“Identity or Polarisation?”

In the Northeast, identity is not a slogan, it is geography, livelihood, and memory compressed into everyday life. Long before identity politics became fashionable elsewhere in India, the region was already negotiating questions of land, migration, and cultural survival. That history explains why indigenous identity has once again moved to the centre of political discourse. What deserves closer examination is not whether these anxieties are real, but how they are being politically framed.

Demographic pressure in parts of the Northeast, particularly Assam’s border districts, is not a speculative fear. Census trends over decades, prolonged litigation around the NRC, and repeated administrative interventions point to a problem that cannot be wished away. To acknowledge this is not to indulge paranoia; it is to recognise the factual basis of indigenous concern. Any serious discussion must begin here.

But acknowledging reality does not absolve political strategy from scrutiny.

A growing tendency in public discourse presents identity as something permanently under siege, requiring constant mobilisation and increasingly strident language. Supporters of this approach argue that bluntness is necessary, that earlier governments spoke softly, governed weakly, and allowed illegal migration and land encroachment to continue. From this perspective, today’s rhetoric is corrective rather than divisive.

There is partial truth in that claim. Institutional hesitation and political evasion have historically deepened distrust in the Northeast. Agreements were signed, deadlines extended, and enforcement diluted. Communities that felt ignored now respond to leaders who speak without equivocation.

Yet political speech does not operate in a vacuum. When identity protection is articulated primarily through confrontation, the line between enforcement and exclusion begins to blur. Eviction drives or legal actions may be defensible on paper, but their public framing often lacks proportionality. Governance, especially in a region as sensitive as the Northeast, cannot rely on legality alone; it must also cultivate trust.

More importantly, polarisation is not a tool that can be used selectively. Once normalised as a political method, it creates incentives to keep anxiety alive even when policy objectives are met. Fear, unlike reform, does not conclude, it escalates. The region’s own history offers reminders of how quickly legitimate movements can harden into permanent hostility when politics substitutes reassurance with mobilisation.

Critics of restraint often pose a familiar challenge: if not strong rhetoric, then what? Is caution merely another form of delay?
The answer lies in differentiation. A confident state distinguishes between illegal acts and cultural identity, between necessary enforcement and symbolic antagonism. It strengthens borders, land records, and institutions rather than outsourcing authority to language. Law functions best when it is firm but untheatrical.

Equally, indigenous identity is secured less by perpetual confrontation than by investment in language, education, and economic opportunity. Cultural confidence grows from continuity, not constant alarm. The Northeast has experienced its most stable phases not during moments of peak polarisation, but when political settlements and institutional credibility reduced uncertainty.

There is also a wider consequence to consider. The Northeast has long resisted being seen as India’s perennial frontier of unrest. A discourse that appears endlessly adversarial risks reinforcing that caricature, undermining the region’s own claim to dignity and normalcy within the national imagination.

Protecting indigenous rights is not the problem. Turning identity into a permanent battlefield is.

Leadership in the Northeast today will ultimately be judged not by how effectively it amplifies anxiety, but by whether it can resolve it, without making division a governing principle.

Identity must endure. Polarisation only needs to win the moment.