Opinion Maker

One commentator in the daily The Hindu remarking, “Fundamental question is how aliens can terrorize Indians in India? Assam is on the way to become another Kashmir, a much more sinister one at that because of the twin evil of vote bank politics and negligent attitude towards the North East in general”.

By Adeela Naureen

The recent up scaled violence and mayhem in India’s North Eastern state of Assam between Bodos and Ashoms is just tip of the iceberg of the powder keg called the seven sisters. Falling along the eastern border of Bangladesh (and not essentially bordering it) these include Assam, Arunachel Pradesh(NEFA),Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalia, Mizoram and Tripura. Wasbir Hussain in an article as far back as in 2001, ‘Insurgency in India's Northeast Cross-border Links and Strategic Alliances in Indian Institute for Conflict Management described the situation as the simmering North East as “India's Northeast is one of South Asia's hottest trouble spots, not simply because the region has as many as 30 armed insurgent organizations operating and fighting the Indian state, but because trans-border linkages that these groups have, and strategic alliances among them, have acted as force multipliers and have made the conflict dynamics all the more intricate. With demands of these insurgent groups ranging from secession to autonomy and the right to self-determination, and a plethora of ethnic groups clamoring for special rights and the protection of their distinct identity, the region is bound to be a turbulent one. Moreover, the location of the eight northeastern Indian States itself is part of the reason why it has always been a hotbed of militancy with trans-border ramifications. This region of 263,000 square kilometers three shares highly porous and sensitive frontiers with China in the North, Myanmar in the East, Bangladesh in the South West and Bhutan to the North West. The region's strategic location is underlined by the fact that it shares a 4,500 km-long international border with its four South Asian neighbors, but is connected to the Indian mainland by a tenuous 22 km-long land corridor passing through Siliguri in the eastern State of West Bengal, appropriately described as the ‘Chicken's Neck”.