Emerging Literatures from Northeast India: The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity [First ed.] 9788132110439

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Emerging Literatures from Northeast India

Emerging Literatures from Northeast India The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity

Edited by Margaret Ch. Zama SAGE Studies on India’s North East

Copyright © Margaret Ch. Zama, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2013 by SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320, USA SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP, United Kingdom SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763 Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, Phototypeset in Diligent Typesetter, Delhi, and printed G.H. Prints Pvt Ltd., New Delhi. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Emerging literatures from Northeast India: the dynamics of culture, society and identity/ edited by Margaret Ch. Zama.     pages cm.—(SAGE Studies on India’s North East) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Indic literature (English)—India, Northeastern—History and criticism. I. Zama, Margaret Ch. PR9498.2.N67E44     820.9'954—dc23     2013     2013003614 ISBN:  978-81-321-1043-9 (HB) The Sage Team:  Neelakshi Chakraborty, Dhurjjati Sarma, Nand Kumar Jha and Rajinder Kaur

To the writers of Northeast India May your tribe increase and your writings flourish

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Contents

ix xi

Acknowledgements Introduction by Margaret Ch. Zama Part I:  Building Literary Paradigms for Northeast Discourse   1. Articulating Marginality: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India Kailash C. Baral

3

  2. Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India Tilottoma Misra

14

  3. An Emerging Genre of ‘Political’ Literature in India’s Frontier Manjeet Baruah

28

  4. Towards an Appreciative Paradigm for Literatures of the Northeast Parag M. Sarma

37

  5. Sign Forces of Culture: Reflections on Mnemopraxial Responsibility D.Venkat Rao

47

Part II:  Specifics of Literary Paradigms of the Northeast   6. Locating Trauma in Mizo Literature: The Beloved Bullet Margaret Ch. Zama   7. Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space Sarangadhar Baral

65

76

  8. The Phawar in Context: The Politics of Tradition and Continuity Desmond L. Kharmawphlang

90

  9. Some Petite, Some Powerful: The Cascade of Manipuri Short Stories Tayenjam Bijoykumar Singh

98

10. Culture Makes People What They Are As Much As People Make Culture: Religion As a Factor of Cultural Change among the Ao Nagas Temsurenla Ozukum 11. Beyond Borders and Between the Hills: Voices and Visions from Karbi Anglong or, Whose Hills Are These Anyway? Rakhee Kalita Moral 12. An Assessment of Northeastern Sensibility in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Mamang Dai’s River Poems Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal 13. Northeast Outside the Newspaper Pages Monalisa Changkija

108

116

122 134

Part III:  Caste–Tribe Paradigm Beyond the Northeast 14. Culture As a Site of Struggle: A Study of the Oral Literature of the Bhils of Rajasthan Hemendra Singh Chandalia

151

15. Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur: The Medium of Christianity Joseph Bara

160

About the Editor and Contributors Index

177 181

viii   Emerging Literatures from Northeast India

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks go to the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, and in particular to Professor Peter Ronald deSouza, Director, IIAS, for the support and encouragement received from them which have enabled us to get this volume finally see the light of the day after a passage of four years, ever since a successful National Seminar was organized on 10–11 March 2009 at Aizawl by the Department of English, Mizoram University, in collaboration with them on the theme which is the title of this volume. My grateful thanks go to Dr C. Joshua Thomas, Deputy Director of ICSSR-NERC Shillong, Meghalaya, for helping to fund the seminar. I am grateful to the Mizoram University (MZU) administration, my colleagues, staff, students and research scholars of the Department of English, MZU, whose collective effort was the primary reason for the resounding success of the seminar. Above all else, sincere acknowledgement and thanks go to the contributors of this volume for their cooperation and patience throughout. Mention should be made here of the fact that this volume is not on the proceedings of the seminar per se, nor have all papers presented at the time of the seminar been included. This volume contains only the revised papers received, as well as those invited from scholars who chaired the sessions. Last but certainly not the least, I express my grateful thanks to my family, for their patience and understanding. Margaret Ch. Zama

Introduction Margaret Ch. Zama

The use of the word ‘emerging’ in the title of this volume needs to be defined, for while recent and contemporary works/writings occupy space in most of the essays, so do works of earlier decades. So ‘emerging’ does not necessarily denote only the new but also refers to the fact that though more new writings in English and the vernacular are indeed being generated from the region, so also is the emergence of previous and existing works in the form of translations, thereby making such works accessible for the first time to the rest of the world. All of this is to a great extent, facilitated by the interest generated of late for a growing discourse on the region, particularly from the academia. Space is being created and recognition fast increasing for this growing vibrant writing, much of it now being written in English due to the high levels of literacy in the region. Earlier versions of most chapters in this volume were presented at the National Seminar on ‘The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India’, organized by the Department of English, Mizoram University, over four years back in March 2009, which is the genesis of this volume (though not a volume on its proceedings per se). The seminar brought together scholars of literature, language, folkloristic studies, social sciences and the media, to discuss and interact on various issues of emerging trends witnessed in the growing literary discourse that have emanated from the Northeast region. The thrust then at that point in time still remains valid and unchanged today which is, that emerging literatures from the Northeast region, having undergone historical and political trauma of untold suffering and marginalization, registers various voices that need to be heard and understood in the context of India’s multicultural mosaic. They usher in a different brand of literary repertoire in ways

that depict their various communities, their unique linguistic registers, and the worldview that they project in an endeavour to preserve their cultural and ethnic identities. This is not to be mistaken simply as blind nostalgia for a way of life long lost, but must be received as voices of individual authors from societies caught in the cross current of their political and historical inheritances, personal tragedies and cultural ambivalence, voices that are involved in developing and contributing to a much larger literary consciousness that needs to be recognized and interrogated. The cultural geography and its diversity; the problematics of ethnicity and identity in the context of politics of culture and identity; the emerging literatures that have been generated after the textualization of tribal societies mostly in the wake of Christianity while mapping the transition from oral to the written—these are but some of the vital and engrossing areas touched upon in the content of this volume, and which need not be repeated here. What may however be strongly reiterated is the fact that the changing times and its accompanying dynamics have necessitated the various communities of this region to seek new ways to negotiate, translate and expose their world views. The role and the impact of emerging literatures of the Northeast region in this regard is now being recognized more and more in academia, providing a growing corpus of both primary and secondary resources which is now actively contributing to a literary discourse that is in the process of staking its claim not only in mainstream discourse but beyond. This may be perceived as a tall claim by some, made by one who is seen engaged in privileging and promoting regional revivalism. Not so really, as time will tell. The chapters in this volume have been loosely arranged into three parts to reflect their commonalities and differences. The sequencing of the contents has been based, firstly, on a general overview of emerging literatures from the Northeast region with their historical and cultural mappings, as well as some literary and theoretical structures already in place, which project a potential for establishing new paradigms within the growing creative output and accompanying literary discourse. Secondly, the specifics or those already in place, or in the process of being put in place by writers of the region, and thirdly, paradigms outside of the Northeast to provide a wider scope and perception of similar writings. Part I of the volume: Building Literary Paradigms for Northeast Discourse contains five broad-ranging articles spanning the theoretical xii   Margaret Ch. Zama

and historical that explore the given core themes from very dissimilar perspectives: Kailash C. Baral in his submission ‘Articulating Marginality: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India’ which is a revised version of his keynote address given at the seminar, points out that “literary marginality, against the grain, contests and problematises some of the universalistic assumptions of literature while factoring in and often valorizing unique ethnic and cultural experience that needs to be examined outside the Marg–Desi divide”, in his reference to emerging writers and their works, from the region. These writers are, according to him, individualistic in their approach and narrative styles, but collectively represent the ethos of the region in terms of their shared history and political destiny, and therefore aspire towards a vision beyond narrow ethnic mappings. The chapter also points out that the absence of authentic histories of most communities of the Northeast has compelled many of its creative writers to take on the role of cultural historians in order to provide alternative histories as it were. The advent of Christianity in the nineteenth century and the subsequent conversion of many tribes of the region resulted in cultural loss which today has generated attempts at recovery, again, by many of the emerging writers. New narratives that may be classed under the genre of place novels, have also begun to make their mark with writers like Dhruba Hazarika and Siddhartha Deb to name a few. A new growing confidence is thus detected in the choice of themes and subject matter as well, which seeks to make inroads beyond identity and ethnic issues. One major aspect of any culture possessing the written word as it were is the history of its acquiring it, for this history invariably impacts the culture of the community. In this connection, Tilottoma Misra gives an insightful study of the coming of the print culture into the region in her submission ‘Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India’. The equation of oral culture with non-literate/primitive communities and the written word with modernity and progress was a Western colonial construct, more so because it was associated with power. This aspect contributed to the growing awareness “that possessing the art of writing is in many ways more empowering than oral communication” and the evidence of this, according to Tilottoma Misra, is seen in the construction of a set of myths by different oral communities of the region, about the loss of the technique of writing at some point in their remote past. The colonial efforts to integrate the

Introduction    xiii

different languages of Assam by making Bengali the print language, for better governance, provoked stiff resistance, but there were also evidences of prominent dialects within many tribal communities that were privileged by the Christian missionaries such as the Ao-Naga language and the Lusei dialect Duhlian of the Zo tribes, which received priority and were promoted as print language. The writer notes that such efforts in order to help integrate a region are “characteristic strategies of all modern empire-builders, and the story did not come to an end in northeast India with the end of colonialism”. The writer further shows how recent research on the effect of colonialism on the vernacular languages has shown the creation of ‘laboratory languages’ that were meant to facilitate the development of print capitalism during the colonial times. It is indeed interesting to note how the print culture can play powerful key roles in the sociopolitical and economic dynamics of a community or any nation for that matter. It may be added that it is also worth our while to not forget the primacy of oral speech or orality, which was to be later followed by literacy (writing) and, then only, by the print culture. Manjeet Baruah in his chapter ‘An Emerging Genre of “Political” Literature in India’s Frontier’ makes it a point to emphasize the historicity of the region by stating that the idea of a Northeast frontier was a colonial construct since prior to the nineteenth century, this region never did exist as part of any political state system. So according to him, in order to understand the core history of the difficult relationship between India and its Northeast frontier, one has to return to the colonial period, and in an attempt to interrogate the relationship of Assamese literature to the larger movements in the area, the chapter points out that one can see an emerging genre of ‘political’ literature based precisely on the issue of frontier and of how such a literature is “different from those in the past that also focused on the frontier”. The writer takes as examples works from Assamese literature of the past two decades wherein is detected a growing concern with the political problem of being a frontier people. It is interesting to note that the poetry of Megan Kachari and prose/fiction of Anurag Mahanta’s Aaulingar Zui (An Harvest of Ash, 2007), both members of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), a secessionist/militant group, are taken as case in point and placed alongside Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya’s Assamese classic Iaruingam (People’s Rule, 1960), to highlight the fact that the two novels of the same genre, spread across the span of close to 50 years, clearly reflect the changing political xiv   Margaret Ch. Zama

considerations of people inhabiting the frontier. In examining the works of other writers of the earlier generation writing in contemporary times and on the same issues of military violence, militancy and Indian nation state, as those of the present generation of writers, the chapter takes note of the many differences in treatment of violence, stating that “the difference would be in the paradigm within which the violence is placed. The paradigms are also ideological constructs that gives meaning to the respective treatments of violence.” Parag M. Sarma in his chapter ‘Towards an Appreciative Paradigm for Literatures of the Northeast’, advocates the ethno-critical approach that will acknowledge differences rather than opposition, enabling a fresh appraisal of the literatures of the region that will interrogate the ‘us and them’, and in the process, “dissolve borders and boundaries from absolute categories to shifting spaces where cultures negotiate and deal with each other”. An important question posed in the chapter is about the role of literature in an ethnic milieu as diverse as that of the Northeast and goes on to state that what is needed is “an oral derived appreciative paradigm that while acknowledging that the written form is radically different from the oral, nonetheless gives cognizance to the oral antecedents of a culture, and how the creative vision and world is shaped by it”. This idea of the ‘oral derived’ would allow the examination of traditional features alongside post-traditional evolution brought about by transition to written cultures. In the long run, it is true that a proper appreciation of the literature of the region is possible only with a proper understanding of the ethnic fabric and the interethnic relationships coexisting in the region. D. Venkat Rao provides a scholarly study in his chapter ‘Sign Forces of Culture: Reflections on Mnemopraxial Responsibility’ of what he calls “the verbal and visual sign forces” of cultural singularities to be found in the diverse idioms of communities from the region, and wherein lies the traits of their heterotextual pasts, despite subjection to erasure of identities by outside forces. The questions posed in this chapter bear witness to the confessional style of the writer who, as one not belonging to the region, is seeking ways of relating to a context which to him, is unfamiliar. The chapter attempts to address the cultural, intellectual, experiential gap between the Northeast and the rest of the country, i.e., mainland India, and since academics is our common linking thread, the chapter takes on the burden of how one like him is to deal with other asymmetries between the regions. The theoretical concepts of several terms used by the writer and which

Introduction    xv

have become part of common academic language, contribute further to a deeper understanding of the discourse that the chapter initiates. Another aspect witnessed in the chapter is the distinct attempt to move away from anthropolization of cultures earlier popularized by anthropologists, like Geertz, to contemporary critical developments in literary and cultural studies. Hence a critical footnote on ‘Anthropology in the East’ is also provided. Despite the paucity of material in English on the Northeast, particularly with reference to its literary output and which the writer must have surely found to be a sore point while writing the chapter, it is to be noted that this has not deterred him from making a rich contribution to the present volume. He further goes on to suggest that research in humanities in universities must take up the task of evolving new teaching modules and programmes, both in theory and practice “that are sensitive to our distinct but disjunctive heritages—mnemocultural and mnemotechnical or a-conceptual and conceptual inheritances” and that such a work can be conceived under what he terms Critical Humanities. Such a practice would indeed contribute towards mainstreaming studies presently viewed today as belonging to the periphery. Part II of the volume: Specifics of Literary Paradigms of the Northeast contains seven chapters that dwell on selected texts of writers and oral traditions of the region, which provide a broad spectrum to the growing literary corpus on studies of the Northeast. My chapter on ‘Locating Trauma in Mizo Literature: The Beloved Bullet’ explores possibilities of ways of reading history other than the model of straightforward experience and reference, and touches on concepts of collective trauma, cultural trauma and the politics of mourning wherein many experiences of the tragic aftermath of the region’s violent history can be placed. The selected novella of Dokhuma depicts, amongst other aspects of the Mizo National Front (MNF) underground movement and uprising of 1966, the trauma of dislocation/relocation generated by the controversial enforced village groupings. The chapter makes mention of the fact that while other Northeastern states like Assam, Nagaland and Manipur have not only been immediately vocal, but also productive in their literary output of depicting the resistance, trauma and suffering of their people, Mizoram has been more reticent till of late, though it did give vent to collective trauma and suffering at the time of their dark history, through several song compositions. A telling note touched upon is of how such writers “who write of human sufferings, particularly of sufferings that are part of their own history, xvi   Margaret Ch. Zama

tread the thin line between fiction and non-fiction, and run the risk of projecting a one-sided approach”. The chapter on ‘Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space’ from Sarangadhar Baral depicts the ethnic variety of the folksongs of several tribal groups of the Northeast while projecting the universal appeal inherent in them, despite their distinct geo-cultural localities. The ecological space is not only to do with nature but also centred in ‘an unselfing’ or emptying of the human ego long practiced by many other cultures such as the Native Americans, Latin Americans, Australian Aborigines as well as Taoists, Zen Buddhists and others. The chapter laments that the city-centric modernist consciousness had long “discredited the whole ethos of nineteenth century romantic thought, which in our crisis-ridden environments necessitates our rethinking its discrete sympathies and kindly effects”. Yet we also learn from our ethnic lyrics that our environment shapes and forms our experience, and that it is this that helps in recovering native whole strengths. Desmond L. Kharmawphlang in ‘The Phawar in Context: The Politics of Tradition and Continuity’ writes about a unique Khasi oral tradition which, because of its very flexibility and “wonderful play of imagination, exaggeration, hyperbole and metaphorical representations” is not only a tradition, but an artistic performative production that is, today, appropriated and applied to validate various aspects of Khasi culture. Since the phawar is indeed considered a tradition unique to the Khasis, attempts to identify and locate some other similar folk tradition of India for comparison could prove to be a difficult job. The chapter writer is a renowned folklorist who strongly stakes this claim about the phawar, that it is “the one singular folklore genre which completely identifies the Khasi community”. Samplings of the phawar in the chapter is taken from wide-ranging contexts that span the traditional as well as the contemporary, from the age old Khasi tradition of archery shooting, to politics, to verbal duelling between the sexes, to even those expressing admiration for the football hero Baichung. This changing role of the phawar denotes its flexibility and versatility in mediating “between society and the by-products that culture as a socially derived phenomenon sets off”. The proliferation of modern Manipuri short stories is aptly termed as ‘cascade’ in the chapter by Tayenjam Bijoykumar Singh entitled ‘Some Petite, Some Powerful: The Cascade of Manipuri Short Stories’ which traces the history of the development of Manipuri fiction from

Introduction    xvii

ancient times. Like all other cultures, the oral tradition of story-telling predominated at first until the advent of their script sometime in the eighth century AD which saw the emergence of a new form of storytelling through the written text. The writer terms the rich cascade of Manipuri short stories “a movement of some sort” and points out that it was post-Second World War, which saw the emergence of this genre with renewed vigour, which today provide “valuable insights into the lives of the people and prevailing conditions in Manipur for analysing Manipuri society at large”. The undermining of old ways through education and modernization, effected particularly by the entry of Christianity, is an experience shared by many tribal cultures of the Northeast. Temsurenla’s submission on the Ao-Naga experience is seen in ‘Culture Makes People What They Are As Much As People Make Culture: Religion As a Factor of Cultural Change among the Ao Nagas’. One detects a telling point in the chapter which is the delegation of the Ao language to second place after English in church services, conventions and conferences in their own homeland, where songs are sung in English rather than in Ao and “it is often considered old fashioned to be seen singing an Ao song by the present Ao generation. There is an assimilation of other languages into the Ao language leading to a loss of the ‘Ao-ness’.” The ambiguity of lamentation for cultural loss brought about by a new religion, while willingly embracing it at the same time, finds echo in many writings of other tribal communities of the Northeast, so too the efforts at recovery without compromising the new faith. Rakhee Kalita Moral in ‘Beyond Borders and Between the Hills: Voices and Visions from Karbi Anglong or, Whose Hills Are These Anyway?’ echoes similar sentiments and views expressed in Parag M. Sarma’s chapter. She writes of the strong need to factor in new voices “that aim at alleviating current hostilities and envision a mood of collaboration rather than confrontation in the troubled northeast India”. She projects Rongbong Terang’s Assamese novella Jaak Heruwa Pokhi (Birds Breaking Rank) as a case in point that focuses on culturally displaced communities within the nation. The politics of exclusion among the various ethnic groups of the Karbi Anglong district of Assam revives questions of migration and shifting identities which generate a climate of violence in the region. The ongoing formation of a distinct literature of the Karbis appears to be the result of the increasing preoccupation with the search for identity by a historically ancient community of Assam, and this separate emerging literature has its first xviii   Margaret Ch. Zama

Karbi novel in the Karbi language, dating as recent as 2004. It is called Kanthop Tang Angne (Bitter Hatred) by Lunse Timung. It is only after reading this short but powerful chapter that one appreciates what one first thought to be a rather cumbersome title. For indeed, anyone living in close proximity with the violence of the Northeast has learnt to look beyond the man-made borders and between the many hills, only to ask sadly, if not cynically, whose hills are these anyway? In his submission ‘An Assessment of Northeastern Sensibility in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Mamang Dai’s River Poems’, Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal questions the veracity and spontaneity of the sensibility depicted by Desai in her work as compared to what he considers the genuine depiction of sensibility in Mamang Dai, the argument being that it is not possible for a writer like Desai who is from a totally different background and culture to empathize with the location and people. Such a stance taken is no doubt vulnerable and open to contestation, but the point of literary discourse is to allow space to views other than our own. In this connection, there is also the related consideration of writers indulging in creative writing per se, and those who do so, but with the added burden of being the spokesperson for a community as well, sometimes out of choice, but sometimes out of a necessity. Monalisa Changkija, a well-known poet and journalist from Nagaland as well as editor of the widely read Nagaland Page, provides a searing testimony of the ‘Northeast Outside the Newspaper Pages’. Since the role of a journalist leaves no room for imaginative free play and the factoring in of the subjectivity of an insider, her chapter liberally highlights some of her very poignant, and at times, satirical and bitter portrayals of personal experiences through the medium of her poetry. The writer, by profession a journalist, makes no attempt to wear the garb of an academic nor does she make pretence of critiquing her own poems here as her thoughts are focused elsewhere—on a freewheeling, philosophical rambling of what life to her is like in the Northeast. She is forthright in admitting that “newspaper pages are the medium, not the message and no newspaper can adequately convey the message of the Northeast”. This volume of academic leaning is enriched immensely by the inclusion of this chapter which in itself, is reflective of the various genres of writing presently emerging from the region, and it is also representative of voices other than the ones already touched upon by the other writers. Part III of the volume: Caste–Tribe Paradigm Beyond the Northeast has two chapters which provide a sampling of the discourse that

Introduction    xix

is emanating out of similar contexts in other parts of what one may term as ‘mainland India’. As the subtitle denotes, these two chapters have deliberately been included and placed in isolation as it were, in Part III, and it will be noticed that direct references to the Northeast in the chapters are absent for the intention of the chapter writers is not to provide a comparative study. Their chapters were invited to represent other dimensions to the theme of the dynamics of culture, society and politics in writings about the marginalized in other parts of India other than the Northeast region. Hemendra Singh Chandalia in his submission entitled ‘Culture As a Site of Struggle: A Study of the Oral Literature of the Bhils of Rajasthan’ makes an interesting point when he writes that though culture defines its character by its identity with religion, it is not so with the Bhils who follow different religions, but share a common culture. He observes: “Their faith, as other things in life, has also been a part of the process of interaction, assimilation and reflection. Their literature is a rich repository of their cultural practices and tells a lot about their life style.” He also notes that the literature of the Bhils is available mostly in verse form which is part and parcel of their oral tradition, and that “the oral often expresses counter hegemonic tendencies subverting the asymmetric social norms” of the written and formal discourse which is dominated by power and hierarchy. Joseph Bara’s scholarly chapter ‘Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur: The Medium of Christianity’ is an eye-opener in many ways for it sets the record straight as it were, from and for, the other side. The essay gives a convincing case study of the Mundas and Uraons of Chhotanagpur, examining how the term ‘tribe’ was shaped under British colonialism, and how tribes of India responded to the conceptual cultural imposition. A crucial point made is about the appropriation of Christianity by the tribals for the protection of their distinct tribal identity, contrary to the belief that the impact of Christianity subdued or deactivated them. The tribal leaders employed the new religion “not only to assert for immediate tribal rights, but also used it at a higher pedestal to contest the imposed concept of ‘tribe’ and construct a new one”. It is hoped that all the chapters compiled in this volume are appreciated for their valuable insights, and will provide food for thought to scholars and researchers interested in the area of cultural and literary studies of Northeast India.

xx   Margaret Ch. Zama

PART I

Building Literary Paradigms for Northeast Discourse

The Concept of Society    1

2   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

1 Articulating Marginality Emerging Literatures from Northeast India* Kailash C. Baral

Is marginality a feature of literature, and if so, in what way(s)? Does it underline the author’s location, his/her identity and sociocultural background? Does it connote a political conundrum identifying the relationship between the centre and its periphery? Or is it about other differentiated markers such as ethnic or linguistic identities and the politics about them? Too many questions, too few answers; nonetheless the questions cross our minds leading to an understanding that literary marginality is not a single thing. We understand that literature aspires towards universality in representing the human condition; in its coming to being it responds to the here and now of our existence, and in its becoming it nourishes a transcendental aspiration, an aspiration beyond existence. The emerging literatures from Northeast are variously critiqued as ethnic writing, lacking in history and tradition, and often subjected to the virulent diatribe that it lacks in aesthetic virtuosity. These critical opinions are at best paternalistic and at worst, smack of ignorance in understanding the societies and cultures of the Northeast. Contemporary writings from Northeast either in English or vernaculars aspire towards a vision beyond the narrow ethnic groove and represent a shared history. In these writings, the cultural memory is reprocessed in that the intensity of feeling overflows the labour of technique and craft. The evolution of this literature as a domain has * Keynote Address at the National Seminar on ‘Dynamics of Culture, Society and Literature: Emerging Literatures from North East’ organized by IIAS, Shimla, and Department of English, Mizoram University, on 10–11The March 2009. of Society    3 Concept

its freshness as well as rootedness in age old traditions and therefore could be situated outside the Marg–Desi dichotomy. The Marg–Desi divide of course draws a distinction between ‘Great Traditions’ and the ‘Little Traditions’ in literary articulation, but could be extended to the diverse ways of its conceptualization. The modern scholars suggest that very often both constructs overlap and sometimes a local tradition could be pan-Indian whereas a classical tradition might not, as in the case of dance forms and classical music. If, at a preliminary level, the Classical or Marg refers to stable, elite and immemorial traditions, the Desi implies traditions that are local, ephemeral and lacking in historical depth. This divide is further discussed under such labels as: national versus local, cosmopolitan versus vernacular, elite versus popular and so on. Any analysis based on this division is of historical interest, whereas a local tradition could be reimagined as pan-Indian and some contemporary practices could be considered as classical or part of the great tradition. Further elaboration on this divide would also mean that a vernacular literature that has gone through the process of sanskritization and followed its literary genres is closer to the classical tradition, whereas the literary tradition that has grown indigenously may not be part of that tradition. Such an implication could be valid in the context of the emerging literatures from Northeast India. Though Assamese and Manipuri literatures have gone through some processes of sanskritization (though not fully immersed into it), they also have a body of literature that has been outside this tradition. It is therefore pertinent to say that literary writings from Northeast have a plural signification; sometimes genre forms have been adopted from the Indian classical tradition and sometimes these forms have grown outside of it, mostly drawn from the English literary tradition. Tilottoma Misra is emphatic in driving home this point, saying that “[s]ignificantly, for mainland India, the region known as the ‘North-East’ has never had the privilege of being at the centre of epistemic enunciation … the imagination of the ‘mainland’ has even today not overgrown those constructs of the mysterious ‘other’”.1 In this context, what is important is the way a writer from the Northeast perceives his/her position vis-à-vis the mainland. Temsula Ao, an important creative voice from the region, puts across the point tellingly, that their ‘otherness’ has helped them to overcome their isolation once their feelings and thoughts are textualized, inscribed in written form in forging similarities of world views with other cultures; yet the uniqueness of 4   Kailash C. Baral

their cultural differences has not disappeared.2 In spite of this assertion, marginality defines the essence of that ‘otherness’. Marginality becomes a defining trope that signifies this literature’s location as well as its reception by mainstream critics. It is for this reason that it becomes pertinent to consider the socio-historical-cultural conditions within which a writer from Northeast lives and writes while bringing into his/her writing the unique personal-cultural experience and sensibility. However, literary marginality, against the grain, contests and problematizes some of the universalistic assumptions of literature while factoring in and often valorizing the unique ethnic and cultural experience that needs to be critically evaluated. Emerging out of the colonial–ethnographic representation and seeking consolidation of ethnic and cultural identities in postcolonial times, the writers from Northeast India in their works describe themselves and their cultures, express their views and ideas, feelings and emotions, thereby signifying their cultural and ethnic particularity. Although individualistic in approach and narrative style, the emerging writers also collectively represent what could be called the ethos of the region that underscores their shared history and political destiny. Even if the very nomenclature ‘Northeast’ is subject to contestation, we can talk about it as a given in geopolitical terms. In the cartographic imaginary, Northeast means many things to many people—those who live in it, those who know and write about it, and those who read about it. This land mass has existed for centuries through its legends, myths, stories, poetry, songs, dances, arts and crafts as well as through its conflicting history and moribund politics. This territory is ancient and modern, mythic and contemporary. Temsula Ao (2007), in the epigraph to her work Songs from the Other Life, writes: To All Who can still Sense the earth Touch the wind Talk to the rain And embrace the sun In every rainbow (Songs from the Other Life).3

Her words bear the indelible mark of the people and the terra firma they live on that can best be described in the words of natural elements. It is not a dedication to humanity in general, but to the people Articulating Marginality    5

with whom she shares every bit of her existence. Similarly, Kynpham Nongkynrih ruminates: This land is old, too old and withered for life to be easy. (The Ancient Rocks of Cherra)4

Esther Syiem also echoes similar sentiments: Mylliem of my ancestors, Need I affiliate to you all over again? As in your men and in your women I find an answering call in the aroma of smoked earth in them and the unbeaten slant of a life that writes itself back into my present. (Mylliem)5

In these lines, the poets mix memory with myth in signifying the land, its smell; the wind that blows over it and the rain that beats its hills and forests. The land of the ancestors becomes a place of longing and belonging. The people who call this territory their home define the uniqueness and diversity of their cultures, customs and social practices through their oral and written literatures. Northeast in many ways is a land of paradoxes. In the congeries of its complexities and contradictions, Northeast is not only a territory of diverse people and cultures but also an idea constantly evolving in its making. If the past has a rootedness in harmony among communities and cultures, the present is a reality of profound disaffection. The violence that stalks this land is part of everyday life that adds to the fragility of the human condition. In spite of all this, life goes on. What is edifying in the face of it all is the call for the humane aspect of life. It is true that creative writers seek a different world in their writing. However, the reality around them doesn’t disappear but only gets transformed in that the creative stirrings within them seek words to be articulated, either in vernacular or in English, in trying to hold together and give meaning to fragmentation and disintegration, transforming the real into an imaginary realm. Needless to say, all genres of creative writing collect the raw material from life’s fount, be it poetry, short story or a fictional work come to life in the unfolding of the world of words, in order to give meaning to 6   Kailash C. Baral

life while connecting the individual to the community, to the world. Although contradictions, ambiguities and ambivalences are part of creative writing to hold together, the home and the world becomes the most redeeming feature of literature. Instead of attempting a survey of the works from different states of Northeast, it would be useful to discuss major thematic strands that characterize the writings from the region. A few years ago, I edited a collection of short stories in translation for the Sahitya Akademi and what impressed me was the diversity of themes that “characterize different aspects of life such as innocence, violence, humour, corruption, romantic love and the supernatural. The variety of representations in spite of gaps and a sense of incompleteness conjure up creative ideas about the land and its people.”6 Some of these themes are still relevant when we critically discuss the formation of Northeast literature. In the context of emerging literatures from Northeast, two interconnected factors are important: colonial legacy in the form of ethnographies and the ethnocentric imaginary that is the driving force behind contemporary writing. These two factors intersect colonial identity, construction and resistances to it. Further, significant in this context is that the past is an integral part of the present where the oral informs the written in that the creative writers redefine ethnic-cultural identities in reprocessing cultural memory. The creative energy that moves contemporary writing attempts to rewrite the history of communities. Ao offers the best example of this reinvented cultural identity: STONE-PEOPLE The worshippers Of unknown, unseen Spirits Of trees and forests, Of stones and rivers, Believers of souls And its varied forms, Its sojourn here and passage across the water Into the hereafter. STONE-PEOPLE, Savage and sage Who sprang out of LUNGTEROK, Was the birth adult when the stone broke? Or are the Stone-People yet to come of age? (Stone-People from Lungterok)7 Articulating Marginality    7

Origin myths and belief systems continue to dominate even fictional works. Adi creation myths, ritual journeys and shamans in Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam come alive taking us to a world that once was. Not sticking to a single narrative mode, opening up her text to plural voices and narrative forms, Dai conveys the complexity of the painful process of change in Arunachal Pradesh. A disillusioned young man, Larik, gives voice to his frustration in the context of development of his region: “This one terrible road is all that they have managed for us in fifty years! And what does it bring us? Outsiders. Thieves. Disease.”8 The same sentiment is expressed by Robin Ngangom and Kynpham Nongkynrih, editors of the volume Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the Northeast, that there is “the uneasy coexistence of paradoxical worlds” and of the parallel existence of “the folk and the westernized, virgin forests and car-choked streets”9 in the Northeast. The stonepeople certainly have come of age to express themselves in words. We know that a creative writer is sensitive to the changes while fashioning his/her work that intersects history, memory and identity. Desmond Kharmawphlang sings of the past and connects it to the present: Long ago, the men went beyond the Surma to trade, to bring home women to nurture their seed. Later came the British With gifts of bullets, blood-money And religion. A steady conquest to the sound of Guns began. Quite suddenly, the British left. There was peace, the sweet Smell of wet leaves again. (The Conquest)10

In the absence of authentic histories of most communities in Northeast, the creative writers have taken it upon themselves to be cultural historians. Their work provides us the resource for writing alternative histories. Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam reconstructs a bit of history. Her account of the first encounter with the British in 1911 is well documented in which a British political officer and a number of sepoys and coolies were killed by Adis in the village of Komsing. Following the 8   Kailash C. Baral

encounter, the British launched the punitive expedition in 1912. These incidents from history are recounted along with the changes that have swept Arunachal Pradesh in recent years. These historical events are woven into a narrative that also includes personal stories of love and loss. The British are alluded to in many ways in the creative writings from Northeast. But the most enduring feature of British colonization in this region is the spread of Christianity that finds mention quite often. Christianity, a powerful force, has deeply touched the lives of many communities in the Northeast. The advent of Christianity in the region is an important historical event, for the missionaries have been instrumental in giving the hill tribes their script as well as educating them. What emerged from this historical phase is a cultural dynamics that has engaged the creative writers in a quest to know who they are and in what way their culture is predicated. The influence of Christianity is viewed with some ambivalence by some poets, but its contribution to the shaping of the ethnic and cultural imaginary cannot be underestimated. If Christian values are valorized in many writings, the spread of the religion itself is questioned, for the followers of this religion have paid a price too. Ao writes: Then came a tribe of strangers Into our primal territories Armed with only a Book and Promises of a land called Heaven. Declaring that our Trees and Mountains Rocks and Rivers were no Gods And that our songs and stories Nothing but tedious primitive nonsense. We listened in confusion To the new stories and too soon Allowed our knowledge of other days To be trivialized into taboo. (Blood of Other Days)11

Various forces have corrupted the so-called innocence that has been a feature of the people in the region. The hills never remained the same after the British left. Even Christian piety, honesty and charity could not withstand the disabling effects of corruption at all levels. Desmond Kharmawphlang in ‘A Happy Journey for Mr. Ta En’12 narrates about the official corruption and how it eats into the very fabric Articulating Marginality    9

of the society. The lure of easy money in violence-ridden lands with a seize mentality has promoted drug addiction as well as the spread of AIDS. This has come out forcefully in Yumlembam Ibomcha’s story ‘A Fragmentary End’.13 In another story, Vanneihtluanga, a writer from Mizoram, talks of corruption, political power and the death of a child.14 All these themes are very well captured in Ao’s stories of loss and indignity in the volume These Hills Called Home. Across the genre, in the emerging literatures from Northeast, there is a seeking for bonding in the shared experience of pain and loss. The common man in Northeast is painfully caught in the mayhem of violence produced by unending militancy, inter-ethnic feuds and the oppressive measures of the state. While Kynpham Nongkynrih writes about the impossible dream of an indigenous tribe, To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go… (Play of the Absurd)15

echoing the motto of a hill tribe of one million fearful of extinction rising in insurrection against a nation of one billion, Robin Singh writes about the pain of that insurrection: First came the scream of the dying in a bad dream, then the radio report, and a news paper: six short dead, twenty-five houses razed, sixteen beheaded with hands tied behind their backs inside a church As the days crumbled, and the victors And their victims grew in number, I hardened inside my thickening hide, until I lost my tenuous humanity. (Native Land)16

If Robin Singh’s lines give a graphic picture of the mayhem, Saratchandra Thiyam alludes to the myth of Orpheus and Pluto, and wonders what would happen had those guns been in the hands of Orpheus: Except for lifeless bodies lying around unconcerned. The tens of thousands of bullets emerging

10   Kailash C. Baral

From the strumming by one index finger Heap layer upon layer on Charon’s boat the dead. If these guns were entrusted to Orpheus’s hand Will the innocent ones journey to Pluto’s side? (Gun)17

Troubled by mindless violence, the sensitive hearts of these poets express their pain and anguish in articulating what happens around them. Keisham Priyokumar attempts to figure out the sorrow of innocent people who are yet to make any sense of inter-group feuds. His story ‘One Night’ powerfully depicts the Kuki–Naga conflict that generates suspicion and anger between two good friends belonging to two warring communities. Although they regain their humanity in their shared pain and understanding, the psychological scar of losing one’s near and dear ones remains. Temsula Ao takes on all sides in telling the stories about the so-called victors and victims. Conflicts of all kinds throw up heroes and villains, creating new community lores and legends, jokes and stories. Most of her stories in the collection These Hills Called Home deal with the Naga insurgency and its consequences. Stories such as ‘The Jungle Major’, ‘The Curfew Man’ and ‘An Old Man Remembers’ tellingly throw light on different aspects of the conflict and how ordinary people have dealt with extraordinary situations. ‘The Last Song’ is a gory tale of Apenyo, the young singer who was raped and killed along with her mother by a young army captain and his men in an orgy of violence. The story ‘Shadow’ matches ‘The Last Song’ in its gory detail in which Hoito, an underground commander on his way to China, kills Imli, the innocent young recruit, the son of the second in command of the underground army because he hates him being forced on the group. Ao makes a point that acts that are unethical and inhuman would always invite retributive justice. Both Hoito and the army captain became insane. While Hoito met a terrible end, the army captain is still paying for his crime languishing in a mental hospital somewhere. To her, if the Indian army in most cases used raw force and was ruthless, the underground outfit was not free from atrocities on its own people either. In spite of the discipline, the members of the underground are also vulnerable to human weaknesses such as jealousy, hatred and greed. On both sides we have manipulators as well as dreamers; in such conflicts, there are no winners, only victims. Bimal Singha’s story ‘Basan’s Grandmother’18 from Tripura tells about the bonding between a non-tribal grandmother and a tribal Articulating Marginality    11

child who finally meet their death with a single spear piercing through the two of them. He asks: “What is the colour of the blood of the two that smeared their bodies? Is it different? What is the identity of the victims once they are dead?” We cannot of course rationalize the import of the story in a situation where even the life of its author was cruelly snatched away by the same hand that took the lives of Basan and his grandmother. The human cost of such conflicts is enormous as it leaves behind survivors scarred both in mind and soul. As violence breeds violence, there is hardly any relief from violence that has become a way of life in Northeast. New narratives have emerged from Northeast that may be called place novels to capture the cultural experiences of people such as Dhruba Hazarika’s A Bowstring Winter and Siddhartha Deb’s The Point of Return. Besides the ethnocentric imaginary and the politics of identity, themes such as nationhood, migration, exile and gender also prominently figure in some of the writings from Northeast. As we move ahead, looking forward to a future, one needs to pause and reflect on what the future is going to be like. Considering the trauma and the tragedy of the present, I don’t find a better way of visualizing the future than reposing my faith in the words of Temsula Ao: The inheritors of such a history have a tremendous responsibility to sift through the collective experience and make sense of the impact by the struggle on their lives. Our racial wisdom has always extolled the virtue of human beings living at peace with themselves and in harmony with nature and with our neighbours.19

She calls upon the emerging writers to rewrite and re-embrace this vision in weaving it into the fabric of life and writing. Her thoughts could anchor us in hope and guide us to the future. A grandmother holding the hand of her granddaughter in the poem ‘Soul Bird’20 says after seeing the soul of the child’s mother among the stars: “It is over/Come, let us go home now.” Ibomcha echoes the sentiment in welcoming the young son not to return to the sky, but to return to this earth, to home: Boy You are a star this moment And for tomorrow The early morning sun. This storm will last only awhile, Come riding the storm.

12   Kailash C. Baral

Tomorrow’s dawn Is waiting for you Do not go back. (Star)21

The riders of the storm one day will certainly make it home; another sunrise will welcome the little girl and the boy to a new life, a new world. Together they will write the song of hope, the song for a better tomorrow.

Notes and References   1. Tilottoma Misra (ed.), The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India: Poetry and Essays (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), xviii.   2. Temsula Ao, ‘Writing Orality’, in Soumen Sen and Desmond Kharmawphlang (eds), Orality and Beyond (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2007), 109.   3. Temsula Ao, Songs from the Other Life (Pune: Grassroots, 2007).   4. Kynpham Nongkynrih, ‘The Ancient Rocks of Cherra’, The NEHU Journal 1, No. 2 (2003): 134.   5. Esther Syiem, ‘Mylliem’, Ibid., 138.   6. K.C. Baral (ed.), Earth Songs: Stories from Northeast India (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2005), xii.   7. Temsula Ao, ‘Stone-People from Lungterok’, The NEHU Journal 1, No. 2 (2003): 121.   8. Mamang Dai, The Legends of Pensam (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006), 156.   9. K.S. Nongkynrih and R.S. Ngangom (eds), Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from Northeast (Shillong: NEHU, 2003), ix. 10. Desmond Kharmawphlang, ‘The Conquest’, The NEHU Journal 1, No. 2 (2003): 125. 11. Temsula Ao, ‘Blood of Other Days’, Songs from the Other Life, 66. 12. Desmond Kharmawphlang, ‘A Happy Journey for Mr. Ta En’, in Baral, Earth Songs, 35–40. 13. Yumlembam Ibomcha, ‘A Fragmentary End’, in Baral, Earth Songs, 113–124. 14. Vanneihtluanga, ‘Innocence Wears another Look’, in Baral, Earth Songs, 1–6. 15. Kynpham Nongkynrih, ‘Play of the Absurd’, in Nongkynrih and Ngangom, Contemporary Poetry, 162. 16. Robin Singh, ‘Native Land’, in Nongkynrih and Ngangom, Contemporary Poetry,154. 17. Saratchandra Thiyam, ‘Gun’, in Nongkynrih and Ngangom, Contemporary Poetry, 106. 18. Bimal Singha, ‘Basan’s Grandmother’, in Baral, Earth Songs, 65–76. 19. Temsula Ao, These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone (New Delhi: Zubaan/ Penguin, 2006), x–xi. 20. Temsula Ao, ‘Soul Bird’, Songs from the Other Life,15. 21. Ibomcha, ‘Star’, in Ao, Songs from the Other Life, 87.

Articulating Marginality    13

2 Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India Tilottoma Misra

The concept of the written word, especially in its printed form, being equated to modernity and progress, and the ‘oral’ being associated with a primitive, traditional, magical world, is a Western one. It can be traced back to the European Enlightenment when writing was viewed as a vehicle of syllogistic reasoning and as an instrument for consolidation of state power. The primacy given to the written/printed word in European culture, therefore, is mainly because of its association with dominance and power. Colonialism further helped to strengthen this contentious view that orality signified a mentality that was fundamentally different from that of the literate societies. The justification for the ‘civilizing mission’ in the colonies was also grounded on such a perception of difference between orality and literacy.1 Viewed from the perspective of the colonial subjects, the written documents and agreements of the foreign rulers were oppressive instruments with a ‘coercive agenda’, and consequently the written/printed words were invested with ‘frighteningly protean qualities’.2 The subaltern subjects who could not comprehend the meaning of much that was contained in those written inscriptions in the documents, interpreted the inscriptions themselves as emblematic of colonial power.3 Writing, according to recent studies, was considered magical in the oral culture of peasants and non-literate communities.4 This association of ‘wonderment’ with the written word is the staple of colonial portrayal of ‘primitive’ communities. The colonial ethnographer often 14   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

represented the colonized as being bedazzled by the superior technological advancement of the colonizers and the written records were considered to be the most potent emblems of power. But, this attempt to bedazzle the non-literate often misfired. There are stories about people responding violently to the perceived threat from the magical power of the written word which an enemy tries to use against them. In one of her fictional works published recently, Mamang Dai, a writer from Arunachal Pradesh, gives a moving account of the story of the massacre of the British Political Officer Noel Williamson and members of his group in an Adi village in 1911.5 Dai refers to a possible ‘communication gap’ that could have led to the terrible crime: Everyone knew it was the fault of the cowardly men who accompanied the officer. They had laughed in the face of the poor villager and said that he was a wild beast eaten up with disease who would never receive the attention or sympathy of the white officer. Why should anybody insult a man who was not looking for sympathy? Why should anybody look at a man with disgust when he was a man of the land and the other was a visitor trying to conquer the villages with lies and bags of gifts? Why should anybody who had spat on a man’s face live? It was only a matter of time before the migluns learned that all men were not afraid of guns and loud voices.

