Roads and the Raj: The politics of road building in colonial Naga Hills, 1860s–1910s

This article looks at the historical importance of borderland routes, the way they were laid out, built and monitored, and the changing role of hill communities in this colonial enterprise. It argues that road building provided a crucial site upon which plots of empire building could unfold in the Naga Hills. This was a space, which had to be constituted through the politics of access. Access routes intensified the colonial state’s ability to penetrate, control and incorporate ‘unstable’ peripheral areas and its inhabitants into the imperial domain. Road building was then woven into a complex network of colonial practices such as military surveillance, taxation, population enumeration and the subordination of the hill populace as ‘coolies’. However, British officials could not have simply re-shaped the landscape, framed policies and establish its domination from above. To do so, they had to engage with the existing ‘traditional’ structures and institutions, whereby they had to create and draw upon native agents in the form of gaonburras (village headmen) and dobhashis (interpreters) who came to hold considerable stake in their imperial project.