The Voice of the Marginalised: Demands for Autonomy among the Tribes of North East India, with special reference to Assam

The history of Northeast India is the history of ethnic self-determination whose seeds have been rooted by the crown and the company. The demands for separate geographical space for the native Ethnic community are the outcome of British administrative arrangement which created a exclusive-geographical boundary among the ethnically different communities of northeast India. It was the background on which the entire northeastern states were seen bifurcated in different homelands in post independent period. The demands have created a vicious cycle among almost all the communities who started demanding for a unique geo-political arrangement which is often an outcome of the reference point they made in terms of other. The state however has recognized the inherent differences among the communities to an extent which resultsinto the creation of northeast that one noticed today. It was again a fact that ethnic contestation often led to a mass violence involving two distinctly different communities which completely jeopardize the process of coexistence among the communities. Therefore, the present paper tries to highlight the demands for autonomy among the hill tribes and plain tribes and their trajectory in different forms and ends. The paper adopted a methodology which is analytical and the necessary references to the resources have been made from secondary sources.