Forging New Frontiers: Integrating Tawang with India, 1951

With the departure of the British from South Asia in 1947, the transition of the NEFA (North East Frontier Agency, later Arunachal Pradesh) border from the colonial to the post-colonial era followed a predictable and conventional geopolitical script. India began consolidating its frontiers to create borders where none had existed. It adopted a restrained policy of non-interference, in which local traditions—political, cultural and social—were respected and protected. Institutional support and effective policy implementation proved to be the tools that made NEFA, including parts of it that had hitherto never been administered by British India, a part of modern India. The article draws on hitherto unpublished field research carried out in the Tawang tract to tell an oral history account of the integration of Tawang from the perspective of the local people. It draws on more than a hundred conversations with the people in the region and the author’s access to local administrative documents, and locally published materials to examine India’s approach towards local identities as New Delhi began the process of administering Tawang in 1951.