• Latest Revivalism of Ethnic Religion in the North East- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Dr Abhijit Ray - Aug 1, 2025

In a recent visit to the Assam-Bangladesh border, I met a young man from the border area who spoke about his affiliation with a group that wants to revive their 'ancient and original' faith called 'Songsarek'. Even people from Assam and the North East have hardly heard of the name 'Songsarek'. The Songsarek religion, or ‘folk tradition’, was formerly practiced by various Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups in present-day Meghalaya, western Assam, North Bengal, and Bangladesh, primarily by the Garos and Koches. Currently, the Garos are mostly Christians, while the Koches are predominantly Hindus. Only a few of them are still familiar with their ancestral Songsarek religion. The affiliation of the Koches with the Songsarek religion is particularly unique and intriguing. Besides the Koch-speaking ethnic Koches, the rest who identify with the Koch lineage are the most 'Hinduized' and 'Bengali influenced' community in the northeastern part of India. They are so heavily influenced by Bengali culture and language that they are often labeled as 'Bangladeshis' and face discrimination and hatred from other communities in Assam. Interestingly, the young man I met, who was discussing the Songsarek faith, belongs to the 'Rajbanshi'-speaking community, which is highly 'Hinduized' and 'Bengalized' and identifies itself with the Koch lineage.

However, their revivalist ambition in the context of identity politics is not an isolated incident in Northeast India. In fact, it's a micro-element of the larger socio-political environment prevailing in the region and the country. We just need to join certain scattered dots in order to see that larger picture.

We often overlook micro issues when viewing everything through a ‘macro lens’. We have certain dominant macro narrative in the media and among the intelligentsia. When we try to understand everything within that framework, it doesn’t always provide us with a correct understanding of certain issues in specific regions under unique conditions. It has become a routine-wise, repetitive cliché to mention the difficulties of 'visibility' of issues from the North East in national-level media and academia, without observing any positive changes. However, the ‘issue’ of religion will definitely catch the attention of at least a few individuals in the contemporary political context of the country, as the 'revivalist' tendency is quite unique to the Sanskritized or Hinduized (or Semi-Hinduized) groups. On the contrary, the same trend is not observable among people who have adopted Christianity or Islam. In fact, communities from the North East who have adopted Christianity or Islam have been becoming more religious and puritanical in both social and political contexts.

In the recent conflict between the Meitei and Kuki communities, many people unfamiliar with the North Eastern region misinterpreted it as a religious conflict. Some people even tried to give a religious colour to the conflict for fulfilling their agendas. Drawing conscious limitations in understanding certain issues when those issues don’t 'fit or match' our perspective is probably a characteristic of the post-truth era. When people try to understand or explain something from a dominant and popular narrative, then it fulfils certain macro agendas, but it doesn’t help to solve the real problem on the ground level.

Unlike many other parts of India, religious identity is not the primary defining factor of a community in the North East. The Meitei people follow Hinduism, Christianity, and Sanamahism—a pre-Hindu traditional faith of the Meiteis. There is a significant number of followers of Sanamahism, and this ancestral faith of the Meitei people coexisted alongside the Vaishnavite tradition in Manipur. In recent times, Meiteis have successfully revived and popularized their pre-Hindu religion, Sanamahism.

Instead of religion, the majority of identity politics in the North East is rooted in rigid ethnocentrism stemming from homogeneous and exclusive tribalism. Anyone who does not belong to the tribe is 'the other' for the members of that specific tribal group. This ethnocentric identity politics is the dynamic force of North eastern political ambience. However, the rise of widespread religious identity based politics in the country and changing media mechanisms have made this dynamic more rigid and ‘reactionary’.

Challenging Goliath!

In recent times, with the rise of a form of ‘politicised Hinduism’, the Hindu identity has emerged as a rigidly defined ‘exclusive’ identity in certain parts of India. Empirically, it is evident that exclusion at multiple levels and the proliferation of ‘enemies’ are the fate of any ideology or faith-based radical identity politics. The contemporary Hindu radicalism is not an exception. The only factor that keeps them united is the perception of a threat from larger enemies. Ironically, like any other ‘reactionary’ identity politics, the politically defined Hindu identity is often imagined on the line or ‘framework’ of its ‘competing’ religious groups or of its perceived ‘enemies’. The rigidity and exclusivity brought about by the politically defined Hindu identity in certain regions of the country go against the philosophical spirit of Hinduism and are definitely a threat to the idea of an inclusive India.

In recent times, people from a few states in the North, Central, and Western parts of India have become flag bearers of 'Hindu identity' politics in the country. This rigid and exclusive Hindu identity politics is fundamentally a ‘threat’ to the ethnocentric identity politics of North East which is based on their deep rooted tribal or semi tribal cultural affiliation and ‘racial’ identity.

On a positive note, the ethnocentric identity politics of the North East is capable of emerging as a ‘challenging force’ against the larger threat of religious radicalism in the country. They are making a statement against the politicization of a majoritarian religious group by promoting or reviving indigenous faiths like Donyi-Polo, Bathouism, Phurlung, Songsarek, Sanamahism, and others.

