[Assam] A new politics of race: India and its Northeast

[Chan Mahanta]

Let me share one of my own experiences here:

My nick-name at IIT KGP was 'Naga'. To this day my close friends 
call me Naga, and I don't mind. Some people who knew me at IIT-KGP 
never knew my real name -- it was just Naga. But it did not begin as 
such a benign term of endearment.

It began in my first week in campus, as a pejorative label -- slapped 
on me by a couple of second year Bengali fellows who, in their 
attempts to rag ( haze) me -- a long held tradition, found me to be 
NOT an easy target. There were several reasons for it, not the least 
of which was my 'attitude' :-). I also was quite educated about the 
ritual, from my two elder brothers who attended the institutions 
before me. Not finding me to be submissive, annoyed by my 
'smart-alecy' responses and inspired by my crew-cut hair--not 
something expected of a 'good-student'of those days who could make it 
to the place; and knowing I was from Assam, they demanded to know if 
I was a savage - a'jungli' - a Naga? At first I tried to explain that 
I was not a Naga. But I sensed what they were up to, and quickly 
agreed  that yes, I was indeed a Naga. Within days, I became 'Naga' 
in the hostel (dorm), and I let it be known that I accepted the 
nickname as a term of honor, and was not to be annoyed by it as was 
originally  intended.

Couple of years later some Naga students from BHU came looking for a 
Naga student ( Dilip would know him--Zopianga Ao -- from Azad Hall) 
in campus.  Someone directed them to my room in the middle of the 
night.

A few of of my old class-mates, and many others who did not know me 
well enough, would not call me Naga. They were quite aware of the 
reasons how I became one :-).











At 4:39 PM +0000 3/3/06, Malabika Brahma wrote:
>Interesting article.
>
>Once I was a guest at my cousins place at an Indian Navy base where 
>he was the Commander ( INS Shivaji at Lonawala to be precise).  I 
>had stepped out and while on the way back was stopped by the sentry. 
>When I told him where I was headed to and that I was a guest of 
>their Commander. After he checked the papers and records, he 
>mentioned to another " Yeh Chini Commander Ka Mehmaan Hein' ( He is 
>a guest of the Chinese Commander)
>
>
>Chan Mahanta <cmahanta at charter.net> wrote:
>
>
>Dear Netters:
>
>The following is a very interesting and enlightening article by 
>Sanjib Baruah. He was hesitant to post it to assamnet because of ! 
>its length. But I felt it something we cannot afford to miss.So here 
>it comes.
>
>The emphasis on bell hooks' name is mine, so people don't miss it. I did.
>
>cm
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>IIC Quarterly (New Delhi: India International Centre)
>Vol. 32 (2& 3) Winter, 2005) pp. 165-76
>A new politics of race: India and its Northeast
>Sanjib Baruah
>There was a time when peoples of Northeast India were described as 
>belonging to the Mongoloid race.  Today Mongoloid and other racial 
>categories such as Negroid or Caucasoid -- and indeed, the very idea 
>of race as a biological category -- have no standing in scientific 
>circles. For there is more diversity of gene types within what was 
>once thought of as a single 'race' than between 'races.'
>
>But while race may ! no longer be accepted as a scientific category, 
>it does not mean that human beings would stop making distinctions 
>based on stereotypical phenotypes or skin colour. Arunachalis, 
>Assamese, Garos, Khasis, Manipuris, Mizos, Nagas and Tripuris may 
>indeed have some phenotypical similarities related to genetics. Thus 
>one may be able to say that someone is from Northeast India based on 
>looks, though he or she may not always get it right. For "human 
>populations . . . possess a wide genetic potential which increases 
>in variation through chance mutations or new generic combinations in 
>each generation. . . . Completely stabilized breeding isolates. . . 
>are exceedingly rare"  (Bowles 1977, cited in Keyes, 2002: 1166). 
>And of course, most of us realise that what we think of as the 
>'Northeastern looks' are not unique to peoples from the region.  For 
>instance, peoples from the western Himalayas -- those from Nepal or 
>the Uttaranchal -- might share features similar to those found amon! 
