Category: Book Review

Manipur and the Paradox of Security

Book Review

Reviewed by Teinkoo Soibam

The situation of security in Manipur today has gone from bad to worst. It is no longer a question of law and order problem but increasingly a socio-political and economic problem of the various ethnic groups of the state. The security concerns are not merely confined to insurgency and counter-insurgency operations, and its repercussions on the general public and society, it also encompass the ethnic tensions faced by the state and the people as a major challenge to the peaceful co-existence of the numerous ethnic communities. The scenario is a cluster of complex and myriad issues ranging from identity formation by various ethnic communities to gross human rights violations especially by the security forces. In a very common parlance, the notion of security is closely related with the concept of security forces or the police. The people look up to them as an agency for ensuring public order, protection of the people and property for a peaceful and secure life by maintaining law and order, and prevention and detection of crime. However, people in Manipur have developed a different perception of these law enforcing agencies. Mistrust of the public towards the security forces are large, where they are seen as tormentors rather than helpers.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12771500

Jiten Yumnam, Development Aggression Rethinking India’s Neoliberal Development in Manipur, Yaol Publishing Limited, London, 2021

Book Review

Reviewed by Khullakpham Ruqaiya

The book is a must read book for anyone who is interested in development politics in Manipur, one of the states in the north-eastern region of India. Manipur is known for conflict-prone situation due to multiple inter and intra-ethnic conflicts coupled with problems of insurgency and low economic growth. The Indian state after adopting the Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization policy in 1991 intensified the course for a neoliberal model of development. The trajectory of development that the postcolonial Indian state pursues is to bring security to its conflict-prone situation. However since three decades, the neoliberal agenda of development was best reflected in the formulation of the Look East Policy (LEP) rechristened as the Act East Policy (AEP) to realise the region’s strategic location and utilize its untapped resources by initiating development projects aimed for increasing connectivity with the neighbouring South East Asian nations. Therefore, a critical examination of the neoliberal developmental intervention and a study of its implications in the region are highly necessary and this enlightening book strikes at this juncture to explore and analyse the practices of development in the region.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784642

Across the Chicken Neck: Travel in Northeast India

Book Review

By Kekhriesituo Yhome

Across the Chicken Neck is a book written by Nandita Haskar, a human rights lawyer and activist, someone who has an in-depth understanding of the Northeast India. In many occasions, she had represented the Northeast’s insurgent groups fighting against the Indian state for “self-determination”. In her previous writings, Haskar has critically voiced her opinion against the Indian state for the use of military power to suppress the movements in the Northeast. In her attempt to understand more about the Northeast, Haskar along with her husband, Sabestian Hongray decided to make a journey through the region, in their scorpio car. This book narrates the exciting, at times tiring, and sometime chilling experiences of the lone couple journey from Delhi traversing up and down the Eastern Himalayan mountains and back to Delhi.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12772483

Erik de Maaker and Meenal Tula (Eds.), Unequal Land Relations in North East India: Custom, Gender and the Market, Guwahati: NESRC, 2020.

Book Review

Reviewed by Bankerlang Kharmylliem

In Unequal Land Relations in North East India: Custom, Gender and the Market, editors Erik de Maaker and Meenal Tula presents a collection that provides insight into land issues of the tribal communities of the Northeastern states of India. The book, through its six chapters, explores land questions that are very unique to the tribal populace.

Land is a central theme for tribal ethnic peoples in North East India. It has been a driving force for culture, governance and politics. Increasing population has accelerated concerns related to land, more so in the rural areas. This volume critically analyses a number of issues at the fore related to land. The book reminds us of the giants of colonial rule and the modern state respectively being the past and present agents of undesirable land developments.

