North East India: The Changing Frontier

Colonialism transformed the areas what is now referred as the North East India into a 'frontier'. It was marked by fluidity of borders, flux in community relationship and resource extraction. Separation of Burma (1937), the partition of India (1947 and the birth of Bangladesh (1971) had an enormous effect on North East India and their ramifications are felt in contemporary times as well. This book examines whether the post-colonial discursive practices on North East India still carries traces of colonial paradigm of a 'frontier'. The chapters use the understanding of 'space' as it has emerged in social sciences to understand this changing frontier beyond the notions of pre-given building blocks of a nation-state to a process of socially and politically constructed entities, where creation and de-creation of spatial categories remain an inseparable part of today's North East India. This book facilitates the reader with a fresh perspective to under­stand these processes beyond the often-marked zones of separation into an overlap­ping and intermingling spaces.…