Vital Interests: Sanjib, thanks very much for participating in the Vital Interests Forum. You recently published a book titled In the Name of the Nation: India and Its Northeast ( www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29094 ) which investigates an important Indian border region. What motivated you to write this book?

Sanjib Baruah: The French historian of Catalonia, Pierre Vilar once said that “The history of the world can be best observed from the frontier.” In some ways these words were the inspiration behind my book. Since the earliest days of an independent India, relations between the Northeastern borderland region and the country’s centers of power have been troubled. My goal was to take a fresh look at what could be driving those tensions; and to take them as a vantage point for reflecting on the larger historical process: the globalization of the nation-state order that occurred with the decolonization of the European colonial empires. 

We are all familiar with the basic narratives on decolonization following the Second World War and the advent of the United Nations system. It was a moment of optimism. The transition from empire to nation seemed inevitable and irreversible. It was expected that the former colonial territories that were becoming independent countries would develop functioning forms of modern state institutions; and would one day graduate from the status of poor and underdeveloped countries to developed countries. This rosy view of things came to be questioned later in the last century when terms like “state failure” were coined, and a new kind of intervention in the name of the “international community” began to be deployed against failed states. 

Much of what is known as Northeast India today was a “frontier province” in British colonial times. While some areas were closely controlled, most were under indirect rule of one form or another. There was almost no presence of modern state institutions in certain parts of the province then referred to as “frontier tracts”. It is not accidental that the contested border between India and China in the eastern Himalayas lies in those tracts. To reflect on the history of the decolonized world—on how the postcolonial state as an institutional complex has fared--Northeast India is surely a good place to begin.

VI: India’s Northeast region is particularly diverse and therefore provides a good case study of how India incorporated minorities. What took place there during partition when there was such a bitter conflict between Hindus and Muslims?

Sanjib Baruah: Ethno-cultural diversity does indeed take a more accentuated form in Northeast India. Indeed, it could be said that the successful incorporation of many ethnic minorities is one of independent India’s important achievements. 

The Partition of 1947 had a substantial impact on Northeast India though the region did not witness the kind of violence that took place in Punjab or Bengal. We know from a longue durée view of not only undivided India--i.e., the present-day countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—but also of places like Ireland and Palestine that ethnic partitions do not end protracted conflicts. In the region that we now call South Asia, the partition’s long shadow shapes multiple domestic and international conflicts.

Northeast India’s colonial history was closely connected to neighboring eastern Bengal--the region which became East Pakistan at partition and is now the independent country of Bangladesh. Like many other frontier regions of Asia, Northeast India historically was sparsely populated. The British colonial period saw substantial migration to the region from other parts of the subcontinent including from eastern Bengal. That flow of migration began in the early part of the last century and has persisted into recent years. The partition generated a massive new flow of Hindus while the migration of Muslims continued as well. The post-partition migration of recent decades—all of it unauthorized --have been a source of significant political disquiet in the region. The Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens offer a two-track solution to this political challenge: de facto amnesty and a path to citizenship for Hindu unauthorized migrants, and a state of precarious citizenship for their Muslim counterpart.

VI: A concept you raise in your book is subnationalism. A region like the Northeast consists of states that have enjoyed some autonomy from the central Indian government. Is that now a source of tension?

Sanjib Baruah: When you work on a region like Northeast India you are constantly reminded of the problematic nature of the nation state as a political institution. You understand why political formations before the advent of the nation state did not try to make political boundaries coincide with cultural or ethnic boundaries. 

Only state formations that allow significant decentralization of political authority could be expected to accommodate Northeast India’s ethno-cultural diversity and its colonial inheritance of layered and uneven sovereignty. Unfortunately, the trend in India in recent years has been towards more and more centralization. Perhaps there is something inherent in the logic of the nation state that pushes centralization and valorizes internal homogeneity. But the effort to exercise centralized control in such a context can only generate new conflicts. 

