Other Autonomy Movements in Northeast India: Karbi, Dimasa, and Barak Valley

The Northeast’s autonomy story is usually told through its biggest chapters: the Naga movement, the Mizo accord, the Bodoland struggle. But the region’s demand for self-rule runs much deeper than these headline cases. In Assam’s hill districts and its southern Bengali-speaking belt, several smaller but equally determined movements have been pressing for recognition, statehood, and cultural survival for decades. The Karbis and Dimasas want their autonomous councils raised to full statehood. The Barak Valley wants out of Assamese-dominated politics altogether. These movements rarely make national news, yet they reveal how diverse and unfinished the question of self-governance in the Northeast really is.

Why Assam’s hills became a hotbed of autonomy demands
The Karbi movement: from district council to statehood
How the demand escalated
The armed turn and the peace accords
Statehood is still on the table
The Dimasa movement: identity tied to a hill homeland
The dream of Dimaraji
From insurgency to the 2012 settlement
An added layer: who speaks for the hills?
Barak Valley: a different kind of autonomy demand
Roots in Partition and language politics
The long, on-and-off campaign for separation
What these movements have in common

Why Assam’s hills became a hotbed of autonomy demands

To understand the Karbi and Dimasa movements, you have to start with the constitutional framework that shapes them. When the Constitution was drafted, the makers recognised that tribal communities in the Northeast needed protection from being absorbed into the dominant culture around them. The Sixth Schedule under Article 244 created Autonomous District Councils with limited legislative, judicial, and administrative powers to govern certain tribal areas within a state.

Two such areas sit in Assam’s hills: Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao (formerly North Cachar Hills). Both are run by autonomous councils set up under this Sixth Schedule. On paper, this looks like a fair deal. In practice, many in these communities felt the councils were too weak to deliver real self-determination.

There is also a second, sharper promise that fuels these movements. Article 244(A) allows for the creation of an “autonomous state” within Assam in certain tribal areas, with its own legislature and council of ministers. When neighbouring states like Meghalaya were carved out of Assam in the early 1970s, Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills stayed within Assam on a promise of more power, including the implementation of Article 244(A). That promise was never kept. The sense of a broken commitment is the emotional core of both the Karbi and Dimasa struggles.

The Karbi movement: from district council to statehood

The Karbis are one of the largest tribal groups in Assam’s hill districts, and their political journey has been long. An autonomous district council for the hill region was set up under the Sixth Schedule back in 1952. Over the decades, the demand evolved from administrative autonomy toward full statehood.

How the demand escalated

The push gained organised political shape in the late 1970s. The Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC), originally a mass organisation linked to the CPI(ML), was set up with the aim of statehood for the Karbi Anglong region. The ASDC’s central plank was simple: implement Article 244(A) and grant the hills an autonomous state. The council’s powers were seen as too limited, leaving it dependent on Dispur for funds and major decisions.

In 1995, the district council was upgraded. Through a memorandum and a constitutional amendment, the Karbi Anglong District Council was renamed the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC) and entrusted with thirty additional departments. The council today has thirty members, twenty-six elected and four nominated, with a five-year term. Yet even this expanded body did not satisfy the statehood demand.

The armed turn and the peace accords

By the 1990s, the statehood demand had taken a violent path. Several militant outfits emerged, and the region saw over three decades of killings, ethnic violence, abductions, and extortion. A first major settlement came in 2011, when the United People’s Democratic Solidarity signed a tripartite memorandum with the Centre and the state, agreeing to lay down arms in exchange for enhanced autonomy and special packages.

The bigger breakthrough came on 4 September 2021. The Karbi Anglong Agreement was signed in New Delhi between the Centre, the Assam government, and five insurgent groups: PDCK, KLNLF, KPLT, KLF, and UPLA. Under the accord, about 1,000 militants surrendered their arms and joined the mainstream. The agreement promised a development package of around ₹1,000 crore over five years, reservation for the region’s people, rehabilitation of cadres, and greater devolution of autonomy to the KAAC. Importantly, the accord protects the identity, language, and culture of the Karbi people without affecting the territorial and administrative integrity of Assam, and it provided for a Karbi Welfare Council to serve Karbis living outside the council area.

Statehood is still on the table

The 2021 accord ended the insurgency, but it did not end the statehood demand. As recently as 2025, a coalition of organisations under a hills autonomous state movement was still pressing for a “state within state” for Karbi Anglong. The Assam Chief Minister indicated he would push for tripartite talks involving the Centre and a coalition of organisations from Karbi Anglong to address these long-standing demands. The peace pact, in other words, addressed the violence but left the political aspiration alive.

The Dimasa movement: identity tied to a hill homeland

Parallel to the Karbis, the Dimasa Kachari people of the North Cachar Hills have pursued their own path to autonomy. The Dimasas trace their roots to the historic Dimasa Kachari kingdom, and their political identity is closely bound to the idea of a homeland.

The dream of Dimaraji

Like the Karbis, the Dimasa statehood demand began in the 1960s, alongside other tribal sections of undivided Assam. The goal crystallised around a proposed full-fledged state called “Dimaraji”, which would unite Dimasa-inhabited areas across Dima Hasao, parts of Karbi Anglong, and adjoining districts. As the demand gathered steam, it spilled into militancy. The militant Dimasa National Security Force was formed in 1991, and after it surrendered in 1995, a breakaway commander formed the Dima Halam Daogah. Factional splits and violence marked the years that followed.

From insurgency to the 2012 settlement

The North Cachar Hills district has been governed by an autonomous council since 1952. The district was renamed Dima Hasao, meaning “hills of the Dimasa”, in 2010. The council itself, long known as the North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council, later moved to rename itself the Dima Hasao Autonomous Council. Like the Karbi council, it has thirty members, most elected and a few nominated by the state.

The Dimasa insurgency was wound down through a peace process. A settlement led the Dima Halam Daogah factions to give up arms, and the agreement provided for a Dimasa Welfare Council to protect and promote the social, cultural, and linguistic identity of Dimasa people living outside the council’s jurisdiction. As with the Karbi accord, the focus was on enhanced autonomy and development rather than the creation of a new state.

An added layer: who speaks for the hills?

The Dimasa case carries a complication the Karbi one does not. Dima Hasao is ethnically diverse, and not everyone in the district is Dimasa. The renaming of the district and the council to emphasise Dimasa identity created resentment among other hill communities. A forum representing non-Dimasa groups has demanded carving out a separate autonomous district from the erstwhile North Cachar Hills. This reminds us that autonomy movements are not always a simple contest between a tribe and the state; they can also involve competing claims among communities sharing the same hills.

Barak Valley: a different kind of autonomy demand

The third strand looks completely different. The Barak Valley is not about tribal self-rule under the Sixth Schedule. It is about language, identity, and a sense of regional neglect. The valley comprises three districts in southern Assam: Cachar, Karimganj, and Hailakandi. Unlike the Assamese-majority Brahmaputra Valley, the Barak Valley is home to a predominantly Bengali-speaking population.

Roots in Partition and language politics

The region’s distinct character comes from history. Karimganj was once part of Sylhet, the contested district that mostly joined East Pakistan in the 1947 referendum, with only Karimganj remaining in India. A large Bengali Hindu population fleeing Partition settled in Cachar. The valley’s grievances hardened in 1960, when the state government made Assamese the sole official language of the state. This alienated Bengali speakers and triggered the language movement of 1961, during which eleven protesters were shot dead at the Silchar railway station. That sacrifice remains central to Bengali identity in the valley.

The long, on-and-off campaign for separation

The demand for separation from Assam is old. As early as 1967, a civil society body in Cachar submitted a memorandum to the Union government seeking Union Territory status for the valley. The last major memorandum of that era went to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1986, after which the movement faded. Crucially, the demand never became an electoral issue and never produced a strong regional party, which is why it repeatedly fizzled out.

The demand has resurfaced in recent years. Some groups want a separate state, sometimes named “Purbachal”, while others continue to press for Union Territory status. The campaign has drawn opposition: the banned outfit ULFA-I has strongly opposed carving out the Bengali-dominated valley as a separate state, framing it as a threat to Assam’s unity. This tension captures the heart of the issue: the same land is claimed by competing visions of identity.

What these movements have in common

At first glance, three movements led by Karbis, Dimasas, and Bengalis seem unrelated. But they share a common engine. Each grows from a feeling that a distinct community has been politically marginalised by a distant power centre in Dispur and left out of development. Each ties its demand to the protection of language and culture. And each has had to decide between working within existing structures, like the autonomous councils, or pushing for something larger, like statehood or Union Territory status.

There are also revealing differences. The Karbi and Dimasa demands operate within the tribal-protection framework of the Sixth Schedule and Article 244(A), and both have moved from armed insurgency to negotiated peace accords. The Barak Valley demand has stayed largely peaceful and civil-society-driven, but it has lacked the sustained political organisation that turns a grievance into a successful movement. Together, they show that the search for self-governance in the Northeast is not one story but many, still being written.

What do you think? If autonomous councils have not satisfied the demand for statehood, should the answer be stronger councils with genuine powers, or smaller states? And when several communities share the same district, as in Dima Hasao, how should the claims of a numerically dominant group be balanced against those of its neighbours?

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

Average rating 0 / 5. Vote count: 0

No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.

References

PDF 📄

Table of Contents

Why Assam’s hills became a hotbed of autonomy demands 🔗

The Karbi movement: from district council to statehood 🔗

How the demand escalated 🔗

The armed turn and the peace accords 🔗

Statehood is still on the table 🔗

The Dimasa movement: identity tied to a hill homeland 🔗

The dream of Dimaraji 🔗

From insurgency to the 2012 settlement 🔗

An added layer: who speaks for the hills? 🔗

Barak Valley: a different kind of autonomy demand 🔗

Roots in Partition and language politics 🔗

The long, on-and-off campaign for separation 🔗

What these movements have in common 🔗