>g peoples in the eastern Himalayas.  
>
>Race as a social category is the product of practices. There are 
>visual regimes of labeling, and individuals encountering those 
>labels from childhood may internalise characteristics associated 
>with those labels and learn to adapt to the socially constructed 
>racial order.
>
>African American intellectuals have long recognised the role of 
>visuality in the politics of race. The writer bell hooks -- even her 
>way of writing her name without capital letters is an intervention 
>in the regime of visuality -- describes her project as one of 
>'resisting representation' and of constructing an 'oppositional 
>gaze.' "We experience our collective crisis as African-American 
>people," she writes, "within the realm of the image" (hooks, 1992). 
>The project of black liberation, for her, is thus a battle over 
>images.
>The Indian image of the troubled Northeast is increasingly mediated 
>by a visual regime constructed by popular! films, television, 
>pictures in magazines and newspapers, and limited contacts with 
>people from the region.  Thanks to improved communications, Indians 
>today are quite mobile, and Northeasterners travel to other parts of 
>the country more than ever before.  There are a large number of 
>students from the region in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata 
>and other cities.  They are now a 'visible minority' in a number of 
>university campuses.  A disturbingly large number of them tell 
>stories about their experiences of being racially labeled as 
>'Chapta' (flat nosed), 'Oriental' or 'Chinky'. 
>A large number of Northeast Indian young women are employed in 
>upscale restaurants and shops in Delhi - their 'Oriental' looks and 
>English language skills being considered desirable for those 
>positions.  Many of them live in ethnic ghettos, for instance, 
>renting rooms and apartments in 'lal dora' areas: the urban villages 
>of Delhi. Apart from rents being affordable, t! hey feel physically 
>safer than in upscale neighbourhoods. Compared to landlords in elite 
>neighbourhoods, these landlords of more modest means are tolerant of 
>Northeast Indian eating habits -- fermented dry fish, beef chutney 
>and pork -- and less inclined to impose restrictions on the 
>lifestyles of their tenants. However, racially marked niches in the 
>labour market or in settlement patterns have the danger of 
>reinforcing racial thinking. Incidents of violence against Northeast 
>Indian women in the country's capital may partly reflect the 
>racialisation of the divide between the mainland and the Northeast.
>While many Northeasterners travel to the mainland, thousands of 
>Indian soldiers and members of the various paramilitary 
>organisations make the reverse journey to the region to fight 
>external threats as well as on counter-insurgency duties.  In the 
>streets and paddy fields of the region security forces stop and 
>interrogate Northeasterners every day.  The soldier h! imself faces 
>an unenviable situation: the most peaceful of surroundings can 
>quickly turn hostile and he has to be alert against possible 
>offensives by militants.  Some sort of racial profiling becomes 
>inevitable under these conditions, especially since we have no laws 
>prohibiting it.  As Indian soldiers return home, their stories of 
>'treacherous' rebels hiding behind bamboo groves and jungles spread 
>through friends and relatives. The shared visual regime provides 
>ways of putting those stories and faces together.
>Northeast India's fractured relation with the mainland has been 
>described as a cultural gap, an economic gap, a psychological gap 
>and an emotional gap. The shared visual regime now carries the 
>danger of this fault-line becoming racialised.
>II
>Mani Ratnam's film of 1998 Dil Se is a love story between a woman 
>militant from the Northeast and an All India Radio journalist. The 
>male protagonist Amar, played by Shah Rukh Khan, travels to the 
>Northeast to speak! to fellow citizens for a radio programme to 
>celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence.  He 
>develops a relationship with a local woman Meghna, played by the 
>Nepalese-born Manisha Koirala.
>If Bollywood gossip is to be believed, Manisha Koirala was chosen 
>for the role partly because of her 'small eyes.' Director Mani 
>Ratnam, according to Aishwarya Rai, "definitely wanted a small-eyed 
>girl in Dil Se. She had to have that kind of physical features as 
>she was supposed to be from Assam" (Rai, 2000).  The caste of Dil Se 
>also included a number of Assamese actors, among them filmmaker 
>Gautam Bora, who played the role of the chief of a militant group.