This version of the story gives a convincing interpretation of the cause that might have provoked such terrible anger in a fiercely independent people whose dignity had been hurt by insensitive remarks made by aliens. Other accounts of the event refer to a rumour that was said to have been circulated by one of the couriers in the British officer’s retinue that a letter which he was carrying had sinister connotations. The letter was inside an envelope with a black border and the black colour was supposed to signify the imminent destruction of the villagers of Komsing. The terrified villagers decided that the destruction of the intruders was necessary for their own survival. In the massacre that followed, 47 people, including Noel Williamson, his colleague Dr Gregorson and nearly all the members of their party were killed. This was followed by a punitive expedition, the Abor Expedition of 1911–1912, commanded by Major-General Sir H. Bower, which carried out a massive campaign against the recalcitrant tribe. The British forces raided the villages, captured those whom they considered guilty and executed or deported them. These events left such indelible impressions on the psyche of the people that till this Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India    15

day the village rhapsodists—in their mournful lyrics which have been so effectively captured in Mamang Dai’s book—continue to evoke them as if they are a part of the racial memory. The attribution of magical powers to writing is, however, only one of the ways of understanding the complex nature of the relationship between the oral and the written in non-Western cultures. It must not automatically be presumed, says Ajay Skaria that “the valorization of writing in non-literate societies must necessarily be a consequence of incomprehension and wonderment in the face of an external stimulus”.6 The primacy given to the written word over the spoken in European culture (though Jacques Derrida has offered strong arguments against it in his Of Grammatology) is not always applicable to classical Indian culture where the spoken word often acquires an exalted position as that which is infinite, indestructible and fluid. The written, on the other hand, is associated with the fixity of material existence and consequently, destructible. However, these attitudes are also not without a certain degree of ambiguity, and as Sudipta Kaviraj says, “towards writing, the Indian tradition shows a strangely complex combination of deference and mistrust”.7 This mistrust of the written word is as much evident as its valorization in the Indian response to colonial modernity. In fact, resistance to the imposition of colonial rule often expressed itself through attempts to destroy these symbols of power during the peasant rebellions in different parts of the country. There are many references in the historical literature of the colonial period in Assam, about instances of such mistrust of the colonial project of documentation. One such incident has been mentioned by Gunabhiram Barua in one of his ‘Notes’ on Assam history:8 One day, Swargdeo [King] Chandrakanta Singha had the following conversation with Scott Sahib [David Scott]: Swargadeo: Sahib, why do you read and write so much? You can as well settle matters orally. Sahib: Swargdeo, one can do things orally. But writing retains things for the future. Swargadeo: How strange! Is it not possible to remember things? Sahib: The Swargadeo has come down from swarga [heaven], so he remembers everything. We are mortals. Mortals do not remember. So, we write.”

16   Tilottoma Misra

A medieval chronicle of Assam (buranji [historical chronicle]) contains the story of how messages from an arrogant ruler from a neighbouring kingdom were interpreted by the Ahom royalty with scant regard for the written communication. In the sixteenth century, during the reign of the powerful Koch king Naranarayan, whose kingdom Kamatapur was situated near the western borders of the Ahom territory, some messengers were sent from the Koch king to the Ahom king Sukhampha. The message, which was obviously meant to test the strength of the Ahom king, was contained in a letter, but the objects which were sent as ‘gifts’ together with the letter, were meant to convey more sinister insinuations. The messengers delivered the letter and the ‘gifts’ to the Ahom prince who was entrusted by the monarch to interpret the messages. The prince chose to disregard the written missive, but in his interpretation of the insulting messages which the gifts were supposed to convey, the Ahom prince displayed a shrewd intelligence which matched the slyness of the sender. The oral reply that was sent to the Koch king was full of dark and ominous humour. Regarding the written message, the Ahom prince treated it with utmost contempt. He ordered the official interpreter to ‘read’ it in total darkness, as if to prove the superior intellectual prowess of his men. Then, to add insult to injury, he even rewarded his interpreter for being able to ‘read’ the mischievous contents of the letter without actually seeing them. The Ahom prince’s parting command to the Koch messengers was: “Go and tell your king that if he expects anything from the Ahom Swargadeo he should send a proper letter through his agent.”9 Oral communities, it has been argued, began to attribute ‘a quality of lack’ to their orality when they came into contact with colonial writing with its coercive power.10 Many such communities in Northeast India, which were living in close proximity with the people of the plains and had active political and commercial intercourse with them, were in constant need of interlocutors and interpreters to convey verbal and written communication between the hills and the plains. Francis Jenkins, Agent to the Governor General in the Northeastern Frontier, writing in 1832 in his private journal, has made the following comment on the Khasis: “The Cosseahs are ignorant of the use of letters, as far as their own language is concerned, although some of the chiefs retain Bengalee Mohurrees for the purpose of carrying on their correspondence with the public officers and inhabitants of the plains.”11

Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India    17

The growing awareness that possessing the art of writing is in many ways more empowering than oral communication is evident in the construction of a set of myths by the different oral communities of this region about the loss of the technique of writing in some ancient times when there was no difference between oral and literate communities.12 The Ahom chronicles and the historical records of the colonial period mention that the Ahom kings used to maintain a considerably large establishment of official interpreters (Katakis) to maintain communication with the various linguistic groups in the hill kingdoms surrounding their empire. During the initial years of their rule in Assam even the British were dependent on the services of these Katakis of the Ahom kings in order to maintain relationship with the neighbouring communities.13 The Ahom kings, through their large establishment of messengers, interpreters, readers and officers, maintained a robust multilingualism in their administrative dealings. Besides the Assamese language, which itself was born out of a creative fusion of multiple cultural elements present in the region, the Ahom administration also made liberal use of Persian, Hindustani and Bengali in their written communications with other speech groups in the surrounding regions.14 This ‘robustly polyglot character’15 of the Assamese culture, however, seems to have gradually disappeared with the coming of the print culture. In their attempt to bring the Northeastern region with its bewildering heterogeneity of tongues within a manageable system of government, the British tried to steamroll the differences between the varieties of tongues spoken in the region. The Bengali language with which the British administration in India had already become familiar during the preceding century of colonial rule in Bengal was initially imposed on Assam on the erroneous understanding that the varieties of the Assamese language that are spoken in Assam were merely corrupt dialects of the Bengali. F. Jenkins had advised the government in a written communication that instead of upholding a ‘corrupt dialect’ the colonial government should “endeavour to introduce pure Bengalee, and to render this Province as far as possible an integral part of the great country to which that language belongs, and to render available to Assam the literature of Bengal”.16 This agenda of ‘integrating’ a region with the ‘mainstream’ by imposing a language and a literature which is totally different from the spoken language of the people is one of the characteristic strategies of all modern empire-builders, and the story did not come to an end in 18   Tilottoma Misra

Northeast India with the end of colonialism. History has been witness to the social tension that had erupted in the region in the nineteenth century in the wake of the imposition of the Bengali as the language of the court and the medium of instruction in vernacular schools of Assam. The struggle which began in the mid-nineteenth century under the leadership of Anandaram Dhekiyal Phukan and the first group of Assamese intellectuals who had received English education, continued for almost a century as a very sensitive issue that formed the basis of the identity struggle of the Assamese people in the last two centuries.17 The American Baptist missionaries who had set up their mission in Sibsagar with a printing press from which they brought out the first Assamese journal, Orunodoi (1847), gave active support to the cause of re-instatement of the Assamese language as the vernacular of Assam. Supporting the argument put forward by Dhekiyal Phukan in his A Few Remarks on the Assamese Language and on Vernacular Education in Assam (1855) that if education is to reach the masses it must be imparted through the mother tongue, the American Baptist missionaries took the initiative in printing text books and journals in the Assamese language. In this way, the initial efforts of colonial rule to impose Bengali as the print language in Assam were foiled. Recent research on the effect of colonialism on the vernacular languages of India has focused on the creation of ‘laboratory languages’ that were meant to facilitate the development of print capitalism during the colonial times.18 It has been shown that people in different parts of the country have been speaking multiple varieties of the same language which may not be reflected in the standardized version that became the print language. The hierarchical status of these sub-languages reflects the internal politics of language. The process of standardization also prioritized the speeches of those regions which were the seats of colonial administration or of missionary establishments. So, the Ao-Naga language received the priority as the print language of the Naga Hills because it was the language of the region where the American Baptist missionaries first established their mission in the Naga Hills. Similarly, though there were 11 major Khasi dialects, it was the Ka Ktien Sohra, the spoken language of the Cherra region that acquired recognition as the dialect chosen for the printed books in Khasi because it was the language chosen by the Welsh missionaries who adopted the Roman script for the Khasi language and published Christian literature in that language. Cherra was also the seat of the colonial administration in Northeastern India until the capital Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India    19

was shifted to Shillong. The appearance of print culture in the Mizo language was also linked with the missionary enterprise of creating a viable script based on the Roman alphabet and choosing the Lusei dialect, the most widely spoken amongst at least ten other groups of dialects spoken in the region, for the purpose of literary production. The pioneering efforts of Lt. Col. Thomas H. Lewin, a British officer posted in the Mizo Hills, and of the two Christian missionaries J.H. Lorrain and F.W. Salvidge resulted in the Lusei dialect being developed into the print language of the Mizo people.19 The effect of print culture on the standardization of languages and scripts has been discussed in several recent works on the subject.20 Printers and technicians have often steamrolled their way in matters of script and orthography and authors had no choice but to comply with the modifications carried out by them. The shape and structure of the modern Asamiya printed script were decided by the technicians at the foundries in Calcutta and Serampore in the nineteenth century. The old Asamiya lipi was considerably different from the Bangla script in several ways. But, the basic similarity between the two scripts led to the standardization of the Asamiya script to a form that was almost identical to that of Bangla except for the two consonants ra and wa.21 When the Bangla font was designed and created by Charles Wilkinson, the Serampore Mission Press readily adopted it as suitable for printing Asamiya books.22 The same fonts were brought over to Assam by the American Baptist Missionaries when they set up their press in Sibsagar. Subsequently, realizing the difficulty of transporting the fonts from Calcutta, the missionaries set up a foundry in the Sibsagar Press where not only the Asamiya alphabet (including the two consonants ra and wa) but fairly well-executed picture blocks were also metal-cast. The effect of printing on the process of standardization of the Asamiya language was even more significant.23 It is necessary to cast a glance at the historical roots of Asamiya literature in order to understand the subtle links between the trends in the development of literature and the standardization of the language. The earliest evidence of a distinct literature in Asamiya has been generally traced back to the fourteenth century when a group of poets including Ramsaraswati, Rudra Kandali and Madhav Kandali adapted and translated religious verses from Sanskrit into the local language. Of these, Madhav Kandali’s translation of the Ramayana has been acknowledged gratefully by the Assamese Vaishnava saint Sankardev (b. 1449) as the source of inspiration for his own works. The Vaishnava period of the fifteenth–sixteenth 20   Tilottoma Misra

centuries saw not only the growth of a large body of verse literature, contributed primarily by Sankardev and Madhavdev, but also of a variety of prose as seen in the prose rendering of Bhagavat Gita (around 1593) According to the linguist Banikanta Kakati, the language of this work approximated vernacular speech current at that time.24 All these literary activities were confined mainly to western Assam under the patronage of the Koch kings. A completely different variety of Asamiya prose however developed in eastern Assam under the patronage of the Ahom kings, which was very similar to the modern Asamiya prose. The Ahom kings adopted in course of time the spoken language of the Sibsagar region as the language of the court. They were great patrons of chronicle-writing (buranjis) and commissioned local scholars to record the events associated with their reigns. The chronicle-prose of this period has been termed as ‘essentially modern’ by Kakati, unlike the religious prose of the earlier period. When the Missionaries began to publish their vernacular tracts, they adopted the same spoken language of the Sibsagar region which was used in the Ahom buranjis. Thus, as Banikanta Kakati says, “the tradition of the Ahom court, supported by the mission press established the language of eastern Assam as the literary language of the entire province”.25 The western variety of the language, on the other hand, never achieved the status of the official language after it lost the patronage of the Koch kings of Kamatapur. According to Kakati, western Assam had never been ruled by a single power for any significant length of time. Hence, the situation was not conducive to the growth of a homogenous culture or a standardized language in the region.26 When the Asamiya Bhasha Unnati Sadhini Sabha (1888), a voluntary association of the Assamese students of Calcutta, began a vigorous campaign for the promotion of the cause of the Asamiya language through their mouthpiece Jonaki, it was the spoken language of eastern Assam that became their automatic choice for literary activities. In this, the efforts of the Baptist missionaries towards the establishment of the spoken language of the Sibsagar district as the print language were also significant. But, the attempt to standardize the dialect of eastern Assam as the chaste Asamiya language, faced some feeble opposition from a group of intellectuals from the Kamrup district of western Assam. Through their mouthpiece Assam Bandhav (1910–1911), they sought to plead their case in favour of the ‘Kamrupee Bhasha’ which they claimed to be the only written form of the Asamiya language which existed during the time of Sri Sankardev. One of the most forceful arguments put forward Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India    21

in support of the Kamrupee Bhasha was that this language as it was spoken in Lower Assam had a strong Sanskrit base and therefore was more easily understood in the rest of India. But the hybrid language created by the Ahom rulers by mixing the original Kamrupee Bhasha with the spoken language of eastern Assam, is nothing but a distorted form of the Assamese.27 When the American Baptist missionaries first started their proselytizing work in Assam, they faced the problem of identifying the genuine language of the Assamese people which was considered most suitable for reaching out to the common man. Since the Asamiya language till then did not have a standard grammar or a dictionary, the missionaries took the initiative in fulfilling these needs so that the language could be given a formal structure. In the first half of the nineteenth century, a number of word-books and dictionaries were compiled, the best known amongst them being the works of William Robinson, Miles Bronson and Jaduram Deka Barua. Jaduram’s manuscript of a Bangla–Asamiya dictionary compiled in 1839 was accepted by the American Baptists as the basis for the orthographical style of the Orunodoi and other missionary writings. The orthography of this dictionary was considered ‘realistic’ by the missionaries because it was found “to correspond much better with the actual pronunciation than any other that had been met with”.28 Nathan Brown, as the guiding spirit behind the Orunodoi project, vigorously advanced the cause of the pronunciation-based orthography in several editorials of the journal. Many native speakers of the language, however, continued to write in the traditional manner of spelling Sanskrit-based words in accordance with the rules of Sanskrit orthography. This tendency of using a literary language received strong resistance from the editors of the journal who stated in several editorial comments that the declared policy of the Orunodoi was to give preference to the everyday language of the people over the polished and refined literary prose cultivated by a select minority. The following editorial note which was appended to a contribution made by an educated Assamese lady is reflective of the missionary attitude: We have published the above letter written by an educated woman of our country because we considered it a good letter. But we have a few comments to make on it. The letter is undoubtedly well-composed and the views expressed in it are also excellent. But we cannot approve of the use of words in it. It would have been better had the writer written in

22   Tilottoma Misra

simple mother-tongue instead. We wish to warn her that from henceforth she should try and use simple mother-tongue.29

The effort of the missionaries to popularize the ‘Orunodoi’ style of writing amongst the Assamese reading public, however, met with stiff resistance from a section of newly emerging Assamese writers led by Hemchandra Barua. By around 1858, the missionaries had realized that they were fighting a losing battle, as was evident from a dispatch sent by Miles Bronson to the Foreign Secretary of the American Baptist Mission.30 By 1860, Orunodoi finally reversed its earlier policy on orthography and accepted the style and spellings approved by the ‘Assamese learned men’. The editorial of the January issue of that year acknowledged the futility of going against the current and antagonizing the Assamese literati on the question of orthography: In my opinion, it is not the duty of foreigners, and certainly not of the Christian missionaries, to try to bring about changes in the language of a country. For, when the missionaries wish to establish certain better norms and practices in this country, their first task is to explain these to the Assamese people. If the Assamese people consider those practices beneficial for them, then they would, on their own, take the initiative in spreading those ideas amongst the people. There would then be no need for the missionaries to speak about them. And, if their own countrymen speak about those ideas, there would not be much opposition from the people. People, anywhere in the world, resent it if foreigners try to change their manners and customs. The same is true of the Assamese too. That is why we have decided henceforth to use a language which would be readily accepted by the readers as their own language.31

The decision of the missionaries to adopt the Sanskrit-based orthography set the tone for the standardization of the print language in its modern form. This form received wide currency through the Asamiya journals published towards the end of the nineteenth century. Modern theories of the nation have highlighted the importance of the role of print culture in the formation of the nation. The standardization of languages and the birth of print culture have also been generally viewed as significant markers of colonial modernity. But recent literature on “alternative modernities” has opened up other possibilities of analyzing cultural texts, both written and oral, from a new perspective. A more nuanced reading of literatures of the precolonial times, according to Satya P. Mohanty, would enable us to contest earlier views which looked at premodern societies through “speculative and Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India    23

ideologically distorted lenses”. According to the proponents of this new way of looking at literary texts, there are possibilities of discovering “distinctly modern values” articulated in non-Western contexts.32 Mohanty suggests that the concept of modernity need not always be linked with colonial ideology which depicts all traditional cultures and social institutions as barbaric and uncivilized.33 In Northeast India, during the initial phase of colonization, most of the newly educated elites from the indigenous communities accepted uncritically the imposition of the colonial views of modernity that sought to represent all traditional institutions as degraded and savage. But, contemporary writings from the region which present a new subjectivity seek to reverse this tendency and to articulate the anguish of a community at the loss of traditional culture for the sake of ‘modernity’. In her poem ‘Blood of Other Days’, Temsula Ao laments that the Naga people, under colonial rule, had learnt to school their minds “to become the ideal tabula rasa/On which the strange intruders/Began scripting a new story”. But, a different story is now being scripted by “a new breed of cultural heroes”: But a mere century of negation Proved inadequate to erase The imprint of intrinsic identities Stamped on minds since time began The suppressed resonance of old songs And the insight of primitive stories Resurface to accuse leased-out minds Of treason against the essential self.

In the changed circumstances when the indigenous people of the region are challenging the grand narrative of the nation and positing the shared memories of their own communities as the intrinsic part of the ‘national’ memory, the focus of the contemporary writers has shifted from the written to the oral as the repertoire of that legacy which they wish to cherish as their unique cultural heritage. Orality is now being seen as the strength of the communities. Drawing analogies from oral cultures of other societies, especially native American and African, the Northeast writers have discovered the value of fusing the oral and the written or in other words, “writing orality”.34 Esther Syiem, a writer and critic from Shillong says that amongst the Khasis the written is not considered as creditable as the spoken; in fact, the spoken word 24   Tilottoma Misra

is credited with more authority than the written because the former cannot be easily recalled whereas the written can be destroyed. There is still a distrust of the written as an alien intrusion in the Khasi society and in case of the myths and legends “a parallel discourse is always generated to exist on the sidelines of the written”.35 The traditional institutions of the tribal societies also continue to wield their authority through the spoken word. It has been indicated by several writers from the region that though colonialism tried to create a rupture between the oral and the written by privileging the latter over the former, the oral discourses always tried to subvert the hegemonic colonial design to penetrate and map certain inaccessible areas of the tribal society where the spoken word continued to reign supreme. It is therefore significant that the new literature emerging from the region reveals serious efforts to present the spoken and the written as a continuum. Retelling folk narratives from a modern perspective or creative adaptation of folk forms by the emerging writers and dramatists from the region indicate a new maturity and confidence in people’s perception about themselves.

Notes and References   1. Ajay Skaria, in his ‘Writing, Orality and Power in the Dangs, Western India, 1800s–1920s’ [in Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty (eds), Subaltern Studies IX (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 16] refers to the arguments built up by Jack Goody, Walter Ong and other scholars on this theme.   2. Ibid., 50.   3. Ajay Skaria (Ibid., 49) analyses this tendency amongst the non-literate colonial subjects to view the written words as metonym for the sarkar, as ‘fetishization of the daftar’, where ‘the rhetoric of fixity and iconic centrality accorded to the daftar in colonial discourse was taken at face value by many Dangis’ (the adivasis living in the Dangs of Western India).   4. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 54.   5. Mamang Dai, The Legends of Pensam (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2006), 47.   6. Ajay Skaria (1997), 30.   7. Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘Writing, Speaking, Being: Language and the Historical Formation of Identities in India’, in Identity in History: South and South East Asia, German Historical Congress, 1990, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg, 28.   8. Gunabhiram Barua, ‘Alikhita Buranji’, Jonaki 4, No. 7 (1892).   9. ‘The Days of Sukhampha Khora Raja’, translated by Tilottoma Misra, in Medieval Indian Literature: An Anthology, Vol. 1 (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1997), 692. 10. Ajay Skaria (1997), 14.

Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India    25

11. Quoted in Bodhisattva Kar, ‘Tongue Has No Bone: Fixing the Assamese Language, c.1800–c.1930’, in Studies in History 24, No. 1 (2008): 4. 12. There are stories among the Khasis and the Mizos, for example, about the loss of the script owing to the negligence or carelessness of the ancestors (see Margaret Zama’s ‘Mizo Literature: An Overview’, in Tilottoma Misra (ed.), Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010); Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, ‘Cultural History and Genesis of the Khasi Oral Tradition’, in S. Sen and D. Kharmawphlang (eds), Orality and Beyond: The North-East Perspective (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2007). 13. Harakanta Majindar Barua, Sadaraminar Atmajibani (c.1850) (edited and reprinted by Kumudchandra Bardaloi, Guwahati, 1991), 40, 115–119. 14. For more details on this, see Kar, ‘Tongue Has No Bone’, 5. 15. A term I have borrowed from ibid. 16. F. Jenkins reporting to the Sudder Board of Revenue at Fort William, 1836, quoted in ibid., 2. 17. For a more detailed discussion on this theme, see Tilottama Misra, Literature and Society in Assam: A Study of the Assamese Renaissance, 1826–1926 (Guwahati: Omsons Publications, 1987), Chapter 5. 18. Kar, ‘Tongue has no Bone’, 6–9. 19. The first books printed by the missionaries were the Holy Bible (begun in 1897) and Grammar and Dictionary of the Lushai Language, by J.H. Lorrain (1889). For details, see Margaret Zama’s ‘Mizo Literature: An Overview’, in T. Misra (ed.), Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, Vol. 2, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010). 20. Febvre and Martin have discussed the contribution of European printers towards the unification and standardization of languages including orthography, grammar and script. Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800 (London: Verso, 1976), 319–328. 21. According to Maheswar Neog, there were three known modes of writing the Asamiya script prevalent in ancient Assam. Of these only the so-called ‘Brahmanical’ style resembled the ancient Bangla script closely (Maheswar Neog’s ‘Introduction’ to the collected edition of Orunodoi, Guwahati, 1983). 22. See Satyendranath Sarma, Asamiya Sahityar Samikshatmak Itibritta, 513. 23. The observations made in this part of the article are based on my ‘Introduction’ to Gunabhiram Barua’s Ramnabami-Natak [The Story of Ram and Nabami (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007)]. 24. Banikanta Kakati, Assamese: Its Formation and Development (Guwahati, 1972; First published 1941) 15. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Padmanath Bhattacharya, ‘Asamiya Bhasha Sambandhe Kisuman Katha’, in Taranath Chakravarty (ed.), Assam Bandhav 1, nos 5–6 (1910): 105. 28. Maheswar Neog, quoting Nathan Brown, the first editor of Orunodoi. See, ‘Introduction’, Orunodoi 1846–1854, Guwahati, 1983, 120. 29. P. Devi, ‘Stree Sakalar Kartabya Karma’, Orunodoi, October, 1867. 30. “Our books are also unpopular with the educated natives. They object to the mode of spelling adopted and carried out from the first. They say that their language is a cognate of the Sanskrit, the orthography of which has been settled for 3000

26   Tilottoma Misra

31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

years. They say that in our books a mode of spelling is introduced offensive to their taste, and contrary to that correct mode used in their Shasters. It strikes them as unpleasantly as a misspelled English book does our English scholars…. The educated natives of Assam have lately had few books printed in their own language, but they punctiliously adhere to the same system of spelling employed in every other kindred cognate of Sanskrit” (quoted in M. Neog’s Introduction, 123–124, Orunodoi 1846–1854, op.cit.). Orunodoi, January, 1860. Satya P. Mohanty, “Viewing Colonialism and Modernity through Indian Literature” in S.P. Mohanty (ed.), Colonialism, Modernity and Literature: A View from India (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2011), 2. Ibid., 18. Temsula Ao, “Writing Orality”, in S. Sen and D. Kharmawphlang (eds), Orality and Beyond, 109. Esther Syiem, “Navigating the Written: The Challenges of the Oral” in The Oral Discourse in Khasi Folk Narrative (Guwahati, 2011),11.

Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India    27

3 An Emerging Genre of ‘Political’1 Literature in India’s Frontier Manjeet Baruah

Literature and politics have been historically closely related. The relation can be seen not only in terms of ideology that inspires or influences literature (such as writings of authors like Maxim Gorky), but also in the textual structures that are employed to practice literature (such as writings of authors like Gabriel Márquez). In other words, the relation between literature and politics cannot be seen merely as either ideological or textual/aesthetic in nature. The meaning of the relation lies in the dual relation that the two share with each other. In the present essay, the relation between politics of nation state as well as its critiques in Northeast India (bordering Tibet, Bhutan, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh) and literature in the Assamese language in this context would be taken up for discussion. If one tries to understand what lies at the core of the historically difficult relationship between the nation state of India and its Northeast frontier, it is imperative to return to the colonial period. One of the distinctive problems that the British government faced vis-à-vis the Northeast frontier was how to naturalize a non-natural frontier. The Northeast frontier was a colonial invention, since prior to the nineteenth century, it never existed as a frontier to any political state system, whether of South Asia, East Asia or Southeast Asia. In fact, it did not exist as a part of a political state system of any of the above three geopolitical zones prior to British occupation. In terms of territory and population, and their social organization (i.e., organization of space and people into society), the area differed 28   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

markedly from the rest of British India. The recognition of the twin facts was evident in the British policy of treating the frontier at a level totally different from the rest of colonial India. This difference was in terms of (a) transforming it into a frontier and (b) maintaining a variety of administrative mechanisms to govern (actually or nominally) the frontier.2 The only areas that the British controlled totally were the valley of Brahmaputra (known for Assam tea and oil) and the route to Myanmar (NH 39). The military consideration behind the control over the two areas was made explicit in the various colonial military and administrative reports.3 With regard to upper Brahmaputra valley in this context, it is to be noted that the economic expansion for tea and military expansion for a secure frontier went together since the 1860s.4 Recent researchers have highlighted how the colonial argument of expansion of tea plantation as only an economic phenomenon was a myth (that colonial archives continues to perpetuate).5 Since Independence, one of the biggest dilemmas of the Indian state has been how to approach this historical legacy of the frontier, whether politically or administratively/militarily. The Indian state chose to respond through the latter way, the region being the earliest to have been brought under direct military administration (through the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958). As a direct result of the policy, the region, over the last 50 years, has seen the emergence of major political movements for democratic rights and even outright secession. One of the primary arguments of these movements has been that the problem of frontier is political and not military in nature. It is also here that the peculiarity of the Northeast frontier vis-à-vis other frontiers like present Punjab needs to be noted. The secessionist movement (Khalistan) in Punjab was short term and overcome through popular support because in terms of territory and society, it constituted a natural frontier for Indian nation state. However, unlike Punjab, the Northeast frontier has historically differed precisely on these grounds (bearing similarity with the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan in this regard). Therefore, anti-Indian nation state paradigm (due to the choice of government policy) could emerge or become into political movements and secessionist movements that could sustain itself for over half a century. It is also extremely necessary to note here that over the last two decades, the Indian nation state’s approach has been to highlight only the secessionist movements rather than the political movements and thereby justify the military approach to deal with the frontier. The question that we can ask here is what has been the relation of Assamese literature from this frontier to these larger movements in An Emerging Genre of ‘Political’ Literature in India’s Frontier    29

the area. If we concentrate only on the last two decades (for reasons of space), one can see an emerging and growing genre of ‘political’ literature based precisely on the issue of frontier. Whether we take poetry (such as those of Megan Kachari) or prose/fiction (such as those of Anurag Mahanta), an increasing concern with the political problem of being a frontier people is evident in sharp relief. Noteworthy is that both the writers mentioned above are/were also members of secessionist/militant groups. Megan Kachari (presently imprisoned) is the publicity secretary of the militant outfit United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), while Anurag Mahanta was formerly a senior camp commandant (training commander) of the same outfit. The point for us in this context is to see how this genre of ‘political’ literature is different from those in the past that also focused on the frontier. Listed as a classic by the government of India (Sahitya Akademi), Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya’s Assamese classic Iaruingam (People’s Rule, 1960) was also based on the problem of Naga political movement of the Northeast frontier. The author wrote the novel based on his own field experience when he worked in the Naga Hills as a school teacher. Three points are notable about the novel. Firstly, in the novel, there is recognition of the fact that (Indian) nation building at the frontier would be markedly different from that of the rest of the country. The difference in the Naga experience of colonialism vis-à-vis the rest of British India, the particular experiences of Japanese invasion in the region and the peculiarities of Naga sociocultural life can be found throughout the text as examples of how the process of nation building in these hills would differ from most of the Indian nation state. Secondly, throughout the plot, secessionist movements are treated as part of the larger political movement of a frontier. The fact that those who took up arms for the independence of the hills from the newly formed Indian nation state as well as those who supported the union of the hills with the Indian nation state are treated with the same moral legitimacy is noteworthy in this regard. And thirdly, the novel shows that non-violence should be the political method to achieve political ends. Coming to contemporary times, Anurag Mahanta’s Aaulingar Zui (A Harvest of Ash, 2007) is also on the Naga political problem. However, unlike Iaruingam, there are no references to Indian nation building, rather only to military occupation by Indian military forces. There are no references to secessionism either. The novel takes place in a situation of war among politically opposed paradigms, i.e., (a) the interests 30   Manjeet Baruah

of Indian nation state (for control over frontier), (b) the interests of the Myanmar state in a destabilized Indian frontier and (c) the interests of the people inhabiting the frontier and their simultaneous wish and inability to live a life that is not merely that of political warfare, but of their independent national freedom and welfare. Further, there is no take on political methods (violence/non-violence) towards achieving political ends. In fact, there is little discussion on morality of political methods in the novel. There is only the abject reality of war. The two novels spread across a span of nearly half a century and, therefore, could be said to clearly reflect the changing political considerations of people inhabiting the frontier. The distinction of the new genre can also be seen when one compares writers of the earlier generation, but writing on the same issue and in contemporary times. Indira Goswami’s important and popular short story Jatra (Journey, 1993) is an example in this regard. Though the story deals with the violence of military/Indian nation state–militant/anti-Indian nation state confrontation, the paradigm of its treatment is quite different from that found in fiction by writers like Anurag Mahanta (who also has been writing since 1990s). The difference is that whereas in Indira Goswami’s fiction the paradigm is that of humanity transforming into inhumanity in the process of violence, in the case of writers like Anurag Mahanta, the paradigm is that of politics and frontier, the distress in the metamorphosis of the human into the inhuman being only incidental than being central to its plot and characterization. To be noted is that the details of the violence would qualitatively differ little when both are compared. Rather, the difference would be in the paradigm within which the violence is placed. These paradigms are also ideological constructs that give meaning to the respective treatments of violence. Therefore, whereas for Goswami in Jatra, the violence was that of transformation of humanity into inhumanity, for Mahanta in Aulingar Zui, it was a conflict of political objectives, the problematic of human–inhuman being only subsequent to a larger political process. The ideological difference of authors influencing the meaning of texts (and violence therein) can be even more clearly seen when notable texts like Bandiyar (Prisoner, 1994) by Harekrishna Deka are compared with texts like Aulingar Zui. In the former, a collection of short stories, both the Indian nation state and the militant critique of it are portrayed, in terms of plot and characterization, as imprisoned in their own respective ideologies. Therefore, the problematic of the politics in the region is that of two An Emerging Genre of ‘Political’ Literature in India’s Frontier    31

ideologies that can only be conflictual and survives on each other. The resolution to the problematic, as stories like Goswami’s Jatra indicate, could only be through the recognition and restoration of humanism or human values in political formations. Its difference from texts like Aulingar Zui in the ideological treatment of politics (and violence) is once again evident. One significant point of this distinction is that of the generation and/or historical period to which a writer belongs and its impact on the nature of literature, and also on the emergence of new genres. For example, in the case of the distinction between Iaruingam and Aulingar Zui, the difference was that of historical period and experiences and political developments in that period of half a century that separates the two texts. However, in the case of contemporary fiction between Indira Goswami or Harekrishna Deka and Anurag Mahanta, the difference is that of generation rather than of any gap of historical period in between their fiction. Undoubtedly, there are also ideological differences among writers like Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya or Indira Goswami or Anurag Mahanta, which gives specific character to their respective writings. Ideological differences among authors also need to be placed in the context of historical period and generation. Gandhian approach and the dilemmas of the Gandhian approach to political conflict in Biren Bhattacharya’s fiction or the role of liberal humanist approach in Indira Goswami’s fiction or political repudiation of the concept of Indian nation state in Anurag Mahanta’s fiction could possibly be more meaningfully explained by situating the respective ideologies of authors in both historical periods as well as the generation to which an author belongs. Therefore, though writing in the same historical period, that the fiction of Indira Goswami or Harekrishna Deka and that of Anurag Mahanta could differ on the same issue indicates the role of the given generation of the authors on literature. In other words, the nature of this new ‘political’ fiction differs not only in terms of ideology of the author, but also in terms of the historical period and on the basis of the generation to which the author belongs. The poetry of Megan Kachari (for example, Memsahab Prithivi, The Unconcerned World, 1995, and Melodies & Guns, 2006) is more forthright on who is or ought to be accused of creating the political quagmire of Northeast frontier. As someone who continues to be a militant leader, though jailed, the critique of the Indian nation state is pointedly on the grounds of the inherent relation of political rights and human rights. This critique, however, has come from a wide cross section of people 32   Manjeet Baruah

of the area as well. The basic point of the critique is that separate laws for the frontier on the ground of being ‘disturbed’ has never allowed for any meaningful functioning of the democratic Indian constitution. Thereby, both political rights and human rights are two sides of the same denial. In that, the poetry of Megan Kachari can be considered ‘representative’ of a much widely shared critique of the Indian nation state in the area. What is common to both Megan Kachari and Anurag Mahanta is the sense of loss of any ‘normal’ life. The abnormal, in that sense, has become the normal and both the writers share a sense of tragedy at this reality of life. However, the two writers do differ on one issue. For Megan Kachari, the problem of frontier is that of denial of its political identity as a frontier and the impossibility of that recognition as long as it remains a part of the Indian nation state narrative, but for Anurag Mahanta, the problem is that of its eternal existence as a frontier, given its location, irrespective of whichever political narrative it becomes a part of. It may be important herein to compare the works of other authors who belong to the same generation as Mahanta or Kachari and have also written on issues that deal with the politics of frontiers like them. For example, in Anuradha Sarma Pujari’s short story, ‘No Man’s Land’ (2007), one can find a nuanced account of life in a Khasi village at the border between India and Bangladesh, life lived under the shadow of state–militant violence. In the story, there is a critique of the state and its ideology of nationalist militarism. However, similar to Deka in Bandiyar, there is an overwhelming angst that in the conflict between state and its militant critique, there is a great loss of human values and love in the process, the sufferers being those who are poor and weak. In fact, it is only love that can heal the problem of conflict politically and/or socially. Once again, therefore, it is evident that literature from authors like Mahanta and Kachari are fundamentally different from the other kinds of literature thought dealing with the same subject matter. The difference, notably, is because of and despite factors like historical location of authors, generation that a given author belongs to and their respective ideologies and experiences. Therefore, it can be argued that this literature definitely constitutes a new genre of ‘political’ literature in Assamese fiction/poetry, though still an emergent one. The significance of this genre of literature lies in its political critique of the very concept and validity of Indian nation state, and not being a mere civil right critique of the state policies as in the case of other literatures on the same subject matter. An Emerging Genre of ‘Political’ Literature in India’s Frontier    33

Literature, like any other art form, shares a dialectical relation with society. It is not only influenced by its roots in society but it also, in turn, seeks to influence the very roots from which it springs. Authors or readers are not merely ideological subjects. For example, it is precisely because authors are not ideological subjects that two texts of the same ideology are rarely same in their textual structures, and thereby in their respective meanings. The exercise of their rational consciousness enables producers and consumers of art to be both receivers of ideologies as well its agents of change. One of the major aspects of history of art has been this dialectical relation of and between producers and consumers of art. The new genre of ‘political’ literature in Assamese language discussed above is also an indication of this dialectical nature of literature. If the political and secessionist movements of the Brahmaputra valley in particular over the last 50 years are studied, this close relation between literature and society becomes evident. If novels and poetry of this new genre had become possible by the closing decades of the twentieth century, it was not only because the society underwent a certain political experience in the preceding period, but also because literature (and other art forms) had constantly strived to expose or contemplate on the meaning of that experience in the preceding period. Literature of the preceding period had engaged itself with the issue of political identity formation and a frontier political existence. In the process, methods of narration and narrative structure too underwent changes. For example, if one compares texts like Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya’s Iaruingam and Indira Goswami’s Bhikkhar Patra Bhangi (To Break the Begging Bowl, 1993), the difference in the respective structures of texts becomes evident. Both the texts deal with the question of political identity in the frontier of Northeast India. The major difference in terms of textual structure is the role of language. In Bhikkhar Patra Bhangi, the plot and the characterization dealt with the problem of militant nationalism and its effects on women (i.e., the family of the militant in the novel). However, the critical difference was also in the role of language. It was also through the use of variants of the Assamese language (characters conversing according to their language variants) that the socio-regional location of characters, i.e., characterization, was achieved. Therefore, the text not only showed the experience of violence and the larger politics, but also how Assamese society itself is composed of different social units and how the experience of each unit of the historical context (of the politics and its violence) was different from the other. When 34   Manjeet Baruah

compared to an earlier text like Iaruingam, such use of language and, more importantly, such concept of composition of a society and its experience of political turmoil through the structure of the text would be found absent. Such changes in the textual structures and thereby the ability of text to highlight nuances of social dynamics rather than merely rely on the author’s (third person) narration to indicate such nuances, can certainly be considered aesthetic advancements in the field of literature, especially with regard to literature and politics. Therefore, by the 1980s, there were differences of narrative and narration in literature when compared to the treatment of the problem of political identity and frontier in Assamese literature that was to be found till the 1940s. It is important to note here that writers like Megan Kachari or Anurag Mahanta possibly have not invented new narrative or textual structures to express their literature. They continue to use structures already in existence by, or more appropriately, since the 1980s. Therefore, this new genre of ‘political’ literature shares its textual continuities with the past. The difference, significantly, lies in the more radical use of such textual structures to convey a political content, i.e., the changed ideological use of the already existing textual structure. Therein also lays its newness as a genre. If such writers are popular today (which they are), it is because the literature preceding theirs had already, through a process of experimentation and invention, acquainted readers with ways of literature and thoughts. In other words, political thought and literary engagements (or more appropriately here, textual engagements) with such thoughts had already, in the preceding period, undergone a relation in which readership was acquainted with ways of literature and thought. And it can also be argued that it is also this acquaintance of readers to such ways of literature that constitutes one of the fundamental factors behind the popularity of the new ‘political’ genre discussed here. It is this dialectical relation between society and literature in general, and between ideology and textual structure in particular, that needs to be remembered in any study of this new emerging genre of ‘political’ literature in Assam. This emergent genre of ‘political’ literature, however, is not the only genre or even the predominant genre of literature in the contemporary times. It exists as one of the significant and popular genres among others. There are writers like Dhruba Bora in fiction or Kamal Tanti in poetry in whose works politics exist as part of Indian nation state narrative. Therefore, these different genres coexist and interact with each other. Possibly it also indicates the nature of thought processes An Emerging Genre of ‘Political’ Literature in India’s Frontier    35

operating in the society in a given historical period, that multiple voices or thought systems have come to exist simultaneously, some as a result of political developments over time while others through political engineering. In this regard, it may be important to note that there need not be anything natural about the multiple voices that could exist in a society at any given historical period or context. Such (popular) voices can also be engineered through policy initiatives, thereby screening off the larger systematic processes that are at work behind the very production of such voices. In conclusion, it may be noted that if one seeks to characterize this emerging genre of ‘political’ literature, the debate would persist as to whether it is a new voice or the transformation of an already existing political voice or a different voice but of the same political problematic of frontier? What stands clear nevertheless is that in either ways, it certainly constitutes a specific literary voice peculiar to India’s Northeast frontier.

Notes and References 1. The word ‘political’ is used here for want of a more appropriate terminology. Therefore ‘political’ here suggests more the content of the word as used in the essay rather than its mere terminology per se. An earlier version of this chapter was published in Confluence, December 2008, available online at www.confluence.org. uk/2008/12/13. 2. For example, the Inner Line Regulation, 1873, was aimed at demarcating the directly administered and nominally administered areas of the Northeast frontier. Several communities were allowed to carry on with their respective forms of governance, with least interference. Importantly, most of the communities were also ideologically categorized into new anthropological units called ‘tribes’. The Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution had to be devised precisely to overcome this combination of ‘tribe’ and their autonomy in Northeast India in the post-Independence period. 3. For example, see Pemberton’s report (1835) or Michell’s report (1883). 4. For details, see M. Baruah, The Problematic of Space and Historiography on Tea Plantation in Upper Brahmaputra Valley (Guwahati: ICHR, 2008). 5. Importantly, the validity of the colonial argument was accepted for long in researches even during the postcolonial period.

