After annexation of the Brahmaputra Valley in 1826, British colonialism gradually subjugated the contiguous hills and plains and brought them under the colonial province of Assam. The territory of the colonial province was substantially expanded to include the Cachar Plains in 1830, Khasi Hills in 1833, Jaintia Plains in 1835, areas under present Karbi Anglong and North Cachar in 1838 and 1854 respectively, Naga Hills during 1866-1904, Garo Hills in 1872-73 and Lushai Hills in 1890. Therefore, the colonial map of Assam included almost the entire North-East India, excluding the two princely states of Manipur and Tripura.

COLONIAL EXCLUSION

The process of consolidation of colonial administration in the hills, however, witnessed conscious attempts to debar tribal societies from any socio-political as well as economic integration with the rest of colonial India, including the Assam plains. The administrative measures were worked out essentially to ensure ruthless exploitation of the natural resources of the Assam plains, and the process was accompanied by an anthropological construction of the dichotomy between hills (“primitive and savage”) and valleys (“civilized”). Creation of the cultural, political, and administrative binary started with the Inner Line Regulations of 1873 and continued till the Government of India Act of 1935, reinforced by many other measures in between. Following the Government of India (Excluded and Partially Excluded Area) Order, 1936, the geographical areas of the present states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, and the North Cachar Hills were categorised as excluded areas, and the present state of Meghalaya and Karbi Anglong district of present Assam were put under the category of partially excluded area. The powers of the provincial legislature were not to be extended to the excluded or partially excluded areas. The colonial logic of such exclusion was simple, the jhumia societies of the hills, with almost primitive tools of production and communal ownership of land, could hardly offer any surpluses to the colonial coffers. It is obvious that fortification of colonial capital, labor and revenue in the valleys of Assam was the primary concern for the colonial logic of annexation of the surrounding hills inhabited by myriad tribal communities with their autonomous social formations, which were hostile to the colonial political economy that started gaining momentum in the plains.

The exclusionary measures of the colonial administration definitely restricted the influences of pan-Indian nationalist discourse in the hills. Nevertheless, a number of factors, such as growing literacy, contact with outsiders through trade and businesses during and after the Second World War, return of ex-service men after the war with their experiences gathered outside the region, besides the effect of freedom movement in the neighbouring areas, contributed to the growth of nationalism in the hills. This resulted in emergence of different political organisations, especially since the late 1930s. Their common political agenda was autonomy for protection and preservation of their customs and consolidation of their identity.

SIXTH SCHEDULE

While India was approaching independence and accepting the logic of partition, the political logic of the emerging nation-state warranted a well-designed policy for integrating the frontier, cognizant of the political developments in the region. Regarding the political integration of the hills, the question was how to reconcile their aspirations for political autonomy. Considering the need for an adequate understanding of the situation, a Sub-committee of the Constituent Assembly, called the North-East Frontier (Assam) Tribal and Excluded Areas Subcommittee, was constituted in 1947 under the chairmanship of Gopinath Bordoloi. The sub-committee attempted to accommodate the political aspirations for autonomy that had gained momentum in the hills districts of Assam in the national political system characterised by centralised bias. The instrument for integration was passed by the Constituent Assembly constituting the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution.

Accordingly, district councils were constituted in 1952 in the United Khasi–Jaintia Hills district, the Garo Hills district, the Lushai (Mizo) Hills district, and the North Cachar and the Mikir Hills districts, uniting both into an “administrative district.” The arrangement envisaged the political and cultural assimilation of the hills with the plains, without altering the colonial map of Assam. However, as the constitutional mechanism took shape in the form of autonomous districts, it was impossible to satisfy the demand for autonomy and “safeguarding of the Naga way of life” of political leaders of the incipient Naga middle class. In other hill districts of Assam, the autonomy provided by the Indian Constitution was an acceptable proposition. However, the political leaders of the hills strived for more power by remaining within the Indian federal structure, mobilizing for separate hill states comprising the district councils after the constitution of the States Reorganization Commission. The agitation for a separate hills state enjoyed much popular support in the Garo, Khasi and Jaintia Hills, while the leadership of other district councils preferred greater powers to the institution of the district council. Political mobilization in the Lushai Hills took a violent form with the appearance of the Mizo National Front (MNF) in the early 1960s, making its secessionist intentions clear.

