Two Scions and the Fading King: What the “One North East” Moment Tells Us

On 4 November at the Constitution Club in Delhi, two political heirs, Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarma of Tripura and Conrad K. Sangma of Meghalaya, stood together to announce a new front called One North East. Standing beside them were two names meant to lend cross-regional legitimacy: Mmhonlumo Kikon, who recently left the BJP in Nagaland, and Daniel Langthasa, a singer-activist and debutant from Assam’s hills. Together, they promised to speak for the region in one voice. It was a striking tableau, but one that revealed the direction of the wind more than the strength of conviction.

When the North-East Democratic Alliance was launched in 2016 under Himanta Biswa Sarma’s leadership, its slogan “Eight States, One Force” captured an ambitious plan to fold every regional party into the NDA framework. For a time, it worked. NEDA became both the BJP’s campaign arm and its architecture of control. But its internal tensions were visible from the start. Regional parties in the Northeast have strong local identities, and their interests rarely align with the BJP’s ideological line. The Bodoland People’s Front’s exit in 2021 was the first open crack, signalling that the system of managed unity was wearing thin.

NEDA’s unravelling accelerated after the conflict in Manipur, when the alliance failed to act or even convene. By 2024, it existed only on paper. Into that void now step Conrad and Pradyot, each leading a dynastic-like regional party and both eager to inherit the language of autonomy that NEDA had exhausted.

The “Zubeen moment” in Assam this year was a tremor of a different kind. It weakened the public enchantment that had grown around Himanta Biswa Sarma, who built his authority through familiarity. The “Mama” persona, an image of a caring and ever-present paternal figure, was once a symbol of accessibility. It has now begun to reveal its limits. When affection turns into a mode of governance, fatigue follows. Zubeen Garg’s death exposed that fatigue, the people’s sudden awareness that warmth had replaced accountability. The erosion of that intimacy has political consequences. A ruler who governed through personal appeal now finds that sentiment cannot hold when policy falters. Into this softening of charisma step the two heirs who sense both the change in mood and the opportunity it creates.

Pradyot and Conrad are not rebelling against Delhi; they are repositioning themselves within its field of attention. As the BJP’s hold weakens in Assam, both understand that whoever commands Delhi’s trust will shape the next phase of the region’s politics. Their partnership is an early bid to present themselves as that option. Kikon and Langthasa add symbolic breadth, one a recent defector and the other a first-timer from Assam’s hills, but the real negotiation is between the two scions, each testing whether a shared platform can extend their reach beyond home turf.

Their rhetoric of “indigenous unity” sounds aspirational but is contradicted by their record. Conrad’s government continues to preside over mining and energy deals that ignore local consent, and Pradyot’s TIPRA Motha remains formally part of the NDA even as he speaks of protecting Tripura’s tribal interests. On the issues that define the region’s democratic fault lines, such as the Manipur crisis, land alienation, and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, neither has risked alienating Delhi.

For Assam and the Brahmaputra Valley, CAA is not an abstract legal matter. It is a direct challenge to the idea of citizenship built on languages, land, and shared history. Any platform that avoids taking a clear position on it cannot claim to speak for the region’s people. Silence on this question will separate performance from principle faster than any speech from a Delhi podium.

What is emerging is not an organic alliance but an understanding among elites who have learned to survive within dependency. They invoke cultural identity while aligning with the same central policies that erode it. Their unity is less about people than about access and insurance, an attempt to remain relevant as the mood shifts.

The mood in Assam is unmistakably changing. The Chief Minister’s speeches no longer command the same applause, and the social media machinery that once echoed his words now works harder to sustain attention. The BJP’s organisational strength endures, but its emotional authority is fraying. As that aura weakens, the web of alliances once tied to Himanta’s prominence begins to drift apart. The One North East photo-op captures this transition, a slow dispersal of power from a single centre to several smaller claimants.

What matters now is whether this shift can translate into substance. The new alliance will have to show tangible independence: formal exits from old arrangements, public clarity on CAA and AFSPA, and a transparent stance on mining and land rights. Without these, “indigenous unity” will remain a slogan for negotiation, not a platform of resistance.

The Northeast does not need another circle of self-styled visionaries signing joint declarations in Delhi. It needs political imagination grounded in accountability and courage, leaders who can speak from within, not upward. Whether that begins now depends less on the heirs and more on the citizens who decide how much longer they will watch the same play with new actors.

For now, the once-unquestioned king faces his most uncertain season, and two princes stand ready with their new banner. What looks like renewal may only be the next turn in a politics built on personality rather than principle, where intimacy still masks control and citizens are asked to feel, not question.

Anee Haralu writes from Guwahati. She is an aspiring novelist.

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