There Is a Border Dispute with China

gunpowder. The national groups the British had slapped together into subservience took some while to shake off the trauma caused by the imperial departure and the replacement of masters in the country's capital. The conditioned reflex worked for some while, it was the done thing to obey the diktat of New Delhi, There is also a time-lag between the awakening of consciousness and its articulation; layers of intermediate experiences have to be gone through. The time-lag is uneven for different groups of people. In the north-east, the unquiet years commenced right in the mid-fifties. In the rest of the country, disenchantment with the imperial model has been a later event, and has taken diverse forms. The awe commanded by a majestic centre will of course disappear in due course everywhere. But this course has its own rules, which vary from region to region and from linguistic group to linguistic group. There is the other fact too. The various groups come to enjoy, from time to time, slices of advantage on account of their being on the right side of those in authority at the centre. This also affects the actual pace of alienation from the imperial model. Besides, every now and then communal and sectarian forces have nor been averse to using the growing alienation for their own purposes either.