In the introductory chapter the editors framed a number of topics like the customary, gender and the rural monetisation and their association with land. According to the authors, land complications became more pronounced and severe ‘when the region became incorporated in the colonial state, from the early 19th century.’ As a scarce asset, land creates problems of inclusion, exclusion, power, ethnic movements besides others. This chapter sets a finer context for a better understanding of the chapters that follow.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784510

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Developmentalism as Strategy: Interrogating Post-colonial Narratives on India’s North East, Rakhee Bhattacharya (Ed.), Sage Publications, 2019

Book Review

Reviewed by Yenshembam Chetan Singh

The book is an anthology which consists of articles written by different authors which are critical examinations of the development modules undertaken in India’s northeastern periphery. It is a strategical collection of twelve chapters which are comprehensive field work studies carved out in a form to depict the socio-economic conditions of the northeast India and how developmentalism would improve the conditions in the post-colonial era. The book attempts to reconstruct the narrative that the north-east India have been reduced to periphery and neglected in the national development strategy. With contestations between the national and local elites over the control of the region, it has become highly vulnerable to different market forces in the course of globalization process. Its resources, development and marketability has become a bone of contention among various global, national and local players. While keeping these considerations, the book critically examines the post-colonial developmental trajectory of the Indian State in the region. Besides the socio-economic conditions of the region, its unique historical geography has led to systematic marginalization and underdevelopment. India’s economic nationalism within the North East has been largely acted upon the context of resource appropriation and national security, and producing new arrangements of knowledge, power and practices. Within this context, this book attempts to understand the exceptions to India’s dominant development policies in the region by adopting a methodological approach of interdisciplinarity.

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784427

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Ngamkhohao Haokip and Michael Lunminthang (eds.). Kuki Society: Past, Present, Future. Kuki Research Forum’s Publication, New Delhi: Maxford Books, 2011

Book Review

Reviewed by Letminlun Khongsai

The book under review is the first of its kind undertaken by the Kuki Research Forum since its inception in 2009. It is the outcome of a seminar organised by Kuki Research Forum in collaboration with Kuki Students’ Organisation. The book contains a collection of twenty one articles written by Kuki-Chin scholars that deals with a variety of issues pertaining to history, culture, identity, language, religion, literature, politics, agriculture, status of women in the contemporary Kuki society. The volume throws light on the insights of the hitherto unnoticed issues and challenges particularly the socio-political-linguistic issues and the resulting complexities of identity crisis and dynamics of the society.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12743693

Hoineilhing Sitlhou, Deconstructing Colonial Ethnography: An Analysis of Missionary Writings on North East India, New Delhi: Ruby Press, 2017

Book Review

Reviewed by Ngamtinlun Touthang

Deconstructing Colonial Ethnography: An Analysis of Missionary Writings on North East India by Hoineilhing Sitlhou is an attempt to critically analyse the writings of protestant Christian Missionaries in North East India during the 19th-20th centuries. The western missionaries along with the colonial administrators left rich written lit- eratures on local cultures, society and history which continue to play an important role in defining the history of the people of North East, especially tribal communi- ties. Earlier writings on Christian missionaries, especially by Christian writers, fo- cused mainly on how western missionaries arrived and spread the gospel in the North East, a region largely occupied by, as they termed it, ‘barbaric’, ‘savage’ and ‘uncivilised’ tribes. Local church leaders often compared the coming of Christianity as the arrival of ‘light’ to this dark world. Missionaries were considered God sent to save the ‘heathen’ people of North East.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784099

Hira Moni Deka, Politics of Identity and the Bodo Movement in Assam. New Delhi: Scholar World, 2014.

Book Review

[Book Review] Hira Moni Deka, Politics of Identity and the Bodo Movement in Assam. New Delhi: Scholar World, 2014.

Reviewed by Anup Das

The Northeast region of India has witnessed political movements in the form of either demands for cessation or separate autonomy among different ethnic groups. Each ethnic group express and asserts one’s cultural identity in order to claim a territory and political control over natural resources. The present book attempts to provide a holistic understanding of the Bodo movement in Assam which is demanding for a separate state within the democratic framework of India. The author focuses on different issues that have fuelled or motivated the identity movement among the Bodos since the colonial period. She systematically traced the different phases of Bodo identity assertion beginning from the colonial period to the post independence era. The Bodo identity assertion movement is divided into four different phases. Altogether the book has six chapters.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12783277

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