Some thoughts on Literature from India's North East

Literature from North East is a very difficult term to define. A common question that troubles  a lot of new generation writers and intellectuals is that how the canon of Indian Literature was formed in spite of general ignorance of the many literatures that existed in India’s North East.

There are two problems in the way people approach  literature from North East – there is too much emphasis on the folk art and an assumption that literature from NE should capture the blood, violence and terror that ravages this part of India. To assume and celebrate only the orality of North Eastern Literature is to deny the existence of the long tradition of written literature in Assamese and Manipuri that date back to the 10^th and the 16^th centuries, respectively. And to assume certain parameters of a typical North Eastern story is to keep aside the real beauty of the North Eastern region, to ignore the tales that capture the stories of rivers, rains, forests and hills. A large number of medieval texts in Assamese are waiting to be translated, read, analysed.

The term North Eastern Literature yokes together the writings from the Seven Sisters, but is unable to capture the variety and complexity of the region. For instance, though Assamese is the most visible and used language in Assam, in recent years, linguistic nationalism among the tribes has added ample variety to literature of Assam and has changed the definition of Assamese literature itself: it no more means everything written in the Assamese language, but any kind of writing that has emerged from Assam. So, Assamese literature is written in Bodo, Karbi, Rabha, Mishing, etc. There are more than sixty tribes in Assam. Each of them has their own language, folktales and songs, and different myths about their origin. And this is just the case of Assam – the sixty different languages of the fourteen Naga tribes and the eighty-two Arunachali tribes have languages so different from each other that the Nagas communicate amongst themselves in Nagamese, and the Arunachali tribes mostly use Nefamese; both are pidgins of Assamese "North Eastern Literature” thus defies easy definition.

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in writings from North East, in its oral culture and phrases such as “conflict-zone” and the “new heart of darkness” are in abundance in the media, in the context of undiscovered NE culture. What must be accompanied with this is celebration of stories from this region by people who belong there. Only then stereotypes will be dispensed with and the commonality of the NE human condition be discovered. A true picture of North East is the need of the day, but the true picture can only emerge only by translating and transplanting those narratives that are consumed in bulk by the people of North East. 


(A brief note prepared specially for the Voices from North East event organised by Siyahi.)


More : 
Singing in the Dark Times, Preeti Gill
Song of the Hills, Anindita Ghose
Seven Sister at Storytelling, Swati Kumari
Voices from North East, Joydeep Hazarika
Feature : Voices from North East, Pratilipi. 

The Prose of Metamorphosis: Insurgency and Contemporary Assamese Fiction

A procession during the Assam Agitation(1979-85)

Image courtesy: Digital North East

First published in Yaatra: The Journal of Assamese Literature and Culture, Oct-Dec 2008.

I

Introduction

In Chapter 9 of Dhrubajyoti Borah’s Kalantarar Godya (The Prose of Tempest, 1997) the author makes a very shocking observation: “He (Alok) has undergone a metamorphosis” (263). Until this point, Alok is projected as someone who has wavered from his ideals, his promises to his comrades, and thus becomes the traitor figure. In an earlier chapter, the protagonist Partha, the Assam Correspondent of an unnamed international newspaper, notices a pair of familiar eyes staring at him from an army vehicle, bringing a flash of memory of someone who was taken away under security cover. But only the eyes are revealed, rest of the face remains concealed behind a piece of black cloth. The army raids the village from where he Partha is reporting, and the villagers assume that someone from the ‘party’ had leaked out the information. Partha witnesses two dead bodies after this scene: one of them is of Hazarika—a top leader of the secessionist militant organization—who he interviewed a few years back for his newspaper. More scenes flash through his mind: how Hazarika helped him move out of their base camp in neck-deep water on a bamboo raft with great concern and care, while he spoke about Che and his dream of an Independent Assam. Partha is informed later that it was someone called Alok who had leaked out information to the army.

There is a different Alok in Chapter 9. He is imprisoned in the army camp and only two options are laid before him: to render full co-operation to the army or to die. The will to live, of course takes precedence. Borah’s subtle treatment of Alok’s “metamorphosis” is significant because Alok’s story symbolises the definitive changes that are taking place within Assam that were inaugurated by the Assam Agitation under the AASU (All Assam Students’ Union) from 1979 -1985. The six hundred years of glorious Ahom history was erased in one short but tumultuous period of six years.[i] After February 18 1983, when nearly a thousand or more suspected Bangladeshis were butchered in the village of Nellie by a band of jingoistic Assamese it was underlined that politics in Assam will never remain the same, which in turn made a great impact on Assamese literature.

Hence Alok’s metamorphosis—from the ‘traitor’ figure to the pathetic trapped militant in the army camp, and his gradual reduction to a beast-like persona who patrols naked within the four walls of his room like a lunatic—is representative of the metamorphosis of the whole state of Assam.

***

In the last few months, certain short stories have caught the attention of the reading public of Assam. For instance Arup Kumar Nath’s “Koli Puran”[ii] and Sanjib Pol Deka’s “Kathiseleka”[iii] look back at this nationalist period with rejection. But these are just two instances that owe much to the novels of Rita Chaudhury, Arupa Patangia Kalita and Dhrubajyoti Bora. These stories can be seen as culminating points of what these writers sought to analyse in their novels. After the longer narratives, shorter narratives proliferate to symbolise the renewed interests on the Assam Agitation by the young generation of writers

Rita Chaudhury is a lecturer of Political Science at Cotton College, Guwahati. She has written extensively on the Assam Agitation. Her active role in the students’ movement during her college days (Deb Chaudhury) has not only added authenticity to her analysis but also colour and vividness. Abirata Jatra (The Perennial Journey), Ei Samay Sei Samay (These Times Those Times) and Byortho Mollar (Failed Malhar) are some novels that look back at those six years with a critical eye. Arupa Patangia Kalita is a lecturer of English Literature in Tongla College. Her writings primarly focus on the plight of common people amidst the surge of insurgency and military operations with a gendered perspective. The novella Arunimar Swadesh (Arunima’s Swadesh) deals with the issue of secret killings that took place in the late nineties when relatives of insurgents were targeted by unknown people possibly to break their mental strength. In fact in a single night, often a whole family was wiped out. The most brutal example is perhaps the killing of the whole family of alleged ULFA member and poet Mithinga Daimary alias Megan Kachari. Dhrubajyoti Bora is a doctor by profession. His trilogy on the insurgent movement Kalantarar Gadya, Artha (Meaning) and Tejor Endhar (Darkness of Blood) created ripples in the Assamese literary landscape.

This new body of work that negotiates insurgency has certain common features that bind them together. They reject the jingoistic Assam Agitation, accept its mistakes and often depict the plight of innocent common people caught in the crossfire between the insurgent groups and the government. Thus, along with the metamorphosis of Assamese politics, Assamese literature has undergone a significant change through the depiction of contemporary politics. It’s thus crucial to see how this transmutative anxiety is depicted/analysed rendering these works landmarks.

***

The alteration of Alok is not incidental for it also works on a metaphorical level. But similar figurative echoes are in the three novels that would be discussed here: Kalatoror Gadya (1997), Phelani (2003) and Kolijar Aai (2006). Kalantoror Gadya is the first major work in Assamese fiction that aimed to depict the effects of insurgency in Assam from multiple perspectives. Serialised in Gariyoshi magazine from 1994 - 1995, it created a sensation among the readers for its gripping narrative, detailed socio-theoretical analysis of the problem, and loyal depiction of the human condition amidst turbulence.

Phelani is selected for discussion because it is the only major novel that looks at the situation from a gendered perspective. Most of the other novels have a male protagonist and (KG, Kolijar Aai, Hiranya Kashyap’s Samay and Anurag Mahanta’s Aulingor Jui)[iv] the gendered condition is not discussed in detail.[v] Phelani celebrates the existence of a small group of women amidst strife. In fact, the by Arupa Patangia’s analysis of insurgency is always from a gendered perspective—be it in Arunima’s Swadesh, Kunur Makor Ghor (2007) Phelani, etc.[vi]

Dilip Bora is an economist and holds the position of IGP in Indian Police Service. His novel Kolijar Aai serilised in Prantik before its publication in book-form in 2007 generated immense interest and popularity among the readers. It’s a novel that looks back at the last twenty-eight years of turbulent Assam politics with an economist’s eye. I selected this novel due to its plausible depiction of the life of an insurgent. I presume Bora drew heavily from his experiences as a police officer in Assam for the novel. The precise details of the bildungsroman, the names of guns’ models, training locations in Burma, making blue prints of a terrorist attack, or a bank robbery by Chinmay the protagonist are examples that corroborate this point. Though he doesn’t have the lyricism and evocative imagery of Arupa Patangia Kalita and the complex analysis of Kalandatoror Gadya I wanted to bring the novel to this discussion also because of its name; the synonymity of Chinmay’s mother with all the mothers of Assam; besides, the metaphorical rendition of the mother-image to describe the native state of the protagonist is poignant.[vii]. The title of the novel roughly translates as ‘My Dear Mother’.

