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ABSTRACT
This paper hopes to argue that the representations of and engagements with landscape by poets writing in English in Northeast India are embedded within the larger cultural and political contexts of the region. Indigenous communities across the world attach profound cultural, political, economic and spiritual significance to the territories they traditionally inhabit. It is for this reason that the preservation of their natural environment becomes crucial to the preservation of their cultural identities. Representations of the landscape by poets of Northeast India reflect the significance attached to and the intimate relationship shared with the natural environment by its diverse indigenous communities. The poets also display their awareness of the threats of ecological degradation faced by the region and the anxiety these threats have produced amongst the local population. The paper will try to understand the political dynamics behind the nostalgic associations ascribed to landscape in the poetry written in English in Northeast India.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Ao, Book of Songs, 237.
2. Dai, River Poems, 13.
3. The paper will concern itself with a study of the poetry written in English by poets from Northeast India. While the urban turn in Indian Poetry in English can be traced from the 1970s, there have been notable exceptions to it such as the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra.
4. Hasan, Street on the Hill, 23.
5. See note 2 above and 29 below.
6. Baruah, “Northeast India,” 31; Gill, The Peripheral Centre, 3; Haokip, “Conceptualising”; Ngaihte and Ninglun, “The Question of India’s North-east Identity”; and Sarma, “Towards,” 37.
7. McDui-Ra, “Solidarity,” 27.
8. Ngaihte, “The Reality of North-East,” 15; and Ngaihte and Ninglun, “The Question of India’s North-east Identity,” 11.
9. Guha, “Violence to What End.”
10. Nongkynrih, “Hard-edged Modernism,” 41.
11. Misra, The Oxford Anthology, 61.
12. Anjum Hasan and Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih hail from the state of Meghalaya, Mamang Dai belongs to Arunachal Pradesh and Temsula Ao was born and currently resides in Nagaland. Nongkynrih, Dai and Ao belong to the Khasi, Adi and Ao Naga tribes respectively.
13. Hirsch and O’Hanlon, The Anthropology of Landscape, 2; and Taylor, “Landscape and Memory,” 3.
14. O’Keeffe, “Landscape and Memory,” 3–4.
15. Claval, “Changing Conceptions,” 90.
16. Stewart and Strathern, Landscape, Memory and History, 3.
17. Morphy, “Landscape and the Reproduction,” 186.
18. Ibid., 188.
19. See note 2 above and 42 below.
20. Ao, Book of Songs, 109–11.
21. Fulford, Landscape, Liberty and Authority, 3.
22. Ibid., 1.
23. Ibid., 3.
24. See note 12 above.
25. Nongkynrih, Moments, 25. (italics mine).
26. See note 12 and 6 above.
27. Khasi for ‘Sweet Sun’.
28. Fulford, Landscape, Liberty and Authority, 32.
29. Hirsch and O’Hanlon, The Anthropology of Landscape, 5; and Stewart and Strathern, Landscape, Memory and History, 4.
30. Sooväli-Sepping Reinert and Miles-Watson, Ruptured Landscapes, 2.
31. See note 2 above and 62 below.
32. Shillong Peak or Laitkor Peak is the highest point in Shillong and a popular tourist spot. It is currently situated inside an Indian Air Force station.
33. Karlsson, Unruly Hills, 3.
34. Kharmawphlang, Here, 5–6.
35. Hirsch and O’Hanlon, The Anthropology of Landscape, 10.
36. Weiner, Sons of the Soil, 4.
37. Nostrand, The Hispano Homeland, 214.
38. See Barbora, “Politics of Autonomy”; Baruah, “Citizens and Denizens”; Baruah, “Territoriality, Indigeneity and Rights”; Hazarika, “Land, Conflict, Identity”; Lacina, “Problem of Political Stability”; Shimray, “Ethnicity and Socio-Political Assertion”; and Singh, “Ethnic Diversity.”
39. See note 29 and 4 above.
40. See note 2 above and 61 below.
41. See note 21 and 22 above.
42. Ibid., 23.
43. See note 1 above and 44 below.
44. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women, 177; and Sturgeon, Ecofeminist Natures, 23.
45. See note 2 above and 65 below.
46. See Nongbri, “Culture and Biodiversity”; Shangpliang, Forest in the Life; Borang, “Indigenous Knowledge System”; and Tam, “Apatani and their Forest Resources.”
47. Ibid., 50–1.
48. Milton, “Cultural Theory and Environmentalism,” 351.
49. Ibid., 352.
50. Arora, “Assertive Identities,” 216–7.
51. Ibid., 213.
52. Brosius, “Analyses and Interventions,” 280–1.
53. See note 21 and 22 above.
54. Slash and burn cultivation practised in the hills of Northeast India.
55. See note 21 and 24 above.
56. Gifford, “Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral and Post-Pastoral,” 48.
57. See note 21 and 48 above.
58. Gifford, Pastoral, 46.
59. Ibid., 39.
60. Nongkynrih, The Yearning of Seeds, 17.
61. Einstein, “The Politics of Nostalgia,” 38.
62. Natali, “History and the Politics of Nostalgia,” 13.
63. See note 55 and 38 above.
64. Robin Singh Ngangom is a poet who hails from the state of Manipur. He writes in Manipuri and English. He is currently based in Shillong, Meghalaya.
65. Ngangom, Words and the Silence, 20–1.
66. O’Keeffe, “Landscape and Memory,” 4.
67. Williams, The Country and the City, 7.
68. Claval, “Changing Conceptions of Heritage,” 85–6.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rajashree Bargohain
Dr. Rajashree Bargohain is lecturer in the Department of English at the Yonphula Centenary College of the Royal University of Bhutan at Yonphula, Trashigang, Bhutan. She obtained her PhD degree from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati in January 2018. Her research interests include Literatures from Northeast India, Cultural History of Northeast India and Assamese Literature.
Rohini Mokashi-Punekar
Dr. Rohini Mokashi-Punekar is Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. Besides several papers in books and journals, she is the author of On the Threshold: Songs of Chokhamela (Altamira Press 2005 and The Book Review Literary Trust 2002), Untouchable Saints: an Indian Phenomenon (Manohar 2005) which she co-edited with Eleanor Zelliot, Vikram Seth: an Introduction (Cambridge University Press 2009). She is currently engaged in translating medieval Varkari poetry from Marathi, an anthology of which will be published by Penguin in their Black Classics series and Phule’s play Tritiya Ratna which is to be published by Orient Blackswan.