ABSTRACT
This chapter invites readers to Nagaland (Northeast India) to reflect on the impulse that compelled thousands of Nagas to participate in a horrific public lynching of a perceived illegal immigrant. The inflow of ‘ethnic strangers’ is seen as challenging the Nagas’ ethno-territorial sovereignty and reinvigorates local obsessions with notions of autochthony – an emotive affirmation of Naga origins, roots, soil, genes, semen, and blood as the prime criteria of rights, entitlements, and belonging. This chapter presents immigration panic and ethnic violence as cultural and bodily friction blocking such flows. The implication? A body politic gripped by a volatile, potentially violent split between those considered autochthonous and those deemed outsiders.
