page_title: Hill tribes of Northeast India
section_title: Separatist movements
hierarchical_section_title: Hill tribes of Northeast India / History / Separatist movements
caption_attribution_description: English: North East India
context_page_description: The hill tribes of Northeast India are hill people, mostly classified as Scheduled Tribes, who live in the Northeast India region.
  This region has the largest proportion of scheduled tribes in the country.
  Northeast India comprises the former British province of Assam and part or all of the former princely states of Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim.
  There are areas of plains in the modern State of Assam, but otherwise the region is mostly hilly or mountainous. The hills have long been populated with Tibeto-Burman and Sino-Tibetan hill people, some of whom originate in other parts of the Himalayas or of Southeast Asia.
  There are many distinct groups with unique languages, dress, cuisine and culture.
  The British made little effort to integrate the hill people into British India, but governed through a system of village chiefs and headmen. They gave these leaders greater authority than they had traditionally enjoyed.
  In some areas Protestant missionaries converted the people to Christianity and educated an elite. This elite pushed for greater autonomy for the hill people within the state of Assam, and obtained some autonomy at a district level after Indian independence in 1947.
context_section_description: When the political structure of independent India was being discussed, the British were inclined to keep the tribal people of the Excluded and Partially Excluded areas separate from the plainspeople, but Indians such as Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri wanted them to be part of a unified state of Assam so they could be assimilated into the plains culture.
  The leaders of the hill people disagreed, and wanted to retain separation from the non-tribal people.
  The Khasi leader J.J.M. Nichols-Roy was the most prominent member of the educated elite, pushing for autonomy of the hill districts of Assam at time of independence.
  His Khasi National Conference communicated with similar organizations such as the Garo National Conference, Mizo Union and Naga National Council.
  In response, the constitutional plan defined District Councils to look after tribal affairs in the hill districts, to which the chiefs would be subordinate.
  The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India provides for tribal areas in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram to be administered as autonomous districts or regions.
  The Fifth Schedule applies to scheduled areas in other parts of India.
  Neither schedule applies to the hill areas of Manipur, where all the people are tribal, or to the tribes of the Assam plains.
  The Hill State movement developed in the Gari and Khasi hills.
  The movement emerged at a meeting in Shillong on 16–17 June 1954 called by Captain Wiliamson Sangma of the Garo Hills District Council to discuss creation of a separate hill state and amendments to the Sixth Schedule.
  All the participants were against the attempt to impose Assamese as the state language.
  The representatives from the United Mikir and North Cachar Hills and the Lushai Hills wanted to remain within Assam but with greater autonomy, while those from the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo communities wanted a separate state or states.
  The Naga National Council became dominated by separatists.
  The Naga leader Angami Zapu Phizo did not participate in the Hill State movement since he was pursuing independence for Nagaland alone.
  The Khasi leader Rev. B. M. Pugh (1897–1986) wrote in his 1976 autobiography: "So we agitated for the separation from Assam, for a separate State for the hill people .... We felt that the [State Reorganization] Commission did not want to create a State for the hill areas only, as they feared that it would be unlike all other States in India—that it would be a Christian State." 
  Pugh went on to argue that a single large hill state comprising what is now Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal, Mizoram and the districts of Mikir and North Cachar Hills would have been much more viable than the mini-states that were in fact created, the separatist movements would not have developed and the tribal people would have become psychologically and culturally integrated with the rest of India sooner. 
  Pugh was a moderate.
  More radical Khasis such as Wickliffe Syiem could not accept loss of independence for the Khasi states, and after trying to get support for the separatist cause at the United Nation went into exile in Bangladesh.
  Assamese became the official language of Assam State in 1960, stimulating non-Assamese to seek separate states.
  In 1972 Assamese became the medium of education throughout Assam State, leading to demands by the people off Khasi-Jaintia snd Garo Hills for formation of Meghalaya State. 
  There were violent riots in 1960 and 1972 by hill tribes opposed to assimilation by the Assamese, who demanded separation from Assam as separate states within the Union of India.Nagaland became an independent state from part of Assam in 1963.
  Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura became states in 1972.Arunachal Pradesh gained statehood in 1975 and Mizoram in 1987.
caption: Northeast India
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