Anxiety, Violence and the Postcolonial State: Understanding the “Anti-Bangladeshi” Rage in Assam, India

Rafiul AHMED

Article Details

Anxiety, Violence and the Postcolonial State: Understanding the “Anti-Bangladeshi” Rage in Assam, India

Authors:

Rafiul AHMED

Publisher:

T.C Dışişleri Bakanlığı

Main Topics:

Political science

Journal:

PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 2014 Vol.19 Issue 1, pp.55-70

Document Type:

Article

Publication Date:

3/2014

Document Language:

English

Document ID (Org No.):

2000585654

Frequency:

Bi-Annual

eISSN:

2651-3315

pISSN:

1300-8641

Abstract:

 

Fear, insecurity and anxiety seem to be the enduring sources of genocidal impulses against the Bengali-speaking Muslim minorities of contemporary Assam, India. This paper explores how the tripartite matrix of the border, census and citizenship categories has become indispensable in inscribing fear and anxiety in contemporary Assam’s body politic. Using insights from postcolonial states’ practices, the paper shows how the state suffers from a persistent neurosis, characterised by an “incompleteness-anxiety”, and how attempts have been made to resolve this sense of crisis by mobilising the majority to align its Assamese identity in the direction of an imagined purified “national whole”. Further, the paper elaborates upon the implications of these anxieties with reference to Indo-Bangladeshi relations, in which Assam figures prominently both as a prime border state and as a place that is integral to the region’s riparian borderlands as a whole. Moving away from the official discourses of contemporary Indo-Bangladeshi relations, which are guided largely by postcolonial cartographic anxiety, the paper points towards the creative possibilities of exploring the “relational registers” within the region’s shared civilisational resources as an alternative, in which Assam can act as a bridge between India and Bangladesh.

Article Details

Anxiety, Violence and the Postcolonial State: Understanding the “Anti-Bangladeshi” Rage in Assam, India

Authors: Rafiul AHMED

Publisher: T.C Dışişleri Bakanlığı

Main Topics: Political science

Journal: PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 2014 Vol.19 Issue 1, pp.55-70

Document Type: Article

Publication Date: 3/2014

Document Language: English

Document ID (Org No.): 2000585654

Frequency: Bi-Annual

eISSN: 2651-3315

pISSN: 1300-8641

Issues

Authors:

Rafiul AHMED

Publisher:

T.C Dışişleri Bakanlığı

Main Topics:

Political science

Journal:

PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 2014 Vol.19 Issue 1, pp.55-70

Document Type:

Article

Publication Date:

3/2014

Document Language:

English

Document ID (Org No.):

2000585654

Frequency:

Bi-Annual

eISSN:

2651-3315

pISSN:

1300-8641