Connections amidst disconnections: Transport routes and the Naga conflict in South Asia

Abstract

Countless conflicts characterise the road-scape of Nagaland, a frontier border state in the Northeastern region of India. In such a milieu, transport routes in the form of roads transcend the technical imperative of mobility of people, goods, and services and become vehicles of hope, regulation and control. Keeping this duality of roads in mind, this article, through archival research and ethnohistoric accounts, explores how roads in this region became objects of dominance and their surfaces a potential space for conflicts and mitigating conflicts. It traces how roadways viewed as pathways to “civilisation” during the British colonial era (nineteenth century) came to define the state's conception of “appropriate” mobility and movements. The article contends that infrastructures built to connect people can augment a divide between “us” and “them” and signal newer forms of disconnect within the state-defined logic of connections.