Israel to Let In Hundreds from Ethnic Group in India Claiming Jewish Descent

The State of Israel this month agreed to allow 899 members of a small ethnic group on India’s border with Burma (Myanmar) to immigrate under the constitutional provision for the “right of return” for any Jews.  The Indians, who call themselves the Bnei Menashe, are a few thousand members of a larger ethnolinguistic group called the Kuki, from around the far-eastern state of Manipur, who are related to the Mizo people of neighboring Mizoram state and the Chin people just over the border in Burma.

One flag used by Kuki nationalists in India

Also called the Lushai or Hmar, the Kuki–Chin–Mizo speak a language related to Burmese and Tibetan and are East Asian in their ethnic appearance, but Kuki oral traditions tell of descent from the Tribe of Manasseh, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.  Scholars investigating the claims find some of the preserved stories and rituals to be too similar to ancient Judaism to be coincidental.  Genomic data have been inconclusive, as opposed to the well-documented diasporas among the Lemba of the South Africa–Zimbabwe border region or the Falashas of Ethiopia.  (See an earlier article from this blog on Jewish diaspora theories in the Americas.)  Also, researchers point out that meriting the migration tale does not necessarily mean that all Kukis are of Jewish descent.  A migration of Manasseh tribespeople centuries or millennia ago to what is now eastern India could have deposited cultural traditions which took hold, with their descendants in the group remaining more limited in number.

However, that is good enough for the Shevai Israel organization, which advocates for immigration of far-flung branches of the Jewish family, and clearly also for the Israeli government.  Indeed, there are already about 2,000 Bnei Menashe Indians in Israel.  But controversy plagues state relations at both ends of this migratory path.  In India, delegations from Israel have run afoul of Indian laws banning the conversion of populations of people from one faith to another (a legacy of India’s delicate relations between Hindus and Muslims, dating to partition and earlier).  Meanwhile, in Israel, the government has been accused of exploiting Kuki–Chin–Mizo migrants by settling them en masse in occupied parts of the West Bank and (formerly) Gaza Strip, in territories nearly two-thirds of the world’s countries recognize as a sovereign State of Palestine.  At one point, they were even the largest immigrant population in Gaza (though Menasseh’s territory, according to the Old Testament, is farther north, incluiding Tel Aviv, the Golan Heights, and parts of the west and east banks of the Jordan River).  To add insult to injury, some Kuki–Chin–Mizo Israelis in occupied territories had their homes dismantled by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government in 2005.

Back in Asia, most Kuki–Chin–Mizo consider themselves distinct, and oppressed, even though far from all identify as Jewish (most are Presbyterian, a few Muslim or Hindu, while some follow local religions).  Kukis want to carve out about half of Manipur state as a separate Kukiland state; this campaign has reignited in recent months after New Delhi’s decision in July to allow the Telugu nationality to split from Andhra Pradesh state as a separate state within India called Telangana (as discussed at the time in this blog).  Some Kukis even hanker for an independent “Greater Kukiland” called Zale’n-gam.  Rebels from the Mizo, who, as their name suggests, form a majority in Mizoram state, have been fighting for secession since the 1960s.  And the Chin are among several nationalities that have been fighting for autonomy and independence from Burma since the country’s founding dictatorship, in the 1940s, reneged on promises of federalism (as discussed in an earlier article in this blog).

Note: Those wishing to learn more about the Kuki–Chin–Mizo and their relationship to Judaism could do worse than to read Hillel Halkin’s excellent 2002 book Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

As Dream of Telugu Statehood Nears, Bodos and Gurkhas Sharpen Their Swords

On July 31st, the decades-long dream of a separate state within India for the Telugu nationality came close to reality, as a committee of the country’s ruling Congress Party made a unanimous recommendation to the central government that the state of Andhra Pradesh be partitioned, so as to create a new ethnically defined state called Telangana.

But now some fear that this concession has opened a Pandora’s Box.  The Telengana-statehood movement is only one of many throughout India, including a dense thicket of tribal groups pining for the creation of new federal subdivisions in the far-northeastern “Seven Sisters” region by the border with Burma.

Over 1,000 Telugus since 2009 have preferred to die consumed in flames
than consent to being part of Andhra Pradesh.

Already, in Maharashtra state, proponents of creating a new state called Vidarbha have put the Congress Party on notice that their case for statehood is “older and stronger” than Telangana’s. Vidarbhans are committed to pursuing their cause peacefully.  But that is far less true of many advocates of the creation of separate states in the northeast for the Bodo, Gorkha, and Kuki people.

The districts in Maharashtra which wish to split away
as the state of Vidarbha are shown shaded in this map.