II

The Prose of Tempest (1997)

“He (Alok) has undergone a metamorphosis. (pp: 263)”

Alok is not the only example among many in the novel where characters undergo metamorphosis. In Chapter 9, titled “Whirlpool”, a naked Alok walks from one end of the room to the other; he masturbates and dreams about running around in camps inside dense forests with his comrades. This underlines his desire to realize his dreams to achieve freedom (pp 262). Here, his health deteriorates and he is reduced to a bestial state. The only way to live is to obey the army, make newspaper cuttings of all Assamese dailies and translate them, and cough out information about the insurgent group he was enrolled into.

“Babula Purana”, Chapter 3, shows another metamorphosis. Babula, the deaf and dumb grandson of a helpless old woman is taken into custody during an army operation and his inability to speak is assumed as pretension. Babula is brutally beaten up, subjected to electric shocks on his penis and finally when he dies, his dead body is shown to the journalists as a “dangerous terrorist”, to legitimise their brutish treatment of Babula and claim that the combing operation was successful. The omniscient narrator leads us to a different journey restructuring and completing the story of Babula.

Prabhat, the young college going boy who loved ghazals and “liked to become pensive” while listening (pp: 1) to them “without any reason” turns into a lunatic who will forever gaze at the guava tree and shiver for the rest of his life in fear due to the merciless treatment he faced at the torture centre. Prabhat’s Story, Chapter 1, is just one example how the very core[viii] of a human being is shaken [ix] completely by army interrogations/torture. In the process of erasing terrorism, the state becomes a parallel terror source and thus fails to achieve the intended (?) purpose: peace.

However, another feeling of terror runs throughout the novel which is created by the author. This is the design of the text that leaves an immense psychological impact on the readers. Done through the production of a hellish atmosphere through imagery, motifs and symbols, it challenges the readers from the beginning of the novel. In Chapter 1, “Prabhat’s Story” the beautiful description of the evening is punctured with the consequent repulsive description of a garbage dump located near Prabhat’s house; everyone who has to enter that lane has to face the “sweet, pungent” (pp: 2) smell of the garbage. The image seems to anticipate two main elements—Prabhat’s psychological rottenness and the socio-political rottenness due to insurgency and counter insurgency operations. When Partha goes to interview the insurgents, he notices the relentlessly burning flames around the oil fields. He is told that those were fire produced by the consistent combustion of natural gas. Due to the absence of processing plants, over the years, the huge body of natural gas has been incessantly burnt in the process of procuring crude oil. When wind blows through them, Partha hears a strange noise: as if a group women were wailing. Along with the creation of a hellish atmosphere, this small but significant incident also demonstrates the apathy of the government towards the tapping of natural resources in Assam.

The chapter on Karbi Hills is a contrast to this hellish atmosphere—a pastoral space wherein all problems are resolved temporarily. Ron, the insurgent spends some time here along with his comrades away from the repressive state apparatuses.[x] This is a space where he receives the care of the old Karbi-tribe man who cooks chicken for him when he is down with malaria. This is the space where he speaks to his closest friend Prabin for a long time about the mistakes and the future of the secessionist movement. Their intellectually stimulating as well as sensitive discussion raises some basic questions about the armed struggle. It is noteworthy that the author creates this beautiful landscape of caves, trees and brooks towards the end of the novel; it seems the author’s compassion lies with this ideal space and through its evocative creation he attempts to leave the message that this is the space that everyone should aspire for; or rather, this is the space which is lost now, has undergone metamorphosis and is turned into hell.

Phelani (2007)

“Women should be like this chilly. Tiny, but can burn anyone trying to touch it.”(pp: 61)

The Prose of Tempest leaves us with a question why and perhaps how almost all the characters continue to live even after they are brutally dehumanised by the state. Sombori is raped by the army so often that she finally stops providing resistance; her attempt to end her life with rat-kill leaves her unsuccessful: “But Sombori didn’t die. The rat-kill didn’t kill her. She continued to live” (pp: 203)[xi]. Even Babula exists in the forests in the form of a “ghost” and turns into a lore. Prabhat continues to live gazing and shivering at the slightest noise in his own world of fear. Arupa Patangia Kalita’s Phelani begins where The Prose of Tempest ends. How and why do people live? But this is not the story of Prabhat, Babula and Ron but this is the story of “Sombori-s”. Narratives of women who are like “mem-jolokia” (a very hot breed of chilly) invigorate the readers of Phelani. Though Phelani is the protagonist, equal space is given to ‘Jun’s Mother’, ‘Jaggu’s wife’, ‘Driver’s wife’, ‘Ratna’s wife’, etc.[xii] It’s a community of working class women rendered to this piteous state by the disturbances of the early eighties during Assam Agitation. Phelani’s husband is lost in the communal clash and after that it’s her journey from the relief camp to a new place where another struggle of existence begins just for two meals a day. Through the petty day-to-day quarrels, loving, caring, sharing, trips to the market to sell handicrafts to make ends meet, Arupa Patangia glorifies the existence of these women. Apart from being the very hot mem-chilly, they are also ‘phelanis’ in the eyes of the society: useless like garbage.

Phelani derives her name from the very act which could have ended her life. She was thrown into a shallow pond behind her house during the riots—“That is Phelani. Attached to her name is the sound of splashing water. Since she was thrown, she was named Phelani.” (pp: 10) It sounds as though this motif is derived from classical narratives. It is as if she were the emaciated version of the classical Satyavatī from the Mahābhāratā who was renamed as Yojangaņdhā after Parāśar Muńi gave her a boon as a result of which her body emitted a fragrant smell which traveled for yojans. (‘Ādi Parva’, the Mahābhāratā)

Phelani not only has a unique name. She also inherits a unique biological history: her mother was a high caste Hindu child-widow Ratnamala, who gave birth to Jutimala from Kinaram, a man from the Bodo tribe who worked at Ratnamala’s house as an elephant mahout. For committing the transgressive “crime”, Kinaram was killed and Ratnamala died in childbirth. Jutimala was brought up secretly by Kinaram’s village and family. She was married to Khistish Ghose, a Bengali. The day she gave birth to Phelani, both Khistish and Jutimala died during communal riots. What we are left with is Phelani: a woman who has high caste Hindu, Bodo, Hindu-Bengali’s blood in her body and is married to a Koch now. This is the author’s self-conscious design to leave a comment on actual Assamese identity which is a convergence point of all these communities. This is the story of Phelanni: useless, worthless, and yet she continues to survive.

It was from Kali Burhi she learnt that for a woman to survive, she had to be a mem-chilly: so hot that nobody would dare to touch. The use of Goddess Kali as the symbol of strength and weakness is shown throughout the novel. Kali burhi used fake whorls that Phelani refuses to reveal to the world even after finding it after her death. For Kali burhi it was a mode of survival: a strategy of gaining respect and veneration from the community who would have made her a phelani otherwise. But this is also a space of illusion and escapism as we see in the case of Jun’s Mother. Trapped and stranded in the three-hundred hours bandh it’s the only way for her to deal with the trauma. The novelist doesn’t name the organisation which called the bandh: for these people, what matters most is a working day. They haven’t learnt to lose faith in themselves. If the market remains open, they can sell things: pickles, sweets, handicrafts, home-grown vegetables and survive. Till there is peace and absence of gun shots, they can survive and this survival is exactly what the novel celebrates. With a small group of women, glorifying their otherwise neglected life; Arupa Patangia Kalita tries to find some basic questions about the insurgency movements and the counter insurgency operations.

Who is the actual sufferer? Almost all the insurgents depicted in the novel are affluent and powerful; they lead a luxurious lifestyle. After becoming a Bodo insurgent, and abandoning his demented wife to live hand to mouth, Bolen comes back in a new avatar: unmistakably rich. Minati’s lover, who was a student leader initially, and an insurgent later, and after that a surrendered militant has the ability to offer bundles of currencies to her. But the condition of this small group of women remains the same. Jaggu’s wife still undertakes extreme labour everyday pushing inside her stinking, puss filled uterus repeatedly, which moves out of her vagina due to labour, childbirth and repeated abortions; Jun’s mother still attempts to make ends meet by not wasting even one minute; and Phelani? Amidst them we don’t know when she became one of them: Moni’s Mother (Moni is her son). She lost her identity as all Assamese have in search of identities within identities. But did Phelani really have an identity? Do Assamese signify a single ethnic identity? Or how important is identity in itself? This is the implicit question that the novel raises and challenges the basis of many nationalistic movements in Assam.

Kolijar Aai (2007)

“My name is Chinmoy Barua alias Parag Mahanta” (pp: 1)

This is the first line of the novel and its publication has firmly established that Assamese literature won’t remain the same anymore. I see this novel as a culminating point of a tradition started by Abirata Yatra by Rita Choudhury, fortified by Kalantar Gadya. This is validated by the division of consciousness indicated in the quoted line seen through the bifurcated identity of the first person narrator of the novel. It seems to point towards the fissures inherent within the Assamese society between the dominant (upper caste Hindu) and the marginal communities (tribes and sub-tribes, lower-class Muslims). These divisions establish themselves in the novel through various ways: from the split in the identity (pp: 1) to the search for an alternative schema of action of the ongoing student movement (pp 53) the novel enacts the splits and fissures within Assam symbolically and metaphorically. But soon one realises that as Chinmoy’s consciousness gets divided between Chinmoy Barua and Parag Mahanta, the student agitators look for an alternative expressive mode; disillusioned, as they are with the Assam Agitation and seek to form a new armed extremist group. Chinmoy’s mother’s conjecture as if predicts the current situation of Assam.—What would happen if all the tribes and sub-tribes start demanding more independent nations? A question she asks her son when he goes to meet her for the last time. The novel thus not only opens with a split but continues to enact and predict further similar cracks within the Assamese society.

