10 Aug, 2013
Separation trouble spreads in northeast India after Telangana decision – Hindustan Times
Earlier this week, a cartoon in an Assamese daily showed two persons standing on a sandbar in the Brahmaputra with one saying to the other: “Thank god, this river hasn’t yet been divided”.
The cartoon was referring to violent statehood agitations across Assam that the UPA’s endorsement of Telangana triggered. It was also a reminder that the river has remained with Assam despite the redrawing of its boundaries several times since 1947.
There was a time when Sylhet, now in Bangladesh, was a part of British-administered Assam. So were present-day Arunachal Pradesh as the North East Frontier Agency, Nagaland (which became a state in 1963), Meghalaya (1972) and Mizoram (1986).
Self-rule, assertion of ethnic identities, denial of the resources and development pie and the indifference of undivided Assam’s ruling class to the problems of tribal groups without the numerical strength to assert themselves in a larger dominion, were the reasons behind the creation of these states.
Read the rest: Separation trouble spreads in northeast after Telangana decision – Hindustan Times.
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