With the possible exception of the noted Indian journalist, Sanjoy Hazarika, few scholars or analysts have written about the contemporary politics of India's northeast with as much knowledge and authority as Sanjib Baruah. An earlier book, Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (2005), had explored the reasons for the rise of ethnic insurgencies in the region and the sources of their persistence. That book demonstrated his supple grasp of the convoluted politics of the region as well as its relationship with the Indian national state.
In the present work, Baruah returns to some of the same themes that he had examined earlier in both Durable Disorder and India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (1999). However, this book provides a far deeper historical account of the evolution of the complex and fraught relationship between India and the so-called seven sister states that comprise the northeastern region....
