Ethnicity, Religion and Insurgent Mobilization in South Asia

• In Event: Legacies of Colonial Institutions in Contemporary Civil Wars

Abstract

Ethnicity provides one of the most widely-studied fault lines for organized politics. Yet not all ethnic groups are readily politicized and mobilized and an even lesser number of ethnic groups turn to violent rebellion. Within the groups that do experience organized armed rebellion, ethnic rebels display marked dissimilarity in their ability to mobilize co-ethnics. What accounts for the variation in rebel mobilization across ethnic rebellions? This work draws upon ethnographic work in Northeast India studying Naga, Mizo and Meitei insurgencies and utilizes a diverse range of methodological tools to argue that the variation in insurgent mobilization is attributable to the structural connectivity of an ethnic population, i.e., how constituent parts of the population – families, neighborhood, clans and tribes – are connected together. It traces the structural connectivity of the three indigenous groups to the spread of organized religion among these groups – casteless Hinduism among the Meiteis, Presbyterian Christianity among the Mizos and Baptist Christianity among the Nagas – during colonial India. These religious interventions left their distinct imprint on the structural connectivity of the targeted group and conditioned post-colonial insurgent mobilization.

Author

• Anoop K. Sarbahi, University of Minnesota