36   Manjeet Baruah

4 Towards an Appreciative Paradigm for Literatures of the Northeast Parag M. Sarma

There has been an awakening of interest in the larger national mindset towards literatures emerging from the Northeastern states of India. Writers are being published by reputed publishers like Penguin India and Sahitya Akademi, and literatures written in Assamese and other ethnic languages of the region are being translated into English and other Indian languages. Being an extremely heterogeneous region, a blanket term like the ‘Northeast’ is a misnomer in the sense that it might convey an impression of a homogenous entity. Basically a coinage of convenience, the term ‘Northeast’, however, helps in fostering the notion of an entity that can be termed as a multi-ethnic mosaic. Marked by the existence of numerous ethnic groups, the literatures of the region voice the continuous and evolving dynamics of the unique relationships that exist between the different ethnic groups. The literatures of the region have also been serving as negotiative media whereby the authors are also responding as local, national and global entities in an epoch of great change for the region. A slew of events over the past few decades have pushed the region into the media-scape of the nation: immigration, insurgency, AIDS, violent ethnic assertions and the so called ‘look east policy’ of the Indian government. The written literatures of the region are gradually responding to these. Contemporary authors like Temsula Ao in works like These Hills Called Home (2006)1 and Siddhartha Deb in The Point of Return (2002)2 respond to the unique cultural and political turmoil that mark the The Concept of Society    37

region since the decade of seventies of the last century. On the other hand, authors like Mamang Dai in works like The Legends of Pensam (2006)3 go back to the oral narratives of their communities to find validation in the present times of flux and turmoil. It is interesting to note that amongst the different ethnic communities of the region, the written is an extension and continuation from the oral tradition, and in the works of authors like Temsula Ao and Mamang Dai, the oral and the written often straddle the same narrative space. Most of the communities of the region in the precolonial times were oral societies, where verbal expressive behaviour like folk songs, myths and tales tried to harmonize the community to its environmental and cultural ecology. Tracing the etymology of the oral/written dichotomy, it would be appropriate to mention that the ‘written’ and ‘oral’ as cultural denominators, in the wake of European colonialism, had been identified with the civilized and less-civilized or the primitive societies, respectively. This dichotomy was further engendered by colonial anthropology. Writing as a skill/craft and a tool for transcription had privileged the one who knew/had mastered it over those whose creative and expressive behaviour were largely oral and hence intangible, ephemeral and apparently transient. Yet in the Northeast the ‘oral’ persists and is concomitant with the ‘written’, and authors like Ao and Dai, in their works, fall back on their apparently intangible expressive heritage to inform and infuse their contemporary narratives. If Ao and Dai represent the early flush of the emerging creative voice in English from the region, one of the older literatures of the region, Assamese literature, was greatly enriched by voices of many ethnic authors, who delved into their essentially oral heritage to write into the sensibility of an emerging nation, mostly through the form of the novel, by now a familiar literary genre, being engendered by the colonial experience. In the contemporary celebratory muse of difference, where asserting distinctive ethnic markers is held up as some sort of a deliverance from appropriative and suffocating overarching narratives imposed from above, the imperative is perhaps to understand the creative dynamics that went into the fiction created by ethnic voices like Yeshe Dorje Thongchi, Lummer Dai, Rong Bong Terang and others, who primarily wrote in the Assamese language about their land and people. The time when they started writing was certainly different from the fractured milieu of the present; yet it is also clear that such literary exercise can be understood to go beyond the mere urge to tell a story 38   Parag M. Sarma

and include the subtleties of writing back to the mainstream from the margins, an attempt to write into the consciousness of an emerging nation. Such exercises can be seen as an attempt to challenge hierarchy of cultures, and posit difference and plurality as a valid way of life. The act of writing in Assamese was perhaps a subversive intrusion into the tongue of an appropriative discourse, to create awareness that the other way of lives, other cultures, also engendered people and cultures. Engagement with cultural difference on the part of authors like Thongchi is interesting from a contemporary appreciative paradigm towards what can be termed as ‘ethnic’ literatures, and forms an important part of the ethno-critical approach. An ethno-critical approach to literature is an acknowledgement of differences, “an organization of cultural studies which engages otherness and difference in such a way as to provoke an interrogation of and a challenge” to our familiar realms of experience and is “consistent with a recognition and legitimation of heterogeneity”.4 It is interesting that these writers chose the Assamese language. One would like to mention that the genre of Assamese fiction could be perceived as a form that constantly strived to meet the historical requirements of a unifying discourse by accommodating and glorifying cultural subtexts in an attempt to forge a greater cultural text. The first conscious attempt to narrate the plural nature of the region and portray the diverse ethnic composition was made in Assamese literature, especially in the fictive mode. The earliest novel of prominence in this genre is Rajani Kanta Bordoloi’s Miri Jiyori (1894), which tries to represent one of the prominent ethnic communities in the Northeast, the Misings, through the narration of a tragic love story. After Independence, Kailash Sarma’s Bidrohi Nagar Hatot (In the Clutches of the Rebel Nagas, 1958), Anami Naga (Naga with No Name, 1963) and Dalimir Sapon (Dalimi’s Dream, 1972) depicted the Naga way of life and gave the first hint of narrating ethnic assertions and the violence associated with it. Early post-Independence Assamese literature perceived itself as an integral part of the imperative to narrate the nation and integrate plural entities into the national consciousness. A kind of inclination towards metanarratives was emerging in India in the first flush of Independence and the conscious attempt was to consolidate a larger Indian identity by generating regional identities by processes of homogenizing. Early post-Independence Assamese authors inhabited these sociopolitical narratives and one should view early writings Towards an Appreciative Paradigm for Literatures of the Northeast    39

keeping this nationalistic appropriative discourse in mind. Jnanpeeth award-winning novel Mritunjoy (1977) by Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya and Umakanta Sarma’s Ejak Manuh Ekhan Aranya (The Crowd and the Forest, 1986) are novels that immediately come to the mind. Both the novels have a representation of ethnicity, but the main aim was to forge and consolidate regional and thereby national identity. The first novel has the revolutionary approach to the Independence struggle as its main preoccupation where ethnic representations are incidental to the main narrative thrust, and how such struggle forms a common legacy that binds the nation together. The second novel is a humanistic depiction of the travails of the immigration of the tea labourers into Assam, their emergence as a distinct ethnic identity and the author’s ideal of their final assimilation and integration into the canvas of a larger Assamese society. However, representation of ethnicity in Assamese literature had quite different dimensions in the writings of authors belonging to different ethnic communities. It was an attempt to write into an emerging national consciousness. Writers like Lummer Dai, who belonged to the Adi community of Arunachal Pradesh, in novels like Paharor Shile Shile (Wandering through the Rocky Mountains, 1960) and Prithivir Hahi (The Earth’s Laughter, 1963), depicted the social customs, institutions and faith of his people. Joyanta Rongpi and Rongbong Terang belong to the Karbi community in Assam. Rongpi in his Puwate Ejak Dhanesh (Hornbills at Dawn, 1977) deals with the exploitation of the Karbis by traders from outside the Northeast, while Terang in his Rongmilir Hahi (Rongmili’s Laughter, 1981) depicts the Karbi consciousness and articulates a concern for their welfare against the onslaught of detrimental influences brought in by the outsiders. Thus the disruptive social and cultural influences involved with contacts with values and customs of an outside world is an enduring narrative concern of the works emanating from the region, and authors negotiate the advent of a new way of life under the influence of education, governance and the emergence of new social elite within the community. In fact, this negotiation is dramatized in the personae of the characters like Prem Tashi in Thongchi’s Lingjhik,5 whose subjectivity was a liminal entity as he tried to come to terms with his education, exposure to the outside world on one hand and the tradition of his people on the other. Ethnic groups wish to sustain ethnic boundaries in the interest of ‘generating feelings of dissociative belonging’ in order to construct and promote positive minority identities.6 Ethnicity is a flexible cultural description 40   Parag M. Sarma

loosely based on an attachment or a perceived sense of belongingness to any or all of the categories signified by ideas like homeland, cultural heritage, belief system and language. The multi-ethnic or polyethnic cannot be always understood in terms of the dominant and the peripheral, but also in the sense of a continuous negotiation between alternate centres of cultures. The act of writing in Assamese for writers like Thongchi can be basically seen as an act of negotiation. It is against the background of a contemporary plural sociocultural entity that a fresh appraisal of the literatures of the region must be undertaken. It should interrogate the ‘us and them’ oppositional mode with a dialogic mode more concerned with difference rather than opposition, and dissolve borders and boundaries from absolute categories to shifting spaces where cultures negotiate and deal with each other. It seeks to appreciate alternative expressive forms against the backdrop of a pervasive and dominant episteme and calls for a legitimation of heterogeneity. It brings into play different conceptual categories like culture, history, imperialism, anthropology and literature and takes an interdisciplinary approach to interrogate theories of literature, nation and culture, from alternative vantages. Contemporary critical approaches are increasingly directing attention to such alternative vantages to understand the life and cultures of different ethnic communities and such approaches have to be generated from within the life and artistic of the people themselves. One can describe the novels written by Thongchi, Lummer Dai or Rongbong Terang and others as ‘Narrative of Communities’. Sandra A. Zagarell, in her essay ‘Narrative of Community: The Identification of a Genre’ proposed what she calls an alternative genre of the narrative of community in trying to accommodate literatures written by women as distinct and different from those that subscribe to mainstream categories of Western literature. Though not quite in the same way, one can use Zagarell’s idea to understand narratives emerging from Northeast India. Mainstream Assamese literature, like many other literatures of the country has internalized categories of Western literatures, thanks to our long encounter and imbibing of Western values in education and culture under the colonial dispensation. While the centred self is the dominant concern of post-enlightenment Western narrative, its mimetic Indian counterpart structuralism and poststructuralism, Zagarell sees, initiate “an extended assault on the western belief in the heroic indomitability of the self…”.7 She sees the narrative of community as a powerful literary and theoretical alternative to the Towards an Appreciative Paradigm for Literatures of the Northeast    41

overwhelming preoccupation with the self. In the face of it all, the narrative of community is that genre that takes as their subject the life of a community in its everyday aspect and “portrays the minute and quite ordinary process through which the community maintains itself as an entity. The self exists here as part of the interdependent network of the community rather than as an individualistic unit. Writers of narrative of community give literary expression to a community they imagine to have characterized the pre-industrial era. The narrative of community thus represents a coherent response to a social, economic, cultural and demographic changes caused by industrialism, urbanization and spread of capitalism.”8 Thus an important question that should be raised is about the role of literature in an ethnic milieu. It exists as an articulation and sharing of reality, a bringing together of isolated private selves into a harmonious balance with external reality that forms the basis of community life. And the tool to do this is the spoken word. The soul of a community is married to the essence of language and it translates the experiential world into aural signs. In an oral context, the word is of prime importance and should be used responsibly. But the printed textual representation is very different from a traditional oral text. Experiencing the printed text, even with a sense of its shaping culture, is clearly different from listening to a verbal text in a performative milieu. What one needs is an oral derived appreciative paradigm that while acknowledging that the written form is radically different from the oral, nonetheless gives cognizance to the oral antecedents of a culture, and how the creative vision and world view is shaped by it. Arnold Krupat points out that though it is hard to “believe that our textual culture, although presently restructuring itself to replace print with printout, can develop an oral poetic. But that is not to say that the idea of an oral poetic cannot be effective in checking our tendency to project alphabetic categories on non-alphabetic practice…” though “…our script mark on the page is a pale trace of what their voices performed”.9 The concept of the oral derived also allows us to examine traditional features alongside post-traditional evolutions brought about by a transition to written cultures. This transition from the folk/oral to the written has accompanying dynamics of changes, and in the process of modification also modifies the social and political concerns of a community, and hence is capable of providing a cultural poetics to ground and appreciate the creative works arising out of such cultural 42   Parag M. Sarma

hinterland, where both the traditional and post-traditional features straddle the same creative space, as in the works of Mamang Dai and Temsula Ao. In an interview recently, Mamang Dai responding to a question whether her Legends of Pensam is “an attempt to record a disappearing tradition in the face of modernity” replies: In a way, yes. Ours is an oral tradition you know, I was trying to meet people and collect and record these oral narratives. You know, the small histories which were getting lost and when you talk to people even small things can trigger these memories off. I had no idea how the book would turn out because it was very difficult to project these stories in English. To negotiate that (difficulty of cultural translation) I conceived of Pensam as a kind of secret garden where there are no rules and where one can do whatever one wants…. I think I still belong there. Ok, back home people say she is modern and educated, she has gone out etc but I still speak my mother tongue and I think by temperament also I respond to our old oral stories. Not everyone likes mythology and folk tales you know. But I find it a very fascinating area and I can find a lot of things there for myself also…. I like being able to go and get these stories directly from old people in the villages.10

The individual and the community is an important and enduring concern of oral derived aesthetics, and works as written by Dai, rooted as they are in the community, can never be of pure self-expression, but to bring isolated private self into harmony and balance with the larger ethnic world. Words like Pensam are not different from the ethnic cultural world. Words do not come after or apart from what naturally is, but are themselves natural genes, tribal history in the bodies of the people. People are born into their heritage and tribal tongue. For the most part, they do not create words any more than they give birth to themselves or make up nature.11

So, Pensam is like any other place on earth, the territory of the Adis in the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh is Pensam—the in-between place. Anything can happen here, and everything can be lived, and the narrow boat that we call life sails along somehow in calm or stormy weather.12

Words like Pensam carry along with it an inherent metonymic meaning, unique to oral derived aesthetics. While dependent on Towards an Appreciative Paradigm for Literatures of the Northeast    43

the textual moorings to carry forward the narrative, the cultural association remains immanent enriching the narrative associatively, where the larger traditional and cultural structure is the extra-textual domain unique to narratives drawing its inspiration from the oral tradition. Authors like Temsula Ao also give voice to violent contours of social and political reality of the region. Literatures of the Northeast are ensconced in the violence that enmeshes the region. But the violence cannot be neatly categorized in binaries like good or bad, or victims and perpetrators. For most part, the violence co-opts people as they become tragically involved in its unending cycle. Violence of both the inter ethnic and the insurgency/revolutionary versus the nation type claim their victims. Rong Bong Terang in one of his Assamese novels Jaak Heruwa Pokhi (Bird Estranged from its Flock), represents the tragic ethnic conflict between the Karbis and the Kukis in Karbi Anglong, and how it destroys the inter-ethnic fabric of the place, tragically altering not only the larger social reality, but also private worlds, like that of a Karbi married to a Kuki. In the Northeast, the violence is no distant and remote happening from which the unwilling can insulate themselves, but an integral part of the daily lived experience that does not spare anybody. In a region where movement of people in search of pasture and field was as natural as the hills or the mountain streams, the drawing of maps has sadly identified people with territory, thus setting loose social and political movements that try to sanctify territories from the perceived outsider or the ethnic other. It is only with a proper understanding of the ethnic fabric and the interethnic relationships that a proper appreciation of the literature of the region is possible. Violence itself is varied and multi-dimensional in the region. There are the larger and longer battles of attrition like the movement for a greater Naga nation, independent from the Indian union, carried on by the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN). Yet, even this apparently larger movement for freedom is itself enmeshed and ranged in varied ethnic equilibrium with different factions of the NSCN like the IM (Issac-Muivah) or the K (Khaplang) trying to push through their varied agendas, agendas determined by ethnic allegiance and power struggle. It is against such complex ethnic dynamics that Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone unfolds, laying bare the tragic lives of individuals singed by the all encompassing violence, and the triumph of the strong willed to continue with 44   Parag M. Sarma

their lives in such an inimical ambience, and making a strong case for sanity and peace. Siddhartha Deb touches upon another sensitive issue in his novel The Point of Return, the issue of the social and the cultural tension between the tribal and the non-tribal. The non-tribal is the intruder in the ethnic homelands that was carved out from the colonial map of Assam, and the non-tribal and the migrant plainsman in these new cartographic domains were very often the social and the cultural other, whose continuous presence is a threat to cultural and political sanctity, and hence had to be expunged. But according to him, the notion of being the perennial transgressor is to a great extent “true of the entire North-East; all its people, whether indigenous or migrants, seem to have an uncertain, tenuous position in a nation where the lines of identity seem to be very rigidly drawn”13 into some sort of a new age reservations. Northeast and its representation presents its own unique challenges, and any attempt to access it must be informed and infused by the unique social and political setting of the region, the diverse culturalscape that goes into the making of the place. To fall into the trap of the usual binaries of civilized/uncivilized the patriot/separatist or the communal/individual will only divert and deflect. The best way perhaps would be to surrender to the experience, to the notion of the liminal, where new equations emerge continuously and the old fades away, to share the pain and the hope of the writers who try to come to terms with their world and their people, and to appreciate their unique way of seeing their world in both conjunction and variance with the other worlds.

Notes and References   1. Temsula Ao, These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone (New Delhi: Zubaan/ Penguin, 2006).   2. Siddhartha Deb, The Point of Return (New Delhi: Picador India, 2002).   3. Mamang Dai, The Legends of Pensam (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2006).   4. A. Krupat, Ethnocriticism: Ethnography, History, Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 3.   5. Y.D. Thongchi, Lingjhik (Guwahati: Dutta Barua & Co, 1981).   6. Werner Sollors (ed.), The Invention of Ethnicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), ix–x.   7. Sandra A. Zagarell, ‘Narrative of Community: The Identification of a Genre’, Signs 13, no. 3. (1988): 498–527, 499.   8. Ibid., 499.

Towards an Appreciative Paradigm for Literatures of the Northeast    45

  9. A. Krupat, ‘An Approach to Native American Texts’, in A. Wiget (ed.), Critical Essays on Native American Literature (Massachusetts: G.K. Hall & Company, 1985), 116–131, 117. 10. Available online at arunachalnews.com/negotiating-change-with-memoryinterview-with-mamang-dai.html (accessed on 28 October 2010). 11. K. Lincoln, Native American Renaissance (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 47. 12. Available online at www.indiaclub.com (accessed on 28 December 2010). 13. The Hindu online edition, 26 September 2006.

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5 Sign Forces of Culture Reflections on Mnemopraxial Responsibility D. Venkat Rao

Cultures that face(d) colonialism are caught in an aporia. The discourses and institutions that are founded with persuasive epistemic violence skew the sense of responsibility for these cultures. Even as the distinctive ways and means of living-on of these cultures in the world with others are ruptured, the colonial discourses and institutions accord them recognition by means of translation as transferral and appropriation. The colonized were drawn to serve the sciences of man that were conceived in a capitalizing heritage elsewhere. Postcolonial countries like India are caught in the aporia of a conceptual heritage and a-conceptual cultures of memory. How to respond to this aporia and render responsibility to the cultures of memory from the locations of our activity? In addressing the question of responsibility this chapter attempts to share certain specific concerns regarding teaching and research in the humanities today in the context of the university.

I By what right can I invoke an identity to communicate with this deeply wronged heterotopia called the Northeast? What epistemic resources would enable me to affirm even the necessity to communicate? Is such a necessity a common one? Can there be a commonality among all of us—at least those of us gathered here1—that would sanction a communication in this uncommon dehiscence of cultures and communities? The Concept of Society    47

Already my use of the cartographic–geographical indicator—glibly called the Northeast—reveals my involuntary complicity with a violent imaginary. This is the imaginary of the so-called citizen-subject who is assumed to be the signatory and addressee of this cartographical violence. Northeast to whom? From what or whose vantage, from what perspective or privileged viewing point is this Northeast? It is a term useful for political engineers, says a perceptive analyst of the region.2 Yet, will a politically appropriate description of this addressee as a subject of the huge monocultural (‘Indo-Aryan’) dominant land mass called India, located on the eastern side of the uncommon and anachrono-topias of cultural formation in and around the Brahmaputra valley redress the conditions of communication? Patterned and sedimented violence cannot be undone by superficial (politically correct) terminological palliatives. What we do and what we say about what we do will have to change through a slow transformation of the fibres of the mind. One hopes that the force of a critical communication will generate a cultural tectonic grinding that might bring forth affirmative sign forces of culture across cultural formations of our locations. But where can I, nurtured mostly on the plains, find a toehold among the variegated hills of centrifugal cultures and communities? On this uphill task of struggling for communication, I thought one cannot but strive for a toehold wherever one finds oneself. Otherwise the fall would be precipitous—as there are no ideal, secure toeholds anywhere—and the abyss is forbidding. The precarious toehold that in fact brings us all together for a potential communication is none other than the enabling-violent place called the university itself. We gather here within this cliff-hanging topos of the university even more circumscribed. We are teachers of literature in particular and of the humanities in general. We must underwrite our signatures primarily as university teachers of the humanities to specify the kind of communication that we may collectively wish to articulate. But does this mean that now that we have this ‘secure’ foot-holding space we can have a transparent communication? Can we assume that we have a diaphanous language that can travel across plains and hills, gorges and gullies, waters and woods in uninterrupted bandwidth—assuring lucidity of comprehension between the sender and the receiver? As we know, with its various discourses (‘faculties’) and as a massive machine for reproducing and circulating these discourses, the university fabricates subject-positions for us. With the 48   D. Venkat Rao

technologies of teaching and research we reproduce these subjectpositions. But from within this teaching machine when we ask: Do these subject-positions (as members of the university) exhaust our differential identities of being human? Is there an epistemic place for these (other) identities in the discursive structures of the university—a space undetermined by these very structures? In other words, who is the human that circulates in the field called the humanities? Does this field find itself thrown into crisis by the singularities of being human impinging on it from outside of its cherished enframings? Or does the field manage such crises through assimilation of the other in the model of the same (as the discourses of anthropology and history are wont to do)? Or does one argue that the philosophical presuppositions of the humanities and the university transcend the empirical, historical factual entities—that they are universal in their nature and reach? Isn’t the regulating assumption here that as universal forms the university and the humanities can fit/or appropriate any form of singularity of being? Two questions force themselves here: (a) Do such fittings and appropriation leave any remainders of singularity to the appropriated? (b) Why is it that the transcendental universal always gets exemplified by the most empirical, historical, factoid European (represented by such forms and conceptions of thought as epic, philosophy, tragedy, literature, novel, etc.)? Why is it that the singularities of other modes of being are denied by definition this epistemic status of universal exemplifiability? Why is it that only Europe is said to offer paradigms of thought and bear the burden of thinking of the entire earth? The irony or aporia of our situation is that we are impelled to assume subjectpositions in a machine which forecloses space for our identities. We in Indian situation are nowhere near to unravelling this precarious location of our existence as teachers of the humanities.

II Subject-positions are propositionally constituted and discursively defined in accord with norms and rules. Disciplinary formations, Foucault amply demonstrated this, emerge even as they determine subjects and their demarcated roles and obligations.3 Subject-positions are the effects of normative conceptions of self. In contrast, it seems to me that identities are figurations without appropriate referents. Identities live on mutating silently, in subterranean ways without subjecting themselves to discursive normativity. Identities emerge and they are Sign Forces of Culture    49

figured, disfigured in the retentional–protentional force of life; identities are enactments irreducible to objectifications. Identities are irreducible modes of being, acts of life and objects of representation. Discursive formations labour to objectify identities. Discourses of identity, like literary histories, can only be discourses of what identity (or what literature) is not.4 Therefore, strictly speaking even the term identity, like literature, must be put under erasure. Identity and literature cannot be discursivized as positive entities. Indeed identity, as suggested earlier, can be figured as that interminable activity which puts its own mode of being, its own temporal configuration, into question. As enactments, embodiments and performative modes of being, identity cannot be measured by or captured in discursive determinations or retrospective information-retrieval enterprises (as history, anthropology, folklore— that the human sciences tend to do). The university is a positive or rather a positivistic machine.5 It routinely reduces identities to subject-positions. It seduces us to discursivize heterogeneous modes of being into definable objectivities (see the recent collection of ‘professional’ life of ‘anthropologists in the east’ as they acquiesce to the scientistic/positivistic programmes of the discipline).6 This is the epistemic violence that we perpetuate in our strident assertions about our identities by means of discursive objectifications of them—by surrendering to information-retrieval apparatuses. Whereas the Brahmaputra valley (like the Gangetic valley, the Gandhara-Sind anachrono-topias, and the peninsular heterotopias across oceanic currents in different epochs) opens up radically centrifugal modes of being human, those rhythms of life and traces of their traversal chronotopically disperse across mountains, lands and waters. These immemorial and intractable modes and traces expose us to the enigma of being human—an enigma that cannot be surrendered to a programme. They haunt us to forge responses and affirm our responsibility of being human differentially. These modes and traces have lived on over millennia, sustaining their singularities even as they are transformed in their traversal. The protracted migrations, the diasporic waves from South China—of the Lusei, Chin, Mizo communities, the diverse Naga groups (of Rengma, Lotha, Ao, Angami, Konyak), the Ahoms, and other groups like the Meiteis, Loi, Chapka, the Khasi, Garo, Jaintia communities and a host of other cultural formations traversing across the difficult footholds of silent ranges of precarious mountains, fraying paths 50   D. Venkat Rao

in impenetrable forests, risking tidal currents further down—these hetero-genos dispersed themselves across the valley through the much travelled gateway of Myanmar. It must be noted that these tracks and traversals communicated across a much larger and faroutstretched planetary network across the Silk Road—linking South China and further into the mainland and east to the Mediterranean via the centrifugal Central Asia and further west. These communications and the formations of being human that they materialized permeate our own ways of being human today. We are not yet in a position to respond to the power and pull of these planetary centrifugal forces that pulsate in our existence.

III Colonialism initiated a decisive rupture in these planetary cultural communicational disseminations. Metropolitan theorizers of colonialism often focus on the formation of colonial state and the disruptions it wreaked on the prevalent orders of the plains.7 But the disruptive effect of colonialism also involves subject formation—the subjectformation vector brought into effect patterned forms of response to the disruptive-emergent process of colonialism. Whereas the modernizing– Europeanizing apparatus of colonialism worked in the distanced hills and valleys via the powerful vector of religion. A new (religious) mode of being in the world as the culturally dominant pervaded the valley and internally fractured each of the most diverse ways of being human— ways that were nurtured over millennia. As this (religious) strategy of Europeanizing the native on the plains was seen counter-productive, European cultural modes were deployed for subject formation. These specifically European modes of reckoning the human were institutionalized in the discursive forms of knowledge production. As the ‘native’ began to assume these subject formations, the European culture could still stake a claim for moral luck for the imperial civilizing mission (Gayatri Spivak persistently questioned this moral luck for imperialism as she could still affirm other modes of being human—increasingly in her work—in the name of the aboriginal).8 Whereas among the heterogeneous dispersals of the Brahmaputra ranges and valleys, strategies of subjection were sought through systematic erasure of immemorial identities of being human. The erasure was inevitable—unlike in the plains—for the Christian mode of being genuinely discredits all other modes of being human as erroneous or Sign Forces of Culture    51

evil. The Christian lore on the pagans has been eloquent on this matter both in antiquity (when Christianity confronted more ancient pagan communities of Greeks and Romans) and in the post-enlightenment epoch when it encountered the most heterogeneous singular cultures and communities across the planet. The striking contrast between the aboriginals of the plains/forests (about whom Spivak writes) and the immemorial communities of our concern here in the valley and on the hill is that the former were neither enveloped into the civilizing mission nor were they found significant enough for the nation formation. This was precisely because, Spivak contends, the aboriginals of the plains were not found to be conducive to the spirit of capitalism. They were simply discarded or discredited. Their ethno-philosophical sense of being human, Spivak argues, made them ‘useless’ to and was destroyed by the adventure of capital.9 Whereas the strategic significance of Myanmar and the material resources across the Brahmaputra valley seemed to require the erasure of singularities of memories among these heterogeneous communities so that they could be governed under civilized subjection. Unlike in the plains, the aboriginals of the valley and hill were programmed to erase their memories. The valleys and hills that surround us bear testimonies to a violent subjection to a mode of being that required a more radical violent erasure of other rhythms and modes of being. Elimination of a morung, discrediting a performative tradition concerning, say, stone-pulling, head-hunting or mithun sacrifice, wipes out millennial memories of putting the body to work and rendering mnemopraxial responsibility to what one receives and lives on with. The machine that differentiates and discards memories here is not any external alien force as such. It is the aporetic intimate enemy who constitutes and regulates life on the hill and in the valley among those who are called aboriginals elsewhere. Here the subjection and identity appear to have coalesced into a mode of being. But can that be easily made effective? Can the violent yoking of subjection and identity remain seamless and transparent? Can the immemorial strains that textured and nurtured the formations of being, rhythms of communication and idioms of response over millennia be easily wiped out without remainders, without traces? Can the enigmatic body complex—the extraordinary bundle of intractable traces—which moves and responds in silence and slow time, can it receive a programme, a prosthetic with no side effects?

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I need not tell you that these valleys and hills bear testimonies as the effects of this immense programme of epistemic violence that literally and inhumanly ruptured the singularities of being human that these hetero-genos lived on with. The physical violence that reverberates through the valley and hill which makes the region today, to recall a phrase from Agamben, ‘a state of exception’ and invites further violence to sustain a state of being, is a colossal symptom of a much deeper cultural tectonic crisis. The grinding violence of this crisis appears to be the traumatic effect of desertifying the nurturing plasmas of memory. Even dreams and nightmares appear to have been repressed or erased. It looks like the furies of the millennial pasts are taking their toll for the programmed obliteration of their habitat in the valleys and on the hills, among the flora and fauna, and in the bodies, in the animal and bird, in mind and memory—in a word from the heterotopias of this region and life. The intractable mnemocultural formations seem to call for reparative responses that affirm our suspended responsibilities.10

IV One is impelled to ask: if the violent subjection could colonize us and have such a control over us, can we measure the force of the immemorial traces and strains that formed the textures of our differential claims to being human and the magnitude of their gravity for us? Can we simply wish away those millennial clusters under a new subjection? Is the university that shelters us here, which is a part of the problem that we need to grapple with, in a position to respond to this cultural tectonic crisis? Can the humanities that fabricate our subject positions enable us to retrace our mnemopraxial responsibilities? What do we do with what we have? Not only the future of our critical humanities but the future anterior of our mnemocultures impels us to be outside-in the university to forge our responses and affirm our responsibilities persistently. But this enormous task of critical humanities requires us to commit ourselves to what Derrida outlined as the ‘abstract possibility of impossible translation’. Our concern for infinite justice, Derrida declares, must abandon us to such (im)possible task.11 Critical humanities involves a double move—to re-constellate the fields of the humanities (more specifically of literature and philosophy) in such a way that they receive the incomparable iterabilities of cultural singularities without

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alibi; they must remain unconditionally open to the radical divergence of cultures and practices, ways and modes of being in the world. Secondly, and along with the first move—and indeed, to bring forth the first move—to re-activate or invigorate from their abandoned traces the discarded, discredited, demonized and erased mnemocultures that forged our singular existences over millennia. In spite of the violent form of subjection that was imposed in these regions—a subjection that required erasure of identities to gain a subject position—the traits of the heterotextural pasts continue to lurk in the diverse idioms of the dispersed Nagas, the differentiating groups of Mizos and Assamiyas—in the verbal and visual sign forces of these cultural singularities. We need to learn from these sign forces to forge our critical humanities—outside in the fracturing (subject-position/ identity) teaching machine called the university. Identities are not just what we are or what we are said to be. They are most crucially what we lend ourselves to be, what we make of what we are said to be or what we receive. Receivers must also learn to be signatories, the given must be givable differentially—the signature (what we receive) must be countersignable.12

V If culture is what we do, the way we do and what we (or others) say about what we do, our acts and reflections, our performances and formations, our creations and discourses—culture can be described as the force that brings forth versions of reality and signs and relations. Culture is the perennial and (dis)continuous effort to articulate the body and the resources that the body is exposed to. In other words, culture is the body’s persistent struggle to grapple with its most intimate and irreducibly sovereign materiality of form: the sign or symbol. It is the body’s perennial exposure to and struggle with material resources that bring forth the sense of value associated with (but which cannot be reduced to) material forms and substances. Culture is in a way a particular manifestation of the body’s detour to explore and supplement its limits. Although it is difficult to assume any complete severance of the cultural domain from the materiality of the body, the cultural domain often circulates as a formidable surrogate entity constantly demanding exclusive attention to itself. The work of culture expresses the hopes and frustrations of regulating and

54   D. Venkat Rao

containing the body. Ecstasy and mourning mark the work of culture. The domain of culture carries on the body’s discontinuous but perennial struggle to explore and transcend its limits and the interminable tension and inadequacy it experiences with the cultural prostheses it brings forth. How does one engage with and respond to these enigmatic and undecidable articulations of the body and culture? A more general and fundamental reflection on the body’s struggle with and detour through cultural prostheses seems imperative in the context of the sedimented sciences of man and their repression of pluridimensional articulations of the body. At the same time this reflection must remain attentive to the most singular articulations of the body and culture, body’s struggle to grapple with the resources it is exposed to. If the work of the body creates a body of work and accords it value, it is important to explore the specific relations between individual and collective bodies and their work on the one hand and their relation to the question of value on the other. Both the work and value are significantly the effects of and the medium of tangible forces that attempt to contain the body and respond to it; they often coerce, tend and condemn the body in the epoch of the human adventure.13 Even when one recognizes the general significance of work and value, it is imperative to examine the most singular articulations of these effects and forces of the body in the utterly divergent individual and collective material formations of culture. It should be possible, while drawing on but moving across and beyond the sciences of man, to explore cultural prostheses, the sign forces of culture and the articulations of the body. This exploration can focus on two major fields of cultural production: Communications and Images, Verbal and Visual forms. These fields at once allow us to engage with the temporally most distant—say, Paleolithic petrograms—and what is believed to be the latest and ‘contemporary’—say, techno-remixes. For these domains are still very much a testimony to the most distant and ‘originary’ generative potential of the work of hand and face, of gesture and speech—the articulations of the sign forces of a body complex in a culture. Most cultural formations that have been relegated to the margins or discarded for their lack of use for capitalist-state-formation drive during colonialism, i.e., cultures that survived on the margins of colonial modernity, continue to live

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on with the most primordial sign forces of gesture and speech (without these being asymmetrically or hierarchically organized). They carry intimations of being in the world in heterogeneous ways—through song cultures (as in the case of celebrated Mizo song traditions), enacted and embodied cultural articulations. The diverse cultural formations of the ‘Northeast’ bear testimony to such powerful mnemocultures; and they call for appropriate response.

VI The colonial epoch unleashes an asymmetric confrontation between cultures of memory and the culture of the archive. This epistemic confrontation between mnemocultures that performatively embody memories in speech and gestural forms and the culture of the archive that objectifies and discursively institutionalizes memories is still an unexamined and un-thought event in our context. It remains un-rethought as the violent translational mechanisms of the archivalrepresentational colonial transplant effect continue to be dominant in the form of the university. With the acceleration of the archival techniques and capabilities, with the consolidation of archival capital (with unabated primitive accumulation modes), the asymmetry between mnemopraxial cultures and communications on the one hand and the mnemotechnical dominant on the other gets violently aggravated and orchestrated. In all these matters the university and the humanities are at stake. If the humanities are obliged to deal with human creativity, reflection and human invention, human utterance and artefacts, shouldn’t the humanities in non-European locations begin to reflect on the human creations and inventions and above all their discarded and denigrated accounts of the question of being human and its relation to the enigma of symbolization in these accounts? In other words, are the disciplines of the humanities (and the university) in India in a position to respond with responsibility to the creations, and reflections of multiple singularities of the heteronormative communities? Are they in a position to measure their inventive response to the epistemic question of being human beyond the calculus of (un-thought) disciplinary rationality (say, of folklore, history and ethnography)? In short, are they in a position to unravel the epistemic confrontation that the violence that the colonial epoch had initiated between embodied and enacted memories, on the one hand and the objectified and archival 56   D. Venkat Rao

inscriptions, on the other? An unfortunate No! to these questions indicates the depth of our postcolonial destitution. The university and its component disciplines in India circulate and replicate themselves in accord with the template installed in the colonial epoch. Capitulated to the expedient discourses and manoeuvres and regulated by the calculative mechanisms of number and classification, the university expands its ill-thought regime. It has increasingly become apparent that the university has little to offer—except the inflated degrees with declining value—to its expanding constituencies in terms of epistemic mind change in order to alleviate our destitution of postcolonial times. For even to meditate on such cultural tectonic changes across epistemic rupture that the European transplant effect has erupted, one needs to rekindle and nurture intimacy with the idiomatic singularities of what the discrete but related communities have proliferated mnemoculturally—in speech and gesture, in performance and artefact over millennia. The transplant-effect has ruptured the idiom and the modular humanities have done little to learn to suture the ruptured fabric of these discarded and discredited multiplicities of idiom. On the contrary, the class-mobile ‘beneficiary’ of these modular humanities, the denegating inheritor of these stigmatized communities, is tacitly (and often willingly, in complicity) groomed to distance and differentiate himself/herself from the singularity of his/her cultural genealogies (the immeasurably proliferated jatis). The humanities rarely engaged with the ruptured idiom outside the received European or Europeanized modules. The humanities are yet to prepare itself for learning from the reasoning imagination that textures the verbal and visual idioms of the ruptured epistemies. For, as a perceptive analyst of the Northeast arena has observed, the crisis of India today above all is the ‘crisis of the imagination’.14 Living on with the colonial implant our ailing academic institutions are yet to learn to respond to and be responsible for ‘critical humanities’. They are yet to affirm the promise of these multiple singular monstrations of being. Our abyssal destitution awaits the yearning of/ for critical humanities even as we mourn our postcolonial times. Responsibility here involves inventing gestures, discourses, politicoinstitutional practices of the two promises or constraints—the conceptual and the a-conceptual articulations of culture. The site of invention, at least in our engagement at the moment will be this university without alibi, which, as brings us all together here in a precipitous terrain with Sign Forces of Culture    57

a traumatic past. While reaffirming and countersigning inheritances, this experiment in the critical humanities will put to work all its institutional, discursive, communicational (from oral to digital) and human resources to address and respond to the interminable call: What do you do with what you have!? Lest this intruder from plains has little to say beyond unmitigated series of complaints against our common location (the university) and languages (of the humanities), let me affirm unequivocally what can still be risked and brought forth in our uncommon locations. “The urgent agenda”, that concerns us, said a remarkable teacher and thinker, is, “not the elaboration of yet another theory of literary [or cultural] production or practice but the provision of an entire education appropriate to a generation who will outlive our very notions of intelligence, information, education.”15 Such an education must be conceived with vigilance towards cultural difference—for it is precisely this marker that was/is deployed to perpetuate inequities in the world that we live. Here as teachers and researchers at the university, our responsibility is to bring forth (individually and collaboratively) new teaching modules and programmes that are sensitive to our distinct but disjunctive heritages—mnemocultural and mnemotechnical or a-conceptual and conceptual inheritances. It should be possible for us to evolve a series of scalable modules—of specific duration (from diploma level to Ph.D. programmes)—for teaching and research from our singular contexts to share across the university. These modules would be of theoretical and practical nature. Depending on the infrastructural facilities—library, AV equipment, computers, archives etc.—newer reflective-creative practices and work can be developed. The entire work can be conceived (instead of using offthe-shelf term like ‘cultural studies’ or ‘postcolonial studies’) under Critical Humanities.16 The force of such critical humanities perhaps can earn us our right to communicate across the heterotopias of our existence—and the university must be the tectonic axis for this communication of force. It is from this violent politico-philosophical structure which grants us subject positions even as it denies our identities—it is from this very aporetic structure that we must be able to think together to think differently so that the critical humanities can reconfigure and countersign the university with the mnemocultural singularities. This precarious toehold of the university needs to be urgently reconfigured (without guarantees) to face the destitute times we live in. 58   D. Venkat Rao

Notes and References   1. This chapter was prepared for a plenary presentation at the Seminar on ‘The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India’, organized by the Department of English of Mizoram University in March 2009. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the Seminar. I wish to take this opportunity to thank Margaret Zama and Kailash Baral for inviting me to the Seminar.   2. Sanjib Baruah argues that the term evokes no ‘historical memory’ or ‘collective consciousness’. But can the ‘Northeast’ have such a common memory or consciousness? Cf. Sanjib Baruah, Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 5–8.   3. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), cf. especially Chapter 10, ‘The Human Sciences’, 344–385.   4. Paul de Man, ‘Literary History and Literary Modernity’, in Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (London: Methuen & Co., 1983), 142–165.   5. The term ‘positive’ is used epistemologically and not in evaluative sense here. Positivism as a mode of knowledge production presupposes the object as posited already and assumes the access to the object by means of the senses. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (Vols. 1 and 2), translated by David Farell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 151–161.   6. The entire collection (and recollections) of essays under the title Anthropology in the East demonstrates a missed opportunity to think radically about the disciplinary form itself. Rather it collects tid-bits, anecdotes and adventures of the early foot soldiers of the newly emerging (and transplanted) field of ‘positive’ knowledge. This collection symptomatically carries confusion. The contributors to the volume complainingly state that social anthropological disciplinary inquiries look to the West for inspiration, recognition and patronage. Their complaint in this commemorative venture is that we see ‘little purpose in looking backwards [sic] or inwards for professional inspiration’. To redress this situation they take a ‘backward glance [sic]’ to identify and showcase the ‘founders’ of the disciplines and institutions in the ‘East’ (India). Consequently, the story that we get in this venture is the formation of a disciplinary subject who would carry on the disciplinarized modes of knowledge production. The founders bear witness to the ‘transposition of the modern sciences of man and society into non-Western environment’ (10). These ‘pioneers’ faithfully rendered the disciplinary concepts and vocabularies in the alien soil; or they translated the disciplinary categories into indigenous terms or found analogies for them in the native languages. If these founders have smoothly transferred and translated the epistemic categories and contributed to institutionalizing them in the Indian context, and if the disciplines are more or less fatalistically bind us to the West for ‘inspiration’ (as the editors claim), the commemorative spirit seems rather confused and ironical here. Are not these founders, then, contributors to the colossal epistemic violence that colonialism irrupted in colonized countries? How does one hope to get ‘inspiration’ from this ‘backward glance’? Should not the opportunity to engage with earlier generations who were exposed to the rupturing structures of epistemic change to see the tension, ambivalence, struggle, confusion,

Sign Forces of Culture    59

  7.

  8.

  9.

10.

sense of disorientation that those generations might have experienced? Would not the absence of the new epistemic categories in their own experience of their modes of living (and the editors tell us that most of the pioneers were very learned scholars in Indian traditions) and learning, have provoked such feelings in them and turned their accounts of what they have done more complex and disturbed? The commemorative volume (as the editors conceive it) gives us no clue to such experience of rupture; the volume draws a rather straight line between the pioneers and the postcolonial heirs and is rather self-congratulatory in its ‘backward glance’. It must be at once added here that this is not a peculiar narrative of the social sciences. Literary (or even philosophical) historical accounts in the Indian context have failed even to raise the problem of the experience of epistemic violence in the colonial epoch. Indian literary histories have mostly tried to draw straight lines of heritage across the colonial epoch—an endeavour (construction of literary history) which was essentially the product of colonial epistemic expansion. We are yet to address the question of the problems of or the (im)possibility of an intellectual history of India. Cf. P. Uberoi, N. Sunder and S. Deshpande (eds), Anthropology in the East: Founders of Indian Sociology and Anthropology (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007). Practically almost all the extant work on colonialism is centred on the plains. One is yet to see a significant critical work unravelling the colonial anthropological representations/appropriations of the regions of the ‘Northeast’. Gayatri Spivak remains the singular critical thinker who denied ‘moral luck’ to Europe for its projection of civilizing mission as an alibi for colonization. Cf. Spivak, ‘Marginality in the Teaching Machine’, in Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York: Routledge, 1993), 60–61, 296, footnote 18. Gayatri Spivak, ‘Righting Wrongs—2002: Accessing Democracy among Aboriginals’, in Other Asias (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 23–25. Here it must be noted that Spivak is not theorizing some nostalgic lost pre-capitalist cultural past that needs to be recovered—but is emphasizing the future anterior of an imperative that was lost. This ‘lost imperative’ is what she calls the responsibility-bound mode of being. Such lost imperative is unconducive to the capitalist logic of extraction and appropriation. It is such a praxial ethic of ethno-philosophies that should help us supplement the hegemonic pedagogy in the humanities, Spivak insists. Interestingly, V.S. Naipaul’s most recent work sketches a parallel scenario to the one that prevails in the Northeast. The running thread of reflection on African belief in different African countries that he visits receives a tolerant audience in Naipaul (though only a fleeting audience that aims at getting only ‘glimpses’) this time. But what he notices, emerging insistently in various countries like Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Gabon and South Africa, across very different groups of people and varied individuals, is something that can only be called the force of the repressed. Everywhere either Islam, Christianity or modernity are seen as the negative forces that have ruptured immemorial African cultures and practices: the British colonialism had ‘made now for a full century of disorder … the destruction of traditions and the lack of cultural restraint, especially for people who have been brought together by a colonial power and told to form a nation, could only bring disaster’ (3, 54). Naipaul notices that these ‘earth religions’ that could take one back to the ‘beginning, a philosophical Big Bang’ (95) with their healing systems, impenetrable (but now depleting) forests that impact the ways of being

60   D. Venkat Rao

11.

12.

13.

14.

(‘forest mind’, 228)—all have been radically disrupted by colonial irruptions and depredations. He acknowledges real and irresolvable crisis of identity after such colossal disorder of cultures and the incomprehensible violence it unleashes. For the first time in his work one comes across concern for the devastated forests and unmitigated cruelty to animals. Yet, Naipaul’s account moves on the easy binary of reason versus belief and judges the African communities still pulled by the force of belief (‘the dead end’), by the ‘dark abyss of paganism’ (95). Cf. V.S. Naipaul, The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (London: Picador, 2010). It is worth mentioning here, in contrast to Naipaul’s account of Africa, the work of Achille Mbembe who challenges the religion of rationality and insists on rethinking healing systems that continue to prevail in Africa. Cf. Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); also see Gayatri Spivak, ‘Religion, Politics, Theology: A Conversation with Achille Mbembe’, Boundary 2 34, No. 2 (2007): 149–170. Jacques Derrida, ‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone’, translated by Samuel Weber, in J. Derrida and G. Vattimo (eds), Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 1–78. Jacques Derrida speaks tirelessly about inheritances as something that comes before we as individuals (or communities) come into existence and insists on the imperative to affirm one’s responsibility to the inheritance. Each inheritance, for Derrida, is a signed past that assigns responsibility to those who are born into it. Derrida ceaselessly insists on interrogating such inheritances. Responsibility implies here being faithful to one’s inheritance by being unfaithful, by opening the heritage to radical and rigorous interrogation. Such interrogation is the essential affirmation of heritage for Derrida. Cf. ‘Choosing One’s Heritage’, in For What Tomorrow…: A Dialogue, by Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, translated by Jeff Fort (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 1–19. Here a much longer argument is presented in a rather abstract way. The epoch of human adventure refers to the transition from Neanderthal to Homo sapiens sapiens stage. It is in the latter epoch with the emergence of sedentary agricultural mode and the privileging of language as speech that an asymmetric relation between face and the limbs is said to develop. Consequently, work/activity associated with the limbs and the body get subordinated to the work of the face—i.e., of speaking. Speech is said to gain predominance over gesture and all activities associated with gesture are seen as signs of animality still persisting in humans. Thus cultures that do not privilege speech and verbalize every experience and act, but, instead, deploy the body and its parts through enacted gestures are often seen as lacking in rationality—logos. Such asymmetry between limbs and face, gesture and speech, is said to have contributed to the linearization of social formations. This asymmetry also contributed to the formation of theoretically (or conceptually) oriented cultures on the one hand, and the praxially oriented, ‘practically’ inclined, enacting and embodying, a-conceptual cultures on the other hand. Cf. for further elaboration, Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Gesture and Speech, translated by Anna Bostock Berger, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1993); and Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). Sanjib Baruah (2007), 142.

