Lens and the Guerrilla: Insurgency in India's Northeast by Rajeev Bhattacharyya
Che in Paona Bazaar: Tales of Exiles and Belonging from India's Northeast by Kishalay Bhattacharjee
Reviewed by Bertil Lintner
For those who find Myanmar's mosaic of ethnic groups and plethora of insurgencies bewildering, India's insurgency-prone northeastern region is likely even more confounding. Scores of local rebel groups fighting variously for independence, autonomy or political change are active in the seven states east of the
narrow "Siliguri Neck", which connects the volatile region with the rest of India.
Two new books shine light on the motivations and people behind these little-known and understudied movements. Rajeev Bhattacharyya, an Indian photojournalist based in Guawahati, Assam, has covered these conflicts for years and brings his on-the-ground expertise to bear in his new book Lens and the Guerilla: Insurgency in India's Northeast. The author has produced an excellent volume with exclusive photos of more than 50 insurgent outfits, including the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council, the Dima Halam Daogah (Jewel and Black Widow factions), the Kangleipak Communist Party and the Adivasi Cobra Military of Assam. The even lesser known Liberation of Achik Elite Force, the Hmar Volunteers Council and the United Liberation Front of Barak Valley are also portrayed and examined.
Kishalay Bhattacharjee, a former resident regional editor for the Indian television network NDTV, has likewise written a very personal account of life in a troubled corner of the subcontinent that is virtually unknown even to many Indians. Che in Paona Bazaar: Tales of Exiles and Belonging from India's Northeast is set amid the violence and chaos of the insurgencies and government counterinsurgency operations that have killed thousands of people and hampered economic development. Bhattacharjee has written a moving account of the extraordinary human misery these local wars have wrought.
In line with his work as an investigative journalist, Bhattacharyya's book extends beyond the insurgent camps on the Indian side of the country's eastern frontier. From October 2011 to February 2012, he trekked into the mountains of northwestern Myanmar, where several of the insurgent groups maintain remote bases. The author interviewed leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (the Khaplang faction) and the People's Liberation Army of Manipur, and photographed their respective uniformed soldiers brandishing an assortment of weapons obtained on black markets in China or Myanmar.
Most of the pictures in the volume are his own, but he has also collected and compiled historical photographs from the region's most enduring insurgent group: the Nagas. Various groups of Naga rebels have been fighting for independence - and among themselves - since the mid-1950s. There are also recent pictures of the once powerful United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which wreaked havoc in the Brahmaputra Valley in the 1990s. With the recent capture of most of its leaders and the surrender of its core followers, many observers believed that ULFA was now more or less defunct.
Bhattacharyya's pictures, however, reveal this is not the case. Paresh Baruah, ULFA's top military commander and a former Assamese footballer and goalkeeper, is shown being escorted by heavily armed troops in a secret jungle hideout in what Bhattacharyya calls "Eastern Nagaland", but which must be situated deep inside Myanmar.
ULFA once had camps in Bangladesh and Bhutan but was forced out of the latter country by a joint Indian-Bhutanese military operation in 2003. The group lost its sanctuaries in Bangladesh when the Awami League, which maintains good relations with India, returned to power in late 2008. ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and others were arrested in Bangladesh in late 2009 and deported to India. Now, Bhattacharyya's book shows, ULFA is regrouping in northwestern Myanmar, where Baruah and his men are training new cadres and fighters.
Bhattacharyya's pictures are accompanied by detailed accounts of the histories and ideologies of northeastern India's insurgent movements. The volume will thus be a useful resource for policy makers, scholars and ordinary readers with an interest in what is, and has been for many years, one of Asia's most volatile regions.
Apart from maintaining sanctuaries in Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar, several of these groups also received training by clandestine agencies in China in the 1960s and 1970s. Leveraging those old connections, several groups are still able to obtain weapons from private Chinese arms dealers. China-India relations remain strained and some of the insurgents are able to benefit from the rivalry.
TV editor Bhattacharjee's book, although examining essentially the same problems, is different in content and scope. The "Che" in the book's title, of course, refers to the legendary Latin American guerrilla fighter Che Guevara, the icon and pin-up boy of revolutionaries all over the world. "Paona Bazaar", meanwhile, is a local market in the Manipur state capital of Imphal.
