![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
In this article I analyse the ways masculinity is expressed among tribal migrants from the Northeast frontier of India living in Delhi. Unlike many other groups in India who have long histories of migration and return within and outside the country, tribal migration out of the Northeast in large numbers is a recent phenomenon. Furthermore, men and women are migrating out of the Northeast in more or less equal numbers. Masculinity is being reshaped through the displacement of men from the environment where masculinity is reproduced, by the changes in gender relations brought about by the displacement of both men and women from this same environment and by the ways tribal men find new ways to express what it means to be a tribal man as urban dwellers, the latter captured in the shift from majority community back home to a distinct minority community in Delhi. In analysing these dynamics I argue that migration challenges the masculine norms of home. At home tribal masculinity is reproduced in an environment of insurgency and ethno-nationalist politics, whereas in Delhi it is difficult to enact masculinity in the same way. Despite these challenges, tribal men do find ways to express their masculinity in Delhi. Responding to racism, discrimination and minority status has shaped an urban masculinity that enables tribal men to find new ways of expressing what it means to be a tribal man.
Notes
1. Charsley, “South Asian Transnational Marriages”; Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan, “Circular Migration and Rural Cosmopolitanism”; Puri and Busza, “In Forests and Factories”; Toyota et al., “Bringing ‘Left Behind’ Back”; Sharma, “Practices of Male Labor Migration.”
2. Sanford, “Introduction.”
3. Cordaux et al., “Northeast Indian Passageway.”
4. Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland.
5. Kikon, “From Loincloth, Suits, to Battle Greens”; Patil, “Tourism Websites of India's Northeast.”
6. Kikon, “From Loincloth, Suits, to Battle Greens,” 94.
7. Baruah, “Citizens and Denizens.”
8. Das, “Peace Sans Democracy?”
9. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Family and Health Survey 2, 53.
10. Ibid., 57.
11. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Health and Family Survey 3, 452.
12. Ibid., 467.
13. McDuie-Ra, “Violence Against Women.”
14. Banerjee, Borders, Histories, Existences; Bora, “Between Human, Citizen and the Tribal.”
15. McDuie-Ra, “50 Year Disturbance.”
16. Farrelly, “What Price Peace?”
17. Kermode et al., “Killing Time with Enjoyment,” 1085.
18. A discussion of this is beyond the scope of this paper. For further discussion see Devine et al., “Pathways to Sex-Work in Nagaland, India”; Panda et al., “Interface between Drug Use and Sex Work.”
19. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Health and Family Survey 3.
20. Bhaumik, Troubled Periphery; Hazarika, Rites of Passage; Singh, The Problem of Change.
21. Das, Blisters on Their Feet.
22. Dickinson and Bailey, “(Re)membering Diaspora”; Landy et al., “Are people of Indian origin (PIO) ‘Indian’?”; van der Veer, “Transnational Religion”; Walton-Roberts, “Globalization.”
23. North East Support Centre and Helpline, North East Migration, 10.
24. Brosius, India's Middle Class, 65.
25. Taylor and Bain, “India Calling.”
26. Broughton, “Migration as Engendered Practice”; Osella and Osella, “Migration, Money, and Masculinity.”
27. Momsen, Gender, Migration, and Domestic Service; Parreñas, Servants of Globalisation.
28. Arambam, “Prejudice, Ignorance, Intolerance.”
29. Puri, “Stakes and States.”
30. The Mao Gate incident involved a stand-off between the Meitei and Naga communities in Manipur over the refusal of the Government of Manipur to allow the General Secretary of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) to enter the state in June 2010. Muivah wished to visit his home village as part of a campaign to unite all the Naga areas in the Northeast in preparation for peace talks with the Government of India. Naga groups blocked the main highways into Manipur for over two months and tensions between the two communities escalated.
31. There are also relationships between tribal men and non-tribal men and tribal women and non-tribal women but these were not discussed at all by respondents.