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15. Bernard Sharratt, ‘Cyber Theory’, in R. Bradford (ed.), The State of Theory (London: Routledge, 1993), 14. 16. Over the years I have had a chance to develop several such semester-long modules and offer at our university. Some of these include, ‘Oral to Digital’, ‘the Verbal and the Visual’, ‘Digital Technologies and Critical Humanities’, ‘Critical Comparisons’, ‘Muthos and Puranas’, ‘Texts and Textuality’, ‘Culture and Memory’, ‘Culture and Community’, ‘Acts of Reading’, ‘Fables of Power’ and others. Such experimental courses and teaching contributed to opening up new areas of research in Song Cultures, Comparative Jati-Puranas and Indian narrative and visual traditions.

62   D. Venkat Rao

PART II

Specifics of Literary Paradigms of the Northeast

The Concept of Society    63

64   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

6 Locating Trauma in Mizo Literature The Beloved Bullet Margaret Ch. Zama

India’s Northeast, other than the many labels associated with it, is also a region of ethnic and political strife which has given rise to, and is voiced through, a rich trove of creative writings. This conflict generated writing is variously termed as ‘literature of real conflict’,1 ‘poetry in a time of terror’,2 ‘poetry of guns and insurgency’,3 ‘the poetry of survival’4 or, as poignantly stated by Esterine Kire from Nagaland and which may be applied to such writings from the region: I cannot tell the story of Nagaland and the conflict that has been her lot, in prose. For the story of Nagaland is the story of the Naga soul on a long, lonely journey of pain, loss and bereavement, a silent holocaust in which words seldom were enough to carry the burden of being born a Naga. Therefore, I shall use poems to tell the Naga story.5

Though such writings are largely associated with insurgency, the very term ‘insurgency’ is contested by many as its interpretation can be political and therefore vary according to the perceptions applied. Then also, these writings can be examined in the light of the emergence of ‘trauma theory’, touching as they do, upon aspects of history, memory, nostalgia, longing, fear and anger. Though the concept of ‘trauma theory’ in medical science and the Humanities and Social Sciences, is not a new one, it has assumed significant relevance and privileging post 9/11. It is to do with temporary delay of memory of traumatic events which may be due to various The Concept of Society    65

reasons as complex as repression, deliberate disowning or forced amnesia, or the need to buy for time as it were, for healing first, and so on. The Holocaust, Vietnam War, abuse of women and children and partition of India are some of the areas which for many scholars and social scientists occupy centre stage for trauma studies. Literature thus generated from historical/factual events draw a thin line between fiction and non-fiction. This in turn bears witness to the possibilities of new ways of reading history that is no longer necessarily based on models of straightforward experience and reference, but rather on a new understanding that evokes history to manifest whenever and wherever immediate understanding of an event is absent. Writers particularly from the states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur have been vocal and productive in literary representations of resistance, trauma and suffering, and continue to be so, caught as they are even in present times, in the crossfire of violence due to communal and ethnic strife, militancy and underground armed movements. Mizoram too, had its share of a turbulent and violent history during the dark period of the Mizo National Front (MNF)-armed rebellion against the Indian government, from early 1966, and brought to a closure after 20 years in 1986 with the signing of the Mizoram Peace Accord. But Mizoram has been more reticent about this period in its history, particularly in terms of thematizing it as material for generating literary output, both in fiction and non-fiction, until recent years. The reasons for this could be many such as the hurdles of publication during troubled times and, more importantly, the reluctance to speak out or put in writing its violent history while its repositories are still alive, even as the pain and/or anger is still too fresh. Perhaps a line from Esterine Kire once again may best explain the internalizing of pain suffered—“In the worst of the war years, the horror has taken us beyond poetry, beyond words into silence; the deep silence of inexpressible pain.”6 Trauma, besides other things, talks about the repression of suffering by internalizing it in memory, thus silencing it. On the other hand, theorists like Rebecca Saunders and Kamran Aghaie7 express the urgent need to theorize and understand processes that will help wrestle with how to remember and mourn traumatic events, and for communities to reconstruct selves and societies. Dokhuma’s novella Silaimu Ngaihawm (1992),8 in the light of this observation, provides interesting study. It should not be assumed that the creativity of the Mizo was silenced in the immediate aftermath of the 1966 uprising. The vocalization 66   Margaret Ch. Zama

of sufferings that the common man endured, in fact, found their outlet in a manner most befitting to this so-called ‘singing tribe’—in popular songs composed during this period. A brief mention may be made here of two songs composed in 1966 by Laltanpuia both titled ‘Sialsuk khaw kang hla’, which dwells on the traumatic event of the torching of his village Sialsuk and is reflective of many such songs composed during this period that tell of the miseries of villagers who are driven out overnight from their villages by the Indian Army, and forcefully herded into village groupings. Laltanpuia was of course a patriotic song composer who had earlier in 1964, two years prior to the outbreak of the 1966 MNF-armed uprising, composed a song called ‘Independent kan Zoram tan’, wherein he blatantly bore witness to the MNF nationalistic mindset and its policy of secession from India. The hateful long curfew hours clamped over the land following the rebellion was resented, in particular by the youth, for it curbed their movements and this again found expression in song compositions. As a case in point, the nostalgia and loneliness for one’s lady love during the curfew hours is revealed in songs like ‘Curfew kara suihlunglen’ by K. Rammawia. In 1969, the famous songwriter Rokunga composed a nostalgic ballad ‘Ka pianna Zawl Khawpui’ bemoaning the moral degeneration and loss of values ushered into the land post 1966, and wherein his beloved hometown Aizawl is witness to ‘the rejection and demise of truth’. In 1976, another well-known songwriter V. Thangzama, through his song ‘Tho la ding ta che’, gave a rousing clarion call, urging Mizoram to ‘rise and stand up for your wounds are now healed’. These few samples bear witness to the fact earlier mentioned that creativity found its form in song compositions, but the fact remains that there was a clear void in other literary forms. James Dokhuma (1932–2007), recipient of the Padma Shri in March 1985 and the Bhasa Samman from Sahitya Akademi in 1997, was an icon not only for his people but for Northeast India. He studied up to class five but was a prolific writer who authored 42 books that included 10 fiction works. He has over 40 poems to his credit besides a huge corpus of essays and articles that number over 400. He joined the ranks of the MNF in 1966 and rose to the rank of MP and Deputy Speaker under its self-styled underground government. He was arrested and imprisoned from 1968 to 1971, first at Nowgong Special Jail and then Gauhati District Jail. As someone who actively participated in the rebellion, albeit for a brief period of two years before his arrest, he was also co-sufferer of the trauma generated by it. Never one to Locating Trauma in Mizo Literature    67

say die, he wrote three of his classic novels during his incarceration. They are Thla Hleinga Zan, Rinawmin and Khawhar In, though their actual publication came later. Surprisingly, amongst the three, only Rinawmin has thematized the troubled period. His novella Silaimu Ngaihawm was written specifically, and in a way retrospectively, after a gap of several years in 1992, to put on record in fictional form, the sufferings of the common man caused by the controversial enforced village groupings. The focus for study here is going to be on trauma of dislocation/relocation generated by enforced village groupings, and repressed trauma resulting in deep depression and eventual death, which unfolds in the course of the novella that frames a moving love story in the midst of the underground movement. Silaimu Ngaihawm (The Beloved Bullet, henceforth BB) provides a powerful depiction of the draconian practice of village groupings officially known as ‘Protected and Progressive Village’ or PPV, but derisively subverted as ‘Public Punishment Village’ by the victimized Mizo population.9 In an oblique reference to Hitler and the Holocaust of the Second World War, the writer likens such villages to ‘concentration camps’.10 Following orders issued from the office of the Commissioner at Silchar that read: All villages lying between Vairengte and Zobawk near Lunglei, situated within ten miles from the main road on both sides, will migrate to specified villages between January 1st and 10th. All deserted villages will be burnt after January 10th, except for the churches and graveyards.11

Horrendous military action was initiated whereby the inhabitants of villages located throughout the length and breadth of Mizoram, were herded overnight with just only a few hours notice, to leave their all except what they could carry, and have their beloved homesteads burnt to the ground before their very eyes. It is no exaggeration when Dokhuma writes that “the elderly clung to their doorposts, weeping openly”,12 and again, in describing the evacuation of the village Hualtu he writes, Tonight, the village elders who had been reared and nurtured by the spring waters of Hualtu, whose feelings of nostalgia and tenderness could be roused only by their own village and who now were about to be driven out of their homes by alien men, wept and mourned aloud, unable to accept and understand this trauma. Anyone who was slow or did not pack fast enough, was bullied and hurried by the soldiers. Some

68   Margaret Ch. Zama

carried their excess goods and hid them on the outskirts of the village. Happiness had left each and every face. No one looked forward to the migration, yet no one dared to show it.13

Such dark times were recorded in songs by many. A sample from a song by composer Suakliana is given below. Kan huntawng zingah khawkhawm a pawi ber mai, Zoram hmun tin khawtlang puan ang a chul zo ta, Ramtina mi khalhkhawm nu nau mipui te, Chhunrawl avang, riakmaw iangin kan vai e.

(The most tragic of times ever encountered in our history is the village grouping, wherein the entire community is lifeless like a faded cloth, and people, including mothers and children, are hungry and homeless like the ‘riakmaw’14 in search of shelter.) Some significant developments have taken place in more recent times in Mizoram wherein educated sections of the community and the youth have taken keen interest in what may be called the rereading and rewriting of their history, particularly of the period covering the MNF movement. Research and documentation have been underway for some time now, and the unlocking of history and memory have now begun as it were. Amongst several writers who have come up with non-fictional historical accounts of the underground movement have been those who understandably are ex-underground themselves.15 The two historical dark spots in time, as it were, that have refused to fade from public memory, and which to a great extent had served to enhance the alienation of the Mizo psyche from the ‘other’, and which unfortunately continues to provide grist to the mill as it were, are firstly, the bombing of Aizawl town by jetfighters on the morning of 5 March 1966. Interestingly enough, this date has since 2008 been earmarked by an organizing committee spearheaded by a student body, the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), as Zoram Ni (Zoram Day) to commemorate what has come to be known as ‘Zawlkhawpui senmei chan ni tak kha!’ (the fateful day that flames enveloped Aizawl town!). The process of coming to terms with the disturbing fact that Mizoram has till date been the only victim and target in India of such a drastic military action, employed to subdue secessionists, continues. The second, of course, is the forced village groupings which took place in three phases in 1967, 1968 and 1972. It should be mentioned here that there were four types of village grouping methods implemented, namely, PPV (referred to Locating Trauma in Mizo Literature    69

by Dokhuma in BB), New Group Centres (NGC), Extended Loop Areas (ELA) and Voluntary Group Centres (VGC); this last denoting that in some cases of village groupings, it was voluntary.16 The Zoram Research Foundation (ZORF) organized an International Seminar on Grouping of Villages, from 6 to 8 September 2010, at Aizawl, in which a number of noted scholars from within and outside the state, and prominent citizens of Aizawl, participated. I have given the details above to give some grounding to my return to issues of history and memory, and mourning and memory. I had referred earlier to theorists Saunders and Aghaie who (I repeat) believe there is an urgent need to theorize and understand processes that will help wrestle with how to remember and mourn traumatic events, and for communities to reconstruct selves and societies. There are indeed private and public forms of memory as well as mourning, and Zoram Ni may be seen as an example of a devise that has been structured for remembering and mourning. “Traumatic experiences of individuals and groups, whether physical or psychological, leave deep scars and have long-lasting social, psychological, political, and material effects”17 and as to whether traumatic memory operates in the same way in communities as it does in individuals, is a related matter that we witness in Dokhuma’s BB, first with the village grouping which is indeed collective suffering, and Ramliani’s personal tragedy of a slow death caused by depression and a broken heart. Erikson states that “sometimes the tissues of community can be damaged in much the same way as the tissues of mind and body”,18 and also suggests that collective trauma can be seen as “a blow to the basic tissues of social life”.19 Ron Eyerman on the other hand, in his study of slavery and the formation of African American identity, gives an interesting perspective to collective trauma, that “there is a difference between trauma as it affects individuals and as a cultural process”,20 for the act of analyzing memory that is rooted in event(s) that are not necessarily directly experienced, underpin collective identities, and that such memory is usually disseminated through media like newspapers, radio or television and “always involves selective construction and representation” and always engages in a “meaning struggle”.21 This theory of cultural trauma is interesting and has relevance to what I refer to, be it of the bombing of Aizawl town or forced village groupings, when we see the idea further developed and defined as “when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever 70   Margaret Ch. Zama

and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways”.22 These theorists contend that trauma is a social construction for it is the reactions to events rather than events themselves that are traumatic, and that it is the meanings and not the events that produce the sense of shock and fear associated with trauma. Then there is also the politics of mourning, and [s]tates, leaders, and social movements regularly deploy the memory of traumatic events to promote identities or ideologies … such memorialization may take the form of monuments, holidays, or ritual; it may also be facilitated by media, school textbooks, and professional historians. Both through recall of an event and through the affects of grief, fear, and anger associated with loss, mourning may be directed to instrumental ends that include nationalism, political transition or stability, modernization…. These objectives, shrouded by a dense fog of emotion, often overlap or blend together…. In short, mourning may be used for hegemonic or counterhegemonic, oppressive or emancipatory, purposes; processes of mourning contain a formidable cache of loose power…. 23

the kind of power that religious, political, social and economic entities have more often than not, put to effective use throughout history. In the light of these theoretical approaches, the village groupings that Dokhuma felt so strongly about, so much so that he was compelled into creating a work of fiction to showcase it, can be located as the ‘collective trauma’ of the Mizo community at that point in time, which involved the pain of displacement and dislocation in the true sense of the term. On the other hand, as earlier denoted, the collective memory that is being constructed/reconstructed in connection with the bombing of Aizawl, and forced village groupings, can be interpreted as a social and political engineering of ‘cultural trauma’ that involves the politics of mourning used for hegemonic purposes. Perhaps defining Ramliani’s trauma in Dokhuma’s BB is best described as memory and silence, for her memory is internal and suppressed, and cannot tell about what she recalls because words fail her for the present, even as she tells her friend, “Kimkim, someday I will tell you everything”.24 The vast bulk of research on trauma has focused on individual psychology and has been dominated by the clinical parameters of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as a result of which “[t]he experience of the trauma, fixed or frozen in time, refuses to be represented as past, but is perpetually re-experienced in a painful, Locating Trauma in Mizo Literature    71

dissociated, traumatic present”.25 A link with Ramliani’s experience can be detected here. Her story skilfully moves on to create a subversion of sorts, by weaving a metaphor out of the bullet that has taken the life of her lover into one that provides solace because it is the only tangible link that she has with him, therefore becoming the beloved/ or replacing the beloved, who is now dead and gone. The same bullet that—as she predicts—eventually serves to take her life. She says, “It will not happen in the same way as it did with U Lura, but I know that in its own way, this bullet will kill me, too.”26 Earlier in the story, a deep sense of nostalgia and longing pervade the two friends who go to collect firewood from the forest. The nostalgia is for their old village and old haunts which can be seen from a distance. Being forcefully uprooted from one’s original village to another for five years, and then relocated back, only serves to compound their misery further, for the longing is now directed to the village that one has adopted. Ramliani gives vent to her sadness through song thus From every hill, trees in bloom Peep through the mist, I dare not look Little birds play among the flowers But I, like a child, can find no solace27

Meanwhile her friend Chalkimi recalls, “Before the grouping our village was cohesive and complete. But now it is nothing more than the reluctance to part with what we’ve already lost. No matter which way we turn, memories haunt us. The past is not going to return, that’s for sure.”28 It would not be out of context to make a reference here to Temsula Ao, a poet of long standing and an authority on the oral tradition and cultural practices of the Ao Nagas, who is the author of a powerful and evocative collection of stories titled These Hill called Home: Stories from a War Zone. One can indeed locate trauma and suffering, both individual and collective, in many of these stories. She asks what one is to do “when that memory is of pain and pain alone?” and then responds to her own query by admitting that her intention of retelling such stories, is to revisit the lives of those people whose pain has so far gone unmentioned and unacknowledged … what the stories are trying to say is that in such conflicts, there are no winners, only victims and the results can be measured only in human terms. For the victims the trauma goes

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beyond the realm of just the physical maiming and loss of life—their very humanity is assaulted and violated, and the onslaught leaves the survivors scarred both in mind and soul.29

She gives voice to the earlier long silence of pain, revealing to the outside world how half a century of surviving in a war-zone has taken its toll especially on the women who have to bear the maximum brunt from both the establishment as well as the rebel militants. The poignant story of Apenyo in ‘The Last Song’ creates a legend for the people of the village—it being the one she continued to sing even as the soldiers brutally gang raped her. ‘The Curfew Man’ skilfully projects the dilemma and ambivalence of one whose values are compromised in trying times, and who is forced to be an informer due to a cruel twist of fate. These stories and many more “speak movingly of home, country, nation, nationality, identity…”.30 It is true that sensitive writers who write of human sufferings, particularly of sufferings that are part of their own history, tread the thin line between fiction and non-fiction, and run the risk of projecting a one-sided approach. They have to undergo the challenge of having to maintain an objectivity within their own subjectivity, for too much of the former can dilute the depth of their telling, yet an excessive leaning on the latter can result in sentimentalizing that can trivialize the pain and suffering. A credible balance is admirably struck by many of the writers of this genre of conflict writing from the Northeast and it is to their credit that they do so. They have no models except that which they create of their own, no mentors except for the compulsion from within to voice unrecorded history and no other motive but the one that matters most—to tell their tale as best they can, for others to learn and know what it is to be human.

Notes and References   1. Tariq Ali, ‘Literature and Market Realism, New Left Review, No. 199 (1993): 143, quoted in Sumanyu Satpathy, ‘Locating Cultures: A Semi-Academic Essay On the English Poetry of the Northeast’, Muse India (the literary e-journal), Issue 8 (July–August 2006).   2. Robin S. Ngangom, ‘Poetry in a Time of Terror’, Sarai Reader 2006: Turbulence, 422–429.   3. Quoted from Rajalakhsmi Bhattacharyya, available online at http://www.telegraphindia.com.   4. Robin S. Ngangom in ‘Contemporary Manipuri Poetry’, Muse India, the literary e-journal, available online at http://www.museindia.com.

Locating Trauma in Mizo Literature    73

  5. Quoted from ‘The Conflict of Nagaland: Through the Poet’s Eyes’ [Published in Skarven Magazine, Tromso, Norway, (2004), 1]. Available online at http://nagas. systes.net.   6. Ibid., 2.   7. Rebecca Saunders and Kamran Aghaie, ‘Introduction: Mourning and Memory’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, No. 1(2005): 17–29.   8. Silaimu Ngaihawm has been translated into English as The Beloved Bullet, and published in the volume Fresh Fictions, a collection of writings from the Northeast (Katha: New Delhi, 2005). All references to the text are from this translation.   9. Ibid., 172. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 155. 13. Ibid., 171. 14. The Mizo have an old tale about the ‘riakmaw’ bird—called so because it used to fly from tree to tree seeking permission to shelter, but was repeatedly refused until it came across the ‘thingthiang’ tree that agreed to shelter it. In poetic terms, this bird denotes a homeless and sad being. Likewise, the metaphor of ‘puan ang a chul zo ta’, which literally means faded like an old cloth, is commonly used by composers to denote something or someone faded, abandoned and sad, in contrast to a newly woven cloth or puan, which is colourful and fresh. 15. Mention may be made here of ex-MNA (Mizo National Army) Col. Lalrawnliana who wrote Zoramin Zalenna a Sual, Vols 1–10 spanning 1994 to 2004, printed at Aizawl; C. Zama, ex-underground who wrote Chengrang a Au Ve! (Mizoram Government Press: Aizawl, 2008) and Zoram a Tap (Zorin Compugraphics: Aizawl, 2008); and R. Zamawia, ex-Defence Minister and Army Chief of the MNA who wrote Zofate Zinkawngah—(Zalenna Mei a Mit Tur a Ni Lo) (Lengchhawn Press: Aizawl, 2007). Col. Lalrawnliana’s work includes frank accounts of their activities and operations against villages considered collaborators of the enemy, and can perhaps prove disturbing for some. C. Zama romanticizes his hero/martyr compatriots, and is not above sentimentalizing and emotionalizing the underground movement, linking it closely with the Christian faith, though this is not a new angle, as the MNF motto, or war cry was ‘for God and Country’. R. Zamawia’s book provides, besides several important data, an insider’s version of the inside story of intrigue and power struggle of the underground leadership, bound to prove invaluable in the rewriting of the history of the movement. 16. See the article by C. Lalawmpuia Vanchiau with the interesting title Ngaidam la, Theihnghilh suh: Khawkhawm leh Inmawhpuh (Forgive but Forget Not: Village Grouping and the Blame Game) published in Zolife, March 2011, 50–53. 17. Quoted from Saunder and Aghaie, ‘Mourning and Memory’. 18. Kai Erikson, A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community (New York: Norton, 1994), 230, quoted in Saunder and Aghaie, ‘Mourning and Memory’. 19. Ibid., 233. 20. Ron Eyerman, Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 2, quoted in Saunder and Aghaie, ‘Mourning and Memory’.

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21. Ibid., 2–3. 22. Jeffrey C. Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), quoted in Saunder and Aghaie, ‘Mourning and Memory’. 23. Quoted from Saunder and Aghaie, ‘Mourning and Memory’. 24. The Beloved Bullet, 158. 25. Ruth Leys, Trauma: A Geneology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 2, quoted in Saunder and Aghaie, ‘Mourning and Memory’. 26. The Beloved Bullet, 186. 27. Ibid., 157. 28. Ibid. 29. Temsula Ao, These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone (New Delhi: Zubaan Penguin Books, 2006), ix–x. 30. Quoted from Shantanu Dutta, available online at http:/nagarealm.com (accessed 4 February 2007).

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7 Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space Sarangadhar Baral

In this essay, I will attempt to situate a sheaf of folk songs chosen from Northeast India, not so much in the postmodern locale of critical and cultural theories, which theorize and privilege spatiality over temporality, but in the context of ecological disasters affecting the very existence of all living beings. I have used folk song and oral poetry interchangeably, since folk song, though in genesis oral, lyrical and memorized, is already reproduced in written symbols for study. I have followed Nilamani Phukan’s book of folk lyrics in Assamese translation, Aranyar Gaan (Songs of the Wilderness), which contains a preface ‘Banariya Nizarar Maat’ by Professor Hiren Gohain.1 This anthology is a collection of folk songs in translation, which represents many other ethnic groups of Northeast India like the Angami, Kuki, Wanchu, Bodo and Mising. In order to keep my text within permissible limits, I have had to compromise presentation of many other possible samples, which have the same universal appeal despite their distinct geocultural localities. Traditionally, ethnic songs trace their origin to humble and pastoral landscape, which nourished simple life and idyllic vision. They are, of course, not performed in a cityscape, though cities nowadays occasionally accommodate such ethnic performances in a spatial sense, especially dance troupes, as cultural and ethnic symbolizations. This uncomplicated life is, moreover, marked by common constraints of everyday life, but the tortures and triumphs of love are seen to have 76   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

moved and elevated the life-rhythms to the life of a song. A song is not merely a spontaneous exposition of folk breaths; it too is structured with images got fresh from seasons and reawakened landscapes. Obviously, firm ties between life and landscape are a characteristic sign of folk song. A pejoratively termed ‘simple’ people are not to be considered grossly set in material processes of daily life or lacking imaginative re-creation of their habitats. In other words, landscape usually offered them common avenues of subsistence and, more creatively, additional flavours to life by providing intimate images to their breath-woven songs. Primitive societies too constructed their topographies and cultural habits, but not in a manner fashionably critical or philosophical. No time have we in some company Walked to a wild, secret place No time have we to fill the kunki of love Plucked the wild leaves off a creeper And for this Today I am happy (Angami folk song; author’s translation)

This Angami folk song is suggestive of adventurous personal activities as well as quiet avenues in love; the ‘mobile’(wild) love mostly transgresses (plucking wild leaves in a bamboo basket, kunki, which is meant here for collecting flowers) and is not sure of peace. One could well sense here that Angami culture does allow two contradictory perspectives on love. And this ambivalent culture is not unconscious of certain errant human activities affecting nature, but does not cultivate as value some nature/culture dichotomy. Put in the spatio-cultural geographies, this folk lyric would well posit an oblique comment on the discourses negotiating any metropolitan context of concrete jungles in postmodern times. It was not only the Romantic age texts of the West that were greatly inspired by nature, but also those of the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa (Meghadootam, eighth century AD) and Jayadeva (Geeta Govinda, twelfth century AD), not to mention the Vedas among others in the Eastern globe, that were informed by nature’s verdant glories and are a testimony to timeless love poetry on the symbiotic interdependence Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space    77

between man and nature, containing even an intertwined continuum of the physical with the spiritual. The poets cited had had the bitter share of life’s vagaries, but never been distressed souls while looking up to nature for inspiration and consolation. The available texts may be termed as ‘autotopographies’, to borrow Dee E. Heddon’s phrase, in suggesting writings of the author(s) in and on the landscape.2 What is crucial to their creative belief is the grand principle, which, unlike non-Oriental religious paradigms, situated and celebrated their highest gods in the green locale of nature. Kalidasa situated a cloud (metonymic substitute for nature) as an empathetic friend (messenger) to succour the lovelorn hearts, thus, to collapse spatial distance and maximize love, while to Jayadeva, nature was the perfect living theatre or green home for epitomizing love through plays. To both these poets, divine or supernatural lovers are more human in suffering and contemplative of the highest spiritual ecstasy, which is not realized in nature’s void. It may be noted that there has been no conscious tradition or attribution of antipathy between city and nature in early Indian nature poetry. Further, Indian nature poetry is structurally complex and textually more refined than its oral art counterparts but innately informed by the primal spiritual connections with folk sensibilities about nature. On the contrary, the renowned cultural critic Roland Barthes would expose and destroy mythpoesis by charting so-called beautiful utopias as ‘everyday myths’ of things, and clear a space for urban myths.3 It is needless to repeat how city-centric modernist consciousness, compounded by our poststructuralist imperatives, has discredited the whole ethos of nineteenth century romantic thought, which in our crisis-ridden environments necessitates our rethinking its discrete sympathies and kindly effects. However, we may think of folk tradition, which is usually unencumbered by self-conscious rationalizations of the postmodern imperative. Here is one folk lyric of ethnic Misings living in the present Assam state: The murmuring flow I have heard But not sighted the stream You I have seen But of the trembling heart to relate I haven’t got a suitable moment (Mising folk song; author’s translation)

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In this context, we need to bear in mind that Jakobson’s idea of ‘a poetic oeuvre’ and ‘the totality of an individual mythology’ of a poet would not constrain our folk song.4 Folk poetry is not esteemed as an individual expertise; its technology has been shaped fine by a whole community through ages. And thus, oral poetry is usually performed communally in tribal societies. Here, outward sight contrasted with inner audition subtly presents a common[al] experience above unique individual character. Moreover, if at all the first three lines relating to nature are removed from the context, it is not difficult to know what shallowness or bareness the poem would acquire about the human affair. We are once again welcome in a way, down to the basics, for the basics of an interactive relationship between the natural and the human are for us to rework and recover. Less than the aboriginal primitive, but largely to a similar extent, the folk poet lived in an organic complex of place, time and life, intricately affecting and supporting each other in a cycle of coextensive recurrence of the phenomena. The folk mind, here, is acutely aware of an inner rhythm of life, which moves in and holds together all beings and non-beings. The murmuring of a stream and the trembling of a heart are preimagined and thus, evidently manifest for the poet to analogize, and their dialectic too is spatially constructed in the sense that the physical landscape is an entity, which meets its beholder on many planes of observation and experience. The place forces its being into the experiential expression or analysis of its observer–reader. In other words, its being participates in the imaginative construction of its indwellers, its creative singers, its appreciative dancers. So, why has the place gone invisible or unvoiced beneath the city’s myriad humocosmic5 movements in culture, literature and critical theory? In modern/postmodern texts christened as cultural geographies, urban pastorals, metropolitan myths, we are not astonished to see postmodern humanity as too critically cerebral in conceding some genuine space to geographies, pastorals and myths in their old senses. All humanity’s pastorals now are textually and spatially constructed and enlivened with the humocosmic flair and flavour. It is no wonder that an existence in the absence of nature’s proximity has produced its own epics. This lyric, primarily a song performance, does not work at a high level of abstraction or complicated epistemology that often gets the ‘meaning experience’ slighted or obscured. I would concur with Stanley Fish whose reader-response idea argues for the extraordinary effects of an ordinary sentence or a simple verbal object, demonstrating Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space    79

the meaning as an event, a happening and what it does rather than what it is. Here, an oppositional epistemology is primary and the individual or cultural symbolic is a product of the experience provoked in the participatory associations with place, landscape, or nature, if you will. Were it a bloom It would have flowered Were it a creeper It would have crawled If I were loved My agonies would’ve been understood (Mising folk song; author’s translation)

The Mising folk song is, at the first glance, a representation of the simple, rustic, unsophisticated life that is troubled only with a desire of love. To some, its textualization may sound an ‘emotional slither’, in the Poundian phrase. But the economy of expression, clear images and the final ironic twist in the question makes it, to my mind, uncharacteristically modern in taste. One may argue that it does not happen to challenge the discursive modern and postmodern discourse, either by textual strategy or by discursive philosophy; and everything resonates simply to a point of the stereotype, uninterestingly unreflective of postmodern conditions. However, as in the poem, an external object and a subjective experience cohere. And at the same time, the reader like the author is conscious of certain interstices between geography and biography, which the verbal art does not repress, in the sense that unlike potential growth and harmonic fulfilment in nature, the human agony registers a lack of natural growth of the spirit owing to a loving human’s characteristic dependence on a human for life’s fulfilment. Nature assures its native performers of reciprocity in free response, and it is not nature hence, when this reciprocity is suppressed or denied; it turns out to be a burden—a dependence—for it is a violation of nature within. Nevertheless, we learn from our predecessors and ethnic lyrics that our environment shapes and forms our experience. It is not only the Wordsworthian and Thoreauvian strains (that resonate in the thought: nature does not betray the heart that loves her), but far more radically, Native American cosmogonies, Taoistic ontology 80   Sarangadhar Baral

and Eastern epistemologies,6 can guide the postmodern spatialists in discovering our new territories as to recovering native whole strengths. Texts, classical, religious, canonical, and others less so may offer new geographers insights in this direction. And at the same time, deep environmentalists would lend their invaluable strength in the project mapping ecological terrains that concern humanity now. That for our new eco-conscientious activism is not to go the way of all intellectually orgasmic elixirs, the unsophisticated folk songs of humanity would be a resource for the academics to hear and relax and correctly step across their humocosmic spaces into the green terrestrials. In the gaze of the other, non-human other, humanity must put to test and cultivate its own state of being desirable rather than being superior to the other. I would like to solicit a Bodo folk song in order to advance the discussion: The wind is blowing fresh in breezy ripples The flower has bloomed Like the full moon The butterfly is at its fluttering round Falling now soaring now In sucking the honey Ah, how a sweet soft odor is playing abroad On the tree is singing the keteki bird With its sweet-throated measure All fronts reverberate Ah, what a sweet day today (Bodo folk song; author’s translation)

There is no self-conscious, postmodern constructedness in this idyllic joyous song of nature. The subjective human presence is of little significance except in its valid role as one of the constitutive elements of a grand symphony making up a whole synaesthetic scene. The expression ‘ah, what a sweet...’ captures a spontaneous rhythm and rapture of the magical landscape here. One may posit the involvement of the subjective I/eye without which perhaps the lyric would not happen. However, I shall reconfigure this that the human cognition or re/presentation is an effect, not a cause of nature’s solicitations. The human voice, in the present context, is not an extraneous addition Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space    81

from the outside, but an attestation, an echo of a whole organic and grand event here. The visual and aural spaces receive almost an equal emphasis. The context and the content are not alienated categories, which may even characterize oral poetry in general. Naturally, the messy city aura, a built environment of man, can have its own particular affects and expressions. Making an observation on ‘the relationship between art and reality’ in the oral tradition, N. Scott Momaday, the foremost Native American poet–novelist (the Pulitzer prize winner), explains that oral art involves such considerations as memorization, intonation, precision of statement, brevity, rhythm, pace and dramatic effect. Moreover, myth, legend and lore … imply a separate distinct of order of reality. We are concerned here not so much with an accurate representation of actuality, but with the realization of the imaginative experience.7

To me, this imaginative experience is not imaginary, but more of a renewal of the already felt life in words, rhythm and images. Further, in the identity formation of man, forces external to the human subject do play crucial roles; and here for the participantobserver, the natural habitat does more than that; he would not feel the same in another season, but not go alienated from the changed locale. One may posit that the poem here could pose, to us civilized, certain indefensible tendencies of ecologism rather than ecologically sane formatives. This question should rather elicit man’s self-enquiry: why we in our built environments of concrete and fantasy have to drug our bodies for a high. When the sun rises, the metropolitan’s body hardly ever knows its effect; and this has gone too far and beyond human control. More importantly, human utterance of joy is an unselfing (i.e., becoming selfless, losing the human ego) paradoxically in the selfcreating, self-celebrating process. I believe the body is a miniature environment of entire bio-geo-imperatives. In the olden times, it was probably a practice that this unselfing, an emptying of the ego, now and then, a dissolving of the centred consciousness as man/me, was a sane measure for regular identity with other beings, with the vast phenomenal world at large. Native Americans, Latin Americans, Africans, Australian Aborigines as well as the Taoists, Vajrayana Tantrists and Zen Buddhists with their developed epistemologies do continue to believe in such a norm, irrespective of varied practices 82   Sarangadhar Baral

and approaches, and also of their blind culture-pressured abuses. A disadvantaged Mising lover would console himself: If in this life I may not have you In the next life I will In becoming a bird tiny with you Together I will fly (Mising folk song; author’s translation)

This little song expresses the Mising belief in the rounds of birth and reincarnation when certain desires get fulfilled. A tiny Santhal song (outside the Northeast domain) combines senses of shock and erotic fantasy: A snake in the river A snake You would come to me at night Come at night (Santhal folk song; author’s translation)

Many ethnic groups pre-conceptually regard the living things as beings, peoples, presences, because of their firm tie with the interwebbed existence, unlike their modern and postmodern counterparts who privilege the intellectual acrobatics in symbolizing in art and as well as devaluing the other as objects for human pleasure and abuse. One could as well claim that these folk songs/lyrics with their primitive roots in ethnic and communal life are conceived on the borderland crossings of place and self, landscape and life, both affected by time, seasonal cycles, not by absolute historical consciousness. The physical landscape (nature) as topographical forms and the mental landscape of the observer-participant (communal being) of folk song are one ontological reality, which unfolds complex structures in living moments of contact. The folk song rises from their dialectics and webbed processes. It has all the vitality, rhythmic resonance and liveliness of a different borderland of intersections. Without contact, i.e., a corporeal dialectics of communication, anything develops to a mental buzz and un-redemptive state. Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space    83

However, with the onset of modernity, as Eliot says, our complex age is capable of appreciating and deciphering complex meanings and constructs of life. Was he not speaking from an industrialized and war-torn landscape of modern city? An academic respectability has inevitably inspired obscure poetic creativities to this day. I do not say good poetry has not happened in this climate of intellectualism, which in some cases ironically solicit an anti-intellectually pagan or spiritual yearning of life. Here is another folk lyric: On the tip of the bamboo grove The perching golden oriole The yellow cloth of my own weaving Do take it, Dear cousin! In the high ceiling lies the scorpion At the neck of the cousin But hangs a wreath of hand kerchiefs The woodcutter His regular wealth a packet of salt Has sent me the word Take me away today To the woodcutting den Do take me This straight way (Bodo folk lyric; author’s translation)

This exquisite song, a dramatic lyric, reveals many dimensions intricately woven of life and landscape, which can yield better appreciation in the New Critical tradition. More importantly, the mode of expression is economical, oblique and with a touch of parody not to miss in the reference to the cousin’s garland of gifts. The Bodo maiden despairs of her chosen lover’s many loves symbolized by his wreath of handkerchiefs, and decides to go away with a woodcutter who owns not even a shed. The text dramatically celebrates the triumph of love in its ideal aspect. At the outset, one experiences ellipses between the lines 2 and 3, between 5 and 6 which are but recuperated by a common sign or mark, i.e., yellow, here which recalls cultural associations. The elliptical becomes more meaningful in the total context of a culture interiorized, 84   Sarangadhar Baral

and more pertinently, in a specific land/scape of experience based on regular observation and knowledge of animals, seasons and their symbiotic coexistence. On attending to the text, we notice how the brilliant yellow of the oriole and the hand-woven cloth makes nature– culture nexus happen. Ironically, the lover proves to be generous to many others whose gifts (handkerchiefs) are no match for her own yellow singular token. The attractive lover is variously compared with the woodcutter in terms of possessions like wealth, house, social respectability and personal integrity. The oriole as well as scorpion, exquisite in appearances, exciting loving spirit in heart, fails the human intention ultimately. However, the spirit of love inspired by a new, energizing environment of land and landscape in spring gets fulfilled in the respective, not necessarily antagonistic, but overlapping, locales of scorpions, orioles and humans. In a sense, is not love’s loyalty between two human individuals a cultural construct limiting nature’s freeways? Both desire and imagery however derive from the one living complex, i.e., nature human–animal and not human/animal. On the contrary, postmodern spatiality is evidently devoid of the animal space. It is important to remember that the folk poet operates within specific sociocultural matrix, the circuits of which insist on the lyrical capital that implies unifying cultural (above authorial) voice and not postmodern dissipated subject function. The oriole image announces the advent of spring, a time of nature’s glory, an ideal time of meeting for both the animal (oriole, scorpion) and the human. The woodcutter poor, humble and socially marginalized occupationally depends on felling trees. In other words, he is inimical to nature. His unenviable position dramatically changes with an offer of marriage signifying a time of wealth, a time of joy, which would spare nature its usual tortures. Moreover, one may use the postmodern terms in observing that the cultural imaginary appears webbed with the environmental imaginary in weaving this song. In an important sense, nature/landscape is not just a background to the human drama of frailties and fulfilments, but a rejuvenating field of synergy, of symphony, energizing all its participating choristers. One cannot transgress one’s local territory without frustration or violence brought upon oneself (man’s possible crossing over to animal zones, distinctive too—as oriole/scorpion—in themselves), but inside man’s own domain, however conflicted, but rich with choices and possibilities, one realizes one’s fruition and happiness. This is to re-emphasize the pertinent norm, which is that nature distinguishes Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space    85

and constrains, but fulfils and liberates its participants, its celebrators. This fruition comes temporally as well as spatially. In folk songs, neither is the force of time denied nor is the sap of space, i.e., land, landscape, all topographical structures, physical forms of the earth. As to imaginative folk literature, one can generalize that the folk mind accepts with a sense of celebration and recognition the space (local place/wider world) as it is, since at certain deep levels of consciousness, the human mind has synchronized with the pre-conceptualized life-rhythm of the world. Deep Ecologists are critical of Platonic as well as Cartesian philosophies that are profoundly responsible for making the Western man conceive a radical divorce between nature and himself. The ecological mindset cannot accept this for there is this chain of life and dependency wherein no entity can be taken in isolation away from its life-context. To gear everything as man-centric is now not only considered as passé, but even irrational. Much of ecological thought evidences scientifically that everything depends on everything else in an interactive dynamics of relationships, in an inter-web of culture–nature totality. The modern/postmodern man may have to learn from the old, archaic ways of the less civilized humanity who lived with natural self dynamism without being too anthropocentric or paternalistic. Here is a folk lyric from the Wanchus of Arunachal: While the Taishing River overflows With the current come the fish in shoals When the water dries up No fish no current is seen After the marriage When I be gone All will fade away (Wanchu folk song; author’s translation)

The process of nature forms an overarching context, not merely symbolic, for human life and its moments of realization or disappointment. Whatever differences from or conflicts with landscape in terms of images, the inner rhythm of life is grounded in a common reality. We need to be doubly aware of the ontology of change that is foregrounded in the lyric. The folk mind is enmeshed with a wide and harmonizing whole here. In other words, human life thus moves in 86   Sarangadhar Baral

a dynamics of unsophisticated measures, uncluttered by intellectual constructions of a spatialized geography. Further, one can breathe the perfume of love, which unfolds out of twining images natural and human, from a Kuki lyric: Of the Zazem flower and the plantain trunk Round sleek and Softness endowed In all the glory If I come to you at night I think you would Like the male dove of an ever accompanying pair Court me With the delicious call of love (Kuki folk song; author’s translation)

This folk lyric, probably one of the ethnic varieties, would give us some insight (dialectics of desire and bodies, natural and human) into constructing our ecological imaginary. Postmodern geographies already shorn of the green space need to develop a language of ecological imaginaries. The other, ecological other here, is no more to be taken for granted by the human subject. The other has already struck with a loud silence, by withdrawing its presence from our spatialist discourses, our concrete jungles, our fantastic habits in fantasy environments, the Disney lands or hyper-societies. Deep Ecologists would like to favour a steady state of equilibrium achieved through a natural process, so that noth­ing gets wasted or depleted faster than it could be replaced by natural motion and rhythm. Environmental science insists that any extreme form of knowledge and praxis by humans spells evolutionary dangers of extinction to nature’s more vulnerable organisms for they cannot adapt to disturbed environmental conditions. It also reiterates that any form of extreme specialization actually impacts people negatively, that is, it blinds them from any kind of appreciation of the holistic nature of the life or the very web of life itself. Environmentally conscious thinkers have advocated even dismantling political structures of our century and proposed ecologically conscientious alternatives with sweeping powers given to environmental experts. Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space    87

Most creative and critical minds are suspicious of a modern androcentric and masochistic culture, which remains anti-nature in philosophy as well as in praxis. Obviously, it is difficult to choose between these categories of ecological advocacy. However, science and poetry ought to join their forces and premises of deep analysis and deep insight in search for no political power but for a sane habitat and good life on the earth. In our industrialized civilizations today, we will have to turn our ungreen look towards those sources traditionally conceived as pagan, pastoral, rustic, thus wrongly, ignorant and regressive. Folk poetry like folk art of these sources would at least teach us to love green patches in and around life, and to make an old slogan ring truer—love is always green. All future styles of eco-poetry cannot afford to be inventive without this spirit. Whether, it is re-tribalization of our culture, humanization (feminization) or spiritualization of nature, totemic symbolization, tantric and gnostic/occultist acculturation, no matter how uncivilizing these models at first seem, postmodern humanity would not be deterred from re-tracing the sane resources embedded in them. Perhaps one is aware that textuality at the early stages of such an activism may sound more nostalgic or elegiac, but one profound positive urge that impels man all the time is to reflect and restore balance for sanity and satisfaction in living. Let us accede to certain new dogmas of good globalism, which reinvent and actualize the same ancient mind that once chanted in the wilderness space ‘the earth is one family (vasudhaiva kutumbakam)’.

Notes and References 1. Aranyar Gaan (Songs of the Wilderness) (Guwahati: Students’ Stores, 1993). I have no opportunity or expertise to tap and draw on the facsimiles of cited lyric songs in original languages. Dr Nilamani Phukan is a renowned poet in Assamese and a Sahitya Akademi awardee. 2. Dee E. Heddon. Autotopography: Graffiti, Landscape & Selves. Available online at http://reconstruction.eserver.org/023/heddon.htm (accessed 20 February 2009). She distinguishes her ideas subtly from Jennifer Gongales’s ‘autotopographies’ (1995), though in fundamentals the two mapped the convergence between biography and geography. 3. Paul A. Klanderud, ‘Miakovski’s Myth of Man, Things and the City…’, Russian Review 55, No. 1 (1996): 37. See also Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). 4. Klanderud, ‘Miakovski’s Myth’, 37.