This is also dramatised in the slow rejection of the mother figure which is perhaps a metaphorical distancing of the character from his people. (The movement that he finally so firmly believes in is not a people’s movement). For the first six chapters, the novel remains loyal to its title: it repeatedly goes back to the fond memories of domestic past steeped in Chinmoy’s tender feelings about his mother; her aspirations and dreams for him are expressed in simple and lucid prose. After meeting Sarodi, one notices a gradual decline of the mother-figure foreshadowing metaphorical death/murder. The original mother figure is replaced by Sarodi as an alternative mother figure/love object in almost an oedipal pattern. This spilt in his relationship with his mother is symbolic of a break with his past and the community which also goes back to the first line of the novel; the war that he goes to fight is fought from the margins, from the forests in semi-primitive ways. The drama is completed with his rejection of Sarodi when he doesn’t go to meet her at the Kamakhya temple; we never find Sarodi or his mother again. The insurgent Chinmoy Barua who is Parag Mahanta now is finally separated from both his past and present. What kind of a movement is this which has roots neither in its past nor in its present? This is the prime question that the novel raises.

III

It was xenophobia that alarmed the Assamese middle class to start the Assam Agitation. But if we go back, we find that the fear of being belittled and overwhelmed by a new numerical majority has remained in the minds of the Assamese for a long time[xiii]. In 1928 Assamese-nationalist leader Ambikagiri Roy Choudhury initiated an all-party conference to discuss the mass migration of ‘outsiders’ to Assam who were settling in the barren lands of the state and worked as daily wage earners. The Assamese middle class felt this new section of people would dilute their culture. This conference culminated in the formation of a “Colonising Scheme” according to which, “a small family was given thirty bighas of land against a lump sum amount . . . During the six years ending 1936, fifty-nine grazing reserves were opened up for settlement of the immigrant peasants in the district of Nowgong” (Guha)[xiv]. But what was the need to convene such a meeting? If we look at the history of immigration, it is observed that this trend was encouraged at first by the British. After the annexation of Assam in 1826, the British employed a large number of English-educated Bengalis in the services which encouraged migration from undivided Bengal to Assam (Barooah)[xv]. The British government also encouraged large scale migration into Assam for their own economic gains.[xvi] This was also the reason why Sylhet was included into Assam after the formation of the Chief Commissioner’s Province to increase the revenue gains of Assam (Guha). But politics changed in 1905 during the Partition of Bengal when Bengal was divided on religious lines. This act not only anticipated partition of 1947 but also the large scale migration of East Pakistanis in 1947 to the districts of Hailakandi, Karimgunj and Dhubri in Assam. Such migration, on a vast scale, which is continuing even now[xvii], has changed and is changing the demographic pattern of Assam completely. Hence, the current proliferation of secessionist tendencies and identity politics are nothing more than the outcome of the divide and rule policies of colonial administration and their scramble for economic gains.

But to come to terms with this, Assamese literature took some time to shed the romantic recollection of a people’s movement and look at it with a critical eye. And this explains why the three novels that reflect metamorphosis of the Assamese society ends with a quest, or a hope. Phelani ends with the playful description of the group of women collecting straw to mend their roofs since the rainy season has started. This scene symbolises their daily struggle to make ends meet. One of them asks, what will happen if we cut these kanhi-grasses? The other replies, who can finish cutting all of them? The next question seems to reflect their life full of struggle: if you cut them?—and the reply is, they will grow again. If it rains and they get drenched, spread them on the ground when sun shows itself and you can use them once again. This small conversation serves as a resistance to all the divisive politics that paralyse Assam. In spite of all secessionist tendencies and the creation of more and more armed rebellious groups along communal and ethnic lines, the common people remain united and continue to exist.

· All translations of textual quotes of the novels are mine.

References:

1. The Assam Agitation : Promises and Results, ed. Dr. Hiren Gohain and Dr. Dilip Bora; Balalata Publications, 2001.

2. “Novels of a Few Twentieth Century Assamese Writers”, pp: 700-708 ; in Hundred Years of Assamese Novel ed Nagen Thakur; Jyoti Publications, Guwahati, November 2000

3. Freedom: Dream and Reality, by Paragmoni Aditya; Niyor Publications, Guwahati, 2002.

4. The Prose of Tempest (Kalantoror Gadya), novel by Dr. Dhrubajyoti Bora, Students’ Stores, Feb 1997.

5. Kolijar Aai, novel by Dilip Bora, Purbanchal Publications, Guwahati, August 2006

6 Phelani, novel by Arupa Patangia Kalita, Jyoti Publications, Dec 2003.

7. “Foreigners in Assam and the Assamese Middle Class”, Kaustavmoni Baruah, Social Scientist, Vol 8, No 11. Link http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0970-0293(198006)8%3A11%3C44%3A%22IAAAM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W

8. “Ethnic' Conflict as State—Society Struggle: The Poetics and Politics of Assamese Micro-Nationalism”, Sanjib Baruah, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3. (Jul., 1994). Link : http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-749X(199407)28%3A3%3C649%3A'CASST%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A

9. “Once More on the Assam Movement”, Hiren Gohain, Social Scientist, Vol. 10, No. 11. (Nov., 1982). Link : http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0970-0293(198211)10%3A11%3C58%3AOMOTAM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F

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[i] Actually, Assam was culturally bound in one single entity only by the Vaishnav Saint Srimanta Sankardeve in the 16^th c. Most of the time the three dominant groups of Bodos, Kochs and the Ahoms in upper Assam primarily kept fighting against each other for territory. (Gohain) However, they always stood together as a common force against foreign aggression due to the commonality they shared with the larger Assamese culture that centred on folk festivals.

[ii] First published in Gariyoshi, November 2007.

[iii] First published in Gariyoshi.Winner of fourth prize in Gariyoshi Short Story Competition

[iv] KG, Kolijar and Samay entirely focus on an androcentric world. KG’s protagonist is a man and out of the eleven chapters only the fourth, sixth and eighth chapters have significant female characters. However, in 4^th and 8^th they are only mediums through which masculinity is manifested since in both the chapters they function as mere love-objects. Though Ch 6 is about the indispensibility of rape in state-sponsored counter-insurgency operations, it’s named not after Sombari, whose story it is. See Kolijar Aai section of this essay. Samay narrates the story of another masculinist world where women are allowed to function only through binaries: mother figure and the love-object.

[v] Till now, I haven’t come across a work where a female insurgent is depicted but its known that all the major insurgent groups of Assam have women cadres.

[vi] Even her first major novel Ayonnanto (Dawn, Zubaan/Penguin) is the depiction of the pre-independence women condition through the eyes of Binapani.

[vii] Lakshminath Bezbaruah’s song, recognised as the National Song of Assam, ‘O Mur Apunar Dex’ of Assam refers to Assam as ‘Asomi Aai’ (Mother Asom).

[viii] The novel also depicts how counter-insurgency operations attack the foundations of a society in symbolic terms. When Prabhat is arrested, the non-Assamese army officer throws away an Assamese classic novel regarded as a milestone in Assamese literature: Bina Barua’s Jibonor Batotot.

[ix] This is also the prime motif of torture sessions. Prabhat’s torture scenes are interspersed with journalist Choudhury’s detailed narration of the history of torture which somehow links this process with a tradition or repression which has come down unfortunately to the present day.

[x]“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, Louis Althusser.

[xi] Sombori’s case is representative of several widely known rape cases that took place in Assam during Operation Rhino that started on 14^th September, 1991 which broke the backbone of ULFA: (a) Raju Barua, a student of Chariduwar College, Sutargaon, Gohpur was raped by a group of jawans on October 6 1991 when they entered her house during a combing operation; they carried her to the backyard of her house, gang raped her and threw her in a pond. Her brother managed to take her to the hospital where she died. Medical tests confirmed rape (Sombori in the novel couldn't even manage to file a report) and even the Assam State Government accepted the occurrence of the incident; (b) Bhonimai Dutta, a fourteen year old minor was raped by the jawans on October 16, 1991 in her own house. Her post-mortem was done three days later and the Assam State Government refused to accept the accusation but Minister Borgoram Deuri went to their house and gave a compensation of one lakh rupees and promised a government job to one of the family members. ( pp: 62-63; Aditya)

[xii] These dilutions of actual identities also show how women continually lose their true/ primary identities in the process of integrating themselves in the society in a patriarchal context.

[xiii] Probably, the fear of being belittled and rendered extinct by a larger numerical minority, is characteristic of all communities. Juvenal’s Satires are perhaps some of the earliest literary examples of xenophobia where the Romans felt threatened due to the large scale migration of Greeks into Rome during the first and second century AD.