The leader of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (G.J.M.) movement, Roshan Giri, and Sansuma Khunggur Bwiswmuthiary of the Bodoland People’s Front have both said that it is time to intensify their struggles for separation.  Bodo activists have disrupted rail service in Assam state, essentially cutting off the near-exclave from the rest of India.  The associated vandalism and mob violence has turned lethal.  In the Gorkha region, a bandh (general strike) has now been going on for several days.

Bodo protesters have shut down rail service in Assam state.

The Bodo people are a tribal group making up 5% or so of the population of Assam who have been at the center of sometimes bloody conflict in recent years.  An influx of Muslim migrants spilling over from nearby Bangladesh and other areas has made Bodos a minority even in their own Bodo Territorial Autonomous District (B.A.T.D.), a jurisdiction that had been finally set up amid much fanfare in 2003 after decades of armed struggle.  Gorkhas (sometimes called Gurkhas) are an ethnically-Nepali minority who migrated to what are now West Bengal and neighboring states in British colonial times, when the Gurkhas formed part of the colonists’ large mercenary force.  A Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (G.T.A.) now governs the Darjeeling hills of West Bengal as an autonomous district, but the G.J.M. continues to press for full statehood.  During open conflict in the 1980s, thousands of Gorkhas were expelled into West Bengal from Meghalaya state, and militant Gorkha nationalists responded with demands for a fully independent Greater Gorkhaland which would also take in parts of Assam, the quasi-independent former kingdom of Sikkim, and even the fully independent Kingdom of Bhutan.

Meanwhile, a long violent insurgency by members of the related Kuki and Mizo ethnic groups envisions a Kukiland state carved out of their homeland, which spreads across six of India’s northeastern states.  The Kuki and Mizo, who are related to the Chin people just over the border in Burma (Myanmar), regard themselves as descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, the Tribe of Menasseh.  Anthropologists, folklorists, and geneticists have found their claims credible, though by appearance they resemble fellow speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages.  Many expect that Kuki nationalists, some of whom demand a fully independent state, may be the next to follow the Telugu example and throw their hats in the ring.

However, it is the Telangana movement that has some of the fiercest nationalist emotions behind it.  Hyderabad, including much of the Telugu homeland, was the largest of the literally scores of autonomous “princely states” that co-existed under the period of British suzerainty over the subcontinent.  When British India was divided into predominantly-Hindu India and predominantly-Muslim Pakistan at independence in 1947, Hyderabad’s Muslim monarch, Osman Ali Khan, who ruled over millions of Hindus, declared independence from both the United Kingdom and the new Indian nation of which he did not want to be a part.  But Hyderabad was forcibly absorbed into the new country.  In 1956, when the Indian government reorganized its internal borders, pains were taken to make sure that Hyderabadi nationalist feeling was not strengthened.  Hyderabad state was abolished, with some of its territories going to Karnataka state and some going to Bombay state (which later subdivided into Gujarat and Maharashtra), while Telugu areas were attached to Andhra Pradesh.  For Telugus, this is not a minor issue: more than 1,000 Telugu protesters have died from self-immolation since 2009 in protests over the statehood question.

Osman Ali Khan, Hyderabad’s last monarch,
wanted Telangana and other parts of his dominions out of India entirely.

Now that Telangana is likely to be established, those in the rest of Andhra Pradesh, including areas that would like to split away as Rayalaseema and those that do not want to be stranded in a rump state which may end up being called Seemandhra, have reacted angrily.  A raft of legislators have resigned, and violence is spilling into the streets.

This is how many people in Andhra Pradesh feel about the idea of Telangana state.

Telugu nationalism is part of the larger phenomenon of Dravidian nationalism—Dravidian being the language family that dominates southern India, as opposed to Hindu, Punjabi, and other Indo-European languages which dominate in the more politically central north of the country.  Some Dravidian nationalists in the post-independence period called for an independent Dravidistan, Dravida Nadu, or Deccan Federation, and this movement helped spawn separatist movements in India’s Tamil Nadu state and across the straits in Sri Lanka’s Tamil-dominated north—where 50,000 people died in one of the modern era’s bloodiest civil wars, which ended with a Tamil defeat in 2009.  There also remains the possibility that the latest Telugu victory will reignite demands for a separate state among the Dravidian-speaking Tulu people of Karnataka and Kerala states.

Areas where Dravidian languages are spoken

Few doubt that Telangana will become India’s 29th state in short order.  But managing the separatist aspirations of some of the vast multi-ethnic country’s other minorities will be harder.

Proposed new states within India: how much subdivision is too much?

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]