88   Sarangadhar Baral

5. Humocosm, a term coined [human + cosmos] to signify a world of values and activities undertaken by humans conceiving a universe as created to further the interests of humans only. 6. Taoists are traditionally grounded in the universe as a vast energy field. Tantrists believe in living and breathing planets. Buddhists (Vajrayana, thus) insist on the unconditioned nature of all things, which designates that all are already in the state of Buddhahood but ignorant of their true self-nature. Hence they practiced non-dualistic norms to live in communion with all beings. Such philosophies contemplate no Cartesian primacy of man (thinking self) or social Darwinism (evolutionary domination of man). The Taoists acknowledged ‘nature as the Mother of All Things’, so we owe to them the beginnings of chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and pharmaceutics in East Asia. See Reviewed Work(s): Joseph Needham, ‘Science and Civilization in China (Vol. 2. History of Scientific Thought)’ Wang Ling Source: Far Eastern Survey 25, No. 10 (1956): 159–160. See Paul Carus, The Gospel of Buddha [illustrated by O. Kopetzsky, (Illinois: Open Court. USA, 1894); Indian edn (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1981), 94]. And also, Andre Van Lysebeth, Tantra: The Cult of the Feminine (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 2001), 14–15. 7. N. Scott. Momaday, ‘The Man Made of Words’, in Geary Hobson (ed.), The Remembered Earth (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979), 162–173, 168.

Selected Oral Poetry of Northeast India and the Ecological Space    89

8 The Phawar in Context The Politics of Tradition and Continuity Desmond L. Kharmawphlang

The phawar is the one singular folklore genre which completely identifies the Khasi community. More often than not, the phawar is described as a poetic creation, usually of rhymed couplets, which is sung and used in festivals, community gatherings, hunting and fishing expeditions, games and archery. The language of archery, phawar, is imbued with a wonderful play of imagination, exaggeration, hyperbole and metaphorical representations. The images used are unexpected, extraordinary and even far-fetched, having an impact of surprise. The freshness and power of the phawar are marked by this trait. This is an example of verbal virtuosity combining what Samuel Johnson called ‘strength of thought’ and ‘happiness of language’. These attributes are, of course, not necessarily unique to the phawar but operate in varying intensities and combinations in songs and oral poetry the world over. The presence of an audience in a phawar recitation is imperative. It is a performance per se. The phawar master is a performer, and hence an actor, acutely conscious of the effect he has on the audience. He responds with enthusiasm to the reactions and applause of the audience, especially in contests. The performance is heavily dependent on the performer–audience reaction, which provides scope for the development of the call-and-response or leader-choral antiphony. This is the most salient feature of the phawar tradition and needless to say, it is a dimension difficult to recreate in print. 90   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

In 2005, the National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC) published a volume Folklore and Discourse in which I included a long article I had written on the phawar. At that time, I was convinced that the phawar was essentially poetry. Today, I am no longer sure because the more I listen to and study the phawar, I realize that it is an elusive, though at times formalized, utterance. Now it seems like a proverb, a riddle, sometimes like part of a notion or occasionally, nonsensical verse. This I have realized is due to the practice of the phawar singer to enlist material from fixed phrases already in circulation in tradition. The mark of the skilled speaker is the ability to select and arrange these familiar phrases in regular patterns. These characteristics present exciting challenges for students of the performance and oral formulaic scholars. The point of interest here is the way in which the phawar is seen as a tradition, an artistic production and how it is appropriated and applied selectively in validating aspects of Khasi culture. As a part of oral tradition the phawar can be seen as a way of preserving the community’s beliefs, customs and history and thus transmit cultural knowledge through the generations. We can also see this idea of intergenerational transmission of knowledge appearing as inheritance. When seen in this context, it can also be conceptualized that transfer of cultural knowledge is akin to the transfer of inheritance, which again introduces the problematics of cultural property and the even more problematic issue of heritage politics. In one sense tradition denotes authority, established rules, norms and conventions that are felt to block individual innovation and rational creative thinking. Tradition also provides a sense of security in reading social behaviour, by way of keeping up established models and patterns and social institutions. Therefore, tradition is conceived as a collective phenomenon. The phawar fits within these broad contours. But the phawar also represents an expression of artistic individualism in the creation and performance of repertoires. There are individuals who have become legends as phawar masters and some effort has been devoted to the collection of the phawar attributed to them. While the phawar is understood to be composed in the context of anonymity yet this individual creativity can also be seen as a breaking away from collective composition. This is interesting because in folklore studies individuality has been regarded as a deviation from the canon and the collective. Idiosyncrasies have been considered irrelevant for the folklorist looking for collective representations. The Phawar in Context    91

In the phawar practice what can be detected is the existence of creativity in and of tradition. Instead of being regarded as an opposition to change, the continuation of tradition is seen to consist in essential ways of making changes, even though those who continue a particular tradition may think that they are merely repeating things. Variation has come to be seen as a prime indication of creativity. Instead of flexibility, lack of change and repetition, the continuation of tradition is nowadays regarded as being based on cultural flexibility. There is another aspect to the creativity issue. Instead of a canonized body of texts or a process of handing down canonized texts, tradition has in recent years come to be viewed as an active and even political process of creating historical meaning. Again, much attention has been given to the politics of time and tradition, i.e., the political and argumentative processes in which the meaning of the past and cultural descent is—instead of being ‘handed down’ by previous generation— constituted in the present. Today’s folklorist, ethnologists, historians, anthropologists and others who study, for example, contemporary political movements and ideologies, are well aware of the politics involved in the definition and appropriation of history and tradition in the service of present-day strategies and objectives. I reproduce some phawar here, in their original and translated versions (mine), and shall endeavour to elaborate on the poetic construction involved, which will serve as explanation and, as far as possible, interpretation. This is also being done in order to demonstrate the inherent and informing differences between the traditional ones collected from the field and the ones shaped by compulsions of social and political rhetoric. Ynda khiroh ia I iawbei Ynda khiroh ia I iawbei Ia u thylliej ynda pynsum Ia ioh te ia u nam-shei, ba ieid I mei Hukum. (When you cajole the ancestral mother When you cajole the ancestral mother The tongue must be bathed The accurate arrow you will get, because the mother (Hukum) loves you.)

As I stated earlier, the phawar is directly linked to the fate of the archers in that they determined the accuracy of the arrows and thus, 92   Desmond L. Kharmawphlang

fetched rewards to the most skilful archer. In the above phawar, the archer, aided by the phawar master, solicits the blessing of the ancestral mother on his efforts. We understand that the language in which to couch his solicitations must be chaste. To say ‘the tongue must be bathed’ is to figuratively imply that one has to adopt chaste and truthful words. This will lead to a favourable disposition by the Mei-Hukum. Ba U thylliej ynda pynsum Ba U thylliej ynda pynsum Kaba U khaw jong ki kynthei Ba I ieid I Mei—Hukum, te ba kynmaw tang ia phi (When the tongued is bathed, When the tongued is bathed, Rice belong to the women The Mei-Hukum loves you so much She remembers only you.)

This verse is a continuation of the first one illustrated, and it is obvious that the first line is taken from the first verse. This is the technique employed by professional phawar masters. A line is taken from a preceding verse to develop the imagery and metaphor in the succeeding verse. However, it is observed that there is a subtle syntactical difference. The line occurring in the verse reads ‘The tongue must be bathed’, indicative of the expected action, i.e., in the future tense. The line changes to ‘For when the tongue is bathed’, thus shifting the emphasis to an action already performed. ‘Rice’ in the second line indicates fortune, and ‘Women’ refers to the unskilled archers. So, it follows that when the Mei-Hukum is treated to proper cajolery, she will favour even the unskilled archers with luck or fortune. Therefore, the side having a phawar master of some prowess in their midst stands to gain, as through his repertoire of recitations he is able to call favours from Ka Mei—Hukum in a way much more irresistible and appealing. I thei I nong Sohra I thei I nong Sohra Tang I ba lieh na shyllang I mei I nongbynta, ha ka ryntieh u khun shynrang. (Maiden from Sohra, maiden from Sohra White only on the forehead, The Phawar in Context    93

Mother dispense with care, This bow only to the men.)

‘Maiden from Sohra’ refers to an unskilled archer from Sohra (Cherrapunjee), who has arrows which are white feather tipped, instead of having a fully white feather skin, a mark of an unusually gifted sharpshooter. The singer implores the Mei-Hukum to ignore him and instead direct her blessing to his bow. On 8 October 1954, Captain W.A. Sangma, Ch. Saprawnga and B.M. Roy, the three chief executive members of the Garo, Mizo and Khasi District Councils submitted a memorandum to the State Reorganization Commission for a separate state for the hill tribes to be carved from the composite state of Assam. This action gave birth to the APHLC which launched the hill state movement. This movement produced a wave of phawars which were sung during rallies and demonstrations. Political parties in Meghalaya make use of the phawar for campaigns and electioneering purposes. The Khasi Students Union routinely produce CDs of phawar and effectively make use of them during anti-government demonstrations. The United Democratic Party (UDP) released phawar collections in CD format during the election campaign in 2003. There are two phawars, i.e., phawar I and phawar II here. Both of these phawars denigrate political parties other than the UDP. ‘Ka Bom’ (drum) is the symbol of the UDP, which at the same time is one of the traditional musical instruments of the Khasis. Phawar I Ah … hikai te la hikai (twice) Ba kin nang ka khalai wait Ban talain te la tbit Dang jakle pat de ban mait. Hoi … kiw… (Ah … to teach, yes (it has) been taught, For them to wield the sword How expertly they manoeuvre the things Yet a blow they can’t deliver. Hoi … kiw…)

To wield a sword, one has to be properly trained so that he will be good in striking. But since it takes a lot of time to master it, some people still lack the skill of striking, though they may be expert in whirling the sword. This art is also a kind of training for the youths of 94   Desmond L. Kharmawphlang

olden days who were preparing for battle, when the use of firearm was not known to the Khasis. A sword, a shield, a bow and arrow were the weapons used in battle. Here, the singer does not really mean to give training for whirling or striking a real sword when he sings, but he indirectly refers to political leaders who try to woo the voters with their sweet promises during their political campaign. Each political leader—prior to election—attempts to convince the voters with many promises. Their promise is like whirling a sword in every direction. After the election is over, what one realizes is that it was all an empty promise. So this is the reason why politicians do not know how to strike their own sword. Phawar II Ah … papor te uba shroin (twice) Tang beh lyer te ula pait Hynrei un tang dei um Phin ym lah satia ban mait. Hoi … kiw… (Ah … papor is brittle It easily breaks when wind blows But once it becomes wet Break it you will fail. Hoi … kiw…)

Papad is brittle when it is fried, but when dipped in water it assumes a consistency that becomes hard to break. This verse talks about an individual who is considered insignificant by many because of his or her unassuming nature, but when such a person is put to the test, then he or she exhibits admirable qualities. The following Phawar was sung during the Varsity Week at the North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, in the year 2006: Tang ban byrngia. U synthap h’u Mawshamok U padma ha I tharia Ha sngap ko paralok, Para samla ban ngin biria. (The synthap on a flint stone The lotus in a shallow stream Listen oh friends Oh youth peers we shall entertain.) The Phawar in Context    95

This is verbal duelling between a group of boys and girls where the repertoire of fixed phrases are being used in the compositional effort and to a great extent, the traditional method is followed: Shynrang: Lyngdkhur bad I sikei’ Jabyrthieh ha ka weitdem: Ka dur jong phi te thei, Ha ka lieh ha ka syndem. (Wild pigeon and the deer Small fish in misty whirlpool Your face O young woman Quite fair but your nose a mite flat.)

This verse talks about the facial appearance of a young lady who is fair in complexion but has a flat nose. Here, the girl is being compared to a pigeon, a deer and even a small fish in a pool. Fish here is a symbolic representation for grown-up girls who have attained marriageable age; ‘leit khwai’ or to go fishing is an ambiguous phrase which is employed by young men when the intention is to actually do their Romeo bit. The analogy is extended to the metaphors of pigeon and deer although the usage is outdated being very popular in the 1970s. Kynthei: Putbikur h’u makashang, Ban pynhun ia u Baichung: Ka dur jong phi te rang, Shu pyllun la kum u pdung. (Blow the trumpet at the Himalayas In exhortation of Baichung Your face oh young man Just round like a winnowing basket.)

To blow a trumpet at the Himalayas means to praise the males by raising their status as high as the height of the Himalayas. Again, Baichung, the Indian football team captain, is admired by the football-crazed young people and he has become a household name in Shillong as elsewhere. In a similar manner, skill is admired and this composition goes as an exhortation to youth to make use of their talents. It also implies that appearance here does not matter, even if the person mentioned in the phawar has a face resembling the pdung or the sieve. 96   Desmond L. Kharmawphlang

Shynrang: Pliangsbai na kolkata, Ka kyrnet n’u Lum Shyllong Hai te I samla Shu tynnet l’u painkhyllong. (Ceramic plate from Kolkata The bugle from Shillong peak Look at that young woman Is beautiful with plaited hair.)

Ceramic plate refers to things brought from outside one’s own place. The bugle is used by members of military brass-bands in Shillong. Shillong peak has a large concentration of military establishments and it is a common sight to see parades and drill formations accompanied by the blowing of the bugle. The singer obviously is referring to the coming in and use of plates, the auditing of military music and how these elements are influencing the society. Kynthei: Diengduh u bah ryndang Die nokot ha u mynthna: U shniuh jong phi te rang Soh kyrdot kum saimuna. (A wooden staff carried on the shoulder Is sold in cash to the Mithun Your hair oh young man Knotted as the old sack’s thread.)

This verse talks about the mythical market of the beasts called ‘ka iew luri lura’ in Khasi folklore. It is believed that in the remote past, in this market all the animals assembled to exchange their produce and wares as also did man. The place where the market was held is at Mawber village. Again, here we detect not only the practice of barter system but the exchange of trade too as shown in the last line of the stanza. Saimuna or sack thread or jute was an item imported from somewhere and it is used to mock the dishevelled looks of a young man whose stringy hair is compared to old sack thread. This changing role of the phawar mediates between society and the by-products that culture as a socially derived phenomenon sets off. To the folklorist, this is an interesting field for investigation, something that critiques the concept of tradition and change. The Phawar in Context    97

9 Some Petite, Some Powerful The Cascade of Manipuri Short Stories Tayenjam Bijoykumar Singh

Over the years the stream of Manipuri short stories has flowed like a hilly stream crashing down hillsides forming falls and sprays, crushing and breaking through barriers along its path. My intention here is to project a general view of the path Modern Manipuri short stories followed with a few examples here and there. In the olden days, grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters and children—members of extended families—lived together under the same roof. In the evening children used to gather around the fireplace to listen to stories narrated by their grandfather or grandmother. Stories were related and circulated by word of mouth. Oral tradition continued for generations. With the advent of ‘writing’ a completely new form of ‘story-telling’ emerged. It saw the start of relating stories through letters in texts. Taking a peek into the history of Manipuri literature may give an interesting insight into the birth of the short story. The earliest reference to writing in Manipuri as recorded in Ningthouron Lambuba, a chronicle, is about a king who ascended the throne of the Ningthoujas in 984 AD. The earliest literature so far found is the inscriptions on a collection of 10 copper plates. The general consensus is that the inscriptions were made during the reign of King Khongtekcha (763–773 AD). So the periods of Manipuri literature are counted with reference to the eighth century AD as the beginning. 98   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

Early Manipuri literature mainly consisted of verses relating to the appeasement of numerous gods and goddesses, often sung to the accompaniment of Pena, a local bow and string musical instrument. Some of the earliest prose works in Manipuri are Numit Kappa (Shooting the Sun, tenth century), Naothingkhol Phambal Kaba (Naothingkhol Ascending the Throne, sixteenth to seventeenth century), Leithak Leikharol (Heaven and Netherworld, seventeenth century) and Panthoibi Khongul (Panthoibi’s Footprint, seventeenth century). During the late medieval period from 1709 AD to the end of the nineteenth century, Manipuri literature passed through a new phase. The Burmese invaded in 1819 AD and completely devastated Manipur. For seven long years its destruction continued. The people of Manipur, who had so long been living in their hill girt Kingdom in isolation, fled to Cachar, Sylhet and Dacca. In 1825 AD when most of them returned to Manipur, their outlook had changed. Frequent contacts with the British broadened their outlook further. This paved the way for the coming of the Modern Period in Manipuri literature. Modern Manipur is the gift of three devastating wars viz. (a) the Burmese invasion of Manipur followed by seven-year devastation, (b) invasion by the British and annexation of Manipur to the British Empire and (c) the Second World War. Interestingly, British colonial rule did not leave any visible impact on Manipuri literature. It may be because ‘anything British’, except their boots and garments, which were in great demand, was viewed with disdain. Modern Manipuri short story came on the scene in the beginning of the twentieth century. The first Manipuri short story ever published is ‘Ema Wa Tannaba’ (Discussion with Mother) written by Bob Kuthing aka Major Kuthing. It appeared in the October 1931 issue of Yaikairol, a monthly journal, edited by N. Leiren Singh. Another short story ‘Yum Panba’ (Running the Family) by Sarvajit Singh appeared in the May 1932 issue of the same journal. However, the most acclaimed short story of that time was ‘Brojendrogi Luhongba’ (Brojendro’s Marriage, 1933) by L. Kamal Singh. Masik Jagaron (first published in 1924) edited by Arjun Singh in Sylhet contributed a lot to the development of Manipuri short story. Ngasi, Jyoti and Meitei Chanu, journals circulated in the 1940s and 1950s, published short stories and played important roles in popularizing short stories among the Manipuri speaking people. Lalit Manjuri Patrika, another journal of the period, published short stories of S. Krishnamohon Singh, A. Shyamsundar Singh, R.K. Shitaljit Singh and many other writers. Some Petite, Some Powerful    99

Three journals that came out later in the 1950s and 1960s, Ritu published by the Cultural Forum Manipur, Imphal, Sahitya published by Manipuri Sahitya Parishad, Imphal, and Wakhal published by Naharol Sahitya Premee Samiti, Imphal, set the standard of creative writing in Manipuri and gave impetus to short story writing. Manipuri short stories witnessed the emergence of a new approach in the direction of thematic perception and thought process. ‘Yum Panba’ of Sarvajit Singh moulded Manipuri short story. In it the role of a woman in running the family is emphasized. Leiren Babu asks Shyama, his wife, to curtail household expenditure. She in turn requests him to try his hands at doing it in her place. He takes it as a challenge and goes to the market to buy the needs of the family. He even tries to cook. In the end he fails miserably and admits his defeat. In ‘Brojendrogi Luhongba’, L. Kamal Singh picks up an unusual theme: the protagonist, a doctor, agrees to marry a girl of his mother’s choice as an obedient son but refuses to look at her face even after the marriage. At a musical performance in his locality days after the marriage, he chances upon a beautiful girl and exchanges meaningful glances with her. He returns home guilt-ridden for having neglected the girl whom he has married and committing the wrongful act of giving undue attention to another girl, a complete stranger. A surprise awaits him at his house. The beautiful girl who has swept him off his feet turns out to be none other than his wife. It was only after the Second World War the Manipuri short stories emerged with a renewed vigour and stole the show. R.K. Shitaljit Singh published his first collection of short stories Leikonnungda (In the Garden) in 1946 followed by another collection Leinungshi (Beloved, Fragrant Flower) in the same year. In his short stories R.K. Shitaljit harps more on the idealistic values of the society. He takes up the issues of social stigma and caste prejudices in his story ‘Inthokpa’ (Banishment). Shyamsundar banishes his brother Nabakishore for marrying a Brahmin girl outside his caste in spite of repeated requests made by his wife and sister not to do so. Nabakishore dies a pauper in a far-off village leaving behind his wife and a son, who also dies in infancy. An extremely hurt and softened Shyamsundar goes to his brother’s house and asks his widowed sister-in-law for forgiveness and invites her to come and stay with them. She in turn rejects Shyamsundar’s earnest plea—‘banishment’ on her part. In 1951, four writers, Bachaspatimayum Chitreshwar Sharma, Naorem Birendra Singh, Ningthoukhongjam Tombi Singh and Ahanthen 100   Tayenjam Bijoykumar Singh

Brajachand Singh formed a group under the acronym ‘Chitrabirentombi Chand’ and brought out Nupi (Woman), an anthology of short stories. But it failed to make any impact. It appears that after R.K. Shitaljit Singh’s anthologies, Manipuri short stories lay dormant for almost a decade, though short stories continued to appear in journals and magazines every now and then. In 1955, E. Rajanikanta Singh brought out his first collection Chingya Tamya (Hills and Glades). His second collection of short stories Yumgi Mou (Housewife or Daughter-in-Law of the House) was published in 1958. In the same year, Khaidem Pramodini Devi, a woman writer, brought out Punsi Meira (Torch of Life), a collection of her writings including short stories. E. Rajanikanta Singh writes with emotional touch painting artistic pictures of the sufferings and pathos of women with simple words. In his story ‘Leibaklei’ he chooses the protagonist’s name as Leibaklei1 and portrays her as a woman as pure, sturdy and enduring as the flower of the same name. After E. Rajanikanta Singh’s collections, Manipuri short stories remained silent again for a long time till M.K. Binodini, a princess, brought out her collection of short stories Nunggairakta Chandramukhi (Chrysanthemum amidst Pebbles) in 1965. Her book seems to have opened a floodgate. Many books of short stories started coming out one after another. In the same year, N. Kujamohon Singh’s collection of short stories Chenkhidraba Eechel (The Chocked Current) was published. In most of her stories M.K. Binodini deals with emotional problems of individuals caught in the mesh of changes at different stages of life. For someone who was born and raised in luxury, it is quite amazing that most of the characters in her stories are common people, that too with a very deep insight into their lives. In ‘Imphal Turelgee Ita Macha’ (Our Little Friend of the Imphal River) she tries to show one’s attachment to the place of his or her birth. Mishralal, a washer-man, whose forefathers hailed from Vrindaban, was born and raised in Manipur. He married a woman from his forefathers’ place. At his wife Kasturi’s constant coaxing he left Manipur. To make the story palatable to readers and touch their hearts, M.K. Binodini cleverly inserts a loveable character, Ramdulali, Mishralal’s six-year-old daughter. Her innocence, her happiness and her excitement on learning that they were leaving for a new place contrast sharply with Mishralal’s sorrow at the thought of leaving the place of his birth. Some Petite, Some Powerful    101

Some of the notable books that appeared during the 1960s and 1970s are: • Kh. Prakash Singh’s Ichegi Sam (Sister’s Tresses, 1965); • Sri Biren’s Leichillakki Thaja (The Moon amidst the Clouds, 1967); • Nilbir Sastri’s Basanti Charong (A Bunch of Spring Flowers, 1967); • B. Chitreshwar Sharma’s Sannabungda (In the Playground, 1968); • H. Guno’s Phijang Marumda (Behind the Screen, 1969); • A. Chitreshwar Sharma’s Ngasidi Lakle (Have Arrived, Today, 1970) and Bharada (In the Rent-House, 1972); • Elangbam Dinamani Singh’s Thaklabi (Drunken Lady, 1970), Morambi Angaobi (Morambi or Dolly, the Lunatic, 1974) and Tingkhanglei (Thorny Flower, 1977); and • N. Kujamohon Singh’s Ilisa Amagi Mahao (The Taste of a Hilsa, 1973) and Thawanmichak Amana Kenkhibada (When a Star Had Fallen, 1979). Following the examples set by them many more writers tried their hand at writing short stories. Some senior writers who entered late but created ripples of excitement are Elangbam Sonamani, T. Thoibi Devi, R.K. Mani and Maibam Nabakishore. In novels, characters are slowly developed with elaborate descriptions of the time, places and situations whereas in short stories the characters are made to come alive almost immediately in a given situation—varied experiences of life, subtle human relations, present-day problems in the society, personal prejudices, pain of a broken family, pangs of separation and so on. Nuances of meaning, language, expression and style are remarkably different in short stories and novels of the same author. More often than not Manipuri short stories pick up characters and lives from the masses which otherwise would not be heard of, whereas Manipuri novels are more or less devoted to romance, patriotism or zeitgeist. H. Guno is a novelist and a short story writer as well. In his novel Eikhoigi Tada (My Elder Brother), he takes up the cause of economically stricken and downtrodden people. He based the novel on the lives and sufferings of the lower-caste people of Koutruk. Though caste prejudices are not so marked in the present-day Manipur, in the immediate past lower-caste people were not allowed to mix freely with people belonging 102   Tayenjam Bijoykumar Singh

to higher castes. He gradually develops a large number of characters going into details of their lives, situations and the period during which they lived. In contrast to his novels he strikes home the point he wants to project with a limited number of characters in his short stories. In ‘Sarkargi Chakari’ (Government Servant) he gives an evocative account of the plight of a peon who performs more domestic work on the home front of his officer than his actual duties at the office. Elangbam Dinamani Singh is known for his humorous stories, often bordering on satire. His keen eyes turn simple everyday events into hilarious stories at the same time ridiculing the social inequity. Many of his stories bring out the sufferings of the unfortunate ones. In Morambi Angaobi he relates how a poor widow and her daughter struggle to survive without the protection of a man in the male-dominated society. After marriage the unfortunate daughter is physically as well as mentally harassed by her drunkard of a husband, who brings home a second wife. Unable to bear the torment the daughter returns to her mother’s house after the birth of a son but her woes do not end. Taking advantage of the absence of any male member in the family, he often comes and beats her. After a tussle he ultimately snatches away her baby. In the fight she slips and falls down badly injuring her head. She recovers but loses her mental stability on learning that her baby had died at her husband’s own hands when he hit the baby in a drunken fit. In his short stories, Sri Biren, a short story writer and a poet, articulates the same sentiments he expresses in his poems. He vents his anger over social and economic inequalities and moral degradation. He mimics the lines of his poems in his stories also and experiments with different styles and modes of narration. While narrating stories he intermittently asks questions which he himself answers. In ‘Ilisa Amagi Mahao’, N. Kujamohon Singh shows the plight of a poor fisherman in maintaining his family. When the fisherman catches a hilsa his young son is jubilant that at long last he will have a hearty meal. He goes around and tells his friends about the fish. But someone to whom the fisherman owes money takes away the fish shattering the innocent boy’s dream of a hearty meal. In ‘Lin-ga Hangoi-ga’ (Snake and Frog), A. Chitreshwar Sharma tries to show the degradation of moral values in the society, human greed and hardships faced by the common people, who are often at the receiving end of the brutality meted out by the law enforcing agencies. On hearing a frog squeaking in distress coming from the direction of a nearby undergrowth, a group of unruly youths come out to save it from Some Petite, Some Powerful    103

the jaws of a snake. They fail to do so. They are very sympathetic about the unfortunate frog. But when a black hen crosses their path, they chase it without caring for the chicks following their mother. They catch the hen and take it to the house of Tomba, a lunatic who stays all by himself and cook it. Tomba is aghast to see them cooking a stolen hen. He leaves them with fright when they mention ‘police’. There is a reason behind it. Tomba was once a hardworking man who toiled day and night to feed his family. His wife too laboured hard to lend him a helping hand in bringing up their three children. One day while he was returning home in his bullock-cart after delivering bricks, two youths placed a sack in his cart with a request to carry it across the gate and left hurriedly. On the way, security personnel frisking passers-by arrested him with the sack containing small arms in his possession. He was confined and inhumanly tortured as a result of which he lost his mental balance. His wife tried her level best to bring him back to normalcy. When all her efforts bore no fruit, she and their children left for her parental house. From 1980 onwards a crop of young writers came on the scene and made their presence felt. Senior writers also continued to churn out book after book. L. Premchand, Lamabam Viramani, Keisham Priyokumar and Yumlembam Ibomcha pumped in fresh blood into Manipuri short stories. The number of Manipuri short story writers continued to grow. Kamal Toijamba, Brajagopal Sharma, Saratchandra Nongthomba, Sudhir Naoroibam, Lanchenba Meitei, Birendrajit Naorem, Memchoubi, Bimabati Thiyam Ongbi, Jamini, Haobam Satybati, Ksh. Subadani, Yengkhom Indira, Sunita Ningombam, Nee Devi, Surma Ningombam, Sanatombi Ningombam, Nabakumar Nongmeikapam, Nepram Maya, R.K. Hemabati, P. Biprachand, Rajmani Ayekpam and many more writers arrived with fanfare. The 1980s witnessed the emergence of a new direction in short story writing. Allegories, symbols, dreams, fantasies, folk elements and psychological perspectives were exploited to present innovative styles of writing. The deprived segments of the society and the marginalized, poor and impoverished peasants lent their voice to the short stories of the period. In ‘Eshing’ (Water) Yumlembam Ibomcha, a poet-turned-short story writer, experimented with the non-reality or symbolism of characters. In the story water is used symbolically. A newcomer to a city goes in search of water to quench his thirst. He goes to restaurants and knocks on the doors of many houses only to be offered coloured liquids instead of the water he is asking for. Inhabitants of the city tell 104   Tayenjam Bijoykumar Singh

him that there is no water they know of except the strange liquids. In ‘Manglaknaba’ (Nightmare) he shows the traumatic experiences of an innocent man and his family at the hands of the counter-insurgency forces and the terror perpetrated by them in the name of fighting militants as events in a young girl’s dream. Keisham Priyokumar is one who writes about the lives of the ‘unsung heroes’—the hardworking innocent masses made victims of circumstances through no fault of theirs. In ‘Khongup Boot’ (Heavy Boot) he relates the story of a person, an ex-militant, who has come out in open after laying down arms to lead a normal and peaceful life. But he lives in perpetual fear of the insurgents as well as the security personnel. At any given time, security personnel with their indelible thinking of ‘once an insurgent, always an insurgent’ can arrest and harass or kill him in a fake encounter. On the other hand, the insurgents may pick him up for deserting them and give punishment—capital punishment most of the time. Sudhir Naoroibam has written stories of the people who live hand to mouth—their lifestyles and day-to-day problems they faced. Their woes come alive vividly in his stories to give the readers a lasting impression. Kamal Toijamba often uses non-reality of characters and allegories to depict the problems faced by the masses, the complexities in the society brought by the emergence of a neo-rich class and the helpless persons caught between the law enforcing agencies and insurgents. Nee Devi writes stories highlighting human relations with haunting poignancy. In ‘Ashibagi Macha Ashiba’ (Dead Child of the Dead), she relates the story of a woman who goes insane because of the wilful neglect by her husband whom she loves very much. He dies of a mysterious illness. Taking advantage of her love for her husband whom she cannot accept is dead someone impersonates him in the dark of night and satisfies his carnal urge. She conceives and delivers a stillborn baby. The soulful story is not related directly but as bits of information extracted from her by the vendors at the women’s market who want to have a bit of fun when there is no buyer around. As the saying goes ‘only a woman can understand another woman’s woes’, the woman-vendors come to her rescue when an unruly crowd starts teasing her. Nabakumar Nongmeikapam is a writer who harps on the woes of the deprived and marginalized people. He freely uses ‘street-language’ and slang. In ‘Eikhoisibu Kanano?’ (Who Are We?), he paints a vivid picture of the hardships faced by the people of Molcham, a small Indian village near Border Pillar No. 66, which has been missing for Some Petite, Some Powerful    105

quite some time. Taking advantage of the absence of Indian Security Force and the missing border pillar, Myanmarese Army often cross over and raid the village. They torture the villagers and take away whatever they like. Sixty-year-old Lungkholal, beaten black and blue by Myanmarese Army, lies dying on his bed. His wife tries to nurse him back to health. When she finds that nothing is left in their house to feed him after a raid, she runs to the neighbouring houses but all have run away and gone into hiding. At last she manages to bring boiled pumpkin only to find that Lungkholal is already dead. At that moment some personnel of the Indian Army arrive. She is jubilant to see them thinking that they have come to protect them. She shouts aloud calling everyone to come back from hiding. But the personnel have come only to deliver the news of her son in the Indian Army. She is shattered when she learns that her son had died in the Kargil war. Short story has become a movement of some sort. Manipuri writers outside Manipur also bring out anthologies of short stories one after another. Among them mention may be made of Sanasam Vinod and N. Dhananjoy of Cachar, L. Birmangol (aka Ibomcha) of Agartala, L. Surti Kumar of Hojai and Subram of Silchar. Erotic stories are markedly absent. However, some of the writers have brought in the subject of sex but handled it subtly to avoid criticism in an otherwise orthodox Manipuri society where open discussion on sex is taboo. Sri Biren, Kh. Prakash Singh, Haobam Satyabati, Nee Devi and Sagolsem Dhabal are some of the writers who have raised the topic of sex in their stories as a hidden agenda. But their stories cannot be branded as erotic stories. Many young short story writers try to ‘emotionally blackmail’ the readers. Knowing fully well the weaknesses of human beings and their inability to bear sorrows and sufferings of others, they try to exploit and play with readers’ sentiments with an overdose of tragedy. In the end their stories turn out to be sordid tales with flimsy characters. Many short story writers have experimented with different techniques of telling story using allegory and non-reality of characters. Though changes have taken place in the theme, content and form of narration over the years, experimentations done in Manipuri poems are markedly absent in Manipuri short stories. It may be because words can be easily manipulated, twisted and transformed in varying degrees in a poem. Imageries can be used to create lyrical emotions and visual images collectively while writing poems. In short stories, there are limitations in the flexibility of words and use of imagery. Characters, plot, narration and effect are given more emphasis in short stories. 106   Tayenjam Bijoykumar Singh

Short story writers before the 1980s direct their attentions inwards whereas the present-day writers direct their attentions outwards and ridicule the happenings in the society. In other words, early short story writers try to attract the attention of the readers to what the society expects of them though they show concern over the merits and demerits of the customary practices, but the present-day writers express what they expect from the society and raise numerous questions on the present trends in the society and aim at a social revolution. Writers try to fulfil their inherent inner urge to communicate with readers what they see, think, perceive and feel about the happenings around them. They cannot escape from the subconscious impressions made in their minds by the milieu in which they live. Except for a limited number of stories set in a certain period of history or ‘period stories’ all the stories reflect the conditions and images of their immediate surroundings or elsewhere in the world prevalent at the time of writing. Imprints of wars, conflicts, violence, greed and inequity are echoed in the stories. Manipur is now plagued with ethnic violence, corruption, extortion, insurgency, terrorism, oppression, drugs, AIDS, strikes and lockouts and what not. Invariably images of all the happenings are reflected in the present-day short stories. Though Manipuri short stories are works of fiction with fictional characters, they provide valuable insights into the lives of the people and prevailing conditions in Manipur for analysing Manipuri society at large.

Notes and References 1. Leibaklei: Bhui Champa, a flower (Kaempferea rotunda); it shoots up its floral heads first above the ground after breaking through the hard and dry earth in summer. Manipuris consider it as a symbol of purity, endurance, sturdiness and perseverance. 2. R.K. Jhalajit Singh, A History of Manipuri Literature, Vol. I (Imphal: Manipur University, 1976). 3. Ch. Manihar Singh, A History of Manipuri Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2003 [revised second edition]). 4. Aribam Kumar Sharma (ed.), Manipuri Wari-Macha: An Anthology of Manipuri Short Stories (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1994 [first edition]). 5. Kshetrimayum Subadani (ed.), Manipuri Ayibishingi Khangatlaba Wari Macha (A Collection of Selected Short Stories by Manipuri Woman Writers), (Imphal: The Cultural Forum, Manipur, 2001 [first edition]). 6. Kanchi Warimacha, An Anthology of Manipuri Short Stories (Imphal: Manipur University, 1996 [first edition]).

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10 Culture Makes People What They Are As Much As People Make Culture Religion As a Factor of Cultural Change among the Ao Nagas Temsurenla Ozukum

This chapter attempts to delve into the role of Christianity in the lives of Ao Nagas through a study of works on religion by Ao Nagas themselves. Two books on Ao Naga religion have been taken for study namely, Ancient Ao Naga Religion and Culture1 by Panger Imchen and The Religion of the Ao Nagas2 by I. Bendangangshi and I.T. Apok Aier. These books, published in the early nineties, try to give an account of the Ao Naga religion and also critique the changes which were caused by the coming of a new religion, Christianity. The book Ancient Ao Naga Religion and Culture is a more detailed account of the Ao religion. I have also interviewed people in Longkhum and Ungma villages in Mokokchung district to elicit their news on different aspects of Ao religion and culture. This chapter focuses on the Ao Nagas, one of the major tribes of Nagaland. It was this tribe that the American Baptist Missionaries first converted to Christianity in 1872. With the coming of this new religion, the culture of the Ao Nagas underwent a drastic change. The old ways were considered pagan and were forgotten. There was a transition from the old tradition to a new way of life. The main themes for discussion are the socioeconomic and religious life of the

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people like the educational system, marriage, art and literature and worship. I have also made references to the folktales of the Ao Nagas to explicate certain points because they are the source of history and act as a link between the past and the present. Before going into the main themes, let us know a little about the Ao Nagas. The Ao territory lies between 26°62 N and 27°42 N latitude and 93°202 E and 95°152 E longitude. The Ao territory is divided into six administrative ranges: Ongpangkong, Asetkong, Langpangkong, Changkikong, Japukong and Tsurangkong ranges with Mokokchung as the district headquarters.3 According to the 2001 census, the total population of Mokokchung district was 227,230, literacy rate was 84.6 per cent and the sex ratio was 1004:1000 males (Statistical Handbook). Ao Nagas can be considered as one of the most advanced among the Nagas in the field of literacy and education. They were the first to accept Christianity and enlightenment. In the course of this chapter, the terms Ao, Ao Naga and Aos will be used interchangeably. Religion is an integral part in the life of most people and is the same for an Ao. An Ao cannot conceive of a world apart from religion. Since ancient days, religion has been the guiding principle of the behaviour of the Ao Naga. The role of religion in an individual’s life is the prototype of the role of religion in the sociocultural ways of the community. The sociocultural set up of the Ao Nagas is depicted in their notion of God and the ancient Ao Nagas had a well established and systematic form of religious beliefs and practices. They believe in a god who is supreme, one who has always been actively involved in the workings of the universe. Before ‘Tsungrem’ or God, an Ao stands in reverence and awe, yet turns to Him for protection, well-being and prosperity. The most important God of the Ao is ‘Lijaba’ or ‘Lichaba’ who is considered as the creator and is believed to have the greatest influence and is responsible for everything, good or evil. Takatemjen, a theologian, has compared Jesus to Lijaba by using the folktale of ‘Lijaba and the Two Sisters’. In this tale, Lijaba comes to a village as an old man who has sores all over his body. Nobody in the village is willing to take him in for the night and finally two impoverished sisters take pity on him and take him in without knowing that he is Lijaba, the God. In the course of the tale, Lijaba with his power helps the two poor sisters reap a rich harvest from their small field. The villagers regret rejecting Him after coming to know that the old, poor stranger was Lijaba Himself. Here, Lijaba is compared to Jesus because

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both were ‘co-sufferers with the poor’, ‘both liberated the oppressed’, ‘both a champion of the despised and the poor’.4 This similarity could have been used by the early missionaries as an entry point into the culture of the Ao Nagas. Again, when the first missionary translated the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ into Ao language, the word ‘Leezaba’ was used in the place of ‘Father in heaven’. Some other gods of the Ao Naga are ‘Anungtsungba’ (lord of heaven) and ‘Meyutsungba’ (god of death). Meyutsungba is considered as the god of truth and justice. The Aos also believe in ‘Tiya’ or ‘Tiaba’ (lord of providence) who predestined each man’s fortune. During ancient times, Ao religion was full of ceremonies and sacrifices. The ceremony ‘Among’ was preceded and followed by ‘Genna’ or ‘Anempong’ (taboo). There were public as well as individual ceremonies. The ceremonies were ‘Moatsu’ (spring festival) and ‘Tsungremong’ (before harvest in honour of God Lijaba). Sacrifices were made for illness too. Dreams, superstitions and taboos are still important to the Ao Nagas in certain aspects. The transition from tradition towards modernity among the Ao Nagas began with the arrival of the American Baptist missionaries into the Ao territory in 1872. One reason for the acceptance of the new religion was the yearning of the people to make their children learn the ‘white man’s language’, English. On their way to Assam for trading, they often saw the American missionaries teaching the Assamese children in the schools. This piqued their interest and they wanted the missionaries to come up to the hills and teach their children.5 During those days, smallpox, cholera, plague and famine were persistent and there was no help from anyone because of the enmity of one village with another. Use of modern medicines by the early missionaries and the ability of a God who could control all disasters and plagues, who could save them from their enemies, made them easily turn to the new religion, Christianity. On 23 December 1872, Dr Edward Winter Clark baptized 15 young people at Molungkimong village. This was the beginning of a new religion among the Ao Nagas, later engulfing almost all the Naga tribes. The advent of Christianity had a major impact on the old customs and traditions of the people. Their old ways were considered pagan and done away with. The age-old custom of head hunting was no longer practised and the Nagas saw a new world which was fascinating and easier for them. The old cultural ways were undermined and deterioration followed, leading to the destruction of many old good 110   Temsurenla Ozukum

customs. Most of the old culture was abandoned or changed drastically with the advent of Christianity and modern education. Old religious ceremonies were considered satanic and the belief in one God, ‘Tsungrem’, was proposed. This is of interest because according to I. Bendangangshi and I.T. Apok Aier, the Ao religion is monotheistic. Lijaba or Lichaba was also sometimes known as Anungtsungba, Meyutsungba or Longkitsungba, so this can mean that there is just one God who goes by different names depending on the situation.6 Again when we look at Christianity, we have the concept of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The early Christians must have applied the same concept of ‘one god with different appellations’ while the missionaries who were ‘outsiders’ thought that the religion of the Aos was a polytheistic religion due to the different names their God had, and they tried to propose a faith in one God. With this new religion came modern educational system which resulted in a tremendous growth and progress in an individual and at the social and religious levels and they did not want to go back to their old ways of life. Their fatalistic attitude towards life was turned to a life of faith and hope. They were no longer afraid of the unknown and the dark spirits. Along with these positive changes, some negative impact has been seen in the society. The later missionaries prohibited all cultural songs, dances and festivals on the ground of immoral behaviour due to which the first generation of Ao Naga Christians seem to have completely discarded the old way of life. It is only in the recent years that there has there been a revival of cultural dances, songs, stories and festivals with a few individuals feeling the need to preserve their cultural roots. The two main festivals of the Aos, Moatsu and Tsungremmong, are celebrated now. The elders in the villages feel that the church should encourage these two festivals to be a part of the church activity which will help in keeping the tradition of the past alive and will be beneficial for the generations to come in the long run. They also fear that if these measures are not taken, then in the next few decades, all these will become extinct and forgotten.7 Some of the people feel that though the missionaries were responsible for many good things, they also created a destruction in social and cultural life of the Aos…. They failed to differentiate the socio-cultural aspects and religious aspects of the life and culture of the Aos. Along with the worship of Satan they buried our culture…. Because the Ao Christians regarded Ao culture as a sin.8 Culture Makes People What They Are As Much As People Make Culture    111

The Aos practise exogamous form of marriage. This is one cultural practice which has not been changed by Christianity. Intraclan marriage is not only restricted but is forbidden. People who marry within their own clan are ostracized from the community and the villages. This is because it is like marrying one’s own sibling, which for the Aos is incest and therefore taboo. They are not allowed to participate in the social activities of the community. The offsprings from such unions are not considered as full members of the community and they are always looked down upon with contempt. Most marriages are based on mutual understanding between the children who are to marry and their parents. The Aos have a tale of how two lovers whose parents were against their union die an unhappy death with the man committing suicide and the girl who pines away for her lover. The story goes on to say that after the death of the girl, her body was kept on an elevated platform to be smoked, as was the custom of the Aos. The smoke from the fire of both the bodies mingled with the other proving that their love was true. The Aos still believe in letting the children choose their own partner. The parents may advise them about the family lineage and background which are important for every Ao, but do not impose their views regarding marriage. With the conversion to Christianity, the traditional way of marriage has changed. The old rituals which were followed during marriages are no longer used. Christian marriage takes place in the church where the pastor officiates and solemnizes the marriage and the ‘marriage certificate’ is issued. The marriage has become very Westernized. Instead of the traditional costumes which were worn before, Western clothing has been adapted with the bride wearing a white wedding gown and the groom with a suit and tie. The bride enters the church to the tunes of the Wedding March on her father’s or brother’s arm. They also have a host of flower girls, bridesmaid and the best man which are prominent features in a Western wedding. The newly married couple usually has a cake-cutting ceremony followed by a big feast. The standard is set so high that sometimes people feel the societal pressure and spend more than they can afford on the wedding, which is not a healthy trend. For the Ao Naga, the ‘Ariju’ or dormitory was the educational institution where stories, crafts, customs, traditions, discipline and warfare were taught to the young men. After attaining puberty, all the young boys were not allowed to sleep in their own homes. Likewise, 112   Temsurenla Ozukum

for young women, similar dormitories were maintained where they learned social etiquette, songs and dances, weaving etc. These dormitories were maintained by the different clans to which these people belonged. When these young people left these institutions, they were fully equipped to meet the challenges of life. With the introduction of the modern educational system, the ‘Ariju’ system has declined. Panger Imchen opines that, “These days, in the name of modernity, such strict rules and disciplines are almost gone. As a result, social crimes and law breakers have increased as never before”.9 So it is not true that it was the Christian missionaries who brought education to the Ao Nagas. The Ao Nagas already had a traditional educational system. It is just that the missionaries introduced modern Western educational institutions like schools, colleges which have taken over from the traditional ‘Ariju’ and which have brought new ideas and have changed the Ao Nagas’ old way of life.10 Poetry is an important aspect of Ao literature and all traditional songs are sung in the mongsen dialect though the chungli is the common dialect for all the Aos. Song is an integral form of communication. These can be seen in that a folktale always has a song in it, usually in the form of a conversation between characters. Even now, when old people are asked to narrate stories, they first break out into songs which will give an idea about what the story is. Again, for the Aos, songs and dances complement each other. Traditionally, an Ao dance will be accompanied by a song and most dances are emotionally connected with a piece of story, legend or historical event of a community. However, in the early stages of Christianity, it was considered taboo and even today Christians find it inappropriate to keep this tradition alive. Most of these will be forgotten in a few years’ time, which will be a great loss for the people. However, it is heartening to see a few individuals who are trying hard to keep these traditions alive by organizing cultural programmes for the young people where they teach all these cultural traditions like dance, songs and stories to them. In this aspect, Professor Temsula Ao, a well-known writer and scholar, recognized the problem and tried to preserve and record Ao culture through her work Ao Naga Oral Tradition.11 In this book she says, “tradition constitutes for the Ao the world of his origin as well as the idiom of his continuance within that world.”12 There was no written literature for the Aos before Edward Winter Clark, the first missionary, introduced the Roman script. Legend has it that the Aos had a written script which was written on the hides of Culture Makes People What They Are As Much As People Make Culture    113

an animal, which was eaten by a dog and so the script was lost forever. Clark tried to teach the hymnal set in Ao traditional tunes, but the later missionaries introduced a total change because they considered everything Naga to be heathen. This has led to the deterioration of the Ao language and now it has taken a second place to English. Even in church services, conventions and conferences, songs are sung in English rather than in Ao. It is often considered old fashioned to be seen singing an Ao song by the present Ao generation. There is an assimilation of other languages into the Ao language leading to a loss of the ‘Ao-ness’. It is indeed rare to hear a person speak in pure Ao and it is sad indeed that there are many people who do not know their own language. However, I believe this phenomenon is not happening only in the Ao society but is a common problem ailing many societies. Christianity is the main factor of cultural change among the Ao Nagas or any other tribe of Nagaland. Though it had a lot of positive impact on the culture of the Ao Nagas like modern education, employment, better economic development, it has had its share of negative impact. It has led to the deterioration of many good cultural values which have been an integral part of the culture of the Ao Nagas. “A way of life, which had sustained and nurtured generations, suddenly became ‘taboo’.”13 There should be awareness among the people, especially among the younger generation, to preserve all the good things which one’s culture inculcates in everyone while at the same time, to try and get the best of what other cultures have to offer.14

Notes and References   1. Panger Imchen, Ancient Ao Naga Religion and Culture (New Delhi: Har-Anand, 1993).   2. I. Bendangangshi and I.T. Apok Aier, The Religion of the Ao Nagas (Guwahati: Saraighat, 1990).   3. Imchen, Ancient Ao Naga, 19.   4. Takatemjen, Studies of Theology and Naga Culture (Delhi: ISPCK, 1998), 56–65.   5. Mary Mead Clark, A Corner in India [(Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1907). Reprint Edition (Guwahati: Christian Literature Centre, 1978)], 9.   6. Bendangangshi and Aier, The Religion, 38–40.   7. Interview with Watitemjen of Longkhum village on 16 December 2008.   8. Imchen, Ancient Ao Naga, 162.   9. Ibid., 101. 10. Ibid.

