Migration and conflict in North-East Indiathe case of Manipur

Resumen

Manipur, a landlocked state within the federal union of India, has experienced one of the longest lasting armed conflicts in south Asia. The Indian State has responded to a local insurgency that began in 1949 by following a two-pronged strategy, the first informed by militarism and the second by what I identify as developmentalism, which stresses the unilateral nature of India’s nation-building projects. Both strategies have, however, failed to yield any tangible results in terms of any advance or success in conflict resolution. This dissertation argues that, while the state’s merger with the Union of India in 1949 had already led to the formation of resistance movements, other factors must be considered in order to comprehend the multi-layered nature of the conflict. First, the sheer demographic impact of mass migration made up of Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Burmese (Chin-Kuki) and other immigrant communities. Second, the state's efforts to implement centrally planned developmental projects in the area accompanied by massive militarisation, which resulted in human rights violations, the loss of lives and property and an overall deterioration of security. Because of the dearth of studies conducted in this area, these issues have hardly been documented before; this is also due to the intricate nature of the conflict. The Indian Government has conventionally blamed the conflict on economic ‘backwardness’, and has responded with economic incentives. In fact, most political leaders in New Delhi are convinced that economic incentives can in themselves terminate the conflict, therefore misrecognising and denying its political dimensions. This dissertation rather suggests that India’s national leaders are implicitly trying to follow Karl W. Deutsch’s belief that ‘modernization’, intended as a combination of policies favouring urbanisation, industrialisation, schooling and the building of communication infrastructures and transportation networks, will automatically lead to nation-building and, eventually, ‘assimilation’ into the national core. And, while defining the conflict as a question of ‘law and order’, the Indian Government has heavily relied on its army and paramilitary forces to re-establish the rule of law. 2 The dissertation concludes that such a developmentalist path was not implemented by taking into consideration the well-being of the region’s inhabitants, but was rather a concerted effort to exercise full spectrum political dominance and military control over a frontier area and turn it into a ‘normal’ part of India’s national space.