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I'm really not the right guy for in-depth political analysis in India, but in the absence of anyone better I'll step up to the plate:
NE India is largely divorced from the rest of the country, by geography and ethnicity to boot. The majority of the tribes that live in those parts resemble the denizens of Myanmar, Tibet or Nepal more than other parts of India, but even that's belying the ethnolinguistic diversity lurking there. The tribes have their own concerns, with them often being at each others throats over historical grievances, religion, or an effort to get gibs.
In this case, it's the latter, one of the Hindu tribes once successfully lobbied to be granted privileged status affirmative action-wise, causing an uproar in their Christian counterparts, who are afraid of being squeezed out, or more cynically, just as eager to get their stamp of disprivilege and run with it. After all, the coveted Scheduled Tribe status comes with economic and political benefits, and everyone wants a piece.
The extremely hilly terrain means that regional powers dominate the region more than the central government would like, especially given many decades of Maoist insurgency that only relatively recently calmed down. The border with Myanmar is porous, although the majority of Rohingya ended up in Bangladesh instead of NE India, that's still a major point of contention today.
So one tribe is taking the fuck you, got mine approach, and the other wants to join in the fun, prompting violence and rioting. The Indian government loves to cut off Internet access if someone looks at them funny, so there's an information blackout in those parts.
Frankly, most of India doesn't give a shit, violence there is unlikely to percolate to the rest of the country. None of the parties are particularly sympathetic, this is textbook sectarian strife in the arsehole of India, we've seen worse and will likely see more of the same for a while now.
Nah that was great, much appreciated.
I've heard now several times that the Kuki are nearly the same ethnic group as Myanmar's Chin. Do you know if there any recedivism or recruitment between the Chin National Army and their Indian counterparts or do they mostly see each other as unrelated peoples?
There seem to be quite a few potentially relevant articles that come up when you search Google Scholar for kuki chin insurgency.
Interesting, looks like it's an insurgent group in Bangladesh that has definitely received weapons from the Kachin rebels and possibly the Karen, but I can't figure out if they've worked with the Chin National Army. It does seem like they've hid and trained in the Kuki-dominant Indian state of Mizoram and that's also where a lot of them have fled to from the violence. Mizoram itself had a strong secessionist movement for a long time but signed a peace treat with India in '86.
I know very little about this specific issue, but I do know that insurgencies often do tend to spread across borders
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I don't have the faintest idea! It's simply not something I ever looked into, but if I had to bet, I'd bet against it simply because the actual ongoing rebellion in Myanmar hasn't spilled into India barring the refugee crisis. I'd hope that if large amounts of men and materiel were becoming involved in the war, that I'd have heard something about it, but that's weak evidence at best.
To give you an idea of how little thought anyone gives the place, imagine suddenly accosting a random American Mottizen and wanting to know the minute details of the geopolitics in Puerto Rico.
I doubt any of the other Indians here I know are better prepared to answer that, and there's nothing on that particular topic I could tell you that wouldn't involve me googling the same things you would haha.
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