Unlike the mostly Christian hill peoples of the region, the Imphal Valley's ethnic Meiteis are Hindu. But they are also ethnically and linguistically related to certain Southeast Asian peoples who are, as Bhattacharjee writes, "struggling to merge their multiple identities". British colonialism created often unwieldy political entities - one of them being the nation-state of India - which, as one Indian writer terms it, "remains plagued by a siege from within".
To illustrate this dilemma, Bhattacharjee invents a composite character called "Eshei", which means "song" in the language of the Meitei. The author guides the protagonist through a state that has more insurgencies - Meitei, Naga, Kuki and some smaller groups - than any other in India's restive northeast. Bhattacharjee also notes that when northeasterners travel to other parts of India, they are often pejoratively referred to as "chinkos", while Indians from outside Manipur are frequently called "mayang". This has contributed to the alienation of the area from the rest of the country, an identity crisis the author encapsulates through Eshei's eyes:
Till the 1980s, "identity" was a word that meant nothing beyond an identification card. But by the time Eshei's generation graduated, identity as Manipuri or Assamese or even narrowed down to Bodo became a sensitive issue. While growing up in Manipur, Eshei wasn't even aware of "my identity". There was no need. But once Eshei got out of Manipur, there was a need to prove "Indian-ness" or not to be mistaken for a Nepali or a Korean or even a Thai national.
In Manipur, at least 15 groups, most of them Marxist, style themselves as defenders of this identity. Yet local people, the author shows in grassroots detail, are squeezed between unaccountable government forces and extortionist rebels. The government's draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act grants immunity to security forces for any kind of abuse. Active or former rebels, meanwhile, extort money from shopkeepers and ordinary families - and sometimes kill those who oppose their will.
The rebels are also opposed to "Hindi culture" and have pressured local cinemas against showing Bollywood movies. Hindi music is banned as well. The upshot is that Korean movies, soaps and music have invaded northeastern India, which has hardly been conducive to fostering local culture and traditions.
Bhattacharjee writes that the region's post-millennium youth "believe that the baggage of alienation was too regressive and detrimental, so a band of music lovers decided to play a different track - they started singing blues in Shillong. Hard Rock in Manipur. Pop in Nagaland. Church choirs helped create a tradition of Western music across the largely-Christian tribal areas of the region. At the same time, Hindu-Meitei Manipur was equally high on heavy metal and rock."
Amid this culture war, there is also Che Guevara, a symbol of rebellious youth rather than dedicated insurgents. The author writes:
He is the most famous face in a state twice removed from any revolution. Ironically the red armies of Manipur haven't quite adopted him, so thanks to a global fashion statement, he became young Manipur's icon years before his global demand. Chinese manufacturers have imprinted his face on virtually everything. I found a calendar with garam masala sachets hanging from the month of December in a rundown tea shop of a remote village which had a Che Guevara image. Badges with Che's face are available in the most unlikely places, such as an HIV drop-in center.
With Eshei as the book's central figure, Bhattacharjee makes this emotional imbroglio come alive and takes the reader deep into the heart of Manipur.
The two books take entirely different approaches to the problems of India's northeast. As such, they complement each other and both should be read by anyone interested in this largely forgotten corner of the Indian subcontinent, where ambushes, murder, rape, extortion and human rights abuses are a part of daily life. In their own distinctive ways, both books tackle the question of identity in a part of India that is still struggling to come to terms with both its past and present.
Lens and the Guerrilla: Insurgency in India's Northeast by Rajeev Bhattacharyya. Manas Publications, New Delhi (2013). ISBN: 8170494516. 215 pages.
Che in Paona Bazaar: Tales of Exiles and Belonging from India's Northeast by Kishalay Bhattacharjee. Macmillan, New Delhi (2013). ISBN: 9789382616047. Price: US$7.59 (Kindle); 241 pages.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and author of several books on Myanmar and India's Northeast, including Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia's Most Volatile Frontier (2012) and Land of Jade. A Journey from India through Northern Burma to China. He is at present a writer with Asia Pacific Media Services.
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Unlike the mostly Christian hill peoples of the region, the Imphal Valley's ethnic Meiteis are Hindu. But they are also ethnically and linguistically related to certain Southeast Asian peoples who are, as Bhattacharjee writes, "struggling to merge their multiple identities". British colonialism created often unwieldy political entities - one of them being the nation-state of India - which, as one Indian writer terms it, "remains plagued by a siege from within". 