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11. 12. 13. 14.

Temsula Ao, The Ao Naga Oral Tradition (Baroda: Bhasha, 1999). Ibid., 174. Ibid., 175. The author has also consulted these books as part of her research for this chapter: Folktales from Nagaland, Part I and II (Kohima: Directorate of Art and Culture Govt. of Nagaland, 1989); B.B. Ghosh, Nagaland District Gazetteers, Mokokchung District (Dimapur: Sethi, 1979) and N. Toshi Ao, Mission to the Nagas: A Tryst with the Aos (Sivasaki: Radha, 1995).

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11 Beyond Borders and Between the Hills Voices and Visions from Karbi Anglong or, Whose Hills Are These Anyway? Rakhee Kalita Moral

Ethnographers are increasingly faced with disruptions to their ‘cultural areas’ on account of the blurring of ethnic boundaries by people who cross and renegotiate their political and cultural identities. Cultural borders need to be redrawn as shifting political boundaries and contested identities of race geography and gender overtake known maps and communities get reconstructed. While subtly addressing issues of borders and boundaries, Assamese novella Jaak Heruwa Pokhi (Bird Breaking Ranks) by eminent littérateur Rongbong Terang focuses on culturally displaced communities within the nation. The politics of exclusion among the Karbis in their territory with respect to Kukis and the Dimasas, smaller ethnic groups living in the Karbi Anglong district of Assam, swings the question back to migrations and shifting identities consequent upon which a new climate of violence prevails in the state. Rongbong Terang’s is an insider’s view of the Karbi folk, his native voice ringing with significance across the hills and it is imperative that the people who sit elsewhere in the insulated safety of government enclaves and decide the fates of these simple hill people acquaint themselves with their stories first. Terang provides in this novella a compassionate account of the on ground realities of the Karbi–Kuki clashes of recent times. Not considered an indigenous tribe and, unlike 116   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

the Karbi and the Dimasa, both hill tribes, and the nine plains tribes who (in theory) inhabit the plains of Assam, the Kuki have no territory in Assam to call their own, not even a very small administrative unit where they are the predominant population, and from where they can launch an agitation for a ‘territorial recognition’.1 The accord over the establishment of a Kuki regional council in Karbi Anglong signed in December 2000 by the Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC), then a united political movement and a party in Karbi Anglong and in office in Diphu, marked the first formal acknowledgement of the desire and right of the Kuki people to have their own political space.2 The accord, however, remains to be implemented because of the radically changed political situation in the district, most significantly the split in the ASDC and the emergence of the UPDS and the return of the Congress(I) to political office in the state and the district. Karbi Anglong is almost a miniature Assam in terms of its ethnic diversity and its share of ethnic conflicts. In recent times its demographic shuffle in the wake of violent strife has brought a new awareness of ethnic cleansing and internal displacement in the Karbi Anglong hills. The key ethnic groups residing in Karbi Anglong are the Dimasas in Dhansiri and Mohendijua area, Bodos in Langhin area, Kukis, Thadous and Hmars in Singhason and Koilamati areas, Tiwas in the areas bordering Nagaon and Morigaon District, Garos in Hamren subdivision, Man-tai speaking community inhabiting the Bokajan subdivision, Khasis in Hamren subdivision, some scattered population of Chakmas mostly in Borlangphar area and Rengma Nagas in the Nilip Block area. Over the decades, the demands of the various tribal groups illustrate the nature of the conflict over land and resources. Jaak Heruwa Pokhi advances the idea of subtle human relationships forged across communities attempting to break these ethnic barriers in a narrative about Karbi village headman Waisong’s family. His eldest son is married to a Kuki woman from the neighbouring hills and much of the tension that emanates from this alliance can be read as a metaphor for the larger ethnic strife that divides present-day Karbi Anglong. Without any well-defined territory demarcating their inhabitation, the Kukis are spread in small pockets principally in the two hill districts of the State, in Manipur and Mizoram, and also in Nagaland where they are conflated with the Zeliang Nagas. Traditionally a hard-working hill folk, the Kukis inhabit the higher more intractable reaches of Karbi Beyond Borders and Between the Hills    117

Anglong in Assam. In the Singhason hills the locale where Terang’s poignant tale of 2003 unfolds, the Kuki–Karbi conflict was triggered off by subversive elements claiming at least a hundred innocent lives and uprooting thousands from at least 40 villages in the entire Singhason belt. The sense of impending doom lingers in the story from the very start. Waisong’s blunt if sagacious wife has no qualms about calling her daughter-in-law a pariah whose strange ways she fears will influence Ruplin, her daughter and their only grandchild. The fires smouldering silently in Waisong’s homestead suggests the more volatile and simmering tensions between the dominant Karbis and the smaller group of Kukis in the far flung Singhason hills. Karbi Anglong’s society is still emerging with different patterns of migrations and cross movements forming what seems to be a multiethnic multilingual region caught in conflagrations of identity crises. The first of the Karbi novel, written in the Karbi language, unlike Terang’s Assamese novella, by Lunse Timung, as late as in 2004, called Kanthop Tang Angne (Bitter Hatred) documents the painful coexistence of the two warring communities of the Karbis and the Kukis.3 The birth of a distinct literature of the Karbis seems to have been triggered off mainly by the increasing preoccupation with the notion of self identity of a historically ancient set of inhabitants of Assam. Added to this is the recent onset of ethnic clashes when it no longer seemed adequate perhaps to read of one’s own woes in another’s tongue or through a borrowed idiom. Terang by his own admission feels that the Karbi language has evolved in recent times to better accommodate narratives of its complex social structures and formations: one good reason why he thinks new writers of the language will do greater justice to an emerging Karbi literature.4 If this indicates the need for a separate literary tradition of the Karbis, it however does little to undermine the conviction that Karbis are an integral part of Assam and that its history is not separate from the Assamese whose list of favourite contemporary classics will without doubt include Rongbong Terang. Interesting to note also is the availability of an earlier body of small but seminal writings on Karbi folk cultures and literature in Assamese that traced not only the genealogies of the various ethnicities that made up the composite hill people of the region but also unearthed the shared social and economic lives and folklore of Karbis and Kukis from the distant past.5 Contesting older and supposedly more authoritative records of our colonial past, some scattered literary works in

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Assamese and now, gradually in Karbi, point to lesser known facts and ethnologies of the larger ethnic composition of Assam. Edward Gait’s History appears in retrospect to have stereotyped some of Assam’s oldest tribes and a lot of current perceptions about inter-tribal relationships in the Northeast probably owe something to such received knowledge. In a sweeping summarization of the hill-plains divide in the administration of the erstwhile Brahmaputra valley, Gait records the colonial strategies of claiming jurisdiction over Cachar thus: Captain Fisher’s first job was to cope with the eruption of the Kukis. This he did by the expedient of settling along the frontier as many Manipuris as possible, who then supplied with a few firearms, easily kept off the Kukis, and so protected, not only themselves, but also the less warlike plainsmen behind them.6

Even Charles Lyall’s huge and scholarly exegesis of the Mikirs betrays some such generalizations: “From the Kuki and Chin tribes the Mikirs are distinguished chiefly by their pacific habits, and by the absence of the dependence upon hereditary tribal chiefs which is so strong a feature among the former.”7 Clearly, it has not been easy to demystify such appellations and ascription, as categories of indigenous population of the Northeast become perpetually tagged with their ‘generic’ properties. Terang’s bold intervention in this simple but significant work helps: the mindless acts of brutality and bloodshed that spilled over into the otherwise quiet Singhason hills on ethnic grounds leads Gaonburha Waisong to ponder seriously the questions of tribal brotherhood and harmony. The heinous murder of two Kuki schoolboys in a schoolhouse in Manja in the bitter winter of 2003 fuelled angry sentiments of a peace loving rural folk: an incident that Terang naturally borrows into his narrative of war and peace. The writer’s easy mediation of the repercussions of that act is revealed through his protagonist’s awkward encounter with the visiting daughter-inlaw, just in the crucial time of strife. What was baffling however to Waisong and most of his contemporaries was this sudden and complete disregard of the age-old tradition of Karbis, Kukis, Rengma Nagas cohabiting peacefully in the Karbi Hills. The torching of Karbi homes by Kuki insurgent led mobs in the Dillai hills of Singhason immediately after the incident, is now part of the history of Karbi Anglong’s raging ethnic violence. Beyond Borders and Between the Hills    119

The ethnic conflict between the Kukis and Karbis that started in 2003 continued till mid-2004. Both the United People’s Democratic Solidarity (anti-talk faction) and Kuki Revolutionary Army were involved in the killings of people from both the communities. The Karbi and Kuki civil society groups and community organizations questioned each other’s role but reiterated the refrain about the State government’s apathy to the conflict. The National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) reportedly mediated to bring peace between the warring KRA and the anti-talk faction of the UPDS. On 18 January 2004, members of a Karbi armed opposition group swooped on the Basamili village in the Singhasan Hill area under Karbi Anglong district and started firing indiscriminately killing Kimnoy Singson on the spot and injuring K. Singson, P. Langthin and T. Singson belonging to the Kuki community. They also set ablaze around 14 houses. On 19 March 2004, 4 Kuki villagers including a woman were gunned down and 10 houses were torched at Hong Bong village in Karbi Anglong district.8 This conflict between the Kukis and Karbis continued to erupt on and off. In the early morning of 4 July 2004, armed groups opened fire at the Kuki village Deigrun Teron in upper Deopani area under Bokajan police station in Karbi Anglong district killing Jiten Teron and injuring his father Borsing Teron, brother Rocky Teron and a neighbour Ranjit Ingtik. On the night of 13 September 2005, eight Karbis were shot dead by suspected Kuki armed opposition groups at Kangburatisso village in the Thekerajan area under Diphu police station. The dead were four men, three women and a one-month-old baby. It is now merely a log of numbers, statistics that the media vicariously flashes on television screens and newspaper headlines scream in a region where violence has nearly become a way of life. These and more tales of terror and attrition pour in even as one sits and wonders when all this will end.9 “Such hatred and violence knows no human feeling ... those who indulge in terror are people who know no religion or nationality. These are times of great crisis and like those hills in the distance we need to stand still in moments of such danger.” Old Waisong’s stoic advice to his daughter-in-law in Terang’s sensitive work perhaps makes more sense than screams for separate homelands, political identity and still worse, ethnic cleansing and genocide. In the midst of a persisting dynamics of insurgency, it is vital that writers remain free to recover their stilled voices and bring renewed visions of a peaceful and stable Assam. 120   Rakhee Kalita Moral

Notes and References 1. M.S. Prabhakara, ‘Reinventing Identities’, Frontline 21, No. 11 (2004). 2. In a recent press release issued on Internet by the P.S. Haokip, President of the Kuki National Organization, the Kukis, he alleges, have long carried the burden of being a nomadic tribe upon their weary shoulders. Historically denied territory and dispossessed of their homes whether in Nagaland, the Khasi Hills or in Karbi Anglong, the Kukis seem to have no claims to indigeneity in the respective states. Available online at www.Kanglaonline.com (accessed 6 March 2009). 3. ‘Debut Karbi Novel Is No Rosy Tale’, The Telegraph, 28 January 2004. 4. Rongbong Terang, President, Asom Sahitya Sabha, wrote his first novel Rongmilir Hanhi (1980) in Assamese about his simple agrarian Karbi hill-folk innocent of the capital and cunning of the burgeoning towns in the more developed plains of Assam. 5. Nirmal Prova Bordoloi, Karbi Samaj Aru Sanskritir Echerenga (Asom Sahitya Sabha: Jorhat, 1982), 27. Bordoloi, a noted Assamese litterateur, in her study of Karbi folksongs and social mores found evidences of Karbi acknowledgement of borrowing agrarian wisdom from the Kuki Chins, ancestors of the present-day Kukis. 6. Edward Gait, A History of Assam (Guwahati: LBS Publications, 2004 [first published in 1905]), 290. 7. Edward Stack, ‘The Karbis’, in Charles Lyall (ed.), The Mikirs (New Delhi. Spectrum Publishers, 1997 [first published in 1908]). 8. The Telegraph, 21 March 2004. 9. Since this piece was written, Karbi Anglong has witnessed a changing climate of relative peace and internal reconstruction, with the new ethnic–sensitive district Dima Hasao replacing the erstwhile North Cachar Hills in its immediate vicinity.

Beyond Borders and Between the Hills    121

12 An Assessment of Northeastern Sensibility in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Mamang Dai’s River Poems Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal

At the very outset of this research work, I am reminded of the following lines from Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’: I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.1

The pangs of despised agony rule the roost in the world. On the surface level, the world appears to have the glittering sparkle of light, colours, fun, mirth and wild ecstasy. To the inexperienced, it is full of ‘Dance, Provencal Song and sunburnt mirth’. But, a closer scrutiny of world affairs presents a diametrically opposed picture of the universe, which has ‘nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure’. Here, it will not be inappropriate to say that Lord Buddha had also envisioned an image of the world full of grief and anxiety. Explaining Lord Buddha’s first noble truth, C.D. Sharma writes: There is suffering (duhkha): Life is full of misery and pain. Even the so-called pleasures are really fraught with pain. There is always fear lest we may lose the so-called pleasures and their loss involves pain. Indulgence also results in pain. That there is suffering in this world is a fact of common experience. Poverty, disease, old age, death, selfishness, meanness, greed, anger, hatred, quarrels, bickerings, conflicts,

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exploitation are rampant in this world. That life is full of suffering none can deny. 2

The world today is at the crossroads with the forces of subversive and nefarious mindsets marauding the dignity of man. Kiran Desai’s Man Booker award-winning novel The Inheritance of Loss claims to talk about the sufferings of man in general and Gorkha people in particular. Pankaj Mishra comments thus about the novel: Although it focuses on the fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desai’s extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight, just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence. Despite being set in the mid-1980s, it seems the best kind of post-9/11 novel.3

Krishna Singh also makes the following comment about the novel: Kiran Desai, the winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize, 2006, for her second novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006) explores colonial neurosis, multiculturalism, modernity, immigrant’s bitter experiences, insurgency and the game of possession, gender-bias, racial discrimination, changing human relations, impact of globalization.4

It is a novel, which discusses several entangling social and cultural issues, related to the lives of the Gorkhas. The novel traces the element of tragic agony in the lives of these people and depicts the nonfulfilment of the demands of the Gorkha Liberation movement. One of the agitators cries out the woes of the Gorkhas thus: At that time, in April of 1947, the Communist Party of India demanded a Gorkhasthan, but the request was ignored…. We are laborers on the tea plantations, coolies dragging heavy loads, soldiers. And are we allowed to become doctors and government workers, owners of the tea plantations? No! We are kept at the level of servants. We fought on behalf of the British for two hundred years. We fought in World War One. We went to East Africa, to Egypt, to the Persian Gulf. We were moved from here to there as it suited them…. We are soldiers, loyal, brave. India or England, they never had cause to doubt our loyalty. In the wars with Pakistan we fought our former comrades on the other side of the border. How our spirit cried. But we are Gorkhas. We are soldiers. Our character has never been in doubt. And have we been rewarded?? Have we been given compensation?? Are we given respect??5 An Assessment of Northeastern Sensibility in Kiran Desai and Mamang Dai    123

Similarly, the love between Gyan and Sai is also adversely effected due to upheavals of the time. The chaotic situations of the Northeast have robbed the true lovers of the emotional bond and their love for each other dwindles. The following exchange between the two lovers reveals this: “Well, if you’re so clever,” she said, “how come you can’t even find a proper job? Fail, fail, fail. Every single interview.” “Because of people like you!” “Oh, because of me … and you’re telling me that I am stupid? Who is stupid? Go put it before a judge and we’ll see who says is the stupid one.”6

The novel traces the history of despair and agony in the turbulent lives of the people from the Northeast; in a way all the characters of the novel have inherited a sense of loss. Now, the question is—whether the grief painted by Desai in the novel is real or synthetic. Does a novel not present an outsider’s response to the problems of suffering humanity? Kiran Desai, the daughter of Anita Desai, spent the early years of her life in Pune and Mumbai. When she was around nine years old, her family shifted to Delhi. By the time, she turned 14, the family moved to England. A year later, they shifted to the United States. Kiran completed her schooling in Massachusetts and her graduation from Columbia University.7 Is she capable then, as one belonging to a privileged class and one who had spent the major part of her life in the West, to write about what she has never really known? As someone from a completely different cultural background, is it really possible for her to experience the pains of the people belonging to the Northeast of India? Her response to the predicament of the Gorkhas can be perceived as unconvincing and out of place, as she could not have possibly experienced the same pain that her characters in the novel feel. Only a person who has gone through similar pain can describe the intensity of that injury, as human experience is opaque. Most Dalit writers hold the same opinion. They believe that persons from the upper class, no matter how sympathetic towards the cause of Dalits, cannot truly delineate the age-old scar of caste-oppression, as they have not felt it. The notable Dalit writer J.P. Kardam told me in an interview: I would like to quote here the words of Dr Manager Pandey, a renowned Hindi critic, who wrote in the preface to a collection of

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Dalit short stories edited by Ramnika Gupta that “Only ash knows the experience of burning”. This indicates that Dalits know the experience of burning—burning in the fire of sorrows, hatred, disrespect, injustice, inequality and untouchability. Non-Dalits do not have this experience. Dalits have specific experiences of life, which non-Dalits do not have. Only Dalit writers can express their experiences in an authentic manner but not others. Non-Dalit writers may be sympathetic to the Dalits, they may be their well-wishers but their experiences about Dalits are not their self-experiences. They are the observers of torture and exploitation of Dalits, they are not sufferers.8

In like manner, the feelings of Kiran Desai for the Northeast can be seen as synthetic. Despite several accolades won by Desai for the novel, it appears to be slightly marred by its synthetic treatment of the subject taken up. The brochure of the National Seminar on ‘The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity: Emerging Literatures From Northeast India’, posted on the website of IIAS, Shimla, has brilliantly brought out the cultural phenomenon of the Northeast, which an outsider is unable to grasp: Northeast India has always been in mainstream consciousness mostly for the wrong reasons, its understanding mostly created through, and derived from the media. There is a Northeast outside of the newspaper pages; it is something different to people who live here. The land mass that is designated as India’s Northeast is not the same to the people who inhabit this geographical area that has existed for centuries through its ecology, myths, legends, stories, poetry, dances, arts and crafts, its conflicting history and moribund politics. This territory has many facets and many faces; it is not just a map; it is a cultural and linguistic geography— diverse, vibrant and variegated. The people who call this territory their home define the uniqueness and diversity of their cultures, customs and social practices through their oral and written literatures.

It appears that Desai’s perception of the Northeast is derived mostly from media reports. She has not been able to recognize the fact that it is not just a map and that the region has its own cultural and linguistic geography. It is my belief that the written or spoken word should correspond to the inner sentiments of the author. All great imaginative literature is carved out of the strong emotional upheaval in the heart of the artist. A particular emotion catches the soul of the artist/poet and the result An Assessment of Northeastern Sensibility in Kiran Desai and Mamang Dai    125

is the outpouring of great creative poetry.9 Poetry is nothing but the drainage/exit of the excessive emotions in the poet’s heart. Through this cathartic or therapeutic release provided by the poetry, a literary genius gets the aesthetic relief from the burden of feelings. Poetry cannot be created, if the emotions are dried up in the individuals. Poetry, written without the rhythmical vibrations in the poet’s heart will be artificial and lack in the spontaneous ‘full-throated ease’. Poetry should come as naturally to a poet, as the leaves to the branches, for it emerges in a poet effortlessly without any strain. Wordsworth had also propagated that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. The sage Valmiki had the same experience when he saw the killing of the Krauncha bird. About this episode in the life of Valmiki, G.B. Mohan writes thus: “When the sage Valmiki saw one of the Krauncha pair shot dead by a hunter, he was overcome by sorrow. But, this sorrow was transformed into infinite compassion for suffering humanity.”10 D.C. Chambial, one of the leading poets from Himachal Pradesh told me in an interview: “I very much believe that the poems evolve from the deep recesses of one’s heart. Absolutely, I agree with your observation that ‘poetry is the bubbling of excessive emotions’.”11 A literary product is therefore the result of an excessive flow of emotions in a poet’s heart. But Desai’s novel, in my opinion, is not from the core within as she has not experienced the emotions she is writing about. Due to her dry outsider’s response to the issues of the Northeast, her novel appears synthetic and artificial. To fill the aesthetic vacuum, she has stuffed her novel with the subject of sex that many may find revolting. What is the purpose being served by literature of this kind? It appears to merely titillate man’s basic instincts. In the wake of the Nithari12 killings of the innocent children by paedophiles, literature which titillates is unwelcome. Here, the supporters of ‘art for art’s sake’ theory may argue that literature should have no social/moral purpose. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on WTC and more recently the seizure of Mumbai by terrorists, no literature can be purely aesthetic anymore. It has to be propagandist at some point. To borrow an expression from Rushdie, we should make “as big a fuss, as noisy a complaint about the world as is humanly possible”.13 Rushdie adds: “…there is a genuine need for political fiction, for books that draw new and better maps of reality, and make new languages with which we can understand the world.”14 Thus, literature should focus on some social message. Desai, in her description of judge Jemubhai defecating,15 employs language of a 126   Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal

highly objectionable kind and as such, oversteps the normal/acceptable, in her narrative technique. A genuine reader is able to derive pleasure out of literature by exploring the inner meaning of a work, while the uninspired just experience literature at the superficial level to show off their acquaintance with culture. At this juncture, I am reminded of T.S. Eliot’s expression in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’: In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.16

What I mean to say is that this novel is meant for the non-serious and perhaps an elitist class of readers. We may contrast this approach with the emotional poetry of Mamang Dai, a poet from Arunachal Pradesh. A leading journalist of the Northeast, she has to her credit works of poetry as well as of fiction. Her poetry collection River Poems17 was published by Writers Workshop, while Penguin Books India brought out her fictional work The Legends of Pensam.­­18 (In preparing this chapter, I have concentrated mainly on her poetry.) A former member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), she left the service to pursue a career in writing.19 She is also the author of Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land 20 and a recipient of the state’s first Annual Verrier Elwin Awards, 2003 (in the field of publication in print media), for the book. Dai is also a member of Northeast Writers’ Forum (NEWF), an organization dedicated to the cause of promoting the literature of Northeast India. Her contribution to the literatures of Northeast has been admired thus by Margaret Ch. Zama: Mamang Dai from Arunachal Pradesh has been instrumental in bringing recognition to, and expanding the readership for emerging literatures of the northeast through the exposure that she has received both at home and abroad. Her poetry is said to have an old world quality, romantic and lyrical in essence that abounds in evocative nature imagery. The pantheistic nature of her poems are but natural being a practitioner of Doni-Polo, a traditional belief of the Adi tribe to which she belongs, which upholds the union of life in rocks, rivers, hills, trees and all life which is held sacred.21

Her poetry is filled with the spirit of the Northeast. Every moment of her life appears to be immersed in the culture of the Northeast. Her poems are filled with the metaphor of her indigenous culture and her writings always display an insider’s response to the issues of the An Assessment of Northeastern Sensibility in Kiran Desai and Mamang Dai    127

Northeast. There is complete emotional involvement with her region in her poetry. In the opinion of celebrated poet Keki N. Daruwalla, she is concerned “with landscape and nature, through a half-animist, half-pantheistic outlook”.22 The ecology of the region has found an indelible impression in her mind’s eye. In the poem ‘Ties’, she sings in full-throated ease: Among strangers and friends suddenly I would recall rivers, and summer rain, the vivid years.23

Dai was a programme officer with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) during the first years of its establishment in the state, and worked with the Bio-diversity Hotspots Conservation programme in the field of research, survey and protection of the flora and fauna of the eastern Himalayas. Her association with these two organizations may also be one of the several factors responsible for her emotional treatment of the ecology of the Northeast. The following lines from ‘Remembrance’ exhibit that she has completely internalized the natural habitat of the region: This summer it rains more than ever. The footfall of soldiers is drowned and scattered. … The jungle is a big eater, hiding terror in the carnivorous green.24

Beneath this regional exterior, her works show certain values and issues which are truly universal. The expression ‘The jungle is a big eater/hiding terror in the carnivorous green’ is one such example of universal element in her poetry. Every reader will be disturbed by this depiction of the ferocity of nature. We may also mark the following lines: Plants and foliage grow silently, at night a star falls down, a leopard leaves its footprints.25

The treatment of natural and geographical surroundings in some of Dai’s poems is quite unlike Wordsworth’s adoration of the same. The great romantic poet worshipped nature for its ‘beauteous forms’. His 128   Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal

idealization of nature was marked by imaginative romantic illusions. He just saw the rosy side of the nature, which is far removed from reality. There is other side of the coin too. Sometimes nature may be as disastrous, chaotic and havoc-friendly as the Gorgon’s head. Nature is not just the representative of ‘the stars of midnight’ and ‘the floating clouds’. The other side of the nature is very heinous. Will the tsunami victims be able to sing of nature in ‘full-throated ease’? How can the millions of people living in the regions of Greater Himalayas find Wordsworth’s idealization of nature comfortable, when there are continuous threats to their lives from the killers like earthquakes and landslides? Every year, there are natural disasters of famine, drought and flood, claiming numberless lives. So, in my view Wordsworth’s glorification of nature is illusory and he closed his eyes to the cruel aspects of nature. He did not see that some times, nature may become a rough beast, hungry for human blood. One may experience the inadequacy of Wordsworth’s treatment of nature when one encounters life-threatening dangers, posed by nature in real life. At this juncture, it will be proper to say that a better, fuller and a more life-like approach is adopted by Mamang Dai in River Poems, because she had seen nature from close quarters. The mingling of realism and imagination in the presentation of nature exhibits Dai’s extreme devotion to her art. Her picture of nature appears to be complete and it does not smack of any false sentimentalism or illusory romanticization of the subject. Along with this penetratingly sharp portrayal of the Northeast ecology, her poetry also deals with certain significant social customs of the region. ‘Song of Dancers’ is concerned with the ‘ponung’ dance of the Adis, performed by young girls of the village during the festival of ‘Solung’. ‘Tapu’ refers to a dance, performed by men on the occasion of community fencing. ‘Man and Brother’ projects the belief of many Arunachal communities that man and tiger were born brothers. According to Mita Kapur, “Her bond with her land is evident in her poems”.26 Dai’s writings are completely soaked in the culture of the Northeast. This penetration of the regional culture in Dai can also be seen in her book The Legends of Pensam, which in Ranjita Biswas’ words “gives readers the glimpse of a tiny corner of a world largely unknown to the outside world”.27 Dai’s treatment of the cultural and ecological ethos of the Northeast is from the innermost recesses of her heart, as being an insider she has An Assessment of Northeastern Sensibility in Kiran Desai and Mamang Dai    129

imbibed the cultural aspects of the region. Recently, in an interview given to me she provided poetic responses to my questions. Almost all the answers of Dai displayed her inner contact with her indigenous Northeast culture. To my question about the scenic natural beauty of Arunachal Pradesh, she replied, “If you come to Arunachal I think you will see what I mean. It is very green, it is quiet and one can be absorbed by this abundance if one has the temperament for it”.28 Similarly, she explained to me several customs of Adi community: “The traditional belief of the Adi community to which I belong is full of this union. Everything has life—rocks, stones, trees, rivers, hills, and all life is sacred. This is called Donyi-Polo, literally meaning Donyi—Sun, and Polo—moon as the physical manifestation of a supreme deity, or what I like to interpret as world spirit.”29 As a journalist she has closely observed her native Arunachal culture and civilization. The minute journalistic observation of Dai is evident in her article ‘Arunachal Pradesh: The Myth of Tranquility’, where most major issues of her state is explored in an unbiased and unprejudiced manner. Mark her statement about Kebang (a council of village elders): Before 1972, when Arunachal became a Union Territory, this vast and open land was administered under traditional systems, and there were no fences. Yet all the territory of the State was invisibly marked according to traditional law, and everyone knew where and what were a village’s boundaries, who owned each plot of land, and what belonged to which tribe and which clan. A council of village elders (the Kebang), an institution that has existed since time immemorial, functioned as the judicial body to maintain peace and tranquility and settle various disputes.30

A genuine literary artist is one who, to borrow an expression from Eliot’s essay on Yeats, “out of intense and personal experience, is able to express a general truth”.31 That is what Dai does in her literary creations. She is part of the experience of the culture of the Northeast; that is why she is able to reproduce an insider’s intense response to the culture of the Northeast. This is indeed a far cry from the experiences of Kiran Desai on the other hand of the Northeast if any, that she has portrayed in The Inheritance of Loss. What I intend to say here is that the insider’s response is always far superior to that of an outsider’s response, as the later tends to be synthetic, artificial and lacking in

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spontaneity. Seen in this light, Dai’s poetry emanates from the core within, while Desai’s treatment of the Gorkha problems is neither spontaneous nor genuine.

Notes and References   1. Fifteen Poets (Indian edition, 7th imprint), (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1985), 341.   2. C.D. Sharma, A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, 1991), 71.   3. Pankaj Mishra, ‘Wounded by the West’, review of Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, The New York Times, 12 February 2006. Available online at http://www.nytimes. com/2006/02/12/books/review/12mishra.html (accessed 5 December 2008).   4. Krishna Singh, ‘Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss: A Diasporic Articulation and Multiculturalism’, The Indian Journal of English Studies 46 (2009): 64–79, 64.   5. Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Penguin, 2006), 158.   6. Ibid.,164.   7. The biographical information about Desai is taken from the following source: http://www.iloveindia.com/indian-heroes/kiran-desai.html   8. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal, ‘Only Ash Knows the Experience of Burning: An Interview with Dalit Writer Jai Prakash Kardam’, The Quest 23, No. 1 (2009): 1–8, 3.   9. Here, I equate all emotional literatures with poetry. 10. G.B. Mohan, The Response to Poetry: A Study in Comparative Aesthetics (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1968), 10. 11. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal, ‘Poetry from the Innermost Recesses of the Heart: An Interview with D.C. Chambial’, Wild Violet 7, No. 3 (Winter 2009). Available online at http://www.wildviolet.net/linked_lives/dc_chambial.html (accessed 12 August 2010). 12. Nithari is a place in India, where a number of innocent children were killed by certain heartless killers. Available online at http://www.nitharifacts.com (accessed on 12 August 2010). 13. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991 (London: Granta Books in collaboration with Penguin, 1992), 99. 14. Ibid., 100. 15. Desai, The Inheritance of Loss, 110–111. 16. T.S. Eliot, Selected Poems, ed. Manju Jain (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 3. 17. Mamang Dai, River Poems (Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 2004). 18. Anjali Daimari’s view about The Legends of Pensam is worth quoting here: In The Legends of Pensam, Mamamg Dai intertwines myth, legend, history and memoirs to record the life stories of the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh…. What follows is a series of tales etched in the narrator’s memory which not only records legends, life stories, but also chronicles the change in this pristine valley and the hazards that the people face.

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  Anjali Daimari, ‘Dialectics of Home in Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home and Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam’, Protocol: Journal of Translation, Creative and Critical Writings 2, 3, No. 1–2 (2008/2009): 4–5. 19. In an interview given to G.S.P. Rao, she has discussed this issue of her life. Rao interacts with Dai in the following manner: GSP: You were in the Civil services once. What positions did you hold? MD: I left during the training period. My cadre was Karnataka, but I didn’t join so I didn’t hold any post in the service. GSP: Why did you give up that career to focus on your writings? Have you ever regretted that decision? MD: There is no exact answer. Let’s say, things happen. It was a vague feeling at the time that I wanted to do something else. But I did not start writing immediately then. I travelled instead. In between I also did a lot of journalistic reporting. No, no regrets. GSP: What I meant was that civil service provides a rare opportunity to understand the plight of people and see how social systems work—or fail to work. One could serve people by addressing these hardships and derive satisfaction. You have consciously moved away from such an opportunity and have decided to serve people through your writings. Have you found contentment now? MD: Yes, given the power of the bureaucracy there is much that one can do, but there is no guarantee that once within the system this will be possible. Of course when I left the academy I did not have such considerations on my mind. It is only with hindsight that I can say this now, and it was many years later that I took up writing seriously thinking that this is what I can do to share something and also continue learning at the same time.   ‘Mamang Dai: In Conversation with GSP Rao’, Muse India 13 (May–June 2007). Available online at http://www.museindia.com/viewarticle.asp?myr=2007 &issid=13&id=707 (accessed 11 August 2010). 20. Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty comments thus about this work: A sizeable hardback, it is replete with splendid sketches of the Himalayan range that surrounds the State, its vivid outfits, its food, its beautiful people, so veiled, so disconnected even today from the mass we call ‘mainstream India’. Every chapter begins with a drawing by a hearing impaired local artist whom Mamang knew long ago.   Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, ‘Aroma of the Hills’, The Hindu, 13 January 2010. Available online at http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article80231.ece (accessed 11 August 2010). 21. Margaret Ch. Zama, ‘Emerging Literature from North-East India’, Summerhill: IIAS Review 14-1, No. 2 (2008): 39–46, 41. 22. Keki N. Daruwalla, ‘Poetry and the Northeast: Foraging for a Destiny’, The Hindu, 7 November 2004. Available online at http://www.hindu.com/lr/2004/11/07/ stories/2004110700350500.htm (accessed 12 August 2010). 23. Dai, River Poems, 14. 24. Ibid., 16. 25. Ibid., 18.

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26. Mita Kapur, ‘In Conversation’, The Hindu, 2 April 2006. Available online at http:// www.hindu.com/lr/2006/04/02/stories/2006040200190400.htm (accessed 11 August 2010). 27. Ranjita Biswas, ‘In Between the Worlds’, review of Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam, The Hindu, 5 November 2006. Available online at http://www.hindu.com/ lr/2006/11/05/stories/2006110500140400.htm (accessed 31 January 2009). 28. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal, ‘Fusion of Journalism and Poetry: An Email Interview with Mamang Dai’, Bridge-in-Making 50 (2008): 64–69, 65. 29. Ibid., 66. 30. Mamang Dai, ‘Arunachal Pradesh: The Myth of Tranquility’, Faultlines 5. Available online at http://satp.org/satporgtp/publication/faultlines/volume5/ Fault5-5mdhai.htm. 31. T.S. Eliot, ‘Yeats’, in John Hayward (ed.), Selected Prose (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953), 186–193.

An Assessment of Northeastern Sensibility in Kiran Desai and Mamang Dai    133

13 Northeast Outside the Newspaper Pages Monalisa Changkija

The proposal for the two-day National Seminar on The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India announced that “There is a Northeast outside the newspaper pages”, which caught my attention. It was something I could identify with because professionally I am a newspaper person. The rest, for me, was academic. And I am not an academic person. So let me start at the beginning. I am not running towards my destiny nor am I running away from it simply because I don’t know what my destiny is. And this is not a personal thing. This is the fact of the consciousness of the entire Northeast. Now don’t take it from the negative perspective. See, if we are very certain about our destiny, we may lose out on the better and the best potentials and the possibilities that must surely exist for us. At the same time, if we are equally uncertain and/or clueless about our destiny, there are also the potentials and the possibilities for us to get lost or be led astray. So what we are doing today is taking each day as it comes. I don’t know if this is a very sensible thing to do but seen from our perspective, there are few options left for us. Moreover, we sort of find comfort in what has become familiar to us. And what has become familiar to us is what we have been told is the right thing to do after the advent of the British and the Missionaries into our hitherto uncharted land, and all that these two most significant historical events have generated to impact our lives. But the consciousness of our existence before the British and the Missionaries came to our land—the Northeast—continue to

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exist, to prevail, to persist and to haunt us, even if in the peripheries of our consciousness—and so we are not exactly running towards our destiny nor are we running away from it simply because we do not know what our destiny is. Since the two historical events, we have been told so many things— what and how to think, how to conduct our lives, what to believe and what to embrace as the only truth, the only salvation and the only deliverance, and what is the only way for us to be free and liberated politically, economically, socially, whatever. But all these put together have not erased from our psyche our memories and our consciousness what we were, what we believed in, what we embraced and what we swore by, and also how we lived and conducted our lives. And this is one of the perspectives from which our literature and all our visual arts must be viewed unless of course they are strictly traditional because that is a totally different issue. This I underscore because Northeastern endeavours in these areas are often perceived from the perspective and paradigms of mainland India, as also from our former colonial status perspectives. In fact, justice cannot be done to Northeastern culture, traditions, literature, music, or our entire value-system, if they are perceived from the lens of colonial India or Independent India. The Northeast, geographically and in all other ways, is so unique that it is only those who appreciate this uniqueness and respect it for what it is that can understand the manifestations of our being, our existence, in the literary and cultural domains. Yes, our literary and cultural manifestations and endeavours are what we are and what we experience. They may not be ‘pretty’ but there it is. So for those who attempt to ‘tame’ the Northeast into the run-of-the-mill perspectives and paradigms of colonial India or Independent India, this region and all that it is home to in terms of its literature, visual and performing arts, its very culture, would be totally meaningless and unfathomable. I cannot understand why some people, or let’s say some school of thought, feel the need to put all human experiences and endeavours into neat compartments. Why can’t we just let some things be and appreciate them for that they are? If the Northeast is an iconoclast, why can’t the rest of India accept us for what we are and make the very best of what we have to offer? We are different, we cannot conform to the ‘mainstream’ but we are not the villains, so why not accept us as we are and facilitate our different-ness to enrich the country’s uniqueness?

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If one were to perceive us as ‘rebellious’, wouldn’t the smart thing to do then is to find the virtues of this ‘rebelliousness’? Must I really write poetry just like Keats? Or like an Oriya, Tamil or Gujarati poet? Must my homage to my loved one be exactly like the Taj Mahal? My poem ‘Mist over Brahmaputra’, published in my second volume of poetry Monsoon Mourning, has been often interpreted as personal confusion but the ‘I’ in this poem signifies the Northeast. And it had to be mist over Brahmaputra because this river is integral to the consciousness of the entire Northeast. You have to understand our geography, our politics, our economics and our social norms to appreciate it. Mist over Brahmaputra From the silence of my air-conditioned hotel room I flow with the currents and coherence of Brahma’s Son, sometimes filthy with human inadequacies, other times chaste in spiritual serenity. And in moments such as these I will myself to breathe the perseverance of Brahma’s Son and disintegrate into the shapes, colours and volume of water—untouched and unscarred by time, space and the elements. … in moments such as these I will myself to emulate Brahma’s Son to celebrate the sights, scents and sounds and the strength in my solitary self, and allow time to heal these self-destructive tendencies that sometimes buzz around my head, as they do over Brahma’s Son. And like Brahma’s Son, I wait for the serenades of the Sun, to soak up the mist over Brahmaputra.

Yes, you have to know our geography, our history, our politics, our economics, our culture and traditions, our value-systems, our religions, our yearnings, in fact everything about us to understand our psyche and appreciate our literature and our raison d’être. Many, many years ago I wrote ‘February’s Tragedy’ as a reaction to a reaction. I had 136   Monalisa Changkija

approached a publisher for my first volume of poetry and I was told that the publisher decides what poetry is. February’s Tragedy When the trees sway and the leaves dance it is a celebration of vibrant life. But to you it is just the wind blowing. When my verses do not rhyme not conform to traditional norm, to you, they are just words, not poetry.

