Review of: Barua, Sanjib (2003), “Confronting Constructionism: Ending India’s Naga War,” Journal of Peace Research, 40(3): 321-338.

Barua asks Nagas and all other ethno-nationalities to face the constructedness of their identities. He decries the homeland model, on the grounds that it perpetuates a politics of exclusivism and expulsion.
Barua worries for Manipur should the Nagas integrate into a unified Nagaland, Nagalim. India should not change boundaries.
There is tension between constructivist understanding of identities among most contemporary theorists and the practice of nationalists or ethnic activists who engage in the construction of such identities (Suny 2001, cited in Barua 2003: 323). The Naga project is a disastrous road to ethnic violence unless Nagas confront their constructedness (2003: 324).
He engages with Nagas who are pro-India as well as “independentist” Nagas and admit they both share the goal Naga unification. It is obviously Barua’s intention to provide a fillip to the faltering India-Nagaland peace process coming through the August 1997 ceasefire. He wrote this in 2003, soon after India recognised the “uniqueness of the Naga history and situation”.
Barua recognises that the politics of recognition is an underlying theme. The notion of bounded collectivities living in national homelands relies on a very different spatial discourse from the one of “overlapping frontiers and hierarchical politics” that preceded it.
Saving the India-Naga peace process will require confronting the constructionism of modern identities by the political actors themselves. He reiterates he does not de-emphasise the power of these identities. He proposes that confronting constructionism applies to Nagas as well as Manipuris and Indians.
Barua contends that the facts of a Naga consciousness are constructed and perhaps illegitimate and does not consider Nagas from outside Nagaland state as Nagas.
Weber does premise that constructivists view human beings actively making the world they live in, though it did not imply that one could ‘make’ the world just as one wishes (Weber 2007: 97). Yet, India agreeing to talk to the Naga armed group at the highest level in a third country without pre-conditions is a vindication of what Weber’s question as to why “change in international relations should not issue from and through actors other than states” (Weber 2007: 98).
Barua draws from resources both print, archives, online and first hand experiences and a Naga neighbour.
His arguments tally with those from the Bedrock of Naga Society both espousing the maintenance of territorial integrity. Barua does not deal with the issues of exploitation and discrimination by the Meities upon Nagas, for instance the imposition of the Meitei language.
He mentions that two former Chief Ministers of Manipur had been Nagas. Barua surely knows that 40 out of the 60 member State Legislative Assembly are Meiteis. Barua admits that India created states “where particular nationalities constitute majorities capable of defining the public identity of those states” (2003: 336). ‘Supercop’ KPS Gill is an ‘expert’ source though criticises his view as reminiscent of how colonial writers “sought to deny the status of nationhood to colonised peoples on account of their supposedly perpetual state of conflict and disunity.” Some other sources are unreliable. He touches on settler colonial discourse and indigenous peoples right to self-determination. He feels ideas of ‘shared territories’ are plausible indicating the Saami Council though this non-territorial solution was rejected by Nagas. Unlike many, Barua is bold to suggest that the Burmese government be taken into confidence and bring the Nagas there into the ambit of a long term solution.
Barua clearly deemphasises pre-existing socio-political realities that prevailed across boundaries. Khongreiwo (2009) critiquing Barua says India’s northeast are “colonial and postcolonial creations” and “often taken for granted, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes intentionally”.
Elsewhere Barua writes about Northeast as “a hurried exercise in political engineering” to “pre-empt, radical political mobilisation” (Khongreiwo 2009: 440).
Anthony D Smith argues that nations are not “attained once-for-all”, rather they are processes; also nations need ethnic cores which can be constructed; and finally, nations need territorial homelands as much as historic territories (Smith 1986: 212-213, cited in Lotha 2009: 5).
Yhome writes that Nagas, resisted “hegemonic state power and thereby counter the spatial and political orders constructed by the colonial rulers and later post-colonial Indian nation-state” (2007). Nagas were able to defy the “colonial spatial construction through the production of their homeland by re-imagining the spatial order thereby transcending the modern dominant state's constructed arrangements,” Yhome adds.
According to Bowden, the ongoing question of what constitutes Naga identity is testimony to constructionism (2012: 30).
Barua I found that though he exposes the constructedness of Naga identity, he didn’t make any comparable case for the Meiteis.
Now, the onus is on Nagas. Barua says Nagas have to work against the constructedness of their articulation and retract from the demand of a territorial integration of the four states (in India).
This article will be of interest to policy makers, academics, graduate students, media practitioners, indigenous discourse, development and human rights activists.

(1082 words)

REFERENCES

Bowden, Amanda. 2012. ‘Fit to be a Man: Women’s Perspectives and Gender Relations among the Zeme Nagas of Assam’. (Unpublished PdD thesis). Brisbane: University of Queensland.

Khongreiwo, Rammathot. 2009. ‘Understanding the Histories of Peoples on the Margins: A Critique of “Northeast India’s Durable Disorder”’. Alternatives 34: 437-454.

Lotha, Abraham. 2009. ‘Articulating Naga Nationalism’. PhD thesis. The City University of New York.

Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origin of Nations. Basil: Blackwell.

Weber, Martin (2007). ‘Constructivism and Critical Theory’. In An introduction to international relations: Australian perspectives, eds. R. Devetak, A. Burke and J. George. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Yhome, Kekhriesituo. 2007. ‘Politics of Region: The Making of Nagas Identity During the Colonial and Post-Colonial Era’. Borderlands 6(3). Accessed 20 October 2013. Available at http://borderlands.net.au/vol6no3_2007/yhome_region.htm.

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[ 1 ]. First published in 2003 in the Journal of Peace Research, 40(3): 321-328. Subsequently published as “Confronting Constructionism: Ending the Naga War” in Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (ed. Sanjib Barua), Oxford University Press, New Delhi (2005). Subsequently it appeared in Ethnonationalism in India: A Reader, edited by Barua in 2010.
[ 2 ]. Nagalim includes the Nagaland, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, besides Burma.
[ 3 ]. That Nagas were not a willing party to the Indian union unlike most principalities that formed it.
[ 4 ]. Prime Ministerial level
[ 5 ]. Neither India nor Nagaland would insist on talking within the ambit of their respective constitutions
[ 6 ]. Published by Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee, a Naga branch of an Indian political party.
[ 7 ]. The 20 seats are shared between Nagas and Kukis.
[ 8 ]. Credited with ‘crushing’ the militancy in his native Punjab.
[ 9 ]. The writers “Angami et al” are non-existent with “Genesis of Nagalim” first appearing in Nagaland Post in May 2002 and subsequently in http://www.kuknalim.net/focus/2002/focusApr2002item1.html. Currently available at http://nnwpsg.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/genesis-of-nagalim/.
[ 10 ]. Saami Council has jurisdiction over indigenous peoples in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Russia (Russia is not mentioned by Barua and I feel it is deliberate.
[ 11 ]. Assam, Tripura, Sikkim, Manipur, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.
[ 12 ]. Meiteis are spread across the Indian states of Manipur, Assam and Burma. Predominantly in the state of Manipur, they constitute about 70 percent of the state’s population and command 40 out of 60 seats in the legislative assembly. Their physical domain though is about 10% valley area while 90% landmass is inhabited by tribal Nagas and Kukis who make up 30 percent of the population.