Borderland politics in Northern India

Table of Contents:

1. Borderland politics in northern India

2. Space and community between the local and the global: two examples from the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam

3. Choosing the Gorkha: at the crossroads of class and ethnicity in the Darjeeling hills

4. Ethnic identities and the dynamics of regional and sub-regional assertions in Jammu and Kashmir

5. Research note: Ethnic mobilisation for decolonisation: colonial legacy (the case of the Zo people in Northeast India)

The colonial legacy in the construction of the modern Indian state has left a deep imprint on contemporary Indians’ self-identity and self-determination. Borderland Politics in Northern India is a collection of essays, giving detailed accounts of the many different ways that people throughout India understand their homeland, the territory where they live, and the broader region to which they belong. Mona Chettri looks at the Gorkha community in the Darjeeling hills to the northeast, Manjeet Baruah examines Assam, and L. Lam Khan Piang explores the dispersion of the Zo people throughout many northeastern states. In the northwest, Aijaz Ashraf Wani illustrates how Jammu and Kashmir state is severed along complex regional, religious, and ethnic lines. This book is an invaluable source for readers interested in comparative studies of borderlands globally. It also contributes to South Asian studies broadly conceived, to Indian border studies, and to local social, cultural, and political histories of the constituent border regions of Northern India.

(https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138813298)