To me poetry is also a form of recording history. An example: Child of Cain No one has this right to make anyone live with the stench of burnt human flesh in our hearts and minds for the rest of our days. But then, no one has this right to burn human flesh—body, mind and soul. If anyone believes, for whatever warped reasons, he/she has these rights, let him/her have no doubts, he/she is a child of Cain, and be prepared for exile in the East of Eden, forever. No reasons can exist without prices; some prices are not worth a paisa, or an iota of sympathy/empathy. Some reasons simply deserve condemnation, and some of us are willing to condemn; come what the price. Some of us consider life too precious to live it under the shadow of fear, or under any shadow. Northeast Outside the Newspaper Pages    137

Call us foolish, call us anything, because no words can describe our zest for of life Or our contempt of death.1

Poetry to me is also a commentary on what happens as a matter of routine in the Northeast besides it being an instrument of recording history as it happens. Few examples: Welcome, Sir Good morning, Sir. Thank you for sparing your valuable time to give us an appointment. We know how busy you are and we feel so bad to infringe on your time but what to do? You are our Minister. So, whatever you and we may feel we have to request you to be our Chief Guest. Sir, we the Field Staff Association of your Department we’re going to have our annual general meeting-cum-elections we need not apprise you of our fund situation, as it is the same like everything in our state but since we could not meet for the last so many years this year we are determined since now you are our new Minister and we hope to see some changes. Sir, we have come to request you to be the Chief Guest in our inaugural function and share with us your experience and wisdom, for which we shall remain eternally grateful. Thank you Sir, for accepting our request but there is only one thing we would like to bring to your notice. Sir, everyone, including your honourable self, says we must change and our Association is trying it’s level best. So we have decided to request you to be our Chief Guest.

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But please don’t talk about hard work and honesty. Sir, we have worked hard and been honest but there’s no reward or recognition in sight. Also Sir, if you find the unemployed willing and able to do our jobs please say so in your speech because we find that the unemployed earns more than what we have earned during our service. Sir, we also request that you should give time to discuss the problems in our Department, not just give us a sermon. Yes, we need to be chided and reminded from time to time but only after you know how the Department functions and how we serve, with no acknowledgement and recognition. Sir, we are not bonded or contract labour we are simply humble Government employees striving to serve our State. Sir, this year we have saved and scrimped to have our general conference since you are our new Minister. Yes Sir, we will invite the media and request them for front-page coverage. And we hope besides your speech, they would also highlight our problems For which we will remain ever grateful to you.2

And At My Funeral At my funeral they beat their breast and wept. While my lifeless body laid there, with great organizational and oratorical skills, they performed the last rites and bade me farewell. Northeast Outside the Newspaper Pages    139

A farewell with full assurance the dead do not react, respond and reply. So there they were, with my body on a bedecked bed, the air rent with appropriate hymns; another social do in good progress. The right people said the right things but failed to say anything right; no, not one of them. They were, after all, never there when I was here. And those who were there when I was here wished me elsewhere, so they would not, could not say anything right. And death is no weapon to crush the propensity of the living to assume, to presume to pretend the dead do not react, respond and reply. At my funeral they beat their breasts and wept. What a shame! For death is a perpetual release for the dead and for the living a parole

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from the dead. Strange, life should be an imprisonment. At my funeral they beat their breasts and wept; and lied knowing the dead do not react, respond and reply. Or refute. At my funeral they beat their breasts and wept; and lied but none said it is well with my soul, as it always was.

And Aftermath The silence of the sunlit summer afternoon has just been shattered by gun shots across the town I stand rooted to the ground waiting for the echoes to die down in my mind. Gathering my daughters into our seemingly secure home I wait for the endless night to begin when searches start and when they don’t, I know the nightmare is only postponed. The silence of the sunlit summer afternoon has just been shattered by gunshots across the town I stand rooted to the ground waiting for the echoes to die down in my mind. Calming my nerves, concealing my fears I am desperately searching for an answer to my daughters’ question, when will the gun shots end.3

In the Northeast, there are many things one cannot write as a journalist. I have had my experiences while doing so, and then I found poetry is also another vehicle to express one’s anger and protests. For instance: Northeast Outside the Newspaper Pages    141

Not Be Dead If tomorrow my body is riddled with bullets, I shall not be dead. Nor will I be defeated and silenced. The event would only mean the capitulation of those who cannot think beyond the AK-47. The event would only mean the recognition of the impact of my words over those who elect. Unlike them who pull the trigger I am not for hire, All my words are for free. So, if tomorrow my body is riddled with bullets, I shall not be dead. Nor defeated or silenced.4

And Stop This Nightmare Stop, please stop this endless nightmare wherein I read of another shot dead, another apprehended, another tortured and maimed. Stop this nightmare, I beg of you wherein I have to write of another child orphaned, another girl abused, another woman widowed.

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Stop this nightmare, I pray wherein my people, victims of geography, history and politics have become prized booty to be overpowered and possessed by those who will not listen. Stop, I beseech, this nightmare perpetuated by those who believe power flows from the barrel of the gun. Better still from the deadly impact of RDX for which they make us pay with our dreams and humble hopes. Stop this nightmare, Lord For salvation is out of sight As we have turned our back on you, And in shame I beg you, stop it Lord For I cannot make myself write Another word of another shot dead.

And Shoot Go ahead, shoot and blast us to eternity I give you my word, we will not move Neither from our stand nor to distract your aim Shoot, what’s stopping you? What’s making you tremble? Shoot, I give you my word, we will not move Shoot, you, all of you who have us covered from your sides You have us now the way you want, so shoot. Shoot and claim victory, it’s all yours We will stand firm and not move From our dreams of brotherhood Shoot, you have the guns. Surely you are confident of world opinion? Surely you are convinced you are right? So shoot, I give you my word, we will not move Shoot, after all we are only an inconvenience of a few lakh souls So go ahead, shoot, blast us to eternity I give you my word, we will now move neither from our stand nor to distract your aim. Shoot, wipe us out from the face of the earth

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You, all of you, who swear by Christ or the Mahatma Shoot, don’t stop now, pull those triggers Shoot, surely you have the courage of conviction of the rightness of your causes? Go ahead then, shoot, blast us to eternity I give you my word, we will not move neither from our stand nor to distract your aim Shoot, we will stand firm and not move from our dreams of brotherhood.

And When It Rains Here When it rains here the Heavens hold back nothing. It rains day and night weeks on end I know, I’ve counted the hours. Then the newspapers faithfully report on our villages and rice fields the floods washed away, and our withering hills the relentless rains humbled. The landslides, the roadblocks, The power cuts, the soaring prices the epidemics, like the floodwaters, also swirl in their currents the non-sustaining healthcare and other systems here. In a while, the body counts of human, livestock and wildlife begins. That’s when VIPs in choppers inspect the rain’s might and the isolation of our land is complete. These all vie for space in the front page of our newspapers, as much as our brothers’ endless enmity with brothers and as neighbours’ burn down each others’ homes. I know, I’ve written on them. Yes, when it rains here, the Heavens hold back nothing yet the rains would not cleanse the blood-stains on our land.

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Poetry is also an instrument of protest. Besides the political, it is an instrument of protest against age-old customs and traditions that seek to perpetually keep society’s most vulnerable suppressed and silent. So I wrote: Take This Name Take this name, Take it. No one has used it. And I, like everyone, have no need to use it on myself. Take this name, Take it. It’s the only part of me unused, Except on pieces of paper, No one has the need to read. They are all irrelevant now. Take this name, Take it. Like all women, With nothing left to give, That’s the only possession That can be returned. Take this name, Take it. I give it on my own volition and while I’m still able Why wait for death to take what anyway must be returned?5

And Must I Remember? Must I remember the number of tiles in my front yard? Must I remember the number of dresses I possess? Must I really remember the mundane triumphs and tragedies? Must I remember the number of times you said and wrote you loved? Northeast Outside the Newspaper Pages    145

What do they all matter now? Now that the winter of life has set upon me? Now that I don’t wear smartly on your tailored and dry-cleaned sleeves?

And Digital Diary Perhaps I should remain silent and put up facades, those ones that come all patched with paint and perfume and emit auras of possessing wide knowledge on issues of the day with a smile that sells confidence and proclaims empowerment. But even to save my soul I really don’t have it in me. Anyone can always tell my feelings of the moment. So I will not pretend I am lost in this digital world. Believe you me, when anything Digital is discussed, including the Digital Divide, I see only wriggly toes, big and small, shapely and cute, burying me, as they walk by me, as they walk all over me. The Digital Divide has certainly reduced me into the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator), yet I refuse to marvel at the Digital world for I have never been

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and most unlikely ever to be ‘into’ anything. And if I, the human, can’t be dealt with too bad; it’s really not my problem. Try your digital gizmos to sort that out. Me, I’ll always pray for gentle summer showers but if the Good Lord sends me summer storms I’ll enjoy them as much; stick to my iconoclastic ways, thrill at the warmth of the sun and the flirtatious ways of the drizzling rain. Believe you me, ‘Howdys’ on e-mail and chats on-line isn’t my idea of romance, or friendship or whatever relationship. If I can’t sense real feelings of a pulsating heart, passion in kisses, I’d rather remain IT-illiterate and wait for the world to get over its infatuation with everything Digital and on-line. Send me a Postcard, The Postman’s still a hit with me; or, telephone. If the Postman doesn’t stop by, and my telephone remains silent, I’ll know we’re truly digitally and otherwise DIVIDED.

Now, if you ask me what is poetry, I wouldn’t be able to answer. All I can say is: if you grow up in our Northeastern outposts, with no exposure to the outside world and you are stuck within the four walls Northeast Outside the Newspaper Pages    147

of your thatched cottage, with only the light of the kerosene lantern to brighten up nights that cower before the howling winds and days that the incessant rains force into timid submission, but you have had the privilege to literacy, your options are limited and I chose to write. It didn’t matter that there were perspectives and paradigms I needed to fit in or norms to follow. I wrote to live. Please do not look at what I have written as my assumptions, presumptions or protestations. I am not qualified to dissect and analyse literature. I don’t know if I even have the ability to write but I write—just as the Northeast that simply is, that always was, very much outside the newspaper pages. Besides, newspaper pages are the medium, not the message and no newspaper can adequately convey the message of the Northeast.

Notes and References 1. This poem was written after the twin bomb blast at Dimapur’s Hong Kong Market and Railway Station on 2 October 2004, wherein hundreds were killed, several more injured, including a group of school children from a village of Kohima district, who were on an excursion to Dimapur, especially the Railway Station, because they had never seen trains before. This poem was also published in Poetry From Nagaland, published by the Department of English, Nagaland University in 2005. 2. Inspired by the numerous press releases that local newspapers in Nagaland receive. 3. This poem is inspired by yet another event of a mindless shooting spree by security forces on 7 September 1995, at Dimapur, during which it may be recorded that Inashe Ayemi, aged around 40 years, of Yehemi village, who was Project Director, DRDA, under the State Department of Rural Development, Zunheboto, and on official duty to Dimapur, was a victim. 4. Sometime in 1991–1992, I wrote this poem titled Not Be Dead with the journalist community of Nagaland in mind because of various reasons. On 23 September 1992, Chalie Kevichusa, Editor of Ura Mail, fell prey to assassins’ bullets. This poem is dedicated to his memory. The poem was published in the Dimapur-based English weekly Ura Mail, and in my first volume of poetry Weapons of Words of Pages of Pain, published in 1993. 5. Ao custom dictates that only the name of a married woman must be returned to her family and clan.

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PART III

Caste–Tribe Paradigm Beyond the Northeast

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150   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

14 Culture As a Site of Struggle A Study of the Oral Literature of the Bhils of Rajasthan Hemendra Singh Chandalia

Culture is a composite of various practices, beliefs, customs, attitudes and their manifestation in the form of art, music, literature, etc. It is usually associated with a group, a community or a nation. In a communal conception of nation, culture not only occupies a central place but defines its character by its identity with religion.1 In this conception nation is understood as an integral part of religion. This conception of culture is much against the grain of historical experience and contemporary reality. The culture of the tribes, particularly the Bhils, as evident from the study of their literature defies this characterization. It reflects that the tribes, though following different religions, share a common culture. Their faith, as other things in life, has also been a part of the process of interaction, assimilation and reflection. Their literature is a rich repository of their cultural practices and tells a lot about their lifestyle. The Bhils are one of the tribes residing in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. They are the second largest scheduled tribes in India. According to 2001 census report the tribes constitute 8.10 per cent of the total population of the country. In Rajasthan their percentage is 12.6, which means the ratio of tribal population in Rajasthan is higher than the national average. Bhils constitute 41.39 per cent of tribal population in Rajasthan. Besides them other tribal groups are Meena, Garasia, Saharia, Damor, Dhanka, Bhil Meena, The Concept of Society    151

Nayakda, Kathandi, Patolia, Kolitor and Kokana. Etymologically, the name ‘Bhil’ is derived from the Dravidian term ‘Vil bhilwar’ meaning archer.2 As per the ancient scriptures the Bhils are part of the ancient population of the Indian subcontinent whom James Tod described as autochthones of India.3 Today, they are mainly distributed in the southern districts of Rajasthan, viz. Banswara, Dungarpur, Udaipur, Chittorgarh and Pratapgarh. The BhilGarasia, DhdiBhil, Dungri Bhil, Dungari Garasia, Mewasi Bhil, Rawal Bhil, Tadvi Bhil, Bhaglia, Bhilala, Pawra, Vasava etc. are the sub-tribes of the Bhils. The Bhils have lived a life of seclusion and so the projects of their development did not benefit them much. The literacy rate among Bhils is about 11 per cent only. The seeds of struggle at the cultural level lie in the distinct nature of social composition of tribal society. B.D. Sharma admits that the tribal social organization is very much different from the caste social organization of non-tribal society. Therefore, the provisions made by the state and the constitution affect their basic fabric. For example, the tribal society is informal and its foundation is laid on concepts which are oral. The society which is being built up through constitutional provisions is formal and relies too much on the written word. These are two very different forms of social organizations. In oral tradition which the tribals follow, the word-of-mouth is the basis of conduct and hence a tribal man or woman acts on his word and expects others to also keep their word. This is not a common practice in non-tribal societies. The difference surfaces more in the context of socioeconomic structure. The new capitalist model adopted from the west and applied to Indian society makes this difference more clear. The tribal society believes in collectivism while the new socioeconomic struggle taking shape gives prominence to the individual. In tribal society the community is more important. Even the property relations are much different in tribal society. The collective resources of the community or village are more valuable. This collectivism is reflected in the literature of the tribes, particularly the Bhils, which is predominantly collective right from its creation to its performance and presentation. More importantly, while the written and formal discourse is dominated by power and hierarchy, the oral often expresses counter hegemonic tendencies subverting the asymmetric social norms. The literature of the Bhils is available mostly in verse form. It appears in the form of song-poems, dance-dramas, poetic narratives, idioms 152   Hemendra Singh Chandalia

and sayings. Of these the oldest are the songs. Song poems form a significant part of tribal oral literature. “Songs were the earliest forms of literature.”4 Sitakanta Mahapatra, the well-known Oriya poet, has pointed out, “Once upon a time all poetry was song”.5 Since the songs have to be passed on orally from one generation to the other, many of the songs have refrains to be sung by the chorus. There are other songs which are dialogic in nature. Besides the songs, prose narratives in the form of short tales also exist. These today also reflect the cultural prosperity of the Bhils. The literature of the Bhils abounds in devotional songs related to birth, naming ceremony, betrothal, marriage and mourning. The songs of heroism, war, protest against kings, opposition of imposition of excessive taxes, cautioning the king about the invasion of the British, salutation of freedom fighters like Gobind Guru and Mama Baleshwar Dayal and the plight of their community during the days of famine also exist in large numbers. Some prose texts of the Bible translated into Bhili are also reported though they do not form a part of popular literature of the tribes. Two important narratives which cannot be ignored, though they do not relate very closely to this chapter, are Gavari and Bharat. Gavari is a dance-drama performed for 40 days beginning the day following the festival of Raksha Bandhan. The Bhils perform this every year. Their belief is that Bhils are the children of Lord Shiva. The narrative of Gavari revolves round Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati, his wife. Lord Shiva is pleased by a demon called Bhasmasur and gives him the blessing that he will have such a power in his palms that whoever comes under it, will be burnt to ashes. After gaining the power Bhasmasur, who is a demon, tries to kill Lord Shiva with the intention of marrying Parvati. Shiva runs here and there to escape. Then Lord Vishnu comes in the form of a dancing girl (in some texts Parvati herself) and Bhasmasur approaches her to marry him. Vishnu, in the disguise, asks Bhasmasur to dance like Lord Shiva. He tries and while doing so accidentally rests his palm on his own head and perishes. Around this central narrative are woven a number of tales which act as subplots. The 40-day festival is a public celebration in which hundreds of villagers, both tribals and non-tribals participate as onlookers. The performance is staged by a group of amateur performers who are required to observe a number of restrictions during these 40 days. They do not go to their homes, observe celibacy, eat once a day, do not take non-vegetarian food or liquor. The text is improvised Culture As a Site of Struggle    153

in every performance in which new comic contemporary anecdotes are added to make it more interesting. But one must understand that it is a devotional dance-drama performed at the community level in which the cost of production is paid by the village collectively. Gavari is described by some people as having an origin in ‘Gouri’ which is a synonym of Parvati. It is always performed in the open. A sacred fire is lit, a Trishul is struck near the fire and the performers play in a circle made by the audience who assemble there to watch the performance. The instruments used are Flute, Madal and Thali. Madal is the symbol of Lord Shiva while Thali symbolizes Parvati. The human characters include Budia, Rai, Kutkadia (Narrator), Meda, Shankaria, Khetudi, Nat, Paita, Kalbelia, Kalukeer, Bania, Gurjari, Garada, Jogi, Goma, Banjhati, Banjara, Sikligar etc. The animal characters include Monkey, Boar, Lion and Pig.6 Another important text of the Bhils is called Bharat. This is recited at the shrines of deities during Navaratra, nine sacred days, and twice a year. They are divided into two broad categories namely, 1. Dev Bharat—Bherunath, Rebari, Raada, Ramdeo, Kesaria, Vasag, Rangdya, Devnarayan, Takha, Raika, Bhunamendu, Mamadev, Ogarh, Nathu, Hanuman, Deraveer, Bhut and Gataleng. 2. Devi Bharat—Chavanda, Lalan–Phulan, Kalaka, Ambav, Roopam, Masima, Latkali, Meladi, Shikotari, Chouth, Kacha, Kakani and Peepalaj. The Bharat is sung by the local priest (Bhopa). It consists of devotional songs dedicated to the deities mentioned above and usually sung in their invocation. Oral literature of the Bhils abound in creations that reflect their struggle against extremities of nature, excess of the feudal lords, the money lenders and the British rulers who came to occupy the land. The Bhils address them in their song poems as ‘Bhuria’, i.e., brown-skinned people. The culture of Bhils is usually described as that of accommodation, patience and non-aggression. But they are also human beings and experience hunger, thirst, discouragement, disappointment, etc. when things go wrong. Sometimes they accept their fate while occasionally they decide to contest and struggle. Rajasthan is prone to frequent droughts. If year after year drought continues, it leads to famine which means lack of water, food and 154   Hemendra Singh Chandalia

fodder. The famine of Vikram Samvat 1956 i.e. 1899 AD is mentioned in several Bhil songs. The word ‘Kodikal’ refers to the worst famine: O Harna, worst famine has hit O Harna, a dry wind blows O Harna, water has dried up in the wells O Harna, grass in the forest is finished O Harna, The granary is empty too O Harna, cattle have started dying O Harna, women are ill nourished O Harna, children are losing their – lives!

The description arouses a sense of desperation. What is to be done in a situation like this? They invoke the Goddess to their land in order to support them. Now that the dates are ripe, Kalka Mata Come to our land When the wind blew rain clouds away Leaving our fields water Rivers dry like old wounds Forests dead hills corpselike We prayed to you but you never come Now that the dates are ripe, KalkaMata Come to our land.7

It is interesting to note that similar expressions of prayer and invocation are seen in the literature of indigenous people in other countries as well. The American Indians also pray for the rain in the same way: Far as man can see Comes the rain Comes the rain with me From the rain mount Rain mount far away Comes the rain Comes the rain with me.8

When the king of Dungarpur imposed a tax ‘Teelibarad’ on the public to meet the expenses of his daughter’s marriage, the peasants opposed and did not pay the tax. The denial resulted in a battle between the Bhil peasants and the force of the state. The hero of this battle was Culture As a Site of Struggle    155

Kala Gameti. A song is sung to narrate the entire episode. The refrain ‘Kala Gameti’ follows every line of the song: My dear brothers listen to me The king of Dungarpur has levied a tax It is called the Teeli tax Brothers should we bear this tax O village head listen to me We shall not bear it, living or dead.9

There are some songs which express anger of the Bhils towards their king who is not careful of the advance of the British forces. The song aims at awakening the king to prepare his forces and resist the advance of the British forces. O King, may you be cursed, Brown foreigner is coming They are coming dear friend on the elephant Passing by Godhra, they have almost reached Mahi.

Govind Guru was a popular leader of the Bhils who started several reform movements for the tribals. In south Rajasthan Govind Guru taught people to develop confidence and fight against the British occupation of Vagar. He had called a meeting at Mangarh. The British forces opened fire and killed about 1,500 tribal people. Mangarh is therefore called the Jallianwala Bagh of Rajasthan. A song was sung by the tribals asking the British to quit the region: Mangarh is our shrine, Baneshwar our temples O Brown skinned people go away from here Baneshwar our temples, at Pawagarh our Gods O Brown skinned people go away from here.

There are several songs that depict the exploitation of tribals during the colonial rule. These songs suggest that the tribals, though unlettered, do not lack political consciousness. They had the understanding and the courage to oppose the British as well as the feudal powers. Just as they could raise voice against the feudal powers for not fighting the British, they could oppose the British as well. In the rule of the British, Peasants are bonded labourers They work very hard and rise with the cock’s crow Rising with cock’s crow they clean the horse’s dung They clean the stable and give water to the horses

156   Hemendra Singh Chandalia

They work very hard and grind grain for making bread Work in the fields, give manure to the soil Give manure in the fields, and sow seeds They cultivate the crops and make fence to protect Yet they don’t get any wages, bonded labourers are they.

Though the Bhils lived in remote areas and the means of transport and communication were meagre during the struggle for Indian freedom, yet they were aware of the nationalist movement. Mahatma Gandhi was leading the movement and the Bhils were impressed by him because of his lifestyle. Gandhiji’s austerity, his simple dress, his loving words attracted the tribals and they could easily identify themselves with him: I love the teachings of Gandhiji Living in a broken hut, he took pains, Eating in an earthen pot, he took pains, I love the teachings of Gandhiji He went to jail several times Plied the Grinding mill in jail Many pains did he take, Gandhiji I love the teachings of Gandhiji.

Culture is not a static phenomenon. It does transform itself with the changes in circumstances. Literature reflects the changes taking place in the society. Though the status of women was always high in the tribal society, after independence, due to a number of campaigns launched by the government, the consciousness of the villagers to send their children, especially the girl child, to school, has increased. Not only have they started sending the girls to schools but also the message has found place in the songs of the Bhils: Send the girl child for studies A girl reforms two families O farmer, send the girl to study Don’t marry her too young Child marriage destroys her life Send the girl child to study O farmer send the girl child to study.

When a girl is married at a very early age, she is unable to perform all the duties expected of her. The life of the Bhils in south Rajasthan is full of hardships as the terrain is very difficult to traverse. Houses are built on Culture As a Site of Struggle    157

the top of hills and the farms are spread at the foot hills. They rear cattle including cows, goats, hens and others. A woman is expected to wake up early, fetch head loads of water from the wells, or hand pumps, has to clean the cow shed, feed the cattle, prepare food for the family and help the husband in the fields. If she has children, then the responsibility of raising them is entirely hers. The girl, too young to carry out all these tasks, expresses her sorrow and anger in such words: I was too young to marry, o match settler Why did you arrange marriage, o match settler? I was too young to marry, o match settler Why did you send me to my in-laws? They want me to bake bread for the family I do not know how to bake, o match settler Why did you arrange my marriage, o match settler!

The songs are sung by a group of people, both men and women. In some songs men and women recite alternatively responding to one another. The songs are often accompanied by clapping, dance and rejoicing. It is a source of jubilation and marks the colourful culture of the Bhils, which is full of song and music despite the tough life they are bound to live. There are a number of folk tales which are narrated among Bhils. In the recent past quite a few non-tribal writers have written poems, plays, stories and even novels on the lives of the Bhil community. Mention, however, may be made of a novel Dhuni Tape Teer by Hari Ram Meena who is a tribal IPS officer and has written a novel in Hindi about tribal life in south Rajasthan keeping the massacre at Mangarh Dham at the centre of narrative. Dr Jai Prakash Pandya ‘Jyotipunj’ and Upendra Anu are non-tribal poets who have received awards given by the central Sahitya Akademi for writing about the tribal life. It is very interesting to note that the Bhils have transformed the practices of worship of the church incorporating their own traditions. In a village Mohammad Falasia in Jhadol Tehsil of Udaipur district lives a man called Hiralal who is converted to Christianity. He carries the same name and told that on Christmas last year they gave the offering of six goats in the church. The phenomenon is difficult to explain but this is how assimilation of cultural practices takes place. There are many songs in Bhils in which numerous English words have been used. These changes point at the complexity and social relatedness of culture. The cultural strength of the tribes is a product of its own tradition as well as those practices assimilated from the contact with other communities. 158   Hemendra Singh Chandalia

One major struggle found in south Rajasthan is caused by the activities of Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad, an outfit of the Sangh Parivar, the saffron brigade. The activists of this organization have penetrated deep into the tribal heartland and they are teaching the tribal people the gospel of Hinduism. The attempt is to make this indigenous nature-worshipping community, a part of the Hindu Varna system. Unfortunately, the simplehearted tribal people are unable to understand this political conspiracy and sometimes become a part of their programmes. Mass marriages are organized using the Hindu system of a Pundit reciting Mantras and the bride and bridegroom moving round the sacred fire. In some reports, even married couples with children are made to undergo this ritual. This is a big cultural struggle among the tribals in Rajasthan, Gujarat and some parts of Madhya Pradesh challenging their very identity. There is a necessity to understand the struggle at the cultural level which has several parameters. It cannot be understood through purely empirical or descriptive methods. Marxist methodology of explaining culture on the basis of economic determinism also falls short to explain this. The relationship between the base and superstructure, with a little bit greater autonomy of the superstructure—dialectical, dynamic and complex can open up immense possibilities for the study of Indian culture including the culture of the tribes.

Notes and References 1. K.N. Panikkar, ‘Culture as a Site of Struggle’, Economic and Political Weekly XLIV, No. 07 (14 February 2009). 2. J.S. Yadav, Glimpses of Tribal Rajasthan (Udaipur: M.L.V. Tribal Research and Training Institute, 2006), 7. 3. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1873, reprint 2001), 186. 4. Anand Mahanand, ‘The World of Oral Poetry: Songs of the Bhils’, New Quest 148, (Mumbai : Indian Association for Cultural Freedom, April–June, 2002), 24–25. 5 Sitakanta Mahapatra, The Endless Weave: Tribal Songs and Tales of Orissa (Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1991), 2. 6. Mahendra Bhanawat (ed.), Aadim Gandh Ke Adhyeta (Udaipur: Mukta Prakashan, 2008), 92. 7. Randhir Khare, The Singing Bow: Song Poems of the Bhils (Delhi: Harper Collins India, 2001), 15. 8. George W. Cronyn, American Indian Poetry: An Anthology of Songs and Chants (New York: Liveright, 1962), 143. 9. Bhil Phool Ji Bhai, Rajasthani Bheelon Ke Lok Geet (Udaipur: Lok Sahitya Vibhag, Sahitya Sansthan, Rajasthan Vishwa Vidyapeeth, 1954), 40. Songs, not otherwise attributed, are taken from Janjatiya Lok Sahitya: Vagad Pradesh Ke Vishesh Sandarbh Mein (Udaipur: Ankur Prakashan, 2007) and translated by the author.

Culture As a Site of Struggle    159

15 Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur The Medium of Christianity* Joseph Bara

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971) explains the original meaning of ‘tribe’ as “a group of persons forming a community and claiming descent from a common ancestor”. The etymology changed it in course of time as “a race of people ... applied especially to a primary aggregate of people in a primitive or barbarous condition under a headman or chief”. The change of tribe from being a kinship-based simple community to a group in ‘primitive and barbarous condition’ marks distinct derogation of the term. The shift indicates an imperialist slant since the latter idea was indiscriminately used in various parts of the colonial world to stamp certain groups as incorrigible backwards. Especially in the early twentieth century, the Darwinist theory of race was brought into use to depict tribes as less human and more beastly, somewhat in a following way: “There is less difference between the highest type of ape and lowest of aborigines than there is between the latter and the modern English gentleman.”1 Today, a tribe is universally understood as primitive, savage or wild in a routine manner. * This paper was presented at the National Seminar on ‘Dynamics of Culture, Society and Literature: Emerging Literatures from North East’ organized by IIAS, Shimla, and Department of English, Mizoram University, on 10–11 March 2009. It is hereby acknowledged that a revised version was published as a Special Article in Economic & Political Weekly XLIV, No. 52 (26 December 2009): 90–96.

160   Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia

This conceptual vilification was entirely based on non-tribal sources. Rarely were the tribal viewpoints taken into account, since those who indulged in it belonged to the exploiting classes. A colonially evolved concept was, thus, imposed on the tribals. The imposition meant suppression of the tribals’ own idea of tribalness which insisted on a tribe being simply a human, no less or no more.2 Based on this conviction, recently an Indian tribal group resented: “…little respect is today, shown to our culture, social systems, political structures and economy. Efforts are made to integrate us into the mainstream society as a low caste, though traditionally we have lived in an egalitarian and casteless society.”3 This essay attempts to examine, taking the case of the Mundas and Uraons of Chhotanagpur, how the term ‘tribe’ was shaped under British colonialism and how tribes of India responded to the conceptual cultural imposition.

Resilience of the Inner Voice Under the British colonial rule, most of the tribal populations have a history of resistance of the outsiders for their nefarious acts of encroachment and exploitation.4 Even after Independence, many, with a strong sense of sons-of-the soil, have continued to assert for their rights. This tempts one to project tribes as avowed subaltern fighters for property rights, but nonchalant on their cultural identity. Even where tribal cultural distinctiveness is recognized, depiction usually is as cultural quaint, of museum piece value. The tribals are shown as statically clinging to certain archaic system and practices. A careful observation indicates that the tribal societies are actually highly aware of their self-defined cultural identity. A live indigenous tribal identity is an integral part of any tribal awakening for rights, whether a revolt or a movement, though its expression might be latent in some cases. The tribals’ tribal identity, often reiterated and redefined, differed distinctly from what was imposed. There are instances where the Mundas and Uraons based the claims of rights on their self-defined identity. Perhaps one of the best examples in this respect is their maiden demand for autonomy under the Indian polity, as a remedy to internal colonialism in their region, before the Indian Statutory Commission (1928). In their petition the tribals professed: We aborigines, sir … as descendants of the earliest known owners of Indian soil and with more hoary traditions of sovereignty in the land, Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur    161

… are entitled to as much or perhaps greater indulgence and an equal, if not a larger, share in the government of our own people…. These alien landlords despise us as ‘Mlechhas’ and despicable creatures— more brutes than men, and actually stigmatize us as ‘Kols’ which we understand is a Sanskrit term for ‘pigs’. But we too, sirs are human beings with a long past—longer than that of any other race in India, with a native genius for democratic government.5

Voices like this did not surface from, what is generally presumed, a cultural vacuum, or ‘silence’ of the suppressed subalterns.6 They emanated rather from certain vibrant cultural undercurrent of the tribal society that found articulation under certain specific situations. The Western forces coming under the bogey of colonialism provided stimulus to the expression. But they were, it should be emphasized, not the source, as authors tend to argue fallaciously.7 In 1831–1832, for instance, when Western forces had hardly reached Chhotanagpur, the tribals, being harassed and labelled as ‘Kols’ by their adversaries, spontaneously felt “being of one caste [meaning tribe] and brethren” to rise against the enemies.8 Against live and resilient self-defined cultural identity, from mid1830s the Mundas and Uraons closely encountered the forces of colonial education, British idea of rule by law and Christianity. These were introduced to pacify or tame the tribals, whom the colonial ethnography of the time portrayed as ‘belligerent’ or ‘beastly’, having animal-like emotions and low intellect. The interplay of these developments created a queer situation: more the cultural abuse of the tribals more was their cultural consciousness. If cultural impositions were innovative and sublime, the tribal responses were no less dynamic and reconstructive. In their cultural assertion, the tribals employed missionized Christianity markedly to define a respectable concept of tribe, which is shown in the last section of this chapter.

Precolonial Setting and Sensitivity As those who reclaimed land from dense forest and made the region habitable, the Mundas and Uraons had strong attachment to the land, forest and other resources of Chhotanagpur. Having been constantly pushed from one place to another, they chose to live in the place a peaceful and contented life and with simple needs. Centuries of living a relatively isolated life amidst forest and mountains helped them to 162   Joseph Bara

develop and standardize a local culture. When outsiders began trickling in, the tribals accommodated them in their settlement, but in a separate part of the village and sans certain privileges of traditional tribal rights.9 This way they became proud descendants of the first ‘bhuinhars’ or original settlers before the migrants. Used to democratic values, where their chiefs were simply primus inter pares, the Mundas and Uraons did not reconcile to the economic and cultural injustice and the idea of ruler-and-the-ruled that came with the outsiders. In the beginning the tribal cultural verve actually forced the Nagabansi raja, a migrant ruler, who had usurped power from Manki (Munda chief), to recognize the tribal way of life and even adopt it for several centuries. Things changed from the medieval times, when the raja began distancing himself from the community of the tribals and invited a horde of outsiders as subordinates. Brahmins especially became his advisors and confidants. The immigrants sublet the tribal lands fraudulently and were accorded the facility of free labour by imposing bethbegari [forced labour] on the tribals. Culturally, the raja changed his colour by Hinduizing himself, an example that inspired some tribals at the upper echelon to follow suit. This is called ‘Great Tradition’ or emulation of the Hindu rank model, which is projected as an explanation of the tribals’ natural tendency to discard their cultural values.10 Far from this, the tribals actually adopted Hindu cultural traits as a strategy to protect their tribal cultural identity, which explains why the ‘Great Tradition’ existed side by side with the ‘tribalization’ of the migrants in some tribe-dominated regions.11 One is also reminded here of the Mundas and Uraons claiming their ancestry to the Mahabharata figure, Jarasandha, while arguing for their ‘indigenous’ tribal status in Chhotanagpur before the Indian Statutory Commission, 1928.12 The alienation of the raja from the rank and file tribals and the rise of the migrants’ dominance in the medieval times set off the malady of conceptual diminution of the Mundas and Uraons. The raja now projected the tribals as people of ‘low caste, turbulent wretches, in person like men, but in mind like beasts”.13 Thus, the annals of the Nagabansis traced the lineage of Phani Mukut Rai, the first raja who was an ordinary migrant, to a respectable Brahminical ancestry, whereas that of Madra Manki (whom the raja had dislodged) to a ‘cook’ of ‘one Bairaja Dom’.14 The tribal chiefs, who defied the raja, were called ‘Daitya’ or ‘Raksal’.15 As the outsiders’ dominance took Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur    163

the shape of ‘feudalism giving rise to every species of extortion and plunder’, the abuse was unabated.16 Not surprisingly, in the Moghul establishment the tribals were known mainly as the ‘original savage race’ or the ‘barbarous Hindus of Jharkhand’.17 Moghuls, it should be noted, ruled Chhotanagpur through the Nagabansi raja and saw the tribal society through the lens of the raja’s advisors and coterie. Cultural disfiguration and slandering at the hands of the migrants boiled the blood of the Mundas and Uraons. Though harassed a lot, the tribals did not spare the enemies uncontested. The aliens—initially simply ‘others’ to the tribals—became their hated ‘dikus’ or exploiting aliens. To express their hatred for them, the tribals used the choicest metaphors, such as ‘greedy vulture’, ‘ravenous crow’, ‘upstart peacock’, ‘ominous owl’ and so on.18 From their cultural standards, the tribals even looked down upon them as people of ‘low birth’.19

Conceptual Condemnation by Deprivation Already put on the anvil of alien construct, the concept was in for more rigorous hammering under the colonial state, making the tribals increasingly contemptible. The deprivation and exploitation of the tribals always went hand in hand with conceptual despicability of tribe. Thus, the innocent-looking and frequently used eighteenthcentury British term ‘Hillman’ or ‘dhangar’ (deriving from ‘danga’ or hill) for tribe20 came to be replaced by such brutish variants as ‘semi-barbarous’, ‘demon’ or ‘kol’21 by the early nineteenth century. In this shift, invariably essence was drawn from the popular Purana of the eighteenth century, the Bhavisyata Purana.22 A statement of 1832 reflects the change clearly: The inhabitants, neighbours to Coles [generally spelt Kol] are a simple and in-offensive race, are chiefly Hindoos and talk the Ooriah language. They have the greatest dread of the Coles, whom they consider as demons, and no doubt, from their former frequent aggressions, in which they usually exercised every species of cruelty, the former has sufficient cause for doing so. Having no religion, the Coles, during their incursions never hesitated to enter the temples.23

After 1850 when the Mundas and Uraons mustered courage, after an interregnum, to assert their tribal rights under the Sardari Larai (1858–1890), they were despised and demonized further as ‘sar kols’ (dirty kols), ‘impure and illiterate savages’, ‘stubborn kols’, ‘restless 164   Joseph Bara

junglies’ and so forth.24 Many of these abusive terms found their way in the official proceedings as common usage. The irony was that the agitating tribals associated with this movement made advanced use of the recently acquired skill of rudimentary literacy in petitions and depositions for radical claims.25 Even words like ‘chuar’ and ‘dakait’ (thief and dacoit respectively), hitherto used for certain neighbouring tribes, were freely imported and applied on the Mundas and Uraons.26 The beastly and demon connotation of the term normally attributed to Darwinian racism in anthropological literature, actually pre-existed in India for centuries. The Vedas, Puranas and epic writings like Ramayana are replete with reference of tribe as dasyu, daitya, nisada, rakshasa and so on, all invariably linked with the Aryan concept of mlechchh.27 The tribes in these literatures generally remain beastly and monstrous, though some, in exceptional cases, were seen to turn humane under direct godly influence or brahminical ambassadorial touch of ‘civilization’.28 The term ‘Uraon’ was, thus, said to have been derived from recitation of ‘O! Ram’ by a grieving banara when Lord Rama left his forest abode of 14 years.29 Even the great nineteenth century enlightenment of colonial Bengal failed to bring any qualitative difference in the conceptual understanding. In late 1860s, a peer group of intelligentsia conjectured the following Indian tribe: “The Hindu books in poetical legends describe those aborigines as monkeys, so Megasthenes writes of Indians one-eyed, without noses, wrapped up in the ears (hastikarnas): even Marco Polo and Ptolemy believed that men with tails had a real existence…”.30 Under static mindset, the Mundas and Uraons were further described by the same forum as “Dhangars and other low caste people in the jungles: still impure, as probably unconverted mlechchhas”.31

The Informants’ Paradise When colonial ethnography embarked upon defining the tribe, it relied upon these same traditional Sanskritic sources, now ‘Orientalized’ for the colonial purposes. The local Indian idea of tribe, thus, colluded with the racist idea, demeaning the concept greatly. Here an important role was played by the local informants of the Europeans coming from the plains, who, as internal colonizers of the tribal regions, were highly prejudiced against the tribal people. They were not only gate-keepers of information on the tribals, but were also active disinformants, out to prove that the tribals were by Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur    165

no means land-owners, but nondescript ‘turbulent rebels’.32 The early 60 years of the British rule facilitated the informants’ disinformation politically. The authorities governed the region from camp offices at Chatra and Sherghati in central Bihar, which meant to the tribals a distant ‘Delhi durbar’.33 From around the mid-nineteenth century, some European administrator-ethnographers stationed themselves in the tribal regions and encountered the tribals directly. This provided them an access to a new kind of information that projected a tribe different from what was colonially shaped and espoused. The tribals were found to possess certain noble human qualities—bravery, fidelity, honesty, diligence and intelligence—tempting the authorities as ‘splendid material for recruiting regiments equal to best of our native army’.34 But this did not lead to any conceptual rediscovery. In the face of escalating tribal resistance to the colonial rule, the colonial state was bent upon showing the tribes as barbarous backwards. This inspired the colonial ethnographical project to remain firm on its charter and comfortable with the existing approach and information syndicate. Moreover, the outsiders, now migrating into the region in larger numbers and having greater economic stake, came to monoplolize the expanded British bureaucracy at the crucial subordinate level. The period, thus, became the informants’ paradise. A conscientious Special Commissioner, R.D. Haldar, who, as surveyor of the bhuinhari lands of Chhotanagpur (1869–1880), witnessed thorough oppression of the tribals penned the following pensive note: What are tigers without buffaloes? What are cats without mice? Similarly, what are the Aryans without Koles? Superiority can be proved only over inferiors. Chotanagpur is a country where the aborigines’ struggle with the Hindu conquerors may still be observed. The Aryan conquest was never complete here.35

Unprecedented dominance of the alien informants in the colonial information regime sealed the tribal viewpoints from reaching the European authorities. The colonial ethnological exercise thus essentially recycled and ratified the traditional Indian idea of tribe. The informants always played a proxy for the European ethnographers. In case of the Mundas and Uraons an avid observer noted this in the early twentieth century: No literary method is more fondly resorted by old bards—and probably, no habit was more important among the Aryan invaders [whose

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descendants the informants were]—than the giving of nicknames to the aboriginal tribes across whose path they had thrown themselves … [The nicknaming] did duty, to all intents and purposes, for the real name.36

By reinforcing the precolonial stigma and adding the ingredient of Western racism, the colonial ethnography demonized and maligned the Mundas and Uraons as never before.37

Mutant Mind and ‘Godsend’ Christianity The heightened cultural denigration under British colonialism that accompanied systematic deprivation was unable to domesticate the Mundas’ and Uraons’ conceptual sensitivity. The tribal mind actually could not be numbed even in the event of, what is believed to be, their ‘complete silence’ or ‘sullen silence’ as a result of stern actions of the powerful British military in the early nineteenth century.38 The suppression of the great revolt of 1831–1832 actually became an opportunity to ruminate over the efficacy of the mode of violence for cultural rehabilitation and exploration of an alternative. At this time the British gestured to the tribals a policy of friendship and assured redress for injustice to them in the post-revolt administrative measures of 1834. The British polity, insisting on administration by rule of law and justice, came to the doorstep of the tribals with headquarters at Kishenpur (present Ranchi). The first European officials posted in the region led by Political Agent to the GovernorGeneral T. Wilkinson who established personal rapport with the tribals, promised to be the protector of the tribals. The British overture of goodwill, coming against the tribals’ long experience of systematic deprivation by deceit and treachery by all the incoming social groups, was most appealing. Yet, even as the tribals responded to the British overture and tried to understand the ‘benevolent’ administration, they also found the ground reality unchanged. The alien landlords and the subordinate officials continued with their usual excesses, at times in a more reactionary way. For instance, the tribals, who had fled their villages fearing British reprisal in the course of the 1831–1832 revolt and returned later to claim their land, were resisted.39 This way the hollowness of British ‘benevolence’ was gradually vindicated and the measures of 1834 proved to be a mirage to the tribals. Deprivation of the tribals actually became more rampant and thorough. The euphoria of close Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur    167

connection to the European officials also dissipated. The officials were too preoccupied with the nitty-gritty of administrative reclamation of the region. Swinging between hope and despair, the tribal psyche came across another possible ‘resource’40—Christian missionaries. The urge of making the troublesome tribals a peaceable colonial subject in the British colonialist mind prepared a background for the coming of the missionaries. The colonial managers invited them as ‘colonial social workers’ to educate and ‘civilize’ the tribals.41 The Gossner Evangelical Lutheran missionaries of Berlin responded to the colonialists’ call and positioned themselves among the tribals from 1845. Two and a half decades later, since 1869, they were followed by the Roman Catholic Jesuits from Belgium and the Anglicans of the Society for the Propagation of Gospel. To pursue their object of winning coverts, the missionaries adopted, since 1850, a humanitarian approach to the tribal agrarian problems. The missionaries demonstrated their sympathy by providing consultancy to the tribals in their legal battle with the landlords and many tribals actually won back their lost rights. Reciprocally, the tribals converted to Christianity, which they found to be a simple belief, in large numbers.42 Even as evangelical romanticism of humanitarian flair progressed spectacularly, it was unable to refine Western arrogance on the notion of tribe. To a typical nineteenth century missionary, therefore, the Mundas and Uraons were ‘heathen Coles’, comparable to ‘bears and wolves’—an image that was deeply embedded in the missionary mind.43

