ABSTRACT
This entry situates ‘global’ wars and their consequences for the colonial frontier of Northeast India. It offers a select historiography of the wars that connects the European Front during the First World War (WWI) and the Second World War (WWII) in South Asia [called the China–Burma–India (CBI)] theatre to Northeast India. This is with particular reference to memories that indicate the tensions which emerged with national and also within Northeast Indian histories. The historical relevance of a so-called ‘forgotten’ war can be understood through memorialisation, which is connected to the question of local participation in the conflict and how this legacy has been recollected and mobilised in later times. Wartime collaboration is supported by rich literature on the subject across Asia, but mostly in ‘national’ history contexts. The divergent experience of the wars in Northeast India from the rest of the nation provides a unique vantage point. Moreover, it situates how scholars have tried to look at ‘local’ participation in both the World Wars which is in turn linked to the ideas of self-determination and ethnic identity formation in the region that fuelled fragmentation. These can be understood within a longer history of warfare, coercion and co-option of local populations under colonial rule.
