HYPNOTIZING drumbeats and chants reign over the beautified festival ground and bounce back from the mountains. The dancers move in simple but rhythmic steps, led by local elders who wear distinctive headdresses made of peacock feathers and bright yellow, red or green robes with dragon ornaments. Dancers wear the traditional dress of the six Kachin tribes that range from the red and black garments with tiny jingling silver bells of the Jinghpaw to the snow-white coats of the Rawang. All men hold the traditional sword in upright position.
This could be a Kachin manau festival scene in China, Burma, Thailand or India – at least as far as the Kachin, or Singpho as they are known in India, are concerned. This centuries-old Kachin dance festival digresses just slightly from place to place. Significantly, neither the drumbeats and chants nor the dress and language of the dancers vary. It is the flag towering over the festival ground on top of the highest manau post – above the traditional flags and symbols – that alternates.
In China, the supplements have often included the Chinese red lanterns and symbols such as the coat-of-arms of the Communist Party. In Thailand, the Kachin dance under the Thai flag. In the Kachin state capital of Myitkyina, two huge Myanmar flags loomed on top of the two highest manau posts during the 2001 Grand Manau Festival, while squads of heavily armed Myanmar army soldiers patrolled the festival ground. Under these flags the soldiers from the Kachin Independence Army, in full uniform but without arms, were allowed to dance, since the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) has signed a ceasefire with Rangoon.
In the KIO controlled territory on the Sino-Burmese border, the Kachin dance under their very own flag of two crossed swords on the red-white-green background. This flag was also festively hoisted at the Kachin (Singpho) manau in Arunachal Pradesh in a special ceremony honoured by the deputy chief minister of the state. There was no Union flag but special detachments of the Indian Army represented the state to provide security in the insurgent-prone area.
The plot of history has been written retrospectively by the winners, as historian Clive Christie notes. The vast naturally connected space on the foothills of the southeastern Himalaya at the peripheries of the pre-existing centres has in a very short historic snapshot of time become India, China and Burma, delimited by boundaries that mark the sovereignty of each state.
The Singpho are an officially designated ‘tribe’ in India with a population of about 20,000 in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam (mostly in Changlang district that borders on Kachin state and Sagaing division of Burma), but they are more widely known as the Kachin or Jingpo amounting to over a million in Burma and 120,000 in China. Close to the tri-junction of India, Burma and China sits a unique village of Vijayanagar that has no road connection to anywhere in India! Between 3000-5000 Lisu live in this village and in several others in close proximity to Kachin state in Burma, while over a million Lisu live across northern Burma, Yunnan and Thailand. The Shan are the least known of the ethnic nationalities in Northeast India but their temples, decorated with the Shan scripts, extend from Chonkham village of Lohit district in Arunachal Pradesh to Yunnan province of China, Burma and North Thailand.
The Naga amount to about 3.5 million in India and Burma, making up the majority in Nagaland (90%) and in four of the seven districts in Manipur, several districts in Arunachal Pradesh (Tirap and Changlang) and in Assam. The Indo-Burmese border runs through several Naga villages and even cuts through people’s houses. The Chin/Mizo comprises a complicated category of several related tribes in the hilly areas of Manipur, Mizoram, Sagaing division and Chin state, and is plagued by subdivisions, dialects and the politics that feed into the internecine conflicts. Even the Manipuris talk about their connections in Burma.
The territorial domains of all these peoples were in 1947-49 sharply cut by boundaries that are ironically referred to as international. These nations have thus – due to the dominating world system of states – become the so-called ‘losers’ in history. They have become nations without a state in the world where the international system of states is the underlying phenomenon determining a remarkable amount of people’s everyday lives and movements. Furthermore, the practice throughout the world tends to be that the longer-established nations, given their ‘legitimate’ power positions dub themselves ‘civilizations’ and often look down and belittle the cultures on their peripheries. All nations demarcate the boundaries of their pre-modern realms and nations retrospectively, while the nationalist projects of those with a state enjoy the ‘legitimate’ support of the state institutions – and this makes the crucial difference.
The modern world political map presents the boundaries dividing the world space into orderly and fixed patches of adjacent territorial units, with different colours expected to manifest distinctiveness and demarcate the sovereignty of each such entity. Although such maps leave an impression as if the past territorial practices have been discontinued since the delimitation of territorial boundaries, one does not have to subscribe to a postmodern school of political geography to admit to a discordance between the conceptual and lived spaces.
The conceptual nexus of the political map can control, dominate and submerge the life-world but it cannot phase it out. The naturally connected lived space has nowhere to disappear. It can only become more resistant when suppressed or submerged. The Indo-Burmese border, settled ‘amicably’ by New Delhi and Rangoon who decided to follow the British administrations borders, exemplifies the discord between the conceptual and lived. The border cutting through remote, mountainous and sparsely populated life-world is difficult for the states to demarcate and control – and thus it displays various leakages and hidden geographies given the different lines and routes that have been inscribed over centuries. The linkage of the Northeast to New Delhi, 2,300 km away – from the status of a Bengali frontier with the administrative centre in Assam – has taken place in a very short historic time. The state’s attempts to establish the conceptual Indo-Burmese boundary in the life-world are countered by the various practices of ‘unbundling’ of territoriality, counter-territoriality and other ‘hidden geographies,’ ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ – that is, by the resistant lived space.