[xiv] As quoted by K Barua , in From Planter Raj to Swaraj. Amalendu Guha.

[xv] Maniram Dewan Borbhandar Barua in fact raised strong arguments for the employment of indigenous people in the institutions under the British government. (Barua)

[xvi] “As the cultivable land was much more in proportion to the inhabitants and the government did not want to be deprived of the land revenue from these lands, the British administration encouraged large scale immigration in Assam.” (Barua)

[xvii] On 31^st May 2008, Minister Dr. Bhumidhar Barman and his team made a trip to the Karingunj district sector of India-Bangladesh border. From unhindered transportation of goods through Kusiara river from India to Bangladesh to a land dispute between a Bangladeshi family and an Indian army officer Colonel Prabhu Singh where the Bangladheshi family still pays the land revenue to the Indian government—there are many some incidents exchange still present between the two nations. About three kilometres of border in Karimgunj district and about 2.8 kilometres of disputed area still remain open without any border signifier. The team was finally convinced about the unhindered movement of Bangladehsi migrants to Assam in search of livelihood, as reported. (1^st June, 2008, Amar Asom, Assamese daily.)

Saraswati Samman to Lakhmi Nandan Bora

The prestigious Saraswati Samman (equivalent to the "Indian Nobel : The Jnanpith Award"), for the year 2008 has been conferred on the novel Kayakalpa by noted Assamese writer Dr Lakhmi Nandan Bora.

The Samman, instituted in 1991 by the KK Birla Foundation, selects an outstanding literary work written in any Indian language in schedule VIII of the Constitution and published within the last ten years. Dr Boras novel, published in 2002 was published serially in Gariyoshi, Assam's most prestigious literary magazine. It covers a wide canvas, ranging from modern technology and science to the ancient thoughts and philosophy by the great rishis of India. It is translated by journalist Biman Arandhara into English. The novel is about various attempts by human beings to gain back youh. The novel discusses in great detail ancient Indian ayurdevic practice, asana and pranayamas, modern discoveries in the field of medicine, new research in genetic engineering, etc and try find a way to stop ageing. Though ostensibly it falls under the category of science ficiton, but its difficult to not call it literary as it grounds itself in complex Indian philosophy and ends up making interesting comments on some eternal truths of human life. The novel is racy, eventful and is told in an unique manner.

A Sahitya Akademi awardee and former president of literary body Assam Sahitya Sabha, Dr Bora has been an academic, researcher and journalist. He is the writer of 29 novels and 26 short story collections, out of which Patal Bhairavi, Jakeri Nahike Upam (on the life of medieval Bhaki saint Srimanta Sankardeva) and Sehi Gunanidhi (on the equally eventful life of Sankardeva's disciple Madhavadeva), were immensely popular and hailed as great works for his ability to recreate the Assamese society of around 500 years back and also provide great insights to Assamese medieval literature. He has authored around 74 books till date and his novel Gongachilonir Pakhi is translated into 22 languages. The same writer also authored the potent political novel Akou Saraighat, a short novel to add inspiration to the the turbulent six years long Assamese Nationalist Agitation (79-85), and to popularise ideas of Assamese nationalism.

The Saraswati Samman carries a cash prize of Rs 7.5 lakh and a citation.

From Asomiya Pratidin and other sources

Update : Assamese Literature

Just reached home; train delayed by one and a half-hour, due to foggy rail tracks. After a much-missed meal of local fish cooked with sukloti leaves, Delhi-talk with parents and uncle, making hello-I've arrived-calls, I take account of two hot latest developments in the Assamese literary circuit. The literary circuit is buzzing with it : lots of speculations, lots of responses. Waiting for the papers tomorrow.

Rang Bang Terang , the first tribal-Assamese to be the President of Asom Sahitya Sabha, 90 years after Sitanath Brahma Chowdhury.

Rong Bang Terang is elected the president of Asom Sahitya Sabha; the first tribal-Assamese writer to be so, after Sitanath Brahma Chowdhury. His novels are an evocative portrayal of the life of Karbis in Assam. Rongmilir Hanhi (Rongmili's Laughter)--the novel he is best known for--is regarded a classic in Assamese literature. This decision is welcomed with great excitement in the Assamese literary circuit as people think it will go a long way in cementing unity between the 'hills and plains'. This is also a historic event as after a long period the Asom Sahitya Sabha has given this recognition to a tribal writer. Asom Sahitya Sabha, the biggest and the most prestigious literary organisation of Assam has earned a bad name recently with various controvesies surrounding it. Indira Goswami's name was constantly raised but a few months back she told the media that she had 'no desire to be the president' of Asom Sahitya Sabha. Her preference to stay away from the body is seen as a reaction to the controversies. Rang Bang Terang's entry is seen as a major force that'd reclaim the somewhat lost glory of the Sabha.

The Assam Tribune 'Editorial' on Rang Bang Terang and Asom Sahitya Sabha

Rita Chowdhury wins Sahitya Akademi Award 2008
Sahitya Akademi Award 2008 (Assamese) goes to Rita Chowdhury, for her novel Deu Lankhui (The Divine Sword), though Ei Somoy, Sei Somoy, written on Assam Agitation, is her recently published work. She has been writing on the Assam Agitation ('79-'85)-a momentous event that changed the history of Assam forever--for a long time now. In fact most of her novels have reconstructed that event from various perspectives. The Divine Sword is her most ambitious, matured and mot well-researched novel. It was perhaps a very challenging task to recreate the ancient Tiwa legend, associated with King Jungalbolohu of the Gobha Kingdom, in middle-Assam.

However, this award will possibly be greeted with mixed reactions in the papers next morning as the literary circuit feels the award could have gone to Dhrubajyoti Bora for his large novel on caste issues in Assam Katha Ratnakar, Arupa Patangia's Phelani on the life of a group of women dealing in various ways the violent situation around them due to insurgency and couter insurgency, if not Rang Bang Terang for his lifelong contribution to Assamese literature and his latest novel Mirbin. Rita Chowdhury's novels are extremly popular for their gripping narrative, her ability to tell a story with "magnetic and magical language unseen in any other contempory writer in Assamese"(Debchaudhury, Binita Bora; Hundred Years of the Assamese Novel). Once you start reading any of Rita's books, she makes sure you it read till the end and that may be even as long as 500 pages : Ei Somoy, Sei Somoy (These Times, Those Times), is one such narrative, though not her best work. I think her magnum-opus, The Magic Sword, based on an oral legend, is one of the most wonderful works of contemporary Assamese literature. The world she conjures up around the legend--in the form of a 600 page novel--which is no longer than a page if written down, as available orally, is a commendable work. The evocative and detailed portrayal of the Tiwa tribe of Assam in the novel is another plus point. Its also takes a lot of linguistic risks by bringing in a number of Rabha words in the Assamese language. The novels stays long after you finshed reading for the new setting, the court intrigues, some memorable characters and the amazing story of a how a divine sword was smuggled out of the royal household inside a huge ragho-borali fish.

Sahitya Akademi awards for Choudhury, Narzary

On Rita Chaudhury's These Times, Those Times

Image : from Asomiya Pratidin website

Delhi University Poetry Reading : Featuring Poets from India's North East

Desmond L. Kharmawphlang, Nitoo Das and I shall read from our work on 17th December, 3pm 2008.

Venue : Room 12 (A), Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi, Chattra Marg, Delhi - 7.

All are welcome.

For more information

A Semi-Academic Essay On the English Poetry of the North-East by Sumanyu Satpathy

"Return to the Roots", a report in The Assam Tribune by Isawanda Laloo.

We Have to do Something

(Images are taken from Asomiya Pratidin and Assam Times)

Dear Friends,

I'm writing this after a very long day that started this morning with the news of the serial blasts seeping in to me bit by bit .

It was a day which I'll never forget in my life. And this is not because I made frantic calls to reach my mother, father, relatives, and friends to ask: "Ma, are you alive? Pita, are you injured."

Looking the the flames on the TV screen in Delhi, I was thinking something very different, something so unnnerving and benumbing and I wish I had the words enough to describe them for you all.

Wish I had a little more power than just cataloguing them, list them like a series of a items that Ma had asked me to buy from the market on my way back from tution.

Here is the list :
1. I thought, what'd have happened if one among those who were reduced to ashes were my father, mother, closest friend?
2. What would have happenned if one of the those cars that went up in flames was my Ma's Maruti 800, 'with a lot of mileage,' as she says, and Ma was sitting inside it?
3. What would have happend to my parents if one of those blackened bodies was my own?
These are such selfish thoughts. I was telling my friends here, "Hi, everything is fine at home and extended family." So selfish.

To look at it, aren't these people who died are also from my extended family? As I recognise myself as Assamese, doesn't this very fact make them my extended family since they are from Assam?

These blasts have left me probing for many such things. I feel I have been reborn and I wanted to share this feeling with you that this event has once again made me feel responsible for my state, that we have to do something; we, the future of Assam; we: who belong to the age group of 15-40 and have the future of Assam in our hands as we have education, security; we: the splinters who have left flaming Assam to study in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta Bangalore, etc. we: who live in Assam, and love Assam and want things to change but don't realise until the flames knock at our doors. .