The conflict involving the Nagas of Northeast India is illustrative. It is now one of the world's oldest unresolved armed conflicts. The Nagas live in the state of Nagaland as well as in some other parts of the region. The territorial imaginary of the Naga homeland animating Naga nationalism (which is their preferred term) spans across the different spaces of governance of the erstwhile imperial frontier: areas under direct rule, those under various forms of indirect rule, as well as unadministered areas.  It is hardly surprising that the Naga nationalist desire to integrate the Naga inhabited areas has emerged as the most formidable obstacle to ending this conflict. 

This kind of political demand requires very deft handling. It requires thinking in complex and innovative ways. Unfortunately, the view from the nation’s capital of these borderlands–as a place where the nation faces grave dangers from domestic and foreign enemies--isn’t conducive to creative problem-solving.  

VI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are using nationalist rhetoric and policies to consolidate their power. They are also promoting the idea of India as a Hindu state. Will these efforts challenge the concept of India as an inclusive democracy?

Sanjib Baruah:  You are right to underscore the dangers presented by the present ruling establishment’s idea of India. But it is important to remember that the contest between their idea of India--a Hindu India--and of India as a composite culture that valorizes tolerance predates the dramatic political shifts of recent years. It surfaced during India’s anti-colonial struggle as well. Indeed, the very first article of the Constitution of India uses two names for the country. “India, that is Bharat” -- this constitutional formulation was an ideological compromise between the two ideas of India.

However, politically speaking, the two ideological camps have not always been as far apart as they are today.  After India’s first general elections in 1952, India’s first prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru included Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who is regarded as the founder of the BJP (because he founded its predecessor party, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) in his new government.  BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was prime minister of India in the late 1990s and the early 2000s was a cosmopolitan man with a liberal worldview. He was comfortable working with allies who didn’t share the Hindu nationalist idea of India. 

This is the first time in the country’s postcolonial history that India has a national government with leaders openly committed to a Hindu majoritarian worldview. Despite significant policy failures of the Modi government on multiple fronts, Prime Minister Modi remains extremely popular. With its overwhelming majority in parliament, this government is able to pass highly consequential laws with little opposition. At the same time institutions such as the press and the judiciary have been spectacularly unassertive about ensuring executive accountability and protecting the equal rights of citizens. These developments don’t bode well for India’s future as an inclusive democracy.

VI: Didn’t the BJP come to power promising significant reforms? What were the reforms that Modi and the BJP campaigned on?

Sanjib Baruah:  There is wide agreement among economic thinkers that for India to continue on the path of high growth rates that it enjoyed until a few years ago there has to be economic reform on multiple fronts. Economic reforms were high on the political agenda of the BJP when Modi first came to power in 2014. Many in the middle classes voted for him because he came across as an energetic leader with both the willingness and the capacity to deliver on this promise. But economic reforms were not a major plank of BJP’s electoral strategy in 2019, when Modi was reelected by a landslide. Since coming to office for a second term, the cultural transformation of state institutions to reflect the Hindu nationalist worldview has been a higher priority of this government than economic reforms. 

VI: One controversial policy recently enacted was the Citizen Amendment Act. The original intent was to grant Indian citizenships to refugees fleeing religious persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan but the act stipulated that the refugees had to be Christian or another religious minority - no Muslims would be considered. Didn’t this lead to questions about whether Muslims should be allowed Indian citizenship?

Sanjib Baruah:  While the ostensible goal of the Citizenship Amendment Act is to give refugee status to persecuted religious minorities from those three countries and put them on a path to citizenship, there is more to it that meets the eye. The way this law defines religious minorities is significant. It includes Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians living in the three Muslim-majority countries. A noticeable absence are the Ahmadis or Ahmamidyas of Pakistan and Bangladesh- a Muslim community that is regarded as heretics by other Muslims and have long faced persecution. 