>The film's story  unfolds between the fiftieth anniversary in of 
>Indian independence on August 15th 1997 and the Republic Day on 
>January 26th.  While All India Radio reporter Amar embodies the 
>Indian nation, Meghna represents the horrors of life in the 
>Northeast torn apart by insurgencies and counter-insurgency 
>operations.  Amar defends the nation against rebels bent on tearing 
>it apart.
>The Northeast of Dil Se is a dangerous place where women are raped 
>and families are destroyed. Life in Delhi could not be more 
>different: the film portrays it as a middle class city where 
>tranquil family life and traditional family values prevail.  Meghna 
>in the nation's capital is a danger to both nation and family.  She 
>is on a suicide mission to blow herself up at the Republic day 
>parade.  As a guest at Amar's home she is an awkward presence at a 
>time when the family prepares for his arranged marriage.  "Had it 
>not been for the army, the nation would have been torn to shreds," 
>says Amar to Meghna. It is "your nation, not mine," says Meghna in 
>defiance.
>III
>Am I making too much out of a film? Perhaps. But what if we are 
>beginning to look at people from the Northeast through the prism of 
>a visual regime exemplified by films like Dil Se? What if! after 
>nearly half a century of counter-insurgency, the counter-insurgent 
>gaze is framing our way of seeing peoples from the Northeast? 
>Films like Dil Se and pictures in newspapers and magazines enable 
>people to put together a mental picture of the Northeast and its 
>people.  The gaze of the Indian army patrol, reinforced by films 
>like Dil Se, gives meaning to what is fast becoming a racial divide.
>There are signs that we are slowly beginning to recognise this new 
>politics of race, though we seem to be as yet unsure whether to use 
>the 'r' word.  A Manipuri journalist wrote in a national daily that, 
>"physically the people of the North-east are closer to Southeast 
>Asia and China." However, "this racial divide," he said, is not 
>appreciated "in a sensitive manner" (Singh, 2004). The journalist 
>told me that the 'r' word was edited out at one place in the printed 
>version. He had actually written, "racially the people of the 
>Northeast are closer to South-east Asia an! d China." Apparently the 
>editors substituted the term 'physical' for 'racial.'  However, his 
>second usage of the 'r' word -- in racial divide - remained in the 
>published text.
>Let me turn to a small sample of writings by Northeasterners who 
>have been students in mainland India, recalling their experience of 
>being seen as different and encountering racial labels.  "I did my 
>schooling in a boarding school in India," recalls a Manipuri living 
>in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was the only student from the 
>Northeast in that school.  He posted the following on an email 
>discussion group:
>Being the only minority I was subjected to many racist comments . . 
>. The one that I still remember clearly was my being called "Chapta" 
>(flat nose - for those fortunate ones that never heard the term) by 
>my Hindi teacher. The word "chinki" . . . is peddled around with not 
>even a little thought of whether the term could offend someone, by 
>even my closest friends. I came in contact! with some Mayangs (the 
>Manipuri term for other Indians) here and it shocked me that despite 
>my being there amongst them they refer to the other Asians as 
>chaptas still with no consideration that I could find it offensive. 
>Even on my bringing up the issue they just laughed it off saying 
>they saw nothing offensive in it. So I have now resorted to 
>referring them as "Pakis" and that really seems to anger them. For 
>those who don't know about it, "Pakis" is a racist term used in 
>Britain to refer to people with the sub continent features 
>(Pakistan, Indian, Srilankan etc.) So the next time you hear any 
>mayang using the word chinki or chapta, call them a "Paki". I think 
>once this word gets common usage as a term to refer to them by all 
>the people of the north east they will finally realize what it is 
>like to be referred by a racist term (Manipur Diaspora, 2004; cited 
>in Ray 2005). 