And that happened today. (But flames have been trying to lick us from long ago? Is it only Assam which is taken hostage?--The whole country is under siege by terrorists.) Ah, its already 2 am. It happened yesterday. Last morning. Who knows, how many more blasts await Assam. Who knows, which one of us will hear the news of a dear one's death in in forthcoming days.

We have to do something, and I'm yet to find out what is that. Last month, I tried doing something to that effect. Hurt with the central government's discriminatory treatment of Assam, the state government's inability to stand and work for the people during the floods, I bunked by classes for five days, stayed awake for nights and wrote an article. A friend who is a senior journalist was helping me place it in any of the mainstream journals; but as she tells me, seven places have rejected it. They gave three reasons : words space, such and such editor is absent and this is not in our agenda. I have posted the essay on my blog here for you all to read : Assam Floods 2008

There is only one way how we can make the "mainstream" India feel our presence now. We have to do something. And it's important, as I see the whole national media discussing problems that have been paralysing the state for the last thirty or more years (which are otherwise never even uttered), as a corolarry of the blasts,--ironically, I can see a ray of light : that the ULFA problem will be discussed, porous border issue will be spoken about, flood and erosion that leave people scrambling for food producing seeds of anti-establishment feelings will be focussed; and people will no more find it obnoxious that there are so many insurgent organisations in Assam/ Northeast; all these will perhaps lead towards a solution? Representation is important; it will bring awareness; awareness is important, it will facilitate solution(s). This is our hope. Without representation, there can't be any movement towards a solution. But how sad it is, that all these issues are coming up in such an ironical way when people have been crying hoarse for years for these matters to get heard at the national and international levels. The blasts are perhaps a stray incident may be or may not related to the ethinic, religious, economic problems of Assam, but perhaps the ocassion can be seen as a point where at least people are getting to know what else is happening in Assam. 

We have to do something. But I dont know what. May be we all can go to India Gate and light candles. May be all of us should call up home and start crying, howling, weeping. May be we should all go back and say, we will work for Assam, make Assam what it used to be : The Golden Land, Sunor Asom. May be we should just stick our heads out off the windows, and doors and cars and say - We have to do something. We will do something. We shall not suffer anymore under the discriminatory treatment of the government. I dont know what, but we have to do something, something that get us heard, the probelms focussed.

It might take a long time. We have to be patient and especially the students who are here, away from home, we have to remain focussed; and the friends who are there, back in Assam, need to remain focussed too. And we can do that in several ways : the first thing is to keep us aware of what is happening around us. We have to do something. May be we should start this by shouting at the top of our voice that "We wil do something. No more the state shall oppress us. No more the state shall divide us. "

We have to do something. We should make people around us aware of what we feel, what are the injustices that Assam is facing, what is happening in Assam. We have to do something. We cant let Assam burn like this. We have to do something. 70 dead, 470 injured, 9 blasts in Assam. Flames are licking at our doors. The flames that we had tried to escape from, that our parents tried to save us from, for which we even endured the insult of being branded "escapists", are lashing against our doors, trying to burn us all. Some political parties will say, Islamic terrorists from Bangladesh have done it. Others will say, it could be ULFA. AGP and BJP will soon take out rallies and blame Congress and Congress will say, AGP and BJP has not done anything for Assam and soon, another series of blasts will happen; there will be more death, more protests, more blame game. It will continue. No one will ever know the true picture. We have to make that available for the rest of the country, of what is happening in the state, what is not being reported, what has been suppressed. We have to do something. We: the generation of sun-dreaders, who have left Assam since we couldn't endure the sunlight anymore. Dont you know, that Assam is the land of rising sun? Dont you know, even ULFA's flag has a rising sun on it? We have to do something : we have to make people aware of the reasons for the need of an exploitation free Assam, the root cause behind all the problems of Assam. We have to do something : we should take out our heads off our windows and say this; may be we should make forwards and send around the world; we should write letters to the newspapers. If we are not represented, its not in the agenda of the "mainland" of India to represent North East, we have to do something, and it has to be peaceful and democratic. I'm still trying to find out what, how, with whom. I'm still dazed. The flames have left me gasping for breath. Please write to me if you know what should we do now.

love,
aruni.

Assam Floods 2008: The Untold Saga of Oppression, Denial, and Delusive Democracy

The Rohmoria farmers’ protests on September 8 2008, in Dibrugarh underlines anger of nearly ten-thousand people who walked out on the streets under the banners of twelve peasant organisations. ‘Let us live’—they screamed. ‘Recognise flood-erosion problem as a national problem. Tarun Gogoi Murdabad’. They were farmers pauperised by consistent floods and land erosion for the last several decades.

Rohmoria is not the only place in Assam that faces these problems. Till today, hundreds of villages have vanished from Assam’s atlas forever. But, here in Delhi, I face questions such as: ‘is there a flood in Assam too?’

Nobody knows about floods, how will they know about erosions?

I shouldn't be surprised. Considering that this is just a one of the many poor versions of racist/imperial myths available in Delhi about the Northeastern states as a result of ignorance. ‘All Assamese are ULFAs. Assamese rural households have rhinoes tied to their compounds. Dog’s throw-up is the favourite food of Nagas.’ Inspite of the fact that most of the NE states are heady with incidents that threaten the legality of any democratic set up, very little is spoken, known in the national level.

The denial of representation is a major contributing factor. The 2008 Assam floods in contrast to the media coverage of the Bihar-floods is another representative referential point that underlines the under-representation of NE problems. This ignorance points towards the powerful nature of the reasons behind many insurgent movements in NE which not many ‘mainland’-Indians want to hear about.

Here, in Delhi, it’s difficult to remain calm if you follow the local Assamese newspapers. I write with whatever is available to me and I don’t take account of official figures since the local media has already accused the government of suppressing flood statistics. However, the need of the hour is to speak about what is happening in Assam, to give a true picture of the people based on what is in circulation (news as well as views) at the local level, what the common people are reading and believing and as a result what their reaction is.

On August 25, 2008, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh delivered his speech in Jorhat, the third wave of flood had already hit Assam inundating not only upper-Assam districts such as Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Jorhat, Sonitpur, but also lower-Assam districts such as Morigaon and Nagoan. Local media published reports prior to his visit how the Dhokuwakhona flood-hit people remained without food and water from the government for the eighth consecutive day; thousands of people from about 246 flood-hit families sat on dharna with empty stomachs for food. On August 4 2008, ten organisations gheraoed the DC’s office in Dibrugarh and shouted slogans demanding relief-materials for flood-victims. From June 9 to August 23 2008, in Bhuragaon, about six villages were eroded away making 3, 462 people homeless and landless and also wiping off those villages from Assam’s map forever.

The Prime Minister came to Assam amidst this chaos. He delivered a twenty-five minute long speech to a crowd of fifteen-thousand people. For the crowd, congnisant of the ongoing flood, enraged with the illegal migrants’ issue, he didn’t leave any relevant message. The Kosi disaster took place soon; the central government annouced a 1000 cr package for Bihar and called it a national disaster. Large quantities of flattened rice (chira), blankets, medicine, w ere sent to Bihar from Assam amidst protests by residents of Assam. Indian railways donated 90 cr rupees to the same crisis and also deducted salary from the 60, 000 employees of Indian Railways posted in Assam. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), too donated 53cr to Bihar flood relief fund. People in Assam raised questions that when Assam itself is suffering under floods, on what ethical and humanistic grounds relief materials are being sent out to a different place. Students walked out to the streets and stopped about 25-30 trucks loaded with food and medicine heading for Bihar in Roroiya, twenty kilometers from Majuli where people had started begging in the nearby urban centre for food. Large advertisements of the central government calling for donations to Bihar flood relief only added fuel to the fire among the people.

Amidst this, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, was quoted in newspapers that, he had about 700 cr rupees but Moi khoroshe kora nai. “Just that I haven’t spent it”. It only angered the people further since it raised doubts about the proper use of Central funds by the state government. People lost all hope in the Gogoi government and protests ripped apart an already troubled state. Writers and intellectuals commented forcefully on the situation allegaing betrayal and discrimination by the government. Opposition parties and pressure groups seconded. Nationalistic Congress Party burnt the effigy of the PM, demanding Assam-floods to be termed a national disaster too. In absolute bewilderment, the common public came to the conclusion that the relationship of Assam and Delhi is only imperial. Memories of 1962, Chinese Aggression came flooding back to the Assamese when Jawaharlal Nehru bid Assam adieu with a choked voice which has been inscribed permanenly like a scar in each Assamese mind and has remaiend as the recurrent illustrative referential point of the centre’s discrimination against Assam. Organisations all over Assam demanded the resignation of Manmohan Singh, his Rajya Sabha seat being in Assam.