The Citizenship Amendment Act did not come out of the blue. It is an attempt to resolve the long-standing controversy over unauthorized migration from across the partition’s eastern border in recent decades. In effect, it makes a faith-based distinction among unauthorized migrants. Hindu nationalists have long regarded this to be an unfinished piece of partition business. The Citizenship Amendment Act incorporates into India’s citizenship laws the idea of Hindu immigration as homecoming—and not unauthorized immigration. It fulfills a foundational tenet of Hindu nationalism: the idea of India as a homeland for Hindus. 

One can, of course, be sympathetic to the plight of Hindus persecuted for their faith and still be alarmed by this dramatic change to India’s faith-neutral citizenship regime. It is bound to make Indian Muslims feel less than full citizens–a deeply worrisome development for a country with one of the world’s largest Muslim population.

VI: Is this an attempt to declare Muslims that have been living in India for a long time illegal migrants and not qualified to be citizens? Is this a similar sentiment that motivated the Myanmar regime to oust the Rohingyas by saying they were Bengals who should go back to Bangladesh?

Sanjib Baruah: What you are referring to is the massive bureaucratic exercise known as the updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that took place in the Northeast Indian state of Assam from 2015 to 2019, just before the Indian parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill.  It was intended to compile an accurate register of Indian citizens living in Assam. The political process that set the NRC exercise into motion, however, long precedes the Modi government; the prime mover of the NRC exercise was not a political party but the Indian Supreme Court. It was a response to the long history of political turmoil in the migration-intense border state of Assam over the issue of unauthorized migration from across partition’s eastern border. The final version of the register published in August 2019 excluded as many as 1.9 million people from the register. The Citizenship Amendment Act enacted a few months later effectively makes a faith-based distinction between Hindus and Muslims that were excluded from the NRC. 

Does it mean a looming Rohingya-like crisis is in the making? Probably not. India maintains that the NRC exercise in an internal matter indicating that large-scale deportation is not on the cards. But at the same time there is no talk of legalization or a general amnesty either. The result, unintended though it may be, can only be the introduction by stealth of a new form of precarious citizenship: a large group of Indians will have fewer rights and entitlements than full citizens.

VI: In addition to the erosion of minority rights in India, there are other illiberal policies that the Modi government is advancing that can be interpreted as being heavy handed, even moving toward authoritarianism. There is a disdain for dissent, an enhancing of executive powers, and attempts to control the courts. The courts in India were known for their independence and ability to curtail executive overreach. Like we see in Hungary and Poland, Modi is deploying tactics to rein in the Indian judiciary. Do you see these as worrying trends? 

Sanjib Baruah:  All this is true and quite worrying. Multiple incidents of targeted vandalism and violence against minorities have gone unrecognized and unpunished. Certain forms of dissent have been criminalized, and there are multiple instances of activists and protest organizers being intimidated by the use of high-handed police tactics. India’s political freedom score has suffered a set-back in Freedom House’s annual report on political rights and civil liberties in the world. India continues to be ranked as free mainly because it holds free and fair elections. But the 2019 report flags BJP’s distancing from the “country’s founding commitment to pluralism and individual rights” as a serious concern since democracy cannot exist without it.

There has been a perceptible decline in the independence and credibility of institutions that provide checks and balances in a democracy. India’s press and the judiciary are not what they used to be until a few years ago. 

India’s media was well known for its vibrancy. This has changed significantly; though fortunately, there are important exceptions. Indian newspaper readers and television viewers have certainly noticed a change in the coverage of political news. There is no legal government control of the media. But its ownership structure leaves enough room for the government to apply pressures on newspapers and television channels to do its bidding. 

