Assam and AFSPA

Border Issues

Abstract

Since India gained judicial independence, the postcolonial government inherited a country with various forms of internal border chaos that are based on race, culture, religion, anatomy, and many other factors. The chaotic ‘internal borderization’ of India was initiated by the European colonizers (especially the British colonizers) and has been carried forward by the colonially structured self-profiting governing systems. The postcolonial governments, in order to systematize their self-profiting and consensually dictatorial political systems, made sure that the border disputes remain unresolved through Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) and AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Permission Act) is one of them. AFSPA is based on an ordinance promulgated by the British in 1942 to quell the national independence movement during the Second World War.  In this article, we aim to look at the systemic oppression propagated by the government in Assam and the northeast with the help of semi-structured telephonic interviews with people from Assam. This article delves into the multiple factors in and around AFSPA that have essentially allowed the State to compromise on the basic human rights of its residents.

 Keywords: AFSPA, borders, government, human rights, insurgency, violence