Adjacent identities in Northeast India

In this article I explore the emergence, or re-emergence, of what I refer to as adjacent identities in response to changing circumstances for many Northeast communities in the last decade. In this paper I argue that it is important to consider seriously the ways in which communities in the region respond to the material and ideational changes to their lives in the present conjuncture by exploring adjacent ways of constructing identity in the face of, but not necessarily directly caused by, changing social, political, and economic circumstances. Massive investment in connectivity, which has transformed the Northeast from a frontier into a corridor, rapid urbanisation in the region, and an increase in migration out of the region have intensified the encounters between communities from the region and so-called ‘mainstream’ India and have brought different ethnic communities into closer daily proximity in the plural urban spaces of the region. The purpose of this article is to recognise adjacent ways of constructing identity in the face of, but not necessarily directly caused by, changing social, political, and economic circumstances. I provide two examples, shared Northeast identity in response to racism and broader ethnic inclusion based on shared cosmopolitanism. The former is a mass category in which virtually anyone from the Northeast can slip into, whereas the second relates specifically to speakers of a common language divided by international and internal borders.