There has been no attempt to remake the judiciary on the lines of Hungary or Poland. Yet the Indian judiciary’s reputation for independence has taken a hit. Let me give you an example. Earlier this year the Modi government nominated a former chief justice of the Supreme Court to be a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament. The man who had retired as chief justice only a few months earlier, promptly accepted the offer. There are precedents of former Supreme Court justices accepting positions in government after retiring from the court.  But this chief justice had made a number of controversial rulings favoring the Modi government only a few months before. The obvious impression of a quid pro quo has undermined the independence and legitimacy of India’s highest court.

VI: There are now many pressures on the Modi government. The COVID pandemic is having a serious impact on the health and well-being of citizens but also on the Indian economy. When Modi called for a lockdown, tens of thousands of marginal workers in the cities immediately lost whatever subsistence level jobs they had and were forced to return to their villages in the countryside. How is the Modi government responding to this crisis? What resilience does the Indian economy have to weather these pressures?

Sanjib Baruah:  The Covid-19 pandemic is affecting India quite badly both in terms of soaring infection rates and a severe economic contraction. Probably no other major economy is as badly affected by the pandemic as India. You are right to draw attention to the plight of the so-called migrant workers during the national lockdown last spring. They faced what can only be called a humanitarian crisis; it happened mainly because people were given only a few hours’ notice before the nation-wide lockdown went into effect. With all forms of transportation suddenly unavailable, many began their long journeys to their home villages on foot to escape starvation. Hundreds lost their lives because of heat, exhaustion or starvation and in horrific accidents. If the unfolding of this humanitarian crisis took the government by surprise it reflects the political marginality of India’s working poor and the callousness of the governing classes. 

Many Modi supporters like him because he is seen as "decisive." But the line between being decisive and being impulsive can be a very thin one. In a number of instances, Modi's actions seem quite impulsive. In November 2016 he suddenly announced that certain large denomination currency notes will no longer be legal tender. Commonly referred to as de-monetization it was supposedly intended to control corruption by wiping out illicit wealth. It emerged later that it did not do much to reduce corruption; if anything, it helped the conversion of illicit cash into legal assets. At the same time the resultant disruptions in economic activity slowed down economic growth. 

Something similar happened with the way the nation-wide shutdown was put into effect with no preparation. Lockdowns are intended to slow down the spread of the virus, albeit not without significant economic costs. But it is clear by now that the travel by large numbers of people from metropolitan India to rural areas and provincial towns only helped the virus to spread: “lockdown and scatter” is how economist Kaushik Basu describes it. This was the worst of both worlds. It led to the sharp slowdown of the economy.

The lockdown-induced humanitarian crisis draws attention to a particular vulnerability of the Indian economy: that a major part of it is informal or unorganized. Given the precarious nature of the employment of many urban workers they cannot afford to relocate in cities where they work. This is what makes them “migrant workers.” Scholars who study rural to urban migration in India distinguish between permanent, semi-permanent and seasonal or circular migrants. Many male seasonal migrants leave families behind in their home villages and return to their villages when illness or old age makes them unemployable.

When the term informal sector was first used by development economists in the1970s, informal economic activities were seen as a niche peculiar to the urban economies of developing countries. It was expected to fade away with the expansion of the formal economy.  But this is not what happened. The informal sector now accounts for nearly half of India’s GDP and 80 to 90 per cent of the labor force. Moreover, even many formal sector jobs have been informalized through the outsourcing of work to smaller firms or contractors.

Historian Frank Snowden says in his book Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present that epidemics are “not random events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning.” They expose the specific vulnerabilities of a society.  One of India’s critical vulnerabilities that India’s lockdown-induced humanitarian crisis has exposed is that Indian cities now host thousands of people whose precarious livelihoods keep them only steps away from destitution.

VI: We have discussed some of the internal challenges for India, but what about external problems and threats? Border tensions with China have been in the news and of course the ongoing conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir has recently flared up.

Sanjib Baruah:  Managing relations with China and Pakistan is certainly the most difficult and contentious foreign policy challenge facing any government in India. India fought a border war with China in 1962 and the humiliating defeat it suffered has seared into the collective memory. Border tensions with China have been escalating and they flared up again earlier this year. 

