Published Paper Details:

This article investigates the prolonged territorial contention between Mizoram and Assam, with an emphasis on the northern frontier of Mizoram, where the delineation remains both undetermined and disputed. By tracing the historical trajectory of this contention, the manuscript identifies its origins in colonial boundary-delineation practices, notably the enforcement and subsequent alterations of the Inner Line as dictated by the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation of 1873, along with later notifications issued in 1904, 1912, 1930, and 1933. These colonial interventions, motivated by administrative expedience and resource extraction, disrupted ethnic homelands, restricted traditional land-utilization practices, and established the groundwork for post-colonial discord. Utilizing a diverse array of archival documents, official reports, minutes from inter-state meetings, media sources, and comprehensive fieldwork accounts, the article scrutinizes how clashing assertions rooted in the 1875 and 1933 Inner Line notifications persist in influencing state positions and invigorating annual cycles of claims and counterclaims, particularly during the periods of cultivation and harvest. This investigation underscores the socio-economic ramifications of the intractable dispute on borderland communities, encompassing land dispossession, livelihood instability, administrative overlaps, and the militarization of quotidian existence. It posits that the inability of successive negotiations and the lack of a neutral Boundary Commission have sustained an atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust. The article concludes by asserting that, in the absence of a historically informed, negotiated, and community-sensitive demarcation process facilitated by central authorities, the Assam-Mizoram border dispute will persist as a chronic source of discord and marginalization within the region.