Territoriality, Conflict and Citizenship in the India–Myanmar Borderlands

Abstract

The question of citizenship in northeast India has become a highly contested one due to the persisting ethnic-territoriality and intermittent conflicts that has plagued the region, particularly in the borderlands, since the early decades of Indian independence. The borders between India and Myanmar are largely porous and border crossing is a quotidian experience for people who inhabited on both sides of the border. Conflicts in the region, which were mainly fuelled by the drive for exclusive ethnic homelands in a territory co-inhabited by different ethnic groups, have led to displacements not only within the national border but even beyond. The rehabilitation of such conflict-induced displacements has led to questioning of the citizenship of displaced people. Such claim in contested spaces is nothing but to question the indigeneity of the “other” and their rights to land and its ownership. This politics of indigeneity is pursued in the region today with continued rigour and intensity to mainly ensure ethnodomination or to achieve exclusive ethnic homeland in contested spaces. They are silent and disingenuous on the universal fundamental human rights to leave and return to one’s country.