>In Kuala Lumpur, he wrote, because of his features he had a hard 
>time convincing people that he was! an Indian. He got tired of 
>explaining that he was from India since he "didn't look like the 
>Indians they knew."  On the other hand, he said, he was "able to 
>melt into the crowd and it was easier making friends with the 
>Chinese and Malays" (Manipur Diaspora, 2004; cited in Ray 2005). 
>
>At a seminar in Pune a Naga student joked that after coming to Pune 
>he became "half Naga, and half Indian", while he was "a complete 
>Indian" before. He elaborated that in Pune, shopkeepers, doctors, 
>teachers and government officials, everybody treated him as Japanese 
>or Chinese because of his features. He was asked to show his 
>passport when applying for admission to college  (cited in Das, 
>2004). While doing fieldwork in Manipur, anthropologist Sohini Ray 
>asked a young student about his first visit to Mumbai. He told her 
>that "the first thing he and his companions found difficult was that 
>every other person asked them where they were from, and stared at 
>them." When they said ! Manipur, people asked where it was and if it 
>was really in India. To avoid such uncomfortable encounters after a 
>few days they started saying that they were from Thailand, because 
>"it was more convenient" (cited in Ray, 2005).
>
>An Assamese woman describes her first year as a student in Delhi 
>University (1996-97), as follows: "I didn't look 'Oriental' - the 
>politically correct term they'd devised in lieu of the derogatory 
>sounding 'chinky'. So I didn't have to face some of the stupider 
>questions. My friend from Mizoram was asked if she needed a passport 
>to come to India." The 'Oriental' looking among us," did not have to 
>go through hazing, she recalled since "Indians are always nice to 
>foreigners" (Goswami, 2004).
>
>IV
>
>The emergence of a racial label to include all 'indigenous' 
>Northeasterners fits nicely with the category 'the Northeast' that 
>since 1971, in the words of a retired senior civil servant who 
>played a key role in designing this political order, has "eme! rged 
>as a significant administrative concept . . . replacing the hitherto 
>more familiar unit of public imagination, Assam" (Singh, 1987a: 8). 
>In 1971 a number of the new states were created (though not all of 
>them were states at the beginning), and another piece of legislation 
>gave birth to the North Eastern Council (NEC).  These two laws were 
>'twins born out of a new vision for the Northeast' (Singh, 1987a: 
>117).
>
>Unlike the distinction between tribal and non-tribal that is an 
>important part of our vocabulary in discussing the Northeast, the 
>racial label has the advantage of including all those who belong to 
>the troubled region, and, is perceived as being connected to the 
>troubles.  For instance, a majority of the plains people of Manipur 
>and Assam are not "tribal" which, after all, is an arbitrary 
>governmental category. However, the Assamese and Manipuri 
>insurgencies are among the most potent in the region. Thus the 
>distinction between tribal and non-! tribal is not very useful when 
>it comes to discussing insurgent Northeast India. Since tribal and 
>non-tribal Northeasterners share certain stereotypical phenotypes in 
>common, the racial label has become more functional.
>
>The racial label incorporates meanings that predate the era of 
>insurgency and counter-insurgency.  Willem van Schendel, writing 
>mainly with Bangladesh and the Chittagong Hill Tracts in mind, 
>comments on the "remarkably stagnant view of the hill people" that 
>has prevailed in South Asia.  The classic nineteenth century Western 
>assumptions about social evolution from a state of savagery to 
>civilisation were superimposed on the ancient South Asian 
>distinction between civilised society and nature. The later 
>distinction, indicated in the categories grama  (village) and aranya 
>(forest), implies a relationship that is complementary but always 
>unequal. These two traditions, writes van Schendel, combined to 
>generate a dominant view that considers the! tribal peoples as 
>remnants of some "hoary past who have preserved their culture 
>unchanged from time immemorial. Backward and childlike, they need to 
>be protected, educated and disciplined by those who are more 
>advanced socially" (van Schendel, 1995: 128).  The visual label of 
>race that transcends the colonial categories of tribal and 
>non-tribal and reaches out to pre-colonial categories such as the 
>Kirata people -- used to describe the people of the periphery - may 
>now give a new lease of life some old Indian prejudices.