The society has over a short time come to be associated only with the territorial state, and the territorial definition of ‘society’ has replaced the earlier domination of the social definition. The state through its territory, sovereignty and boundaries has in a relatively short time, particularly in South and Southeast Asia, become the all-defining arrangement for the organization of space.
The states on many of their borders struggle with reinforcing the conceptual in the lived world. Although the world offers some examples of attempts to fence in the states – with walls or barbed wires – it is more common that the states manifest their power at official border crossings. At such locations, the respective authorities on both sides stamp day or weekly permits or require prearranged visas, which are further regulated into single-, double- and multiple-entry, or transit, business, diplomatic visas, and so on. The Indo-Burmese and Indo-Chinese borders definitely exclude any feasibility of reproducing the de jure political map in the lived space due to the harsh, hardly inhabited and mountainous terrain. Nevertheless, both India and Burma have flexed their muscles – and declared they would seal the border. This is how the operation by the Indian and Burmese militaries during their coordinated crackdown on insurgents on both sides of the 1000 mile long Indo-Burmese border was described.
Nevertheless, in Dong – that Arunachal Pradesh tourist brochures advertise as the place to see the first sunrise in India but where the Indian Army does not permit anyone to go – it must feel as if this world ends. Less than 50 km away is Zayü, accessible only with a visa and by airplane from Beijing. Correspondingly, the Sakongdan village in Burma can only be accessed via Rangoon. (The militaries of neither country are likely to allow a visit to these places at their border zones anyway.)
The historian Willem van Schendel points out that the four settlements of Gohaling, Sakongdan, Dong and Zayü, each within a 50 km radius, belong not only to three sovereign states but also to four different world regions. Gohaling is in Yunnan (East Asia), Sakongdan in Burma (Southeast Asia), Dong in India (South Asia) and Zayü is in Tibet (Central Asia). A term ‘territorial trap’, coined by the political geographer John Agnew, most excellently depicts the situation where the people of these settlements – and the geographer or anthropologist wishing to do fieldwork – find themselves due to the restrictive and limited organization of the world space.
Nevertheless, too, the recently established territorial lines cause huge inconveniences in the lived world. The Tibetan-related people from Arunachal Pradesh take weeks-long looping treks across the mountainous terrain via Burma – deemed illegal – to visit their relatives on the China side. The Kachin from Burma who want to travel to the manau festival in Arunachal Pradesh prefer the roundabout option via the existing Tamu-Moreh border crossing at Manipur-Burma border to trekking across the mountains. Similarly, people from Agartala in Tripura opt for the convoluted roundabout travel to Kolkata.
In even more extremes, the territorial lines have become to determine over prosperity or poverty, over enhancement or suppression of cultures and ethnicity, over nurturing freedoms or persecution – and sometimes, over life or death. The refugee flow from Burma to Thailand or Mizoram is a good example of the actual differences that the so-called international boundaries have begun to make in people’s lives.
Not long ago referred to simply as khua-chak, southerners, or khua-thlang, northerners, the multiple tribes inhabiting the Lushai Hills and Chin Hills have become the Chin and the Mizo of their respective sovereign spaces of Burma and India. Once supporting each other’s struggle within their newly established spatial arrangements for wider cultural and political self-determination, and contributing to each other’s economies, their relations today have become strained – territorially trapped under the disguise of socio-politics and economy. Blocking the Chin flow of political and economic migrants who escape the military persecution and collapsed economy in Burma – in order to cherish Mizoram’s freedom and blossoming, although hard-earned – is costly and runs counter to the modern trends of an increasingly globalizing world.
The multiple ‘realities’ in Northeast India, stemming from the historico-political contingencies, have perhaps led to one of the most complex sets of territorial and social dynamics in modern South and Southeast Asia. All stakeholders have, on feeling cornered, opted for using violence as a solution, including the state that has seen a threat to its fundamental characteristic – sovereignty. So powerful, dominating and taken for granted is the international system of states that many groups delimited to India or Burma have replicated the concept through their own demands for a state, seeing it as the only solution. The perception of the latter lingers – mostly from inertia because the world is changing.
The Kachin have lost political control of their historical territorial domain across the foothills of the southeastern Himalaya – a disadvantage from the perspective of a nationalist project. However, the Kachin Independence Organization that fought the guerrilla war against the Burmese military junta in 1961-1994 is today one of the politically strongest ethnic ceasefire groups fighting a desperate battle in Rangoon’s conference hall at the junta organized National Convention for autonomy under the proposed federal system in Burma. The Kachin (Singhpo) in India point out that they are luckier than their kin, particularly in Burma, as their rights are guaranteed by the democratic system. They refer proudly to an elected Kachin (Singhpo) MP in the Arunachal Pradesh government.