The third wave of floods perhaps would be remembered as another referential point for Assam like ‘1962-Goodbye’ of Nehru. Tarun Gogoi continued to make defensive remarks, conforming to the biggest fear of the people of the state government being merely an agent of central government and that it didn’t represent the aspirations of the Assamese people. In lower Assam, after the PM’s visit, Barpeta, Nalbari, Darang, Kamrup, Bongaigaon, Baksha and Dhubri districts were submerged under impetuous river waters. Embankments overflowed and one river speeded to meet another causing further havoc becoming mightier and mightier. Seven people drowned in Morigaon. (Official figures didn’t take cognisance of this then.) Puthimari River washed away 2 cr rupees worth embankment. In Dolgaon, 50 lakh rupees worth embankment was washed away leading to a change in the course of Dhanashri River. The rivers Motongo, Balti, Benki, Manah, and Polli suddenly changed their courses and meandered across plains eroding all that they met on their way. Beki River alone eroded away the farmland of 150 families and turned them into beggars. By Sepetember 3, upper-Assam and lower-Assam was under the choric devastation of numerous major and minor rivers. 17 districts out of 25 were inundated, most of them for the third time of the year, 20 lakh people suffered, 90% of the river island Majuli was under water causing damage to hundreds of years’ old materials significant to Assamese Vaishnav culture and philosophy, it being the centre of the same. Only Beki River engulfed three schools and eight mosques in Kolgachia and two hundred new villages in Mankachar were submerged. In the whole state, around two thousand houses with their plots vanished into the rivers only in this years flood. And yet, no one spoke about them. On September 4, 2008, aided by the All Assam Students’ Union, a group of people in Guwahati left their homes heading for the streets with banners that read, “National Channels –Why No Coverage of Assam Floods” and “Assam Not a Part of the Nation for National TV”.

The need of the hour is about representation of the crisis on the national platform: the alleged discrimination of the Centre and the incompetence of the state government to tackle the flood situation. The underlying hope is that, if problems are focussed at the national level, they would be debated, people will know, and someone may try to lend a helping hand.

Since 1979, 10,000 Assamese youths have been killed by the Indian army in the name of counter-insurgency operations in a country which takes great pride in having the largest population of youths. Many women raped. Many people maimed. Many made to run and shot from behind. But no one speaks about it. When at one frontier of the county secessionist tendencies have raised its head, and the intellectuals in Delhi are divided for the first time on the Kashmir issue, in another frontier state Assam, another set of seeds for reasons of secessionist tendencies are germinating. Thus, the onus lies on the Central forces to emphatically negotiate these centrifugal forces. Otherwise, nobody knows when thousands of cathartic moments akin to the September 8 Dibrugarh-demostrations would rock the state and snowball into something so big, so dangerous, so uncontrolled with all the force of all the lunatic rivers of Assam that things will go out of hand not only for the state but also for the centre.

Flood is just one issue behind frustration and anger, there are numerous more. But cries never reach Delhi. It registers only when the tone is secessionist and then they ask—we have done so much for them, what do they want? They are ungrateful. Uncivilised. They tie rhinoes in their houses. Crush them.

And, the saga of opresssion, denial, and delusive democracy continues amidst peoples’ cries for food to deaf ears.

American Center and Open Baithak present Bruce Berger

Monday
October 13
6.30 pm
Vasant Vihar
(Please contact me at
arunikashyap@gmail.com
for address and directions)

Open Baithak features non-fiction writer and poet Bruce Berger who is best known for a series of books exploring the intersections of nature and culture, usually in desert settings. Those works include the essay collection The Telling Distance, which won the 1990 Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and the 1991 Colorado Book Award; There Was A River, whose title piece is a narrative of what may have been the last trip on the Colorado River through Glen Canyon before its inundation by Lake Powell; and Almost an Island, which recounts three decades of exploration and friendship in Baja California.

Two more books of prose are set in Berger's adoptive hometown of Aspen, Colorado: The Complete Half-Aspenite, an essay collection that won the 2006 Colorado Authors´ League Award for Narrative Nonfiction, and Music in the Mountains, a history of the Aspen Music Festival. Texts integrated with photographs include Oasis of Stone: Visions of Baja California Sur, and Sierra, Sea and Desert: El Vizcaíno. His articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Sierra, Orion and numerous literary quarterlies, and for three years he was a contributing editor at American Way, the magazine of American Airlines. He currently writes for the Baja California website:
www.planetapeninsula.org

Berger's poems have appeared in Poetry, Barron's, Orion and various literary reviews, and have been collected in Facing the Music. He has won the 2005 Colorado Authors' League Award for Poetry and been a featured poet in Light.

Bruce Berger grew up in suburban Chicago and graduated from Yale University with a B. A. in English. During graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, wondering what Crater Lake looked like in the snow, he chucked his books down the library chute and left academia. He subsequently played piano professionally for three years in Spain, and more recently has played benefit classical recitals in Mexico.

However, this will be preceded by an Open Reading of poet performers

Registration for the Open Mic starts at 6pm and will be according to first come first serve basis. Due to limited time, we can't take more than 9 - 10 poets. Each poet will have 5mins to perform.

Refreshments : from 6 pm.

OPEN BAITHAK is a contemporary gathering of poets who want to perform and entertain. We name as our lineage mushairas, open mics, people's theatre, performance art, technology, storytelling and any other tradition that grabs our fancy.

For more information, email arunikashyap@gmail.com

Delhi University Poetry Reading Series IX

Poetry IX

Shehpar Rasool

and

Vinay Vishwas

shall read from their work

at

3 pm, 25 September 2008

Seminar Room, Sri Ram College of Commerce

University of Delhi

Shehpar Rasool teaches Urdu at Jamia Milia Islamia. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Sadaf samundar (Delhi, 1998), and Sukhan sarab (Delhi, 2002). His books of essays include, Urdu ghazal mein paikar tarashi (Delhi, 1998), and Naqsh-o-Rang (Delhi, 2007).

Vinay Vishwas teaches Hindi in the College of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi. His collection of poetry, Patharon ka kya hai (Rajkamal: Delhi, 2004) won the Sahitya Kriti Samman from the Hindi Akademi in 2004.

All are welcome

India’s North-East: The Imperial Look

“As far as India’s North-east is concerned, it is also a geographical marker but not simply so. The idea of India’s North-east has not only sprung from its location in the map, but various other considerations have loaded it”, says Harekrishna Deka.

• When within a country, a region is marked according to its geographical direction as viewed from a central location, is it just a matter of geographical convenience or is the name intertwined with cultural attitudes and political interests?
• ‘North-east’ was first applied as a geographical directional name to a frontier of British India as perceived from a colonial power base, and then as an area to be differentiated racially and culturally from India or rather from a sanskritized India.
• Indic (largely Hinduaized) national culture treated various animistic or christianized tribal cultures of these ethnic communities as exotic and they therefore did not fit into their homogenizing visions. A sense of otherness troubled this relationship.
• The magic of pan-Indian nationalism has failed to work effectively here.
• The North-east, even for Independent India, is not simply a geographical identification.

When we name a region by a geographical direction, we refer to its location but at the same time we also assume that it has a relationship with another location perceived as a centre from where such directional viewing takes place. In this relationship, there may be a point of view too. This point of view reflects not only geographical positioning but also cultural and political attitudes. For example, the Middle-east is so named because of its position from the point of view of the European West though it is not in the middle of Asia, which is the East for the West. This viewing does not end there. The nineteenth century West compared its cultural, economic and intellectual accomplishment with the achievement of this East (which is Arab East ), and for that matter with all of the Orient, and saw itself superior to it despite the fact that the world’s first civilization emerged in this latter region of the earth. Industrial modernization having given it a head-start, the post-renaissance West has always assumed that its superior civilization has some rights to guide the affairs of the East. The directional names such as ‘Near east‘, ‘Middle east‘, ‘Far east‘ etc., in this respect, are not just some geographical identities but also geo-politically and culturally conceived ideas through which such identities are projected and images are established. In international economic relations, ‘North’ and ‘South’ have turned out to be important metaphors distinguishing rich nations from the developing ones.

In modern states, the territorial boundary recognized internationally is a marker of sovereign recognition and modern nation-states have their political maps with clearly defined boundaries usually universally recognized although sometimes disputed by immediate neighbour[s]. It may appear that a country no longer requires directional naming but such naming accompanied with psycho-social attitudes still persists and is underpinned by economic interests. The Middle-east is still an area to be disciplined and brought to the ways of the civilized modes of functioning of the West, but lurking below it is the economic interest—its fossil fuel resources are vital for the growth of the West. This continues to be the global picture in general. But when within a country, a region is marked according to its geographical direction as viewed from a central location, is it just a matter of geographical convenience or is the name intertwined with cultural attitudes and political interests? We may examine this from the name of the North-east applied to a sensitive region of India.

