Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 06/2009

Insurgencies in India's Northeast: Conflict, Co-option & Change

Subir Bhaumik

July 2007

East-West Center

Abstract

Ever since the British withdrawal from South Asia in 1947, India's Northeast has been scarred by sustained separatist insurgencies, mass agitations, ethnic riots and heavy-handed state response resulting in continuous bloodletting. The land-locked region, which is linked to the India mainland by the 22 km wide Siliguri corridor in northern Bengal, borders on Bhutan, Bangladesh Myanmar and China's Tibet Autonomous Region and Nepal is not too far away.