, so to say, within
the range of the laws made by the white people for white people and
for the purpose of the white civilization."117
It
is not clear if the Indian Reservations Dr. Ambedkar was talking about
were the "reservations" brought about by the treaties between
the white settlers and the Indians during the 17th and the 18th centuries,
or the new "reservations" which were created in the west after
removing the Indians from the east by the 1830 Act, or the "reservations"
which were sought to be assimilated in the white areas by the 1870 Act
or, lastly, the "reservations" which John Collier tried to
protect through the passage of the 1934 Act.
If
Dr. Ambedkar was referring to the latest (1934) legislation, his analogy
of the American Indian condition in the context of the north-eastern
hill tribal situation was patently unfair to the people of India as
a whole, both tribals and non-tribals. The 1934 Act of USA was aimed
at reparation to the Red Indians for centuries of brutalities committed
by the white settlers, and more particularly the "greatest land
grab in history" which the 1830 and 1870 Acts had brought about.
Never in the history of north-east India had the hill tribes been subjected
to this kind of treatment by the plainsmen of India. No emigration with
colonial or military overtones had ever taken pla