Arming by Appropriation The progress of Christianity hardly arrested deprivation and denunciation of the tribals. Yet, alongside deprivation, the tribal mind was tantalized by a series of surveys, reports and other official transactions of the colonial state—a body of sub-Orientalist data—that often upheld the bhuinhari status of the tribals and their distinct cultural identity.44 Under this, some cases of working of the constitutional means in the restoration of tribal rights through missionary mediation raised new hope among the tribals. It also instantly instilled in the tribal mind a faith in British constitutional means, which inspired the tribals for the protracted course of the Sardari Larai.45 Imbued with new confidence, the first thing the tribals did was to retort to the Nagabansi raja’s claim 168   Joseph Bara

of ownership and superiority by asserting that they, as bhuinhars, were actually the owners of the land of Chhotanagpur and the raja was originally just their ‘servant’.46 While the Mundas and Uraons were busy experimenting with the appropriated resource of British constitutionalism and Western education in the Sardari Larai, their engagement with Christianity became impassioned and deeper. From the beginning, the missionary actions fixed in the simple tribal mind the idea that the white missionaries were the right route to reach the white masters towards resolution of their problems.47 Further, the missionaries continuing to help them, even at the risk of their own life, assured the tribals that they were indeed their friends in need. This paved the way for an intimate interface between the tribal society and Christianity. In evaluating the role of Christianity in the tribal society, scholars generally obscure the picture of reception by the tribals.48 In their impatience to gather vertical ‘impact’ of the ‘alien’ force of Christianity— bringing in instant cloud of Pax Christi or Pax Brittannica in a dormant ‘primitive’ society—they leave no scope of the tribal mind being active and receptive.49 This prevents them from recognizing that the tribals actually made use of Christianity to protect their cultural identity, than Christianity subduing or de-activating them by way of impact. The tribals primarily valued the German missionaries as expedient means for the restoration of their lost rights. But soon, within two decades, they adopted and internalized Christianity in the tribal culture.50

Resourcing Christianity for Reasoned Reconstruction The integration of Christianity in the tribal culture reflected mainly in the social sphere. Christianity, the religion, had largely an imperfect hold over the tribal masses. The conversion, it should be recalled, was administered impromptu and on a large scale. Obviously most of the converts were neophytes and many in fact just nominal Christians. There were even cases of men calling themselves Christian as soon as they simply enrolled themselves as catechumen.51 Yet, it is this tenuous adherence that the tribal leaders made adroit use of. In their various petitions to the government, they invariably introduced themselves as 12,000 to 14,000 ‘native Christians’, no matter that many had actually turned apostate.52 Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur    169

The tribal leaders employed Christianity not only to assert for immediate tribal rights, but also used it at a higher pedestal to contest the imposed concept of ‘tribe’ and construct a new one. Towards the last quarter of the nineteenth century, their status before the outsiders had reached an all-time low. Despised terms and phrases, that we have noted, were in popular use. Yet, the humanitarian attitude of the missionaries and a few individual European officials, leading to occasional recognition of the tribal rights and bhuinhari status in official discourse, encouraged them to reiterate their earlier status. The tribals asserted their claims on cultural and ethical grounds. In 1869 a Munda stated before E.T. Dalton, Commissioner of Chhotanagpur: “We consider Nagpore [Chhotanagpur] our Gya, Ganga, Kasi and Prayag. The bones of our ancestors lie buried in the bowels of Nagpore. We are no colonists from other countries, but derive race from Nagpore.”53 This was rationalized further by insisting that “other castes than us do not engage themselves to making the jungle clear”.54 With these convictions, as part of a broader effort of regaining their lost status, the tribals resorted to the resource of Christianity for refurbishment of the concept of indigenous ‘tribe’. They drew analogy of their being bhuinhars with episodes of the Old Testament. That is how a group led by one ‘John the Baptist’, which has been mocked as ‘ludicrously comic[al]’,55 named itself as the ‘Children of Mael’.56 Implicit in the assumption of these names was to describe the tribals as special people, like the ‘chosen’ Israelites. A letter from two former Munda students of the GEL mission school addressed to the mission authorities makes it explicit: We Mundas used to have a patriarchal form of government. We gave taxes to the patriarchs (makshays), not rent for the land, but a religious type tax. Anyone, who reads Leviticus, chapter 25 [of the Old Testament] can understand the conditions of our people; they were similar to those of the Israelites….57

The leaders re-asserted the idea in a petition of 1881 to the government: “We do not beg Your Majesty for a … right [different] than that of the Israelites, who after wandering in the jungles, and suffering many trials became heir of the holy land….”58 Christianity to the tribals, in short, became an advanced weapon to fight for a ‘human’ social status under a dignified term of tribe.59 170   Joseph Bara

Conclusion: Conceptual Legacy and Impasse Tribes in Indian history have culturally been among the most suppressed people, both in precolonial and colonial settings, though in a greater degree in the latter phase. The nineteenth century colonial ethnography, in defining tribe, conceptually integrated it into the framework of the caste system. The tribes were placed, as a residue social group, at the bottom-most of the caste hierarchy, forming the ‘Brahmanical opposite’.60 The conceptual denigration culminated in the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871.61 From this understanding rose a number of specific terms, all increasingly despicable, on various tribal groups. The close association of the conceptual making of this sort with colonialism and those terms coming into day-to-day public use has led scholars to see ‘tribe’ as a colonial creation.62 What is blatantly ignored is that the colonial creators actually relied heavily upon precolonial, mainly Sanskritic, ideas and information on the subject. Colonialism, thus, simply revived the term and vulgarized it by injecting in it the factor of Social Darwinism and firmly fixing the tribes at the lowest stratum of the human civilization. The term so raised has been almost static. This is because scholars are reluctant to take tribe as an independent unit of human progress under certain specific ecology; they stick to the belief of its being essentially a stage of human progress. Tribe is, thus, stereotyped or ‘savaged’, as R.C. Guha would like to call, on the basis of conventional understanding and data.63 Even the best of Western humanitarianism, as represented by the early twentieth century Jesuit missionaries, was inconsequential.64 To nationalist India, the tribes became either ‘tiresome savages’ or ‘colourful folks engaged in sexual orgies, human sacrifice and head-hunting’.65 The factor assigned to such status was the tribals being ‘inferior in mental capacity, military organization, material advancement and social efficiency’.66 While scholars recognize stereotyping, they lack the boldness of exploring varied and alternative, including tribal, sources for an objective understanding of the concept.67 The failure remained the basic reason why the twentieth century nationalist effort to correct the concept did not work—whether the case was of coinage of a new term like ‘vanavasi’, or of the romantic move of according the tribe a ‘kshatriya’ status or a ‘civilized’ label.68 As general attitude refused to be open minded, it is not surprising that the tribals themselves took the initiative for a respectable Alien Construct and Tribal Contestation in Colonial Chhotanagpur    171

humanistic term under cultural assertion in various periods of history. Thus, when the nationalist India of 1930s came up with the new terminology of ‘adimjati’ (primitive), the Mundas and Uraons made their choice clear for ‘Adivasi’ (indigenous people).69 In that sense, Adivasi became a fought and won term of the tribals, as independent India accepted it in popular use. However, this did not liberate the term from the inherited bias. In independent India, ‘adivasi’ officially became ‘scheduled tribe’ or ‘anusuchit janajati’. Notably, symbolizing the legacy of colonial ethnology, the word ‘jati’ (caste) forms part of the official term. Meanwhile, the term ‘adivasi’ acquired certain a political ramification, i.e. claim of first right by the local people over local resources, making its use contentious. Not only do the non-tribals disapprove the use of ‘adivas’ for the tribes, even sections of tribals of the Northeast dislike it, since it is used by the tribal migrants there from the inner parts of east India. Political fear makes the Government of India dither in accepting ‘indigenous people’, now a United Nations term for tribes, despite the suggestion from the organization.

Notes and References   1. J. Hoffmann, Encyclopaedia Mundarica, Vol. I (Patna: Government Printing, Bihar, 1950), 1117.   2. The tribals addressed each other as ‘horo’, ‘maleh’, and so on, which meant man.   3. Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, Indigenous and Tribal Solidarity (New Delhi: ICITP, 1997), 105.   4. K.S. Singh, Tribal Movements in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1982). In Chhotanagpur the first revolt took place in 1789, closely following the actual occupation of the region in 1772.   5. ‘Memorandum Submitted by the Chotanagpur Improvement Society’, Report of the Indian Statutory Commission: Selections from Memoranda and Oral Evidence by Nonofficials (Part I) (Calcutta: Government Printing, 1930), 447.   6. This is what cultural theoretician Edward Said perceived in his Orientalism (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1978). The view has since been critiqued by a host of writers. I take cue mainly from Andrew Porter, ‘“Cultural imperialism” and Protestant Missionary Enterprise, 1780-1914’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25, No. 3 (1997).   7. The scholarly tendency in the context of the growth of the Jharkhand movement in late 1930s has been to discern tribal ‘separatism’ in Chhotanagpur, chiefly ‘sustained by continuous flow of external stimuli’. See P.G. Ganguli, ‘Separatism in Indian Polity: A Case Study’, in M.C. Pradhan et al. (eds), Anthropology and Archaeology: Essays in Honour of Verrier Elwin 1902–64 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969); K.S. Singh, ‘Tribal Ethnicity in a Multi-ethnic Society: Conflict and Integration in Colonial and Post-colonial Chotanagpur’, in Trends in Ethnic Group Relations in Asia and Oceania (Paris: UNESCO, 1979).

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  8. J. Reid, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the Ranchi District, 1902–1910 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1912), 22.   9. They came to be known as ‘sadans’, who constitute a sizeable community in the state of Jharkhand today. 10. ‘Great Tradition’ and ‘Little Tradition’ became popular concepts among social scientists in post-Independence India to understand cultural change in small societies ever since Martin Orans suggested them in his The Santals: A Tribe in Search of Great Tradition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965). 11. B.B. Choudhuri, ‘Society and Culture of the Tribal World in Colonial India: Reconsidering the Notion of “Hinduization” of Tribes’, in Hetukar Jha (ed.), Perspectives on Indian Society and History: A Critique (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002). 12. ‘Memorandum Submitted by the Chotanagpur Improvement Society’, 447. 13. Anonymous, ‘The Kols of Chota Nagpur’, Calcutta Review XLIX, No. XCVII (1869): 140. 14. Roy, ‘An Abstract of the Annals of the Nagabansi Raj Family’, Man in India VIII, No. 19 (1928): 269–70. 15. Ibid., 269. 16. S.C. Roy, ‘Ethnological Investigation in Official Records’, (Report of S.T. Cuthbert, 1827), Journal of Bihar and Orissa Research Society, VII, part 4 (1931): 5. (Hereafter ‘Cuthbert Report, 1827’) 17. E.T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta: Indian Studies, 1872, reprint 1960), 162–163. 18. S.C. Roy, The Mundas and Their Country (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1970), 93. 19. Ibid. 20. See, for instance, C.P.N. Sinha (ed.), India Tracts: Major J. Browne’s Report of Jungle Tarai People of South Bihar During 1774–1779 (Darbhanga: Maharajadhiraj Kameshwar Singh Foundation, 1996); James Long, Selections from Unpublished Records of Government for the Years 1748 to 1767 (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, second edition, 1973); Reginald Heber, Narratives of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces India from Calcutta to Bombay 1824–25, Vol. I (Delhi: B.R. Publishing, reprint 1985), 258. 21. G.A. Grierson, British linguist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, sees the meaning of ‘kol’ as dirty pig, which the tribals also believed. 22. Sinha, India Tracts, 15. 23. Report entitled ‘The Coles’, The Bengal Harkaru and Chronicle, Calcutta, 24 February 1832, in J.C. Jha, The Tribal Revolt of Chhotanagpur (1831–32) (Patna: K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute, 1987), Appendix 2, 269. 24. J. Hoffmann, Encyclopaedia Mundarica, Vol. V (Patna: Government Printing, Bihar, 1950), 1449–50; ibid. Vol. II (Patna: Government Printing, Bihar, 1950), 462; Letter dated 22 May from R.D. Haldar, Special Commissioner to Deputy Commissioner, Lohardugga, in Papers relating to Chotanagpur Agrarian Disputes, Vol. I, 82. 25. The details of this movement is well documented in MacDougall, John, Land or Religion?: The Sardar and Kherwar Movements in Bihar, 1858–1895 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1985). 26. L.S.S. O’Malley, Census of India, 1911, Part I: Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot), 234; Papers relating to Chotanagpur Agrarian Disputes, Vol. I, 82.

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27. Romila Thapar, Ancient Indian Social History (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1978), 152–192. 28. The latter phenomenon is explained more explicitly in case of the Gond tribes of central India. See W.G. Griffith, ‘The Folklores of the Kols’, Man in India XXIV, No. 4; J. Forsyth, The Highlands of Central India: Notes on Their Forests, Wild Tribes, Natural History and Sports (London: Chapman and Hall, new edition, 1919). In Chhotanagpur, it reflects abundantly in the annals of the Nagabansis. See Roy ‘An Abstract of the Annals of the Nagabansi Raj Family’. 29. ‘Srimati Satyawati Gaur Gahi Bakhni’ (in Kurukh, the dialect of the Uraons), Dhumkuria, May–June, 1952, 10. 30. James Long, ‘Report of the Sociological Section’, Proceedings of the Transactions of the Bethune Society (Calcutta: Bethune Society, 1870), 414. 31. Ibid. 32. M.G. Hallet, Bihar and Orissa District Gazetteer: Ranchi (Patna: Government Printing, Bihar, 1917), 32. 33. Reid, Final Report of the Survey and Settlement Operation of Ranchi, 34. 34. ‘Cuthbert Report, 1827’; S.C. Roy, ‘Ethnological Investigation in Official Records’ (Report of John Davidson, 1839), XXI, part 4, 243; H. Ricketts, Selections from the Records of the Government of Bengal, No. XX, Calcutta, 1855, 36; P.C. Roy Choudhury, 1857 in Bihar (Chotanagpur and Santhal Parganas), second edition (Patna: Revenue Department, 1959), 39; Indo-European Correspondence, 22 January 1890, 77. 35. R.D. Haldar, Personal Diary, 18 October 1873. 36. Grignard, F.A., ‘The Oraons and Mundas: From the Times of their Settlement in India’, Anthropos IV, (1909): 7. 37. The sway of Darwinist racism was real. A Bavarian tourist in Chhotanagpur in the early twentieth century remarked to his local host pointing at a Munda who was on the roadside: ‘That fellow sitting there is either a monkey, and then I am a man, or if he is a man, and then I am god’. J. Hoffmann, Encyclopaedia Mundarica, Vol. IV, 1117. 38. Jha, The Tribal Revolt, 259; Ganguli, ‘Separatism in Indian Polity’, 100. A reflection of this theory is found in Weiner, Myron, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), which sees ‘passive protest’ in the emigration of the displaced tribals vis-à-vis active protest in the form of revolts and movements. The emigrants actually left their land nostalgically, often with a resolve to get it back. Some of them did return with savings in hand and joined the Sardari Larai. Some others converted to Christianity in the migrated land to empower themselves. This indicates that emigration was not really passive exit. 39. Letter dated 22 December 1871 from E.T. Dalton, Commissioner, Chotanagpur to Secretary, Revenue, Bengal, in Papers relating to Chotanagpur Agrarian Disputes, Vol. I, 21. 40. MacDougall, Land or Religion? 41. Joseph Bara, ‘Seeds of Mistrust: Tribal and Colonial Perspectives on Education in Chhotanagpur, 1834–c.1850’, History of Education 34, No. 6 (2005). 42. See for detailed description of the circumstances in Bara, Joseph, ‘Colonialism, Christianity and the Tribes of Chhotanagpur in East India, 1845-1890’, South Asia XXX, No. 2, (2007). 43. Report of the Chota Nagpore Mission for Year 1863, Calcutta, 1864, 9–10.

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44. This took place especially between 1855, when Henry Ricketts, visiting Member, Board of Revenue, prepared a report and 1880, when R.D. Haldar, Special Commissioner to the bhuinhari survey submitted his report. Haldar’s note entitled ‘An account of the village system of Chota Nagpur’, appended to the main report, especially became an authoritative reference material on the subject of bhuinhari. 45. Scholars have either overlooked this movement or have failed to recognize its importance. In the entire set of ‘Subaltern Studies’ of the Oxford University Press, the subject is unattended. K.S. Singh, whose scholarship on tribal movement of Chhotanagpur is well-known for over three decades, is more concerned to see how Birsa movement was an ‘advance’ over this movement and assigns the latter the role of a second fiddle; see his Birsa Munda and His Movement 1874–1901: A Study of a Millenarian Movement in Chotanagpur (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1983). Historian, Sumit Sarkar in his authoritative survey of popular movements in colonial India explains the ‘primary resistance’ led by traditional chiefs in Chhotanagpur before this movement and the ‘revivalist’ movement led by Birsa following it, but skips comment on Sardari Larai; see Sumit Sarkar, ‘Popular’ Movement &’Middle Class’ Leadership in Late Colonial India: Perspective and Problems of a ‘History from Below’ (Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 1983). 46. Petition dated 25 March 1879 of ‘14000 Christians’ to the Commissioner of Chota Nagpur, in Roy, The Mundas and Their Country, 162–163. 47. A tribal saying is ‘Topi topi ek topi’, which means hat-donning whitemen, whether a colonial official or a missionary, were the same. 48. Some see Christianity playing the role of a mere ‘catalyst’ in the tribal society where chief role was played by market forces, giving rise to a ‘well-off’ tribal peasantry. See Romila Thapar and M.H. Siddiqi, ‘Chotanagpur: The Pre-colonial and Colonial Situation’, in Trends in Ethnic Group Relations in Asia and Oceania (Paris: UNESCO, 1979), 39. Others discern a direct role of it. See especially Roy, The Mundas and Their Country. 49. K.S. Singh, for instance, finds a proactive working of Christianity which ‘radiated deeper’ into the tribal society and raised a band of ‘reactionary’ tribal leaders. See Singh, Birsa Munda and His Movement, 20. 50. For a picture of it from contemporary writings see, Mullens, Joseph, Ten Years of Missionary Labour in India between 1852 and 1861 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1863), 43. 51. W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal: The Districts of Ranchi and Lohardaga, Vol. XVI (Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, reprint 1975), 443. 52. Report of the GEL Mission for the year 1874, quoted in ibid., 436. 53. Quoted by R.D. Haldar in his ‘An Account of Village System of Chotanagpur’, appended to Resolution dated 25 November 1880 of the Government of Bengal on the Report of the Special Commissioners, in Papers Relating to Chotanagpur Agrarian Disputes, Vol. I, 103. 54. Petition to the Lt. Governor of Bengal, 1881, in MacDougall, Land or Religion, Appendix B3, 261. 55. Roy, The Mundas and Their Country, 163. 56. Letter dated 19 November 1887 from Stevens to Chief Secretary, Bengal. 57. Undated (but dating sometime before 1887) petition by two former students of the Lutherean Mission School, in MacDougall, Land or Religion? Appendix B2, 261.

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58. Petition dated 1881 to the Lt. Governor of Bengal, in ibid., 262. 59. The idea of ‘chosen people’ has pushed some sections of the Mizos and Kukis in Northeast India to define themselves as one of the lost tribes of the Old Testament, leading some even to migrate to Israel. Under what specific circumstances it has taken that turn needs to be studied. 60. Crispin Bates, ‘Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: The Early Origins of Indian Anthropmetry’, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995). 61. Anand A. Yang (ed.), Crime and Criminality in British India (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1995). 62. Among many works on the subject, see specifically on the Jharkhand tribes, Susana B.C. Devalle, Discourses of Ethnicity: Culture and Protest in Jharkhand (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1992). 63. R.C. Guha, Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals and India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997). 64. This was the period when the Jesuits led by J.B. Hoffmann fought an in-house battle for social uplift of the Mundas and Uraons. The missionaries generally still took the tribals as incurable ‘drunkards and liars’, who preferred the ‘bliss of their primitive simplicity’; Oscar Sevrin, ‘Village Schools in Chota Nagpore’ (mimeo.) (Ranchi Jesuit Archives), 1–2. 65. Verrier Elwin, The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An Autobiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 290. 66. L.S.S. O’Malley, Modern India and the West: A Study of the Interaction of Civilizations (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), 726. 67. Indian Historical Review XXXIII, No. 1 (2006) devoted to the theme ‘Adivasis in Colonial India’. A number of essays in this issue deal with ‘construction’ of ‘tribe’ and ‘Adivasi’. 68. The term ‘vanavasi’ was conceived, in early 1950s, by Adimjati Seva Mandal, a nationalist non-governmental organization engaged in welfare works among the tribal populations. The idea of ‘kshatriya’ status was floated on the eve of independence by some philanthropists; see Verrier Elwin, Foreword (written in 1944) to All-India Arya (Hindu) Dharma Sewa Sangha, Religious Banditry (Delhi: AIADSS, undated), 15. As for the tribals being called ‘civilized’, see Elwin, The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin. 69. The tribals formed a political organization called Adivasi Sabha, the forerunner of Jharkhand Party and have been publishing an organ Adivasi since 1938.

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About the Editor and Contributors

Editor Margaret Ch. Zama is Professor of English at Mizoram University, Aizawl. Besides publications of her own academic works, her translations of Mizo fiction and tales are to be found in edited volumes published by Katha, Oxford University Press and Sahitya Akademi. Her areas of specialization are fiction and critical theory while her areas of interest are folkloristics, cultural and literary studies, particularly of Northeast India.

Contributors Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal is a Senior Lecturer in English at Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli (U.P.) with a doctorate degree on T.S.Eliot from Allahabad University. His areas of interests are Indian aesthetics, diaspora and contemporary critical theory. His interviews with a number of contemporary literary figures, book reviews, research papers and poems have appeared in publications including South Asian Review, Asiatic (Malaysia), Skase Journal of Literary Studies Summerhill (IIAS, Shimla), ASBEL Journal (New York), Muse India and several more. He has also edited a volume of critical essays on Stephen Gill. Amongst his many literary activities, he is also editor of Parnassus: An Innovative Journal of Literary Criticism (0975-0266). Joseph Bara is affiliated to the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Kailash C. Baral is a Senior Professor of English and the Director of the Shillong Campus of the English and Foreign Languages University The Concept of Society    177

(EFLU). He has authored Sigmund Freud: A Study of His Theory of Art and Literature (1994) and edited Humanities and Pedagogy: Teaching of Humanities Today (2002), Interpretation of Texts: Text, Meaning and Interpretation (2002), Earth Songs: Stories from Northeast India (2005) and J.M. Coetzee: A Critical Evaluation (2008). He has co-edited Theory and Praxis: Curriculum, Culture and English Studies (2003), Identities: Local and Global (2004), Reflections on Literature, Criticism and Theory (2004), U.R.Anantha Murthy’s Samskara: A Critical Reader (2005). His latest work Theory after Derrida: Essays in Critical Praxis (2009) is published by Routledge. His articles on critical theory, cultural studies and postcolonial literatures are published in journals such as Pedagogy, South Asian Review and International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. Northeast studies have been one of his passionate academic preoccupations. Sarangadhar Baral is Associate Professor of English at Mizoram University, Aizawl, and a poet who has several published volumes of his poetry, namely, Reaching Out (2002), My Heritage My Pilgrimage (2003), Native Connections (2005), Measures of the Mind (2006) and a critical work entitled The Verse and Vision of A.K. Ramanujan (2008). His areas of interest are modern poetry, critical theory and ecological studies. Manjeet Baruah is currently Assistant Professor at North East India Studies Programme (NEISP), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was earlier teaching in the School of Translation Studies and Training, IGNOU, New Delhi. Specialized in cultural history, his book Dialectics of Frontier and Its Cultural Forms has been published by Routledge India. Hemendra Singh Chandalia was Professor and Head of the Department of English at JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Udaipur, and his area of specialization is tribal literature and oral folk narratives, particularly of the tribal communities in his region. He is currently Professor in the Department of English, Central University of Haryana. Monalisa Changkija is a well-known writer, poet and journalist from Nagaland and is Editor of Nagaland Page. She has two published volumes of her poetry Weapons of Words of Pages of Pain (1993) and Monsoon Mourning (2007). She lives in Dimapur, Nagaland, with her family. 178   Emerging Literatures from Northeast India

Desmond L. Kharmawphlang is a renowned folklorist and poet, widely published both at home and abroad. He is Professor at the Department of Cultural and Creative Studies at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Tilottoma Misra taught English Literature at the Indraprastha College, Delhi (1969–­1970) and subsequently joined the Department of English, Dibrugarh University, Assam, from where s­he retired as Professor in 2007. Her published books include Literature and Society in Assam: A Study of the Assamese Renaissance 1826–1926 (1986), two novels in Assamese, Swarnalata (1991) and Louhitya Sindhu (1997), and Ramnabami-Natak: The Story of Ram and Nabami (2007), a translation (with an introduction) of Gunabhiram Barua’s Ramnabami-Natak (1857), the first Assamese social drama. She has also edited the two volumes of Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India (2010). She was awarded the Ishan Puraskar by the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad for her novel Swarnalata in 1995. Rakhee Kalita Moral is Associate Professor, Cotton College, Guwahati. Besides her papers in national and international publications and her several translations of regional writings into English, she has also edited a book At the Frontiers and Beyond: Literature and Its Relations (2004). Her areas of interest and research specialization are on gender, Northeast literature and cultural studies. She is a keen scholar on conflict studies and currently working on women and insurgency in Assam. Temsurenla Ozukum completed her MPhil on Ao Naga Oral Narratives from the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. She is currently pursuing PhD from the same institution. Her areas of interests are colonial writings, oral narratives/folktales and literatures from Northeast India. D. Venkat Rao is Professor at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad. In addition to books in English and Telugu, he has published several articles in national and international journals. His most recent publication is a translation of Ashis Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy (as Priya Shatruvu, 2009) into Telugu. Earlier he had translated into English a Telugu intellectual autobiography called The Last Brahmin (2007). His areas of interest include literary and cultural studies, image studies, comparative thought and About the Editor and Contributors    179

mnemocultures. He has designed several courses interfacing areas of culture, technology and literary and cultural studies. Parag M. Sarma (Late) was Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies, Tezpur University, Assam, since January 2008. Prior to this he was Reader and Head of the Department of English, Assam University at Silchar. He was also a guest faculty in the Department of Folklore Research, Gauhati University, and was awarded a PhD by the same university for his research in oral-derived poetics. He occasionally published in the areas of folklore, literature and cultural studies. Tayenjam Bijoykumar Singh is from Imphal, Manipur, and an electrical engineer by profession. He writes short stories, poems and essays in English and Manipuri, and has translated several Manipuri short stories, plays and poems into English. His writings and translations in English have appeared in Indian Literature, Chandrabhaga, IIC Quarterly, Imphal Free Press, Sentinel/Melange, NE Frontier, Katha volumes, Oxford University Press volumes, Sabd, Pratibha India, Ishani, Penguin Books, etc. Meanwhile his works and translations in Manipuri have been widely published as well. He received Katha Award for Translation in 2005. His story ‘Mama, I’m Up Here’ won the Sulekha PenguinBlogprint prize and is published in an anthology of prize-winning stories Blogprint by Penguin Enterprise.

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Index

Aaulingar Zui, xiv, 30–32 Adi community, 40, 130 adimjati, 172 adivasi, 172 Adivasi Sabha, 176n69 African American identity, 70 ‘Aftermath’ poem, 141 Ahom buranjis, 21 Aier, I.T. Apok, 108, 111 alternative modernities, literature on, 23 American Baptist missionaries, 19–23, 108, 110 Anami Naga, 39 Ancient Ao Naga Religion and Culture, 108 Angami folk song, 77 Anglicans of the Society for the Propagation of Gospel, 168 Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the Northeast, 8 Anthropology in the East, 59n6 Anungtsungba, 110–111 anusuchit janajati, 172 Ao Naga Oral Tradition, 113 Ao-Nagas administrative ranges, 109 and advent of Christianity, 110, 114 ‘Ariju’ system of education, 112–113 cultural practices of, 72 educational institution, 112–113

folktales of, 109 intraclan marriage, 112 introduction of Roman script, 113 language, xiv, 19 Moatsu and Tsungremmong festivals, 111 religion of, 109–110 role of Christianity in lives of, 108 Wedding March, 112 Ao, Temsula, 4–5, 9, 11–12, 24, 37–38, 43–44, 72, 113 Aranyar Gaan, 76, 88n1 Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958), 29 ‘art for art’s sake’ theory, 126 art of writing, 18 Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land, 127 Asamiya Bhasha Unnati Sadhini Sabha, 21 Asamiya lipi, 20 ‘Ashibagi Macha Ashiba’ short story, 105 Assam Bandhav, 21 Assamese language, 18, 22, 34, 39 cultural association, 44 and national consciousness, 39 representation of ethnicity in, 40 social and cultural influences on, 40 The Concept of Society    181

Assamese literature, xiv, 20, 29, 35, 38–41 ‘At My Funeral’ poem, 139–141 Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC), 117 Bandiyar, 31, 33 Bangla-Asamiya dictionary, 22 Barthes, Roland, 78 Basanti Charong, 102 Beloved Bullet, The, 68, 71 Bendangangshi, I., 108, 111 Bengali language, 18–19 bethbegari (forced labour), 163 Bhagavat Gita, 21 Bharada, 102 Bhattacharya, Birendra Kumar, 30, 32, 34, 40 Bhavisyata Purana, 164 Bhikkhar Patra Bhangi, 34 Bhils, 151–152 Bharat (text), 154 cultural practices, 158 cultural prosperity of, 153–154 devotional dance-drama, 153–154 Guru, Govind, 156 Kala Gameti, song on, 156 life of, 157–158 literacy rate among, 152 literature of, 153 nationalist movement, 157 oral literature of, 154 song poems, 153 songs depicting exploitation of tribals, 156 struggle for Indian freedom, 157 bhuinhari lands of Chhotanagpur, 166 bhuinhars, 163, 169–170 ‘Bhuria’, 154 Bidrohi Nagar Hatot, 39 Bordoloi, Rajani Kanta, 39 Bowstring Winter, A, 12

British colonialism, xx, 9, 171 civilizing mission, 14 cultural denigration under, 167 deprivation and exploitation of the tribals, 164–165 and formation of colonial state, 51 Naga experience of, 30 policy of friendship with tribals, 167 suppression of the great revolt of 1831–1832, 167 ‘Brojendrogi Luhongba’ short story, 99, 100 call-and-response antiphony, 90 Cartesian philosophies, 86 caste system, 171 Chenkhidraba Eechel, 101 ‘Child of Cain’ poem, 137–138 Chingya Tamya, 101 ‘Chitrabirentombi Chand’ short story, 101 chosen people, idea of, 176n59 Christianity advent of, xiii, 9 and concept of tribe, 162 conversion of tribals to, 168 integration in the tribal culture, 169–170 role in lives of Ao Nagas, 108 tribal society, 168–169 spread of, 9 Christian missionaries, xiv, 9, 23, 134, 168 humanitarian attitude of, 170 chungli dialect, 113 Clark, Edward Winter, 113–114 colonial Bengal, century enlightenment of, 165 colonial ethnographical project, 5, 14, 162, 165–167, 171 colonial social workers, 168

182    Emerging Literatures from Northeast India

composition of a society, concept of, 35 corporeal dialectics of communication, 83 corrupt dialect, 18 corruption, 9–10 Criminal Tribes Act (1871), 171 critical humanities, notion of, 53–54, 57–58 cross movements, 118 cultural and ethnic identities, xii, 5, 7 cultural difference, 5, 39, 58 Cultural Forum Manipur, Imphal, 100 cultural poetics, 42 cultural singularities, notion of, 53–54, 58 cultural trauma, theory of, 70–71 cultures and practices, divergence of, 54 Dai, Mamang, xix, 8, 15–16, 38, 43, 127–129 Dalimir Sapon, 39 dance-drama, 152–154 Darwinist theory of race, 160, 165 Deb, Siddhartha, xiii, 12, 37, 45 Deep Ecologists, 86–87 Delhi durbar, 166 Derrida, Jacques, 16, 53, 61n11, 61n12 Desai, Kiran, xix, 123–125 perception of the Northeast, 125 Dev Bharat and Devi Bharat (text of the Bhils), 154 Devi, Nee, 104–106 dhangar, 164–165 Dhuni Tape Teer, 158 ‘Digital Diary’ poem, 146–147 discourses of identity, 50 Dokhuma, James, 66–68, 70–71 Donyi-Polo, 130 Duhlian, xiv

Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India, The, 125, 134 Eikhoigi Tada, 102 ‘Eikhoisibu Kanano?’ short story, 105 Ejak Manuh Ekhan Aranya, 40 Eliot, T.S., 84, 127, 130 ‘Ema Wa Tannaba’ short story, 99 erotic stories, 106 ethnic communities, 38–41 ethnic conflict, 44, 117, 120 ethnic songs, from Northeast India. See folk songs, from Northeast India ethnic violence, 107, 119–120 European colonialism, 38 cultural modes, 14, 16, 51 Enlightenment, 14 exclusion, politics of, 116 Extended Loop Areas (ELA), 70 Eyerman, Ron, 70 famine of Vikram Samvat, 155 ‘February’s Tragedy’ poem, 136, 137 Few Remarks on the Assamese Language and on Vernacular Education in Assam, A, 19 folk art, 88 Folklore and Discourse, 91 folk poetry, 79, 88 folk songs, from Northeast India, 76 Angami song, 77 characteristic sign of, 77 Mising folk song, 78, 80, 83 New Critical tradition, 84 from Wanchus of Arunachal, 86 Gait, Edward, 119 Gandhian approach to political conflict, 32 Index    183

Gandhi, Mahatma, 157 Geeta Govinda, 77 Gorkha Liberation movement, 123 Gorkhas, 123–124, 131 Gossner Evangelical Lutheran missionaries of Berlin, 168 Goswami, Indira, 31–32, 34 Great Traditions, 4, 163 Guha, R.C., 171 Guno, H., 102 Haldar, R.D., 166 Hazarika, Dhruba, xiii, 12 Heddon, Dee E., 78 heteronormative communities, 56 Hillman, 164 hill tribe, 9–10, 94, 117 Hindu cultural traits, 163 Hinduism, 159 Hindu Varna system, 159 History, 119 humocosm, notion of, 79, 81, 89n5 Iaruingam, xiv, 30, 32, 34–35 Ichegi Sam, 102 ‘Ilisa Amagi Mahao’ short story, 102–103 Imchen, Panger, 108, 113 ‘Imphal Turelgee Ita Macha’ short story, 101 ‘Independent kan Zoram tan’ (Mizo song), 67 Indian Statutory Commission (1928), 161, 163 indigenous tribe, concept of, 10, 116, 161, 163, 170, 172 Inheritance of Loss, The, xix, 123, 130 Inner Line Regulation (1873), 36n2 interethnic relationships, 44 International Seminar on Grouping of Villages (2010), 70 inter-tribal relationships, 119

Jaak Heruwa Pokhi, xviii, 44, 116, 117 Jakobson’s idea of ‘a poetic oeuvre’, 79 Jatra, 31–32 Jayadeva (Sanskrit poet), 77–78 Jenkins, Francis, 17, 18 Jesuit missionaries, 171 Johnson, Samuel, 90 Jyoti, 99 Jyotipunj, 158 Kachari, Megan, xiv, 30, 32–33, 35 Ka Ktien Sohra, 19 Kalidasa (Sanskrit poet), 77–78 Ka Mei-Hukum, 93 Kamrupee Bhasha, 21–22 Kandali, Madhav, 20 Kandali, Rudra, 20 Kanthop Tang Angne, xix, 118 Karbi Anglong, 44, 116–120 Karbi community, 40, 44 folk cultures and literature, 118 Katakis of the Ahom kings, 18 Khalistan movement, 29 Kharmawphlang, Desmond, 8, 9 Khasi community, 90–91 musical instruments, 94 Khasi Students Union, 94 Khawhar In, 68 Khongtekcha, King, 98 ‘Khongup Boot’ short story, 105 Kire, Esterine, 65–66 Kols, 162, 164 Kuki community, 44 regional council, 117 Kuki–Karbi conflict, 118–120 Kuki–Naga conflict, 11 Kuki Revolutionary Army, 120 laboratory languages, 19 Lalit Manjuri Patrika, 99 language, politics of, 19, 28 leader-choral antiphony, 90

184    Emerging Literatures from Northeast India

Legends of Pensam, The, 8, 38, 43, 127, 129 ‘Leibaklei’ short story, 101 Leichillakki Thaja, 102 Leikonnungda, 100 Leinungshi, 100 Leithak Leikharol, 99 Lichaba, 109, 111 Lijaba, 109–111 ‘Lin-ga Hangoi-ga’ short story, 103 Lingjhik, 40 literatures of the Northeast, 44, 127 Little Traditions, 4 Longkitsungba, 111 Lusei dialect, 20 Mahabharata, 163 Mahanta, Anurag, xiv, 30–33, 35 Mahapatra, Sitakanta, 153 Manipur, 117 annexation to British Empire, 99 Burmese invasion, 99 caste prejudices, 102 literary representations, 66 short stories, 98–107 Manipuri literature, 4 history of, 98 modern period in, 99 Manipuri Sahitya Parishad, Imphal, 100 Marg–Desi dichotomy, 4 Masik Jagaron, 99 massacre of the Britishers, story of, 15–16 mass marriages, 159 Meena, Hari Ram, 158 Meghadootam, 77 Mei-Hukum, 93–94 Meitei Chanu, 99 Melodies & Guns, 32 Memsahab Prithivi, 32 Meyutsungba, 110–111 migrations, patterns of, 118 Miri Jiyori, 39

Mishra, Pankaj, 123 Mising folk song, 78, 80, 83 ‘Mist Over Brahmaputra’ poem, 136 Mizo community ‘collective trauma’ of, 71 military action against, 68 mourning, politics of, 71 ‘riakmaw’ bird, tale of, 74n14 Mizo language, 20 Mizo National Front (MNF), 66–67 Mizoram Peace Accord (1986), 66 Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), 69 Mlechhas, 162 modular humanities, 57 Mohan, G.B., 126 Mohanty, Satya P., 23–24 Momaday, N. Scott, 82 mongsen dialect, 113 Monsoon Mourning, 136 Morambi Angaobi, 102, 103 mourning, politics of, 71 Mritunjoy, 40 Mundas and Uraons of Chhotanagpur, 161. See also tribal society attachment to the land, 162 cultural denigration under British colonialism, 167–168 democratic values, 163 engagement with Christianity, 169 precolonial setting and sensitivity, 162–164 Sardari Larai (1858–1890), 164, 168–169 musical instruments of the Khasis, 94, 99 ‘Must I remember?’, 145–146 Nagabansis, 163–164, 168, 174n28 Naga insurgency, 11, 65 Index    185

Naharol Sahitya Premee Samiti, Imphal, 100 Naipaul, V. S., 60n10, 61n10 Naoroibam, Sudhir, 104–105 Naothingkhol Phambal Kaba, 99 National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC), 91 Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN), 44 National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), 120 New Group Centres (NGC), 70 Ngangom, Robin, 8 Ngasi, 99 Ngasidi Lakle, 102 Ningthouron Lambuba, 98 ‘No Man’s Land’ short story, 33 Nongkynrih, Kynpham, 6, 8, 10 Nongmeikapam, Nabakumar, 104–105 non-tribal society, social organization of, 152, 161 normative conceptions of self, effects of, 49 Northeast literature, formation of, 7 Northeast Writers’ Forum (NEWF), 127 ‘Not Be Dead’ poem, 142 Numit Kappa, 99 Nunggairakta Chandramukhi short story, 101 official interpreters (Katakis), 18 Of Grammatology, 16 Old Testament, 170 oral communication, 17–18 oral poetry, 76, 79, 82, 90 Orunodoi, 19, 22–23 Paharor Shile Shile, 40 Paleolithic petrograms, 55 Panthoibi Khongul, 99

Pena, 99 phawar, xvii, 90–97 Phijang Marumda, 102 Phukan, Anandaram Dhekiyal, 19 Phukan, Nilamani, 76 Point of Return, The, 12, 37, 45 ‘political’ literature, 30, 33–36 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 71 Pramodini Devi, Khaidem, 101 ‘primitive’ communities, 14 print capitalism, development of, 19 print culture effect of, 20 importance of, 23 Prithivir Hahi, 40 Priyokumar, Keisham, 11, 104–105 Protected and Progressive Village (PPV), 68 Pujari, Anuradha Sarma, 33 Punsi Meira, 101 Purana, 164, 165 Puwate Ejak Dhanesh, 40 Ramayana, 20, 165 Rammawia, K., 67 Religion of the Ao Nagas, The, 108 ‘riakmaw’ bird, tale of, 74n14 Rinawmin, 68 Ritu, 100 River Poems, xix, 127, 129 Roman Catholic Jesuits, 168 Rongmilir Hahi, 40 Sahitya, 100 Sahitya Akademi, 7, 30, 37, 67, 158 Sangh Parivar, 159 Sannabungda, 102 Sardari Larai (1858–1890), 164, 168–169, 174n38 ‘Sarkargi Chakari’ short story, 103

186    Emerging Literatures from Northeast India

Sarma, Kailash, 39 scheduled tribes in India, 151, 172 self identity, notion of, 118 Serampore Mission Press, 20 Sharma, B.D., 152 Sharma, C.D., 122 Shitaljit, R.K., 100–101 ‘Shoot’ poem, 143–144 ‘Sialsuk khaw kang hla’ (Mizo song), 67 Silaimu Ngaihawm, 66, 68, 74n8 Singh, Elangbam Dinamani, 102–103 Singh, E. Rajanikanta, 101 Singh, Krishna, 123 Singh, Kujamohon N., 101 Singh, Robin, 10 Singh, Sarvajit, 99–100 singing tribe, 67 Social Darwinism, 89n6, 171 social organization, 28 forms of, 152 song performance, 79 song poems, 152–154 depicting exploitation of tribals, 156 Songs from the Other Life, 5 Spivak, Gayatri, 51–52, 60n8, 60n9 State Re-organization Commission, 94 ‘Stop This Nightmare’ poem, 142–143 ‘Take This Name’ poem, 145 Taoists, 82, 89n6 Terang, Rong Bong, xviii, 38, 40–41, 44, 116, 118–120 territorial recognition, 117 Thaklabi, 102 Thawanmichak Amana Kenkhibada, 102 These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone, 10–11, 37, 44, 72

Thla Hleinga Zan, 68 Timung, Lunse, xix, 118 Tingkhanglei, 102 Tod, James, 152 Toijamba, Kamal, 104–105 trauma theory, concept of, 65 tribal society bethbegari (forced labour), 163 bhuinhari status of, 168 conceptual legacy and impasse, 171–172 conversion to Christianity, 168 cultural disfiguration and slandering, 164 cultural identity, 161, 168 deprivation and exploitation of, 164–165 feudalism in, 164 Indian idea of, 165, 166 information on, 165–167 integration of Christianity in, 169–170 oral literature in, 153 oral poetry, 79 organization of, 152 precolonial setting and sensitivity, 162–164 primitive and barbarous condition, 160 resilience of the innervoice, 161–162 re-tribalization of, 88 role of Christianity in, 169 social composition of, 152 tribal rights and bhuinhari status in official discourse, 170 tribe, concept of, 170 Unconcerned World, The, 32 United Democratic Party (UDP), 94 United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), 30

Index    187

United People’s Democratic Solidarity, 120 Uraons of Chhotanagpur, 161, 162. See also tribal society

Western racism, 167 ‘When It Rains Here’ poem, 144–145 Wilkinson, T., 167

Valmiki, Saint, 126 Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad, 159 Vedas, 77, 165 Voluntary Group Centres (VGC), 70

Yaikairol, 99 Yumgi Mou, 101 ‘Yum Panba’ short story, 99, 100

Wakhal, 100 ‘Welcome, Sir’ poem, 138–139 Welsh missionaries, 19 Western education, 113, 169

Zagarell, Sandra A., 41 Zoram Ni (Zoram Day), 69–70 Zoram Research Foundation (ZORF), 70 Zo tribe, xiv

188    Emerging Literatures from Northeast India