Within a political map of a country, it may be of general convenience to call a region according to its geographical position and it is done so in many countries. It cannot be said that such geographical identification is always loaded with political meaning. The USA has a north-east and it is a geographical marker. The US north-east is one of the most progressive and economically vibrant regions, and a large part of it is known for natural beauty, but the name itself appears to imply a geographical and not a particularly political identification, though, of course, racial and religious attitudes in the North and the South might have acted differentially to affect US politics throughout its history, and therefore its north-east cannot escape its effect as a whole.. As far as India’s North-east is concerned, it is also a geographical marker but not simply so. The idea of India’s North-east has not only sprung from its location in the map, but various other considerations have loaded it. Though we are very familiar with the area called India’s North-east from the year 1972 (that is from the time of the reorganization of the region after the division of the erstwhile areas of Assam into several states.)—the name having found political expression as well as being treated as an identified area for economic planning; the idea itself is not new. (1) In the context of the Sino-British relationship, the British colonial Government ruling India before the country’s Independence considered a part of it as a buffer region and a frontier brought under colonial control to dominate the eastern branch of that great natural barrier, the Himalayas, against possible Chinese expansion and also in pursuance of its trading interests (2). Before this, the idea of a north-east frontier was Bengal-specific. The territory north-east of the British province of Bengal was referred to as such by Alexander Mackenzie in his ‘Memorandum on the North-east Frontier of Bengal’ prepared in 1869 for official use at the request of the Lieutant-Governor, Sir William Grey (Mackenzie was in charge of the Political correspondence of the Bengal Government at that time as mentioned in the preface to his book History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill tribes of the North-east Frontier. of Bengal.) Mackenzie defined the North-east Frontier of Bengal as ‘a term sometimes to denote a boundary line, and sometimes more generally to describe a tract.’ He also said that ‘in the latter sense it embraces the whole of the hill ranges north, east, and south of the Assam valley, as well as the western slopes of the great mountain system lying between Bengal and independent Burma, with its outlying spurs and ridges.’ Clearly, the areas comprising the plains of Assam were excluded from this definition. On the other hand, following the annexation of the hill tracts that now largely cover Arunachal state, this area was specifically named North-east Frontier Tract.

Territoriality and geographical direction were not the only ways that the idea of an Indian North-east took shape in the British colonial thought. The colonial administrators introduced a concept of difference between the hills and the plains, and it was not just for administrative convenience. Numerous ‘savage’ (Mackenzie;’s term) hill tribes were brought under control apparently to prevent their depredation in the British Indian territory but the unstated policy of the British officials was not to expose them to the influence of the plains. In Bengal and other places it had already encountered political protests and revolts of various kinds from the early days of colonial expansion. Even the valley adjoining these hills witnessed sporadic unrest, particularly over introduction of the new land tenure system for collection of revenue. Various peasant revolts of Phulaguri, Patharughat, Rangiya and Lashima, and the failed liberation attempt of Maniram Dewan may be cited as examples. (3) In hills, it had its tastes of revolt amongst some tribes from time to time in the early phases of annexation. But these were suppressed quickly. The British administrators were shrewd to notice obvious cultural differences, both in religious practices and customs, between the hills and the plains. While the plains people overwhelmingly belonged to the Sanskritized (Hindu) culture (and Islamic culture amongst some), the majority of the hill tribes except in Karbi-Anglong (then Mikir Hills), North Cachar and parts of Arunachal (then North-east Frontier Tract) were neither hinduaized nor they adopted any other systematic religion. They were still strongly influenced by animistic and mythical traditions of their own. Some of the tribes in Arunachal had already become Buddhists influenced by Tibet. Later, this pristine ethnicity found a patron in Verrier Elwin, an Englishman and a visionary ethnographer, whose cultural views far differed from those of the British administrators. He too wanted the tribes to remain uncontaminated but not for political reasons as it was with the colonialialists. The British conquest of the region that is now called the North-east and also labeled seven sisters (eight after inclusion of Sikkim) did not take place in one go. The Ahom kingdom, from which the name of Assam is derived came into the East India Company’s possession in 1826, Cachar in1830, Khasi and Jaintia hills between 1833 and1835, Mikir hills (now karbi-Anglong ) in 1838, North Cachar in 1854. Garo hills and Lushai hills were fully subdued in 1872-73 and 1890 respectively after the colonial government passed on to the British crown from the East-India Company. The conquest of Naga Hills took a long time. Its various tribes were subdued between 1866 and 1904.(4) This entire region was never in its previous history ruled by a single king or chief and only the British brought it under one administration as a province of its Indian colony, that too, after many experiments with the map. This region along with Arunachal, Manipur, Tripura (and later Sikkim) has come to be popularly called India’s North-east from 1972 and is also recognized so by the Government.

The British East India Company’s expeditions started taking place in the tribal region now called Arunachal Pradesh after the Ahom territory came into its possession and continued after the Raj was established. Subsequently in 1882, a British officer designated as an assistant political officer was located at Sadiya. The occupation of this region gave British India a frontier with China and hence it can be said that ‘north east’ as a geographical directional identification administratively used for this tract was not just in reference to British Bengal but it became contextually related to a frontier between British India and a country independent of its hegemonic influence. The North East Frontier Tract so named necessitated the demarcation of a boundary with China and Tibet and the famous McMahon line became the boundary between China and India (and Tibet, then more or less independent, but later annexed by China.). As we all know, this boundary, which was not physically demarcated, has since been disputed by our northern neighbour. At the time of the demarcation of the McMohan line, China was not strong enough to resist it but it did not officially ratify the agreement. Any way, this was how the geographical term ‘north east’ and a notion of frontier came together owing to a British trading company’s commercial interest turning into a colonial expansionist policy of the British Government, . The The North-east Frontier Tract was redesignated as the North East Frontier Agency (or NEFA in short) a few years after India’s Independence. Though never a part of Assam in any earlier phase of its history, the area enjoyed a relationship with the Ahom kingdom and a pidgin Assamese became the lingua franca of a section of the people of this region much before it became a British territory. The British added this frontier to Assam because of its geographical contiguity and for administrative convenience but did not allow its psycho-social fusion with the plains region. As already said, they adopted a policy of exclusion to govern this frontier as well as other north-eastern hill areas. The exclusionary policy was carried out by means of different regulations and legislations in phases—by the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulations, 1873 in which the idea of an inner line was introduced, then by the declaration of the hills as backward areas ( which they were ) as per the Government of India Act 1919 ( its basis was the Montagu-Chelmsford Report 1917 ), and finally by declaring different hill areas of the province as ’excluded’ and ’partially excluded areas’ as per the Government of India Act 1935 that was based on the recommendations of the Simon Commission. The stated objective of the Simon Commission was that it was for ’experienced and sympathetic handling’ by the Centre rather than by the provincial legislature (legislative rights were partially given to the natives by the 1935 Act) and protection from economic subjugation by their neighbours’, this provision was necessary. (5) The concerns shown seemed genuine but a careful reading of history would show that there is something more than meets the eye.

It can be admitted here that the native mind of India became enamoured of the western education in its early encounter with the western ways of life and it found invigoration in western modernity, but yet the native culture was strong enough to escape being wholly submerged by the western culture. Gradually and sooner than the colonialists expected, a politics of resistance got built up from India’s cultural soil with the construction of a form of Indian nationalism by its newly emerged middle class, which first collaborated with the colonialist and then attempted to capture power. In Assam and its neighbourhood, the colonialists noticed ethno-cultural differences between the largely Aryanized plains and the non-Aryanized hills, and they wanted to keep the latter free from being politically contaminated and culturally influenced by the plains. Besides, the evangelists supported by the colonial administrators found a fertile soil for Christianization (proselytizing was done by the missionaries, the colonial officials shrewdly not participating in such activity). In a letter dated July 10, 1827 addressed to His Lordship-in Council, David Scott pleaded, ‘as soon as convenient such further measures as may be requisite to afford to the Garos instruction in Christian religion as constituting, independently of other instruction, by far the most feasible and efficacious means of humanizing that race of people and effecting the objects which Government has all along had in view in regard to them.’ (Italics mine) (6). One can note the colonial attitude in the phrase ‘humanizing that race’ and its proselytizing design from the overall tenor of the letter as underlies the phrase ‘effecting the object‘. Humanizing a race was not just bringing that race above the level of animals but also westernizing them so as to keep them apart from the rigidified hinduaized socio-cultural mode, and it was a colonial political move.

Later, from within the colonial administration, there was a clever move to politically de-link the hill areas from the Indian main land, when a ‘North East Frontier Province’ comprising the hills of Assam and some contiguous hill areas of Burma as well as Chittagong Hill Tract, then in Bengal, was conceived as a crown colony to be under the direct rule of the British Parliament. This plan was first officially mooted by J. H. Hutton, the deputy commissioner of Naga Hills district and then was strongly supported by Robert Neil Reid, then governor of Assam. It was revived again in 1941 with strong support from Andrew Clow, then governor of Assam and Sir Reginald Coupland. The same idea was supported and discussed by Dorman Smith, governor of Burma with Lord Wavell, Viceroy of India, in Simla as stated in a dispatch by Wavell to the Secretary of State for India, Amery, on July 27, 1944 (7). Coupland emphasized similarities in race and culture of the hills and their differences with the Indians. Here again, ‘north-east’ did not remain a mere geographical identity, rather a colonial politics of differentiation entered into it spoken of in racial and cultural terms. As a crown colony, the region would have remained outside the consideration for transfer of power to a government of sovereign India and the Empire would not only have retained a foothold in the region but would have remained an influential factor in the affairs of the sub-continent. (8) In that event, the epithet ‘north-east’ for this region would have become geographically anomalous (north east from which centre of a political map?) but it would have served the colonial design. The ‘humanizing’ mission undertaken in the nineteenth century would have borne its fruit. Viceroy Wavell did not support this idea not because he considered it bad, but because he did not think it feasible owing to political developments in India at that time.

Thus ’north-east’ was first applied as a geographical directional name to a frontier of British India as perceived from a colonial power base, and then as an area to be differentiated racially and culturally from India or rather from a sanskritized India. Measures were undertaken to keep the region protected from being contaminated by politics of Indian national resistance that spread out in all directions from the mainland.

It needs to be admitted that despite the exploitative colonial economy, the Brahmaputra and Surma valleys got some economic benefits during the British regime as some developmental works had to be undertaken by the administration to extract natural resources that could be profitably exploited ( most spectacular being tea cultivation and its conversion into a profitable industry). There was improvement in surface communication with the laying out of railway lines; markets developed and some urban centres sprang up. But the hills, being devoid of extractable resources at that point of time were mostly left economically unattended by the colonial administration. The British policy was to control the north- eastern border and assure a secure frontier by ensuring the loyalty of the indigenous tribes by way of creating an educated elite amongst them and attracting them to the western mores of life. Proselytizing was a part of this strategy .

But at the same time, they did not disturb the cultural practices of the masses and as a result the latter retained their distinct ethnic identities and did not develop psychological affinities with the peoples of the plains. This they achieved by preventing free social intercourse between the hill tribes and the plains people. This policy served them well. Amongst the hill tribes, ethnicity took precedence over nationalism. In one way, the British administrative system facilitated closer contacts among the tribal groups living as clans in villages mostly isolated from each other as well as socio-economically disconnected, though they shared the same ritual customs and spoke the same dialect. Such closer contact helped develop ethnic alliance (9). As regards the Nagas, this ethnic alliance amongst various tribes got transformed into ethno-nationalism by the time the British prepared to leave the sub-continent. Naga is a name given to these tribes by others but Naga became a common ethno-national identity of all hill tribes of Naga Hills. Many of these tribes are in Myanmar. Naga ethno-nationalism was constructed differently from the Pan-Indian nationalism springing from the depth of the Independence Movement. (10)

Among some other tribes, ethnicity turned into ethno-nationalism later, when the process of pan-Indian national integration received setback from various politico-economic causes. One was sharp divergence between the ethnic interest of the tribes and the cultural-linguistic interest of the Assamese speaking plains people after the Independence. Secondly, the Indic (largely hinduaized) national culture treated various animistic or christianized tribal cultures of these ethnic communities as exotic and they therefore did not fit into their homogenizing visions. A sense of otherness troubled this relationship. The lack of economic development has been another factor fuelling a desire for separation amongst them.

The hills in the North-east did not trouble the British during the Indian nationalist movement for independence, their shrewd moves paying dividends in this respect. But ethno-nationalist aspirations have come to political surface after the country’s independence and it has severely tested pan-Indian national integration. Although the democratic space created by the federal structure of the Republic is supposed to give equal opportunities to all people, in effect, it is in the grip of a centre-periphery complex. As a result, the small ethnic nationalities find themselves marginalized. The sense of their being deprived is actual as well as perceived (the Assamese nationality itself suffers from a similar complex.). As a result, the magic of pan-Indian nationalism has failed to work effectively here.

The British province of Assam, formed by adding the neighbouring areas, both hills and plains, to the Ahom kingdom, which the East-India company occupied after the1826 Yandaboo treaty, was not tampered with (except Sylhet going to Pakistan) on transfer of power by Her Majesty’s Government to the Government of Independent India. Even during the reorganization of the states on linguistic basis in 1956, there was no change in the map of Assam. But after decades of turbulence resulting from conflicting interests of tribal ethno-nationalism and Assamese linguistic nationalism, the map got redrawn in 1972 (Naga Hills were separated even earlier and made into a state because of sovereignty demand raised by some Naga tribes.) With the change of the political map of Assam in this manner, the idea of an Indian North-east was revived in a new light to be applied to a larger area, this also a frontier surrounded by foreign powers, of which China’s territorial claim was well known. Though in 1972, the newly-born country of Bangladesh was ruled by a friendly government, the Indo-Bangla border had never been easy to police from either side. (11) On the Indo-Myanmar border, insurgent groups treated many areas as liberated. On the whole, this frontier looked quite vulnerable. With the formation of so many small states, the area also presented a fragmented look. The epithet ‘seven sisters’ was coined by Sarat Chandra Sinha, the then chief minister of Assam, in 1976 to improve inter-state relationship in the context of Assam-Nagaland border dispute.(12) The national policy-makers found the description an appropriate metaphor for bringing the seven north-eastern states psychologically closer to each other and to promote understanding amongst them. It means that India’s national security and its national integration were and still remain major concerns in this region. The North-east, even for Independent India, is not simply a geographical identification. It is a frontier of a country with not so friendly neighbours and as this frontier looks fragmented from the viewpoint of a political centre, there has arisen a compulsion to find a different identity for the region and hence the frequent evocation of the metaphoric image of seven sisters. But this to become a living metaphor, the socio-political and economic causes afflicting this multi-ethnic and multi-cultural region must be addressed in such a manner that this metaphor does not look artificially imposed but rather becomes naturalized. Failing this, what a western critic Jill Starr said of Indian national project will prove right as far as India’s north-east is concerned, ‘(Therefore) non-western Indian nationalism failed to imagine a manner in which India’s numerous, diversified, non-Hindu, culturally conceived imagined communities and social groupings would also be incorporated in its future equitably.’ [13] The Hinduaized and Hindiaized national Centres often condescending look has been read as an imperial look by at least one insurgent group of the North-east. India adopted a developmental strategy under the Mahalanabish model but this model ignored the need of a region like the North-east suffering from infra-structural bottleneck. Agriculture remained ignored and industrial development was beyond its reach as the emphasis was on heavy industry. The Centre’s failure to address the immigration problem in the right perspective has also been alienating the indigenous people here. Demographic changes have been affecting political power equations in Assam and the migrants are suspected of being part of a political agenda in this respect. The Centre is seen to be lukewarm in addressing this concern.

Notes:

1. For details of the reorganization, see various essays in the book Reorganization of Northeast since 1947 edited by B.Datta Ray and S. P. Agrawal (1996), Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi. Also see India’s Northeast Resurgent by B. G. Verghese (2004), Konark Publishing Pvt Ltd, New Delhi; Indira Gandhi’s speech inaugurating the North-east Council on November 7, 1972 in Selected Speeches and Writings Volume 3.
2. Regarding British trading interest see B. K. Roy Burman’s remark in the prefatory introduction to the book The North-east Frontier of India by Alexander Mackenzie (2007), Mittal Publications, New Delhi. The remark regarding domination of the eastern branch of the Himalayas is my own interpretation.
3. See Political History of Assam, general editor H. K. Barpujari and edited by S. K. Barpujari and A. C. Bhuyan, (1999) Publication Board. Assam & Planter-Raj to Swaraj by Amalendu Guha (1977), Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi..
4. There are several histories of Assam which may be consulted. These include A History of Assam by Sir Edward Gait (1926) Lawyer’s Book Stall, Guwahati; A Comprehensive History of Assam by Swarnalata Baruah (2007), Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt Ltd, New Delhi. The Comprehensive History of India, edited by H.K.arpujari, Publication Board, Assam, Guwahati. Also see North-east India in Perspective edited by Rajatkanti Das & Debashis Basu (2005) Akansha Publishing House, New Delhi.
5. See India’s Northeast Resurgent by B. G. Verghese
6. David Scott in North-east India ,1802-1831 (1970), Munshiram Manoharlal, New delhi. Also quoted by B.G.Verghese
7. See India’ s Northeast Resurgent by B. G. Verghese, page 31.
8. I view that the British officials devised the Coupland plan in order to retain a strategic foothold in this region so that the British Government could be a player in the power-politics of the subcontinent even after they relinquish sovereignty in favour of the national governments of India and Pakistan. B.K.Roy Burman in his article ‘Sixth Schedule of the Constitution’ included in the book Autonomous District Council edited by L.S.Gassah (Omson Pulication, Guwahati, 1997) says in another context that commercial interest was also a reason (page 21 of the book) as the area was resource-rich. I have not accepted this point as till the British left India valuable mineral resources were not so much discovered in the hills of the North-east.
9. See the article “Nation-building and Politics in the Northeast Indian Hills” by S.K.Chaube in the book Tribal Movements in India vol 1 edited by K.S.Singh (2006), Monohar Publishers, New Delhi
10. Also read the chapter “The Naga Imbroglio” in B.G.Verghese’s above-mentioned book
11. See the book The Bengal Borderland bu Willem Van Schnedel (2005), Anthem Press, London
12. See article “Assam Nagaland Clash” by Satish Chandra Kakati (1996), Assam Book Depot, Guwahati
13. Article “Indian National Project: Failures and Successes” in The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolutions, Issue 3.1, March, 2000.