Maintaining Federal Autonomy in a BJP-dominant System: The Special Case of Nagaland in India’s Northeast

This paper seeks to explore the implications the changing party system in India has for the unique federal relationship with the Northeast State of Nagaland. Nagaland is granted de-jure federal asymmetry (omnibus article 371 of the Indian Constitution) that acknowledges Nagas’ “unique” cultural identity as well as the historically specific conditions under which the state was incorporated into the Indian Union. Since 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has managed to create a political base, albeit small, in this state through strategic alliances as well as by tweaking its ideological moorings to fit a predominantly tribal and Christian population. Drawing on Chandan Sharma and Wilfred Swenden’s (2022) framework on federalism and party systems, this paper argues that Nagaland’s federal bargain—despite it being a small and heavily revenue-dependent state—persists in a BJP-dominant system because key conditions that typically enable centralizing behavior by a dominant party are weak or absent. These conditions include a highly centralized internal party structure, a unitarist ideological orientation, and weak constitutional safeguards for state autonomy. The paper thus posits that Nagaland’s special status within Indian federal architecture needs to be understood in the context of the Naga nationalist movement animated by ideas of Naga people’s “unique” history and “distinct” identity, which resulted in a political compromise of “negotiated sovereignty” between Nagas and the Indian state. State actors—and influential non-state actors—effectively use negotiated sovereignty as a political tool, enabling Nagaland to maintain a relatively favorable federal bargain and degree of autonomy within the BJP-dominant system.