About the Book

Northeast India: Development, Communalism, and Insurgency represents a pioneer effort in understanding the linkage among the phenomena of development, communalism, and insurgency. Heretofore insurgency has been viewed as pathology of body politic, a prime instance of the breakdown of law and order and a challenge to the legitimate centralized political authority. The present book argues against this partisan view and underlines the fact that to treat it as a problem of law and order is to turn a blind eye to the causes which, when ignored for long, lead to political violence and insurgency.

The cause of insurgency lies in the frustrated aspirations of the people with distinct socio-cultural identities by tardy development; this paves the way for the politicization of traditional socio-cultural referents of identity-formation; this, in turn, paves the way for intense political agitation which eventually graduates into political violence and insurgency if the smouldering discontent is not pacified. The root of insurgency lies in unsatisfied political demands that are considered by the agitators as Iegitimate.

This is the causal path that Development, Communalism and Insurgency traces in the Northeast, although the theoretical paradigm developed in this study has universal applicability. While developing this theoretical paradigm, the book also focuses on some important aspects of political life and relations in Assam and Meghalaya, the two foci of this study, and probes into the subjective world of the people in these two states.

The combination of these dimensions, the theoretical and the pragmatic has made this study a landmark in the study of the linkage among development, communalism, and insurgency.

About Author

Ramashray Roy is currently a visiting Fellow at G. B. Pant Social Science Institute Allahabad. He has also been the director of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Delhi. He has been associated also with Indian Institute of Advanced Study Shimla; he has been a UGC National Professor National
Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research New Delhiand a Fellow of the Indian Council of Historical Research New Delhi. He is Recipient of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru National Award Government of Madhya Pradesh. He has written widely on such subjects as Political Parties Bureaucracy Development Gandhian Thought Vedic Philosophy etc.

Sujata Miri was a professor of philosophy at the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU). She has many books and articles to her credit and is also an accomplished painter and writer. She has held several positions during her professorship and has been visiting fellow to several institutions of repute.

Sandhya Goswami is a professor and chairperson in the Department of Political Science. Guwahati University Guwahati Assam. She did her M.A. an M.Phil. Degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi and PH.D. from Gauhati University. She has authored Language Politics in Assam; she has also published several research papers in prominent journals and edited books.

Contents

Preface

Chapter One
A Theoretical Perspective
Chapter Two
Socio-Political Antecedents of Insurgency
Chapter Three
A Peep into the People's Mind: Assam and Meghalya
Chapter Four
Meghalaya: The Crucible of Politics
Chapter Five
As People View Their World
Chapter Six
Assam: The Cauldron of Insurgency
Chapter Seven
Assam: As People See Their World
Chapter Eight
Overview
Index

Additional Info.