Living the Indo-Naga politics; Navigating governance beyond state in the Indo-Myanmar border

Active armed conflict between the Indian State and Naga insurgents has mostly ceased since 1997. It has since been a protracted ceasefire, nonetheless the so-called ‘disturbed area(s)’ status according to the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) continues to be heavily enforced. The Indian S/state and insurgents contest for local authority and legitimacy while awaiting a permanent political solution (the Framework Agreement 2015). In this context, the political order of Naga society in Northeast, India is multifaceted with multiple systems of governance functioning simultaneously in the same territory; the formal political structures (Indian S/state), traditional/customary institutions of rule, and insurgents (operating as a shadow government). The state system has to an extent accommodated traditional institutions and customary practices of self-governance but have re-packaged indigenous polity by introducing state functionaries in village governance. Likewise, traditional institutions (village polity and tribe councils) overlap with insurgent governance at informal points as shared sentiments of Naga nationalism prevail. On the basis of tribe allegiance and legitimacy, an insurgent faction runs a parallel government in one district of the state. However, the rebel government structure mimics that of a state, thus, contradictory to the hereditary chieftainship and the council of clans in the customary (indigenous) village polity. These complicated multiple strands of governance in judiciary, legislature, and executives at the local level arising from contested political order (of state, insurgents, and customary/traditional institutions) translates into different sets of court system, taxation, land, and resource management, legal governance, security governance, gendered governance, etc. for the local people. The Naga case contributes to the international academic debate on governance in post (active) conflict and ceasefire societies, where authority remains contested and divided. This paper examines three village governance in Manipur and Nagalnd, including a village that straddles the Indo-Myanmar border. Moving away from state-centered paradigms in studying ‘governance as solely a state’s apparatus of rule within a defined sovereign territory, the paper uses the ‘local turn’ approach to empirically engage with local complexities in examining forms of governance beyond the state. Using methods of political ethnography, it examines ‘governance’ based on interviews and conversations with 37 organized CSOs, tribe councils, Student Unions and Women’s organizations actively occupying the middle space between S/state and insurgents. This is to develop a more accurate conceptual framework to describe and analyze the ground reality of multiple governances where power is mediated/negotiated between and amongst the various sources of authority, sometimes contesting while other times collaborating in a contested statehood situation of a transborder ethnic community.