>
>Responsible Indian officials have from time to time used the 
>metaphor of children to describe the peoples of Northeast India.  In 
>February 2004 the Mizoram Governor A.R. Kohli described the entire 
>region as a spoilt child. Contrary to the charge that the Northeast 
>is "the most neglected region," he said it is "in fact, the most 
>spoilt child in the country." The central government, he said, 
>"showers funds and other goodies" liberally on the region.! But the 
>funds are not properly utilized or they do not reach the intended 
>beneficiaries. A news report paraphrased the Governor as comparing 
>the region "to a petulant child who is showered with goodies but 
>does not know what to do with them" (Telegraph 2004). 
>
>Such sentiments are also found in the language used by B.P. Singh - 
>the former civil servant who played a key role in the creating the 
>Northeast as an administrative category. In an article published in 
>1987, he concluded: 
>
>There is no tangible threat to the national integration ethos in the 
>region despite the operation of certain disgruntled elements within 
>the region and outside the country. But in the context of a history 
>of limited socialization and ethnic conflicts, and rapid 
>modernization after 1947 the unruly class-room scenario is likely to 
>continue in the region for years to come (Singh, 1987b: 281-82).
>
>  "Unruly class-room" is a telling metaphor.  In the Northeast, Singh 
>seems! to imply, what is needed is a paternalistic and 
>disciplinarian teacher - someone who knows what is good for children 
>and, occasionally uses the stick for their own good, the role that 
>he probably sees the coercive apparatus of the Indian state playing 
>in the region.
>
>These passages smack of attitudes and habits of mind that long 
>predate the politics of counter-insurgency.  But while these 
>prejudices are old, they have acquired new meaning in the context of 
>India's failed policies in the Northeast. While Singh's metaphor of 
>an "unruly class-room" rationalises the coercive response to 
>insurgency, Kohli's description of the region as a "spoilt child" 
>expresses the frustration with the failures of a policy of 
>nation-building through corruption or what Jairam Ramesh calls 
>"using corruption as a mode of cohesion" (Ramesh, 2005: 18).
>V
>What are the some of the consequences of the racialisation of the 
>divide between India and its Northeast? 
>1, Motivation for militancy: According to Manipuri intellectual and 
>politician Gangmumei Kamei, a major motivation for joining insurgent 
>groups in Manipur is the social discrimination that young Manipuris 
>face in different parts of India because of their appearance (cited 
>in Ray 2005).  Race has been a factor in the Meitei religious 
>revival movement of the 1940s as well. Some revivalists converted to 
>the newly formed faith "only after returning from pilgrimages to 
>Mathura and Brindavan, where their Southeast Asian features raised 
>curiosity and animosity among the local population." The racial 
>divide, according to anthropologist Sohini Ray, is central to 
>understanding the Meitei urge for constructing an alternative 
>history.  A constituency for an alternative geneology emerged when 
>"the whole idea of sharing a common ancestry with the people who are 
>hostile to them for their looks" became unacceptable (Ray 2005).
>2.  Perpetuating a divide: While official narrat! ives about 
>counter-insurgency view each Northeastern insurgency as distinct; 
>the racial label disrupts this narrative.  As a result the 
>differences between political conditions in different parts of the 
>Northeast have no effect on popular perceptions about the 
>'disturbed' region, since racial thinking do not allow for such 
>distinctions. For instance, the Mizo insurgency that ended with a 
>peace accord in 1986 is usually portrayed as a success story.  Yet 
>that does not mean that Mizo relations with mainland India are any 
>different from that with other parts of the Northeast.  Even today 
>Mizos such as Laltluangliana Khiangte complain about mainstream 
>India not understanding their culture and traditions, and about 
>Mizos being mistaken as South-east Asian tourists in the national 
>capital (cited in Singh, 2004). After nearly two decades of a 
>peaceful Mizoram, as Manipuri journalist Khogen Singh puts it, Mizos 
>"still don't feel fully at home outside the North-east" (Sing! h, 
>2004).
