Given the extent to which ethnicity has come to be regarded as a reliable index of group-identity in India's north-east, and in the context of heedless assertions of cultural uniqueness accompanied by flare-ups of uncontrolled hostility and murderous rage, it is time to closely scrutinise the very concept itself. While ethnicity is an indubitable feature of social life there, it has experienced both deep internal contradictions and active intercourse with the outside world, leading to the absorption of considerable extraneous elements. An ethnic group need not be regarded as an enemy of other such groups or of some larger nationality.
