India Today – August 19, 2019

42 INDIA TODAY AUGUST 19, 2019

MANY INDIGENOUS

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Both Christianity and Islam are seen as foreign

forces, which entered the country to dupe innocent

bystanders by accepting a way of life completely

alien to the geo-religious map of India. While it

seeks to de-indigenise these forces, Hindutva also

has to accommodate the way Christians in the

region, who have a large following, assert their

identity as a basis for their belonging, and thus by

extension, their sovereignty. As a way out of this

impasse, Hindutva summarily defines Christianity

as an inner activity that can co-exist with an exter-

nal patriotic national self (Hindu as a civilisational

force). They are, however, not always complemen-

tary or accommodative towards Muslims. One can

see this in the Citizenship Amendment Bill.

The Citizenship Amendment Bill of 2016,

which has ignited protests all over the region, is

one example of the contested nature of belonging.

Those belonging to minority religions—which

include Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs

and even Christians—escaping persecution from

predominantly Muslim countries (Pakistan,

Bangladesh and Afghanistan) will be rehabili-

tated in India. If Muslims are the ‘other’ in the

larger Hindutva imagination, what place will

they have within the debate over the Citizenship

Amendment Bill or the National Register of Citi-

zens (NRC, in Assam)? Will such mechanisms

explicitly exclude them, even though many of their

homes are in India?

One can get a sense of these polarising debates

around citizenship. For the BJP, both the Citizen-

ship Amendment Bill and the NRC, according to

The Hindu, are understood as methods of ‘keep-

ing Muslims of Bangladeshi origin out of the state

historically allergic to migrants’. Amit Shah, the

then BJP president, is reported as saying that ‘the

a united India where much of the region has resisted this unity?
There are three ways of understanding these recent events.
First, it is obvious that the BJP’s strong nationalist agenda of
maintaining the territorial unity of India is non-negotiable.
When the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang
(NSCN-K) launched attacks against the Indian military in Ma-
nipur on June 4, 2015, killing 18 soldiers of the Dogra battalion,
Indian special forces responded by reportedly killing over 100
NSCN-K militants on June 10, 2015 at the Indo-Myanmar
border. Muscular nationalism had entered the fray.

T

he BJP’s position is also tempered by those willing to
sit across tables and chairs with them. The Frame-
work Agreement with the NSCN-Isak/Muivah
(NSCN-IM) on August 3, 2015 is seen as a ‘political’
document that assesses the ‘unique history of the
Nagas’, an acknowledgement first made in 2002 by BJP leader
Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Framework Agreement lays out the
basis for the Government of India and the NSCN-IM to continue
negotiations towards a final agreement on the Indo-Naga situa-
tion. Acknowledging the distinct Naga history upon which their
struggle is articulated is a first step in mollifying their grievances.
It remains uncertain, though, if the agreement is primarily
a way to prolong and tire the Naga leadership into submis-
sion, or if Vajpayee’s acknowledgement of the ‘unique history
of the Nagas’ has been translated into political action. Various
Sangh Parivar (family of Hindu nationalists including the BJP
and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activists I have
interacted with over the years acknowledge the historical hurt
caused by the militarisation of the region and thus support the
Framework Agreement, but simply as a peace settlement with-
out any talk of sovereignty. The territorial unity of India is too
high a price to sacrifice so easily. Whatever the decision may be,
it puts the spotlight on the Sangh Parivar. Either they suppress
the Naga movement through the machinations of state power
and enact what the political scientist James C. Scott calls Seeing
like a State, or they accommodate the Nagas’ vision of who they
are in an effort to win hearts and minds. Many Sangh Parivar
activists who work tirelessly doing seva (service) are the ones
exposed to the whims of the people on the ground, and it is they
who might bear the consequences of what is decided.
Second, accompanying the ascendancy of the BJP is the sin-
gular idea of Hindutva that has now become widespread. What
does this mean to a region that has resisted efforts to impose a
singular identity? Hindutva is jostling for space amidst the di-
versity of ethnic, religious and territorial affiliations by playing
the ‘indigenous’ card. The idea of indigeneity allows them firstly
to position themselves as ‘sons of the soil’, an idea that resonates
with many in the region whose own identities are rooted very
much in the land. It also allows Hindutva to make distinctions
between those who are ‘indigenous’ and those who are ‘foreign’.