As a consequence of the political assertion by different hill tribes, either through violent or through peaceful means, the process of redrawing the political map of Assam continued from the early 1960s until the mid-1980s. Nagaland came into being as a separate state in 1962, Meghalaya was carved out of Assam in 1969, while Mizoram obtained statehood in 1986. The Mikir and North Cachar Hills districts were given the option of joining Meghalaya, but the district councils overwhelmingly decided to stay with Assam. While the political leadership of the two hill districts of Assam, Karbi Anglong (previously Mikir Hills) and Dima Hasao (previously North Cachar Hills), remained largely contained with the autonomy given to them, subsequently they too started demanding a separate state. Armed militancy became their key strategy.

When the constitution was formulated, the plain tribes were excluded from any consideration of autonomy, with the assumption that they would assimilate with the larger Assamese society through the ongoing process of Sanskritisation. However, their demand for protection of land amid large-scale immigration was addressed by creating the Tribal Belts and Blocks immediately after independence. Nevertheless, when their demand for separate statehood was galvanised with armed struggle, a section of the militants was brought to the negotiating table to sign an accord in 2002, resulting in the creation of the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts to be governed by an autonomous council called the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) under the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution.

Under provision of the Sixth Schedule, the autonomous districts councils are given legislative, judicial, executive and financial powers. However, one of the inadvertent outcomes of autonomy to the tribal societies provided by the Constitution was the growth of a small section of political oligarchy appropriating a substantial share of state dispensations. Obviously, this newly emerged tribal oligarch became a natural collaborator of the larger political forces in power both, in the centre and the state.

SUBVERSION OF SIXTH SCHEDULE

Now being a close collaborator of the BJP rule, the present leadership of all the autonomous district councils of Assam constituted under the Sixth Schedule, has been demonstrating its allegiance to the corporate houses. As directed, the political leadership of the autonomous councils has been visibly misusing their Legislative powers, which inter alia include allotment, occupation or use of land other than reserved forest and management of any forest not being a reserved forest. In the last couple of years, reportedly, 6000 acres of land was to be allotted in Karbi Anglong for the project linked to the Ambani group, which would have resulted in the displacement of nearly 20,000 people from different tribal communities. Similarly, there was a move for allocation of more than 1,134 acres of land, in the Parbatjhora sub-division of Kokrajhar district, again to the Adani Group, for a thermal power plant. The same is the situation in Dima Hasao district. The North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council allotted a total of 3,000 bighas of land (more than 667 acres) to a Kolkata based private company for the installation of a cement plant. These are only few instances of love and affection shown to the corporate houses, jettisoning the constitutional rights of the common tribal people over land. 

The political unrest and violence that flared up in West Karbi Anglong district of Assam in the third week of December (December 21–23, 2025) is an inescapable consequence of Hindutva politics, marked by insensitivity to the constitutional rights of the common tribal people. Alongside their resistance to allotment of huge area of land to different corporate houses, the common tribal people, especially of the West Karbi Anglong district, have also been demanding immediate eviction of the non-tribal people, mostly the Nonia community, originally from Bihar, who encroached more than 11,000 bighas of land categorised as Professional Grazing Reserve in 1933. Their movement got intensified when an organization viz. Rachnatmak Nonia Sanyukta Sangh, allegedly backed by RSS, submitted a memorandum to the President of India during her visit to Shillong in January 2024, demanding land pattas (permanent land ownership), which was in violation of the basic ethos of the Sixth Schedule. The ruling BJP, both at the state and in the autonomous council, however, preferred to remain indifferent to the basic concern of the common tribal people for long, but sought to ruthlessly dominate the movement when it was intensified in December.