‘Ethnic’ Conflict as Stat–Society Struggle: The Poetics and Politics of Assamese Micro-Nationalism

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to understand one case of ‘ethnic’ conflict in India—Assam. By looking closely at this one case I hope we will understand better the phenomenon of India's persistent dilemma of micro-nationalist politics that from time to time seems to be fundamentally at odds with India's macro-nationalist project. To be sure, despite the seriousness of some of these conflicts—say Punjab and Kashmir at present, or Assam until recently—the incidence of micro-nationalist dissent should be kept in perspective. The Indian state can claim quite a bit of success in its project of ‘nation building’-it has been able to incorporate micro-nationalist dissent of a number of peoples by using persuasive and coercive means at its disposal. Moreover, cven conflicts that appear stubborn at one time turn out to be surprisingly amenable to negotiated settlement. Irrespective of the Indian state's ability to manage micro-nationalist dissent, the assumption that nationalisms have a telos that inevitably leads to a demand for separation relies on a rather sloppy and lazy naturalist theory of the nature and origins of nations and nation states. What the Indian experience forces us to confront is the fate of nationalism and the nation state as they spread worldwide as a modal form. In the Indian subcontinent these new forms that privilege 'formal boundedness over substantive interelationships," come face to face with a civilisation that represents a particularly complex way of ordering diversity.2 In a subcontinent where the historical legacy of state formation is marked by an intermittent tension between the imperial state and regional kingdoms, nationalisms and the nation state may have proved to be rather unfortunate modern transplants.3