Histories We Skip

Written by: Muskaan Kaushik 

Graphic Design by: Jiyaa P Shah

In classrooms and academic discussions, students are often asked to reflect on their favourite chapters from school history textbooks as a way of understanding which narratives remain most visible in collective memory. More often than not, these recollections revolve around ancient civilisations, imperial dynasties, or the freedom struggle. Rarely do they include the dynasties and kingdoms of Northeast India. This absence is not a matter of forgotten facts, but of forgotten focus. History in the Indian education system follows a painfully familiar trajectory, moving from ancient civilisations to imperial dynasties and finally to the freedom struggle, presenting a neat and linear narrative. This emphasis on historiographical neatness leaves little room for regions that do not fit into this simplified framework. As a result, the Northeast often appears only in the margins of national memory, if at all.

What is missing here is not only a region, but also a rich and complex history that existed long before colonial intervention. The Northeast has witnessed powerful kingdoms such as the Ahom dynasty, which ruled over parts of Assam for nearly six centuries and successfully resisted Mughal expansion. Alongside these were diverse political systems, cultural traditions, and forms of governance that did not always mirror the imperial models dominant in the subcontinent. However, because much of this history is rooted in oral traditions and classified as intangible cultural heritage, it is frequently dismissed as peripheral or unreliable.

This erasure was not accidental; it was deliberate and systematically reinforced. Under colonial rule, the Northeast was never imagined as an integral part of India but was treated largely as a buffer zone—a frontier to be fenced, regulated, and kept at arm’s length. Policies such as the Inner Line Regulation did not merely establish administrative boundaries; they institutionalised distance. While the rest of the subcontinent was narrated through empires and nationalist movements, many of which continue to be romanticised—the Northeast was governed through exceptions and restrictions, framed in the language of control rather than belonging. Independence may have changed the flag, but it did not dismantle this mindset. The region continues to be governed cautiously rather than remembered fully.

The year 1947 is widely remembered as a moment of rupture and rebirth in Indian history, yet its impact on the Northeast is rarely granted the same significance. While Partition is extensively narrated through the trauma of Punjab and Bengal, the Northeast underwent a slower, quieter process of fragmentation—one that was easier to overlook. New borders cut through existing communities, disrupting cultural and economic ties and leaving the region increasingly disconnected from the rest of the country. What was needed was integration; what followed instead was surveillance. This was not belonging, but militarisation. In the name of national unity, the Northeast was forced to live with the consequences of decisions over which it had little voice.

If history exists, why does it continue to disappear from our textbooks and television screens? Why does the Northeast enter national consciousness only during moments of violence, protest, or tragedy? In most school syllabi, the region is reduced to sterile labels such as “insurgency” or “special provisions,” implying that entire communities and histories can be compressed into administrative terms. The media follows a similar script—turning its cameras towards the region only after violence erupts, and retreating into silence once the spectacle fades. This selective visibility transforms the Northeast into a headline rather than a homeland, a problem to be managed rather than a place where ordinary lives are lived. When history is taught as a checklist, absence ceases to be an oversight; it becomes a pattern.

The cost of this selective memory is not theoretical—it is lived. It surfaces in the casual racism faced by Northeastern individuals in Indian cities, in the constant questioning of their nationality, and in the assumption that difference implies distance. When a region is written out of history, its people are written out of belonging. Stereotypes thrive where context is absent, and ignorance cannot be mistaken for innocence. A country that repeatedly erases a people from its historical narrative cannot be surprised when those people feel estranged in the present. Silence is not neutral; it aligns itself with power.

Bringing the Northeast into India’s historical narrative is not an act of charity, but one of honesty. History is more than a record of the past; it shapes how we see the present. When certain histories are relegated to footnotes, the idea of a shared national memory remains incomplete. Conferences such as Libernium, which position the Northeast not as an aesthetic or a theme but as a subject of serious thought, gesture towards a different possibility—one guided by engagement rather than silence, and curiosity rather than convenience. The histories we skip do not disappear; they return, unresolved and insistent, demanding not just celebration but sustained attention. Until then, the margins will continue to speak, even if the centre refuses to listen.