>3. Hijacking of counter-insurgency: There is evidence that the 
>racial divide sometimes subverts counter-insurgency operations and 
>they get hijacked for other purposes. For instance, it was reported 
>that in the Karbi Anglong district of Assam, Indian security forces, 
>ostensibly there to deal with the security threat posed by 
>insurgencies, became partisans in local land conflicts between 
>tribal Karbi and Hindi-speaking settlers.  The settlers whom Karbis 
>refer to as Biharis had over time acquired informal control over 
>what is formally designated as public lands and had consolidated a 
>"considerable amount of economic and political power."  They now 
>seek formal change in the status of those lands and formal land 
>titles (MASS 2002, 11-13). In Karbi Anglong's ethnic configuration 
>and the growth of insurgency, the loss of land by Karbis to 
>"Biharis" is a factor. Many Karbi young people have come under the 
>influence of the United People's Democratic Solidarity (UPDS).  But 
>in local armed land conflicts, because of racial solidarity, 
>"Bihari" settlers have occasionally secured the informal backing of 
>Indian security personnel stationed in the area to fight the UPDS 
>(MASS, 2002: 21).
>4. Facilitating militarisation: The racial divide facilitates the 
>relentless militarisation of the region.  Consider for instance, the 
>recommendation to strengthen Indian military presence in Manipur 
>made by E.N. Rammohan -- a senior Indian police official, who was 
>Advisor to the Governor of Manipur.  In order to stop the 
>penetration of the government departments by militants, Rammohan 
>recommended that battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force 
>(CRPF) should guard all government offices and the residential 
>neighborhoods housing central and state government officials in the 
>state.  Furthermore, he recommended that ten battalions of the 
>Central Para-Military Force (CPMF) be deployed in the Manipur Valley 
>in a "counter-insurgenc! y grid", and six to eight battalions be 
>deployed in each hills district, where roads are few, with 
>"helicopter support to effectively dominate them" (Rammohan, 2002: 
>15). Were it not for the racial fault-line it is unlikely that such 
>policy options would have been seriously considered.
>
>5. Legitimisation of corruption: The leakage of funds allocated for 
>Northeast India's development can be best described as insurgency 
>dividend.  The figures are staggering. Jairam Ramesh estimates that 
>the annual expenditure of the Government of India on the eight 
>states of Northeast India, including Sikkim, is about 30, 000 crores 
>a year. With the region's population at about 32 million, he 
>estimates that the Government annually spends about 10,000 rupees 
>per person in the Northeast.  This money is not going for 
>development. In Ramesh's words, it is going to 
>
>ensure cohesiveness of this society with the rest of India through a 
>series of interlocutors who happen t! o be politicians, expatriate 
>contractors, extortionists, anybody but people working to deliver 
>benefits to the people for whom these expenditures are intended.
>
>A surer way of improving the economic conditions of the intended 
>beneficiaries, he suggests, might be for the Indian government to 
>open bank accounts and deposit an annual cheque of Rs. 10,000 for 
>every poor family in the Northeast (Ramesh, 2005: 18-19).
>
>The racial divide facilitates the sharing of the insurgency dividend 
>between local political and bureaucratic elites and outside 
>contractors and suppliers.  Not unlike western businessmen who 
>justify bribing politicians and bureaucrats in the Third World in 
>terms of local norms, the image of the Northeast and its people in 
>this new visual regime is that of a modern frontier where corruption 
>is just a part of the natural landscape.  Even the "chinky" students 
>from the Northeast in Delhi, after all, appear more "modern," 
>"westernized" and affluent th! an many of their mainland peers 
>apparently confirming the corruption-friendly image of the region. 
>It is hardly surprising that when it comes to doing business in the 
>region 'make a fast buck and run' appears to have become accepted 
>practice.  Even today's much-lowered levels of inhibition and moral 
>compunctions do not apply to India's modern but wild Northeast 
>Frontier.