History tells us that the belief in 'being too big to be challenged' or 'being too small to challenge' is a mistaken truism in ideological battles. However, the ‘challenging forces’ should avoid becoming like their ‘enemies’ while ‘fighting’ against them. We can't deny the fact that the stance against majoritarian religious fanaticism in the North East is not rooted in progressive and liberal ideals but rather in a form of ultra-ethnocentric radicalism. At times, challenging majoritarian expansionism and religious radicalism serves just as a cover-up for certain ethnic ambitions and imaginations of different groups. It could be argued that the stand for the revivalist movement of ‘traditional faith’ is coming not only from the rigid ethnocentrism but also from some unexpected inducements and stimuli of recent times which are often ignored for being insignificant and ‘taboo’ in nature.

Innocence of David!

The demand for 'tribal status' is an argument for 'revivalism' among the community leaders of certain Hinduized ethnic groups that are not officially listed as tribal in the North East. Meiteis from Manipur, as well as communities like the Chutia, Ahom, Koch, Morans, and Mattaks from Assam, have been demanding 'Scheduled Tribe (ST) status' for a long time. According to many of their organizations, their demand is not just for job-related reservations but mainly for protecting their political rights and land from 'outsiders'. Many of their leaders and common people are convinced that their demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status will only be valid if they can ‘showcase’ their pre-Sanskritized tribal characteristics. This approach may seem pretentious and superficial, but in the given political scenario of North East- it’s just a ‘strategic tactic’ for the ‘greater goal’ and ‘survival’ of their communities.

Racial affiliation of the people of North East is another aspect to the identity politics of the region, which is often ignored for being a taboo topic. The close ethnic, social, and cultural affinity with people from Southeast Asia, along with media exposure to the 'cool' and 'rich' East Asians, has added new ‘aspirations’ among the people of the North East based on racial proximity. It is also triggering a desire for distancing themselves from the ‘other’ South Asians. The derogatory terms in different ethnic languages of the North East for 'Indians' (or, in a broadly used ‘politically correct’ but geographically inaccurate term in North East- 'mainland Indians') and Bangladeshis are often based on racist connotations. It should be noted that many separatist groups in the North East refer to their region as WESEA, which stands for Western South East Asia. The ‘racial’ factor is encouraging many from the North East to distance themselves from the ‘latest version’ of an exclusive and imaginary ‘ethnic’ Hindu identity.

However, imagining being part of some ‘rich and cool’ group on the basis of some ‘racial affiliation’ doesn’t really make sense for the people of North East. It is quite similar to the ‘aspirational’ imagination and desire of a section of Muslims of the subcontinent to be aligned with Arabs, Turks or central Asians, or the fantasies of Aryan blood of a section of upper caste Hindus. We often pay a price for our ‘one sided love affair’ and it makes us delusional. For instance, Bangladeshis paid a heavy price in the form of 1971 war, for their ‘one sided love affair’ based on an imaginary affiliation with another group of people and tried to be a ‘part’ of them on the basis of the idea of Muslim brotherhood and Muslim identity. This kind of imaginary affiliation stems from our deep-rooted inferiority complex and often makes us delusional.

Another ‘taboo’ related to this phenomenon of ‘distancing from Hindu identity’ is the masculine versus feminine narrative of identity politics. Historical narrative and the continuous armed struggle against Indian forces by tribal groups has created a hyper masculine narrative about the tribal identity in the North East. This is an undercurrent force with powerful impact on the psyche of the people of North East. On the contrary, migrant Hindus, Bengalis (both Hindus and Muslims), and Adivasis have been ‘soft targets’ for a long time in the entire North Eastern region. As a result, their identity is often disparaged as feminine and inferior. A masculine identity is a primary aspiration for any ‘nationalistic’ identity politics.

The Ant Mill

In current scenario, a masculine, powerful, and 'cool' identity with an ultra-nationalistic flavour is desirable for every 'competing' ‘nationalistic’ group in the country, but an inward-looking, exclusive, and radicalized identity politics of any group is good for no one. Living with an isolated exclusive group of people with limited outside interaction creates a bubble and provides a false sense of strength and motivation which often transforms into aggression in different forms. The tribal set up of North Eastern society often causes the environment of isolation and exclusiveness.

We often miscalculate the strength of our own group in such situations; because there is no one to challenge the popular narrative of those small communities. Contemporary media is also ‘assisting’ to create such remote and exclusive environment for a circle of people in the virtual world in a more vulnerable way. We become part of a small circle and create bubbles through our collective imagination that don’t match with reality. It often leads to delusional absurdity. We are even ‘creating’ multiple sovereign states in the Northeast for every ethnic group in our imagination that is powerful like China, fashionable like South Korea and challenges India and Bangladesh! We are turning into sort of ‘cave people’. We have our small circle, we create our gods and heaven and we are suspicious and aggressive to anyone- anything that is not ‘us’ by our definition. With the changing political environment and media mechanism, this phenomenon has been becoming applicable to the ‘larger’ and 'majoritarian' groups of our country as well.

Minor symptoms, whether good or bad, in our body often point out major health issues. The person I met at the Assam-Bangladesh border might seem like 'nobody' from a micro-minority group in the country. However, his statement is capable of highlighting some major issues of the country. The desire and initiative to protect, preserve, and revive cultural norms or faith-based aspects are commendable approaches, but one should not shy away from addressing certain grey areas that this phenomenon points to.

The false sense of power or strength along with threats from some perceived enemies of any exclusive identity-based groups has proven to be deadly, tragic and suicidal at the same time. People only realize it when some major conflict starts. We have experienced it in the North East multiple times, and it stops for a while only after a bloodbath.

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