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ABSTRACT
Northeast India, a ‘zipper region’ that gives impetus to Southeast Asian and Himalasian studies, is marked by complexities and ambiguities. The paper examines the multiple identity construction in contemporary Assam, the central state of this region and seeks to recover the other experiences that make ethnic life-world possible while challenging the ethnocentric discourses—in academia, politics, public and social movements. Acknowledging the presence of common or possibly universal processes behind the production of such discourses, it aims to interrogate the factors that cut across socio-cultural, political-economical or ecological dimensions. It further examines the multiple discourses and narratives that makes that social possible in the region. In doing so, it locates the strategic positioning of such discourses and how they deal with Indian nation-state and beyond. This paper in essence is interested in the question of possibility of various discourses—as a question of post-history.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Shneiderman, “Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia?” 297.
2. Ramirez, People of the Margins.
3. Biswas and Suklabaidya, Ethnic Life-Worlds in North-East India.
4. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic.
5. Gogoi and Saikia, “NRC and Intellectual Racism.”
6. McDuie-Ra, “Adjacent Identities in Northeast India,” 400.
7. Jinba, In the Land of the Eastern Queendom.
8. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.
9. Lefebvre, “The Everyday and Everydayness,” 9.
10. Baruah, Durable Disorder.
11. Saikia, Fragmented Memories, 3.
12. Planning Commission of India, Report on Development of North Eastern Region.
13. Biswas and Gogoi, “Racism in India.”
14. Saikia, Fragmented Memories.
15. Kikon, “Fermenting Modernity,” 320.
16. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.
17. Ibid.
18. Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, 2.
19. Wimmer, “The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries.”
20. This concept was argued by Prasenjit Biswas in the inaugural workshop of Northeast studies Programme held in the Department of Sociology, Delhi University on 12 March 2015.
21. Flusser, Post-History.
22. The question of possibility is a concern and worldview that has been developed by Flusser in talking about the possible worlds and life after Auschwitz.
23. Middleton, The Demands of Recognition.
24. Loveman, “The Modern State,” 1655.
25. Guru, Humiliation.
26. See Endnote 23.
27. Guha, ‘States, Tribes, Castes.’
28. See Endnote 3.
29. Xaxa, “Tribes as Indigenous People.”
30. Said, Reflections on Exile and other Essays.
31. Fanon, Black Skin.
32. Loveman, “The Modern State,” 1652.
33. See Endnote 5.
34. See Endnote 27.
35. See Endnote 23.
36. Ibid.
37. Weber, Economy and Society, 54.
38. See Endnote 7.
39. Khaldun, The Muqaddimah.
40. Bloch, Marxism and Anthropology.
41. Shneiderman, “Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia?”
42. Andaya, Leaves of the Same Tree.
43. Goswami, Conflict and Reconciliation, 5, 84.
44. Scott, Art of Not Being Governed.
45. Elvin, A Philosophy.
46. Tribe is determined in India by five distinctive criteria: (a) indication of primitive traits, (b) distinctive culture, (c) geographical isolation, (d) shyness of contact with the community at large and (e) backwardness. For Xaxa, indignity, on the other, involves (a) they have lived in the same country before the colonisation process started, (b) they have been marginalised due to conquest and (c) they have their own set of social, cultural and economic institutions that governs them.
47. Gogoi and Chakma, “State of Exclusion.”
48. Jinba, In the Land of the Eastern Queendom, 7.
49. Ibid, 8.
50. Gogoi, “Reimagining Assamese Identity.”
51. See Endnote 5.
52. See Endnote 50.
53. Gogoi and Biswas, Routinising a Periphery.
54. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power.
55. Latour, Reassembling, 7.
56. Gogoi, “Identity, Violence and Boundaries.”
57. Shneiderman, “Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia?”; Middleton, The Demands of Recognition.
58. See Endnote 14.
59. It is a village council system that is prevalent amongst different tribal communities such as Adi, Galo, Mising and so on.
60. See Endnote 3.
61. Grosfugel, ‘The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities’, 74.
62. Kar, Ph.D. Thesis.
63. Misra, “Assam.”
64. Guha, “Little Nationalism Turned Chauvinist.”
65. Ibid.
66. Kipgen, “The enclosures of colonization.”
67. See Endnote 10.
68. Kligensmith, One Valley and a Thousand; Kothari, “Re-Evaluating Multi-Purpose River Valley Projects.”
69. Vagholikar and Das, Damming.
70. Ibid.
71. Chowdhury and Kipgen, “Deluge amidst Conflict.”
72. Apong and sai-mod are indigenous alcohol made of rice and very popular among Mising ethnic community.
73. Gogoi and Goswami, “A Study on Bank Erosion.”
74. Kotoky, “Erosion activity on Majuli.”
75. Bhotajalowa is the process of drying up clay pots in a pottery firing mound. In this process, a large stake of clay pots are placed on a large earthen and bamboo platform and then fire is lit from the bottom in a sustained manner. In a single bhotajalowa, claypots worth of 10,000–15,000 rupees are dried up but a single crack in one pot can lead to cracks in all the pots. Claypot makers have opined that the due to the low quality of clay, the risk of crack appearing during this process has increased in the recent times.
76. There are several kinds of rice cultivated in Assam depending on the season. Ahu variety of rice is cultivated in autumn, while Shali is cultivated during winter season.
77. It is an international river festival organised by government of Assam, from 31 March to 4 April, 2017. It attempted to highlight the significance of the river Brahmaputra in society and culture of Assam, along with promotion of the river as National Waterways 2. However, symbolically it was presented as a very Hindu form of life, ignoring other life worlds and syncretic traditions of Assam marked by religiosity, cultural harmony and linguistic sublimity that brings diverse ethnic groups together.
78. Baruah, Durable Disorder; Goswami, Conflict and Reconciliation.
79. See Endnote 42.
80. O’Connor, “Agricultural Change and Ethnic Succession in South East Asian States.”
81. See Endnote 16.
82. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries; Ramirez, People of the Margins; Jinba, In the Land of the Eastern Queendom; McDuie-Ra, “Adjacent Identities in Northeast India.”
83. See Endnote 3.
84. See Endnote 54.
85. Loveman, “The Modern State.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Suraj Gogoi
Suraj Gogoi is a PhD candidate in sociology at National University of Singapore. His doctoral project is about water lives and state making in contemporary Assam. He is interested in social and political history of India’s northeast, water, public sociology, citizenship, liminality, water and non-philosophy.
Parag Jyoti Saikia
Parag Jyoti Saikia is a PhD student in Anthropology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interest includes hydropower, infrastructures, rivers, social and political life-worlds of Northeast India.