A story of violence and displacement in North-East India.

Although India’s conflict over Kashmir and the clashes with the Naxalites garner more headlines, the seven sister states of the North-East of India have some of the most stubborn and bloody insurgency movements in the country. As multi-ethnic as Afghanistan or the Balkans, this is a patch of earth crammed between China, Burma and Bangladesh and attached to mainland India by a sliver of earth barely 15 kilometers wide.

There are some 130 different armed groups here: sometimes fighting for an ideology, sometimes for an autonomous ethnic homeland, sometimes for complete independence and sometimes because there is no other way to make a living. In April 2010 I visit the area to understand the violence – both from the perspective of those displaced by ethnic clashes and from those who have lost loved ones in the Indian government’s efforts to stamp out insurgency. These are some of the photos from a two-week reporting trip.

Adivasi woman in an internally displaced camp on the border between Bhutan and India:


“Before we were living a very peaceful life,” says a woman dressed in the bright yellow woven scarf typical of this community – the Adivasi. “I do not know how it could have happened that our neighbors did this.”

“First they would come and take our buffalo,” she says, of the ethnic group, the Boro. “Then they would come to our house and shoot us. They cut people into pieces.”
Almost 200,000 people were displaced, 2000 were killed. They now live as strangers in their own land, without access to clean water, schools or adequate food.
“They burnt the 80 houses in our village, one after the other,” another woman nursing a baby chimes in. “If we tried to save anything from our home they took us and threw us to the ground.”
“We ran to the border and lived for three days without food or water,” she continues. “Now we cannot go back to our land. The Boro live there now.”

Child playing in one of the Adivasi camps:



The women are talking over each other, arguing or disagreeing or correcting each other as the translator tries to keep up and their children get restless.
“My husband was beaten so badly last time that he can no longer work, his arms were too broken,” says one woman, while another illustrates the beating, standing and whacking her scarf over and over again on a stone in the middle of the muddy center of their village – “bang bang bang” she yells and the group of women laugh at her impersonation.

Women in the Muslim internally displaced camp in Assam, standing on the bank of the river:



It is not only the Adivasi who were displaced. The Rajbongshis, the Muslims, the Nepalis and the Sutraohars also lost their land and the chance to hone out a living from the land.
“Everybody is asking for a separate state,” says one woman. “How will it work?” Others mutter in agreement. “We cannot build our houses properly because we do not know when we will have to leave again.”
“For a year or so they have stopped coming and killing,” says another. “But you never know when it will happen again.” The Muslims suffer double discrimination for their religious beliefs.

In Nagaland, a grandfather cuts his grandson’s hair.




Despite the violence of every-day life, ordinary tasks continue.

At the Konyak Spring Festival in Nagaland men fire guns into the air.



Even during celebrations, preparation for violence is never far away. A man rests with his gun between dances.

Khagel Barman’s mother stands in the courtyard, where her son was shot twenty seven times while she and the rest of the family watched.



The Indian police killed twenty-year old Khagel Barman (innocent of terrorist activities according to local police officers and local authorities). No one has ever faced trial for his death and the police officer in charge of the killing was promoted. The government uses an old British law known as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to allow the police and military to shoot anyone they suspect of being a terrorist, without fear of arrest.