>VI
>Things did not have to turn out this way. As an Arunachali minister 
>once said at a meeting in Mumbai, "Why can't you think that in a big 
>country like ours a few people may even look Chinese? Come to 
>Arunachal Pradesh, he said, people in areas bordering China will 
>greet you by saying Jai Hind" (cited in Das, 2004).
>In everyday conversations Northeasterners resist mainland India's 
>representation of the region. But intellectuals, artists and 
>activists will have to develop what bell hooks calls an oppositional 
>gaze. Khasi commentator Patricia Mukhim believes that because of its 
>geographical location po! licy makers in Delhi think of the 
>Northeast primarily in terms of its "strategic importance."  The 
>region, she suggests, is treated as "enemy territory, which needs to 
>be subdued by force."  But "you cannot buy allegiance with force," 
>she warns and calls for 'an entirely new approach' to the region 
>(Mukhim, 2004). 
>A new approach must start with the domain of representation. Our 
>policies have an impact on the way the Northeast and its people are 
>represented.  For instance, softening our international borders -- 
>opening up the region on the east and the north, and encouraging 
>close cross-border interaction  -- can slowly change perceptions. 
>The region seen as a gateway to a friendly transnational 
>neighbourhood will evoke very different emotions than those of a 
>frontier or an "enemy territory"  -- a danger zone where foreign and 
>domestic enemies conspire against the Indian nation. Policies could 
>transform the Southeast Asia within India into ! a dynamic gateway 
>to the Southeast Asia of world political maps. This could be the 
>foundation for a new social contract between India and its 
>Northeast. This could radically change what it means to look 
>Northeastern in India. The battle for the future of Northeast India 
>is also a battle over images.
>References:
>Bowles, Gordon 1977. The People of Asia. New York: Scribner.
>
>Das, Arup Jyoti.  2004. "The Half-Indians" (Unpublished essay)
>Goswami, Uddipana 2004 "Misrecognition" (Unpublished essay) 
>hooks, bell 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Cambridge, 
>MA: South End Press
>Keyes, Charles 2002 "Presidential Address: "The Peoples of Asia" - 
>Science and Politics in the Classification of Ethnic Groups in 
>Thailand, China and Vietnam," Journal of Asian Studies 61 (4) 
>November, pp. 1163-1203.
>
>Leshin, Len  2003 "What's in a name The "Mongol" Debate," Down 
>Syndrome: Health Issues (website) http://www.ds-health.com/name.htm 
>(Accessed Se! ptember 16th 2005)
>Manipur Diaspora. 2004. Manipur_Diaspora at yahoo-groups.com Archives, 
>E-mail No. 367.
>MASS (Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti). 2002.  And Quiet Flows the 
>Kopili [A Fact-finding Report on Human Rights Violation in the Karbi 
>Anglong District of Assam] Guwahati:  Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti.
>Mukhim, Patricia.  2004.  "Life under Martial Law," [Shillong 
>Notes]; The Telegraph (Guwahati edition) September 21.
>
>Rai, Aishwarya. 2000. 'I've not come here looking for fame,' 
>Interview by Kanchana Suggu, 
>http://www.rediff.com/entertai/2000/mar/29ash.htm (Accessed 
>September 16th 2005).
>Ramesh, Jairam 2005. "Northeast India in a New Asia," Seminar (550) 
>June, pp. 17-21.
>Rammohan, E.N. 2002. "Manipur: A Degenerated Insurgency," in K.P.S. 
>Gill and Ajai Sahni (eds.), Faultlines. Vol. 11, New Delhi: Bulwark 
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>Ray, Sohini. 2005. "Boundary blurred? Folklore/Mythology, History 
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>(Unpublished manuscript).
>Singh, B.P.  (1987a) The Problem of Change: A Study of Northeast 
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>Singh, B.P.1987b. "North-East India: Demography, Culture and 
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>Singh, M. Khogen. 2004. "As Indian as You and I," Hindustan Times, 
>September 10th 2004.
>Telegraph 2004. "Governor Slaps Spoilt-child Tag on Northeast," The 
>Telegraph (Guwahati edition) 14 February.
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