It is not easy to explain why India’s border dispute with China remains unresolved even after years of serious diplomatic efforts.This is in marked contrast with China’s territorial disputes with almost all other countries with which it has a land border. Those border conflicts are now settled.  For the most part what lies on the other side of India’s border with China is historical Tibet. Indeed, India’s border dispute with China is entangled with the question of Tibet. Only after the 1950-51 violent takeover of Tibet by the Chinese communist government did India’s border with Tibet become the India-China border and India’s historical buffer with China disappeared. China and India have very different narratives of Tibet’s past. China’s leaders mistrust India on the question of Tibet. While economic and trade ties between India and China have flourished in recent years, the two sides have never come close to settling the border dispute. The improvement of relations has been achieved only by setting aside “difficult issues” and concentrating on trade and investments – a formula first suggested by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. I tend to agree with the analysis of John Garver who believes that China has kept this territorial dispute alive as leverage to deter India from acting onTibet in ways that would harm Chinese interests.

India’s relations with its other nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan have been even more fraught. This conflictual relation can only be understood as a legacy of the partition. India has fought three wars with Pakistan, or perhaps four--if you include an undeclared war in 1999. Six years ago, when Modi first came to power, the chances of a reset in relations between the two countries looked promising. Modi invited the then prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration, and he made a surprise visit to Pakistan the next year. But a couple of deadly attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists on Indian security forces in 2016 including one in Kashmir ended that bonhomie. Relations have not recovered since then. India’s controversial decision in August 2019 to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy broke the state up into two units. The adoption of the Citizenship Amendment Act in December 2019, especially the narrative of persecution of religious minorities in the neighboring Muslim-majority countries that was used to justify it, have not helped matters.

VI: The Chinese are quite involved in Pakistan and Pakistan has always been India’s main adversary. Does China use its relationship with Pakistan to leverage India?

Sanjib Baruah: It does, and Pakistan certainly sees its alliance with China as crucial for its security against India. Developments along the 2,500 miles long India-China border--much of which is disputed--features in Pakistan’s strategic calculations vis-à-vis India. The triangular dynamic in relations between Pakistan, China and India becomes visually apparent when you look at a map. China having Pakistan on its side certainly limits India’s choices. 

The skirmishes between Indian and Chinese soldiers in June of this year were in Ladakh, now a separate administrative unit, but it was a part of Jammu & Kashmir until last year before the state was broken up into two units: Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. Thus, last year’s controversial move on Kashmir had an impact on India’s relations not only with Pakistan, but with China as well. 

Northeast India—the regional focus of my new book -- includes India’s eastern border with China. That is mainly where the India-China war of 1962 was fought. China calls the state of Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast Indian China’s Southern Tibet. It is through this area that the Dalai Lama had escaped to India in 1959.

Six decades ago when India and China fought a war, most of the high-altitude border areas between India and China were very sparsely populated. Since then a huge infrastructure has been built on both sides and there are now settlements of people as well. Legal and effective control over territory becomes more of an issue in these changed conditions. That is the larger context of the growing tensions on this disputed border. 

VI: China has extensive economic arrangements with Pakistan. Their Belt and Road Initiative involves significant projects in Pakistan. Are there any economic initiatives or partnerships between China and India that are important and can be built on?

Sanjib Baruah: China would have liked India to join the Belt and Road Initiative. But India has chosen to stay away. Pakistan being a major beneficiary of the BRI has constrained India’s choices.The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – the flagship BRI project in that country – passes through what India calls "Pakistan-occupied Kashmir." When India did not attend the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) in Beijing in April last year citing “sovereignty concerns,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi appealed to India to drop its opposition. “One of our differences,” he said, “is on how to look at the BRI. The Indian side has their concerns. We understand that and that is why we have stated clearly on many occasions that the BRI, including the CPEC, is only an economic initiative and it does not target any third country and has nothing to do with the sovereign and territorial disputes between any two countries.” 

