Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Emergence of Class Consciousness of Pan-Naga Ethnic Community and Nationality Question as an Ethnic Boundary Marker in North-East India

Abstract

Man is by nature self-egoistic creature, John Locke once coins.  But at the meantime, he himself cannot live happily because he is both social and political animal as Aristotle views. With this prime instinct invoke the very inception of emergent identity assertion. Later, again, this was unsatisfied to him lead to in search of commodious living as conscious group (s) craving for power, glory and achievements. Thus, R. Paul Brass's studies of ethnicity and nationalism covered a broad range of theoretical framework to understand the full length of the emergence of class consciousness. Keeping this R. Paul Brass's contribution as a theoretical framework, an attempt is made to study the pan-Naga ethnic community and nationality question as an ethnic boundary marker in North-East India. For the methodology study, the Social Scientific method based on Instrumentalists like class based theories and Social Constructivists models have been applied to find it out the evidences and research analysis for the article.