Many spatial arrangements and trends have long had trouble fitting the framework of the modern states. The various persisting historic legacies and customary systems aside, common markets, international fairs, intelligence sharing, various transnational functional regimes and political communities are not primarily delimited in territorial terms. Transnational corporations and information flows function legitimately beyond the sovereign spaces of the states. The global movement is building up towards further boosting such trends. India’s Look East policy is a part of the current, as is the visionary transforming of Southeast Asia into a European Union-style single market and manufacturing base by 2020.
After lying dormant for a decade since its initiation in 1990s, in pursuit of a larger, global vision, India’s Look East policy seems to be gaining momentum again. The opening of new border trade posts, plans of upgrading old cross-border roads and constructing new ones, and mega-projects such as the Asian Highway and the trans-ASEAN railway have become the talk of the day.
Among the official inaugurations of border trade posts that are gaining momentum under the Look East policy are Zokhawthar and Longwa. Dubbed ‘Mizoram’s new gateway to Indo-Burma trade’, Zokhawthar was opened last February, while crores of money have been approved to ‘boost’ trade with Burma at Nagaland’s Longwa. Both ‘crossings’ have been used by traders for centuries, including periods when the cross-border trade was deemed illegal. A journalist reporting on the ‘opening’ of the Longwa trade post could not help but say that Longwa had been ‘witnessing barter trade among the people living along the international border for the last several decades.’ A small-scale Chin trader, who transports sacks of footwear all the way from Ruili in China via Mandalay to Zokhawthar to Aizawl, complained that his profits had dwindled since the ‘opening’ of the Zokhawthar ‘trade point’ – because now the government also collected tax.
The Kachin have creatively adjusted to the dominating international system of the states by incorporating into the definition of the Kachin nation references to their three ‘host’ states – China, Burma and India. It is a well-founded and sensible next step in our changing, globalizing world that the ‘host’ states – from their power position – lend a helping hand to facilitate connections and communications, both politically but also economically. For example, reopening the world famous Ledo (Stilwell) road would establish both physical and conceptual connections amongst the Kachin, in addition to paying the deserved tribute to the road’s historic role and significance.
The reopening of the Ledo road that during the Second World War connected Yunnan’s Kunming to Ledo in Assam is, however, stranded in political paranoia. It has remained a mere discussion topic in the academic circles in Yunnan and India and a daydream to a handful who fancy driving from India to China along the most direct route, enjoying picturesque scenery and the sight of the highest peak of Southeast Asia, Mt Hkakaborazi, in the background. It remains a dream to the Kachin who in a fast developing modern world would prefer to drive rather than trek across the mountains.
The submerged but persisting lived space constitutes the past territorialities, creatively adapted to the present dominating system of the states. The territorialities of the many ethnic nationalities provide a multitude of examples of how the global trends and lived realities can merge.
The Kachin territorialities centering on the mountainous terrain of the southeastern Himalaya cannot be demarcated on modern political maps or by using conventional cartographies. However, as a nation – never mind that stateless and cross-boundary – the Kachin are united through a tight unique kinship lineage network of various spatial trajectories and social bonds, a commonly recognized lingua franca and a variety of tangible ethnic features. In the modern system of states they emphasize their unique position between the two superpowers while having connections to both. The Kachin’s creative adaptation to their spatialization into Burma, China and India suggests a way to negotiating the dominating system of the states delineated by the so-called international boundaries – for the benefit of all stakeholders.
The local people, better experienced in the lived, naturally connected world than the statesmen, academics or reporters, continue to rely on their feet just as they have done since times immemorial. The Kachin of India, China and Burma, the potential passengers on the presently failing Agartala-Dhaka bus line, and the numerous small traders plying between India and China would admit that this remains the winning strategy. To sanction them would mean cutting the shoe to fit the leg.
The multiple layers of ‘reality’ will continue to coexist, interact and interdepend. The Chin trader in Aizawl, the Naga and the Kachin – plus the millions of people on the Indo-Burma and Indo-Bangladesh borders – do not mind if the state stuck to its rhetoric of ‘opening’ borders. They would hail together with the state the inaugurations of new bus routes, new roads and money invested in infrastructure. The economic development that comes along with the improvement of infrastructure and communications is planned to enhance the life world and make all winners in the end. At least so goes the rhetoric. Thus negotiating common grounds between the conceptual and lived would lead to reaping the maximum economic, political and social benefits.
The lived space has recently given a rare warning about its negligence by the more powerful stakeholders. The villagers from eastern Burma won the lawsuit in the Californian Superior Court over Unocal for it compliance in using slave labour at the construction of its gas pipeline from Burma to Thailand. This has set a precedent. In the long run, deals struck at the expense of lived space are neither in the interest of the states that wish to build communications and economic linkages, nor the multinational corporations who lose out, nor the local people who suffer.
The grandiose proposal to develop a traffic network to connect the 38 Asian nations and Europe via Turkey is a fit plan for our 21st century. So are the gas pipeline projects from Burma via Bangladesh to India. India’s Look East policy and global trends in moving away from the territorial delimitation of every aspect of our world provide a momentum, and an excuse, to do away with the territorial trap – leaving the latter to the geopolitics of the past century.
In our world system of states, the society itself has granted the highest statute – and honour that comes with obligation – to the state and its institutions.