China’s economic ties with India have grown significantly in the last couple of decades. There is a growing trade imbalance in China’s favor; and many in India believe that a flood of cheap Chinese imports has hollowed out India’s domestic manufacturing base. Both because of this, and because of the growing border tensions, economic relations between the two countries have been on a downward trend. 

Last year the Modi government pulled out from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – an Asia-wide free trade arrangement negotiated between Southeast Asian countries (members of ASEAN) and Australia, China, Korea, Japan, and New Zealand. Apparently Indian policymakers have come to the conclusion that being part of a China-led economic order is not in India’s long-term interest. 

In April of this year India announced a new policy on foreign direct investments that is clearly targeted at China.  Foreign direct investments from a country that shares a land border with India now requires prior government approval, a move designed to curb “opportunistic” acquisitions of Indian companies during this pandemic-induced economic recession. The recent border tensions have reinforced this downward trend. There have been social-media campaigns in India against buying Chinese goods. While they may not succeed, we are unlikely to see a reversal in the downward trend in political and economic relations between the two countries any time soon. 

VI: Not so long ago, wasn’t India regarded as a leader among the non-aligned developing nations of the world standing up to Western countries in the WTO, the UN, and other global forums demanding better trade deals, financial arrangements, and human rights considerations. Have global economic realities diminished India’s global role?

Sanjib Baruah:  Indeed, we have come a long way since the days when non-alignment, the rejection of great power politics, and the championing of the cause of developing countries were dominant themes in India’s foreign policy. “India has moved on from its non-aligned past,” said India’s top diplomat in 2019. “India is today,” he said, “an aligned state--but based on issues.” Strategic autonomy has emerged as the key phrase in India’s post-Cold-War diplomacy. India, however, continues to project itself as a growing world power and has long been campaigning for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The Indian argument for effective multilateralism and reforms of the United Nations has this aspiration as a sub-text. 

India’s desire to be recognized as a major power is backed by claims of possessing power resources such as a large population, a large national economy, a supposedly fast-growing middle class, significant military capabilities, a significant scientific and technical infrastructure etcetera. However, it is important to remember that India hasn’t done well when it comes to areas such as health, food and nutrition, education -living standards as measured by the Human Development Index. The pandemic has brought into stark focus the state of India’s fragile public healthcare system and public health infrastructure. These sectors in India have long been grossly underfunded. Indeed, India’s public spending on health as a share of the country’s Gross Domestic Product is among the lowest in the world even compared to many poorer countries.

Whether or not India’s global role has diminished, when we consider the challenges facing India today – and we have gone over a number of them--I tend to agree with the writer Aravind Adiga, who said a few years ago that “the greatest danger to the nation's future is no longer poverty or Pakistan, but overconfidence.”

VI: We are coming towards the end of our time.  We've had a good conversation on the realities facing India these days. It certainly seems that Modi and the BJP are firmly in control. There are many challenges on the horizon for India - the most serious being coping with the impact of the COVID pandemic on Indian society and economy. 

Sanjib Baruah: Yes, that plus developments vis-à-vis China: these are the two areas to watch.

Sanjib Baruah is a professor of Political Studies at Bard College. He holds a concurrent position as Visiting Research Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He was a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (Norway) until earlier this year. His publications include In the Name of the Nation: India and Its Northeast (Stanford University Press, 2020), India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (Oxford University Press, 2005); Postfrontier Blues: Towards a New Policy Framework for Northeast India (East-West Center, 2007); and the edited volumes Beyond Counterinsurgency: Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Ethnonationalism in India: A Reader (Oxford University Press, 2010). Baruah serves on the editorial board of the journal Studies in Indian Politics (Sage Publications) and the book series ‘South Asia in Motion’ (Stanford University Press). He also writes a column for the Indian Express.