They were told to hand over their mobiles and assemble in one place: it was a ‘survey’ by the Indian government’s income tax department.

Suhas Chakma’s Outsiders in Their Own Lands contains the rage and injustice of the settled who have been pushed around by history and political lines drawn without their consent.Around midday local time on 14 February 2023 the staff of the British Broadcasting Corporation in Delhi and Mumbai were surprised to see men march into their offices. The “others” are official institutions rather than human. Thounoujam Brinda’s Phenomenon of Impunity records the atrocities and injustices wrought on the people of the Northeast by Indian Independence and the Indian state. What about the insider insiders? There are two pieces in this collection marked by their anger. Most of the pieces in Insider Outsider are personal recollections and ruminations. Indeed, until the National Citizenship Bill was used politically by the BJP, these subjects remained unspoken. These pointed statements by editor Samrat remind us once again of how wilfully ignorant India has chosen to be about the upheavals and unpleasantness of being the Other in the Northeast. The forced exodus of Bengalis and Nepalis from North-East India is forgotten”. “The forced exodus of Kashmiri Pandits is well known. How does one become an outsider in Shillong? You can be one for being Assamese, like Ankush Saikia is, or for being Bengali and Muslim as Shalim M Hussain shares, or a Punjabi married to a Khasi as Paramjit Bakshi writes. Indeed, this city, once a British colonial headquarter, the capital of Assam, now capital of Meghalaya, is the most common recurring theme. But it is also of the pain of living in Shillong and leaving Shillong. It is of the humans we all are, after you strip away labels of birth and history. It contributed to the new classification of a rival community of ‘foreigners’ who were perceived as impediments in the Khasi quest for self-rule.”Īnjum Hasan’s Growing up with Mrs P is a beautiful story about being welcomed and nurtured by the Other, in spite of being the Other. As Binayak Dutta writes about Shillong, (Collapse of a Colonial Cosmopolity), “Partition of the country and the Constitutions coming into force unconsciously perhaps introduced a new dimension to inter-community conflicts.

Northeast India by Samrat Choudhury