There is usually a thin line between ethnic paranoia and savagery. The massacres in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district once again show how little it takes to ignite an ethnic powder keg in India’s North-east. The killing of 34 people belonging to the Karbi community by Kuki militants must be a grim reminder of simmering ethnic tensions in the area. Most of these tension-ridden areas periodically slip into savagery because of their xenophobic isolationism. The longer the communities remain isolated, the more they fear and hate the outsider. But many of the communities in the North-east have been continuously migrating from one place to another. The result is that it is often difficult to distinguish the nomadic from the native. This is the case with much of the tensions between the Kukis and the Karbis. To the Karbis, the Kukis are outsiders from neighbouring Manipur who pose a threat to the natives’ land and livelihood. If armed Kuki groups burst into orgies of violence from time to time, it is basically because they too live under constant threats of persecution. This is a pattern of ethnic violence that keeps repeating itself throughout the North-east.

All this clearly indicates the failure of the state. The failure of the law-enforcing agencies is only a part of it. That the Kukis struck a second time within hours of the visit of the chief minister, Mr Tarun Gogoi, to the scene of the first violent outbreak is enough evidence of that failure. Mr Gogoi must prove that his government has the skill — and the will — to administer a state so prone to ethnic divisions. But there is a much bigger failure that has little to do with any particular regime in Assam. Fifty-seven years after independence, much of the region continues to be far-flung outposts of the Indian state left to their own local oddities. Ethnic or tribal loyalties, and not the country’s laws and other systems, are allowed to work in these places. It is little wonder that militant groups supporting one ethnic group or another become laws unto themselves. New Delhi has done precious little to integrate these areas into the national mainstream, politically or economically. It is not enough to allocate funds through the Northeastern Council or some other body. It is not enough to take tribal groups to big cities for the so-called cultural integration of the region with the rest of the country. Assam’s — or the North-east’s — tribal battles will rage as long as tribalism rules there. To effectively change this, the state has to play a larger role than that of economic benefactor. In other words, the state must truly replace the tribal order.