ABSTRACT
This entry explores how different communities imagine the ‘nation’ in Northeast India. The idea of the ‘nation’ has largely been viewed with the dominant frame of theories that are highly Euro-centred, if not focused on established post-colonial states. In India, too, the tendency is to take India as the ‘nation’ and use it synonymously with ‘state’. Yet, even today, many communities in India and within established nation-states continue to view themselves as a ‘nation’. The entry reflects on the relevance of the category ‘nation’ in the region and examines how the idea of the ‘nation’ is constitutive of the regional politics. Under post-independent India, several communities have launched armed struggles that expressed a strong desire for sovereignty. The entry focuses on the imaginative process of the nation and the historical context in which such imagination takes place.
