Landscape, Culture and Belonging: Writing the History of Northeast India

Description

This collection of essays is an important contribution to the new literature on frontier studies and the historiography of Northeast India. Moving away from an exclusive dependence on colonial ethnographies, the authors build their arguments on a varied range of sources: from buranjis to revenue records, survey maps to explorers' diaries, and missionary papers to police files. They question the givennes of the categories through which the region is usually described, and contest the stereotypes by which the people of the region are primitivized. They explore the historical processes whereby the region was surveyed, mapped, understood, represented, politically governed, economically refigured, and historically constituted during the colonial period. Though focused on the experience of Northeast India, the volume also raises substantive questions about the idea of the frontier and the border, the primitive and the modern, and the tribal and the settled, the local and the trans-local. Cover Landscape, Culture, and Belonging Title Copyright Contents Figures Acknowledgements Introduction PART I BORDERS AND BEYOND CHAPTER 1 India’s Spatial History in the Brahmaputra–Meghna River Basin CHAPTER 2 The Birth of the Ryot: Rethinking the Agrarian in British Assam Descent and Disjunction Finding the Paik Runaways, Resignations, and Villages without Trees Rates and Races Conclusion CHAPTER 3 Embracing or Challenging the ‘Tribe’?: Dilemmas in Reproducing Obligatory Pasts in Meghalaya Introduction: The Past of Non-Historians The Past in Four Steps Step One: Locating Meghalaya Step Two: Making Tribes Step Three: Shillong as Cosmopolis Step Four: Reclaiming the Hills Tribe, Ethnicity, Race, Migration Borderlands Studies Distant Cousins Intra-frontier Identities Space, Migration, Urbanization Conclusion PART II SURVEYS AND EXPLORATIONS CHAPTER 4 Picturing a Region: A Geographical History of British Assam Introduction Objectifying the ‘Geo-body’ of British Assam Mapping Mughal Knowledge of the Northeast Ways of Seeing: Reorienting Local Cosmography British Survey: Producing Colonial Assam-on-the-Map Cartographic Curtain: Territoriality and Enclavement Conclusion CHAPTER 5 Geographical Exploration and Historical Investigation: John Peter Wade in Assam Bengal’s Unknown Eastern Frontier A Mission to Assam Investigating the Past: Encounter with Tradition From an Unknown Terrain to a Fabulous Geography Conclusion PART III ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORY, AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION CHAPTER 6 Naga: Lineages of a Term The Naga Hill Tribes Ptolemy’s ‘Nanga’ The ‘Naga’ of the Ahom The Naga and the British Etymological Presumptions Naga: New Identities beyond the Tribes CHAPTER 7 Representing the Nagas: Negotiating National Culture and Consumption Introduction Representing Naga National Culture in a World System Time