A phenomenological exploration into lived experiences of violence in Northeast India

The Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) in the state of Assam in Northeast India can be described as a landscape of terror since the area has been a stage for recurrent, mostly violent contestations along ethno-religious lines for more than four decades. Over the years, the violence has claimed more than a thousand lives and displaced millions. Using a multi-sited ethnography carried out over more than eleven months of fieldwork in the region, this paper looks at the everyday lives of those affected by the conflict and critiques the notion of spectacular resistance and exceptionalism in the context of Northeast India. This is done by using a phenomenology of lived experience framework to pay closer attention to the distinctly ordinary ways in which populations survive and endure states of dispossession, displacement and abandonment.