International Migration, Language and Ethnicity: The Case of Nepalis in Northeast India

Migration from one place to another has brought about the inter-mingling of different people, languages and cultures. While in some case, this inter-mingling of ethnic groups have brought great prosperity; in most cases it has brought ethnic conflicts. North East region of India is considered the hotbed of ethnic conflicts in the recent times. The concept of ‘sons of the soil’ is not a new concept in the region. The frightening sentiment of the indigenous people becoming a minority in their own state has fueled anti-outsider movement in almost all the states of the region. Anti-Nepali feeling has occurred in Meghalaya and Mizoram in the 1970s, and still occurs in states like Manipur and Nagaland. Keeping this in view, the present paper studies the Nepali community and their migration to the region. Census 2001 provides migration details as well as the language considered as the mother tongue by every individual. The Nepali speaking community is one of the largest ethnic groups of the population of North-East states. The paper brings out the irregularities observed in the estimation of international migration in the region on the basis of the two definitions used in Census of India.