Abstract

Chapter 1 discusses the background of the research that led to the book, and offers an introduction to Nagaland as a frontier and borderland. The chapter also offers a discussion of borderlands, anxiety, and the role of gender in borderlands, and discusses the methodology and methodological considerations of the book.

Keywords: borderland, frontier, anxiety, gender.

The thoughts that shaped this book began in their haziest sense in 2012, when I was travelling through Bangladesh on a personal mission to reach and explore the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the country's east – three hilly districts that have witnessed decades of communal violence between migrant Bengali settlers from the plains and tribal communities indigenous to the hills. After several months in Bangladesh, I travelled overland through the Dawki Border gate to the Indian state of Meghalaya, and then to the state of Assam, a lowland valley state bordered by six highland ‘tribal states’ – Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland, as well as the Kingdom of Bhutan. These ‘tribal’ states are home to distinct tribal communities, unique geography and complex politics similar to the communities, geography and politics that captured my interest in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Following this interest, I took the six-hour Kamrup Express train from Assam into the state of Nagaland. My intention in coming to Nagaland was to travel from Kohima, the state capital, to the village of Longwa – a small hilltop settlement of around eighty thatch huts that is divided in two by the India/Burma border, in Mon District, Nagaland's most isolated and poorest district. The journey was an opportunity to engage with people living along the border and to continue to observe the complexities of securitized governance, border politics, and armed conflict that have become the background to life at the borderlands between India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Arriving at Nagaland's largest city, Dimapur, after midnight, I was confronted with a rusty, muddy, foothills town not dissimilar to the towns I had visited in Assam. The kilometres leading up to the station were crowded with corrugated iron sheds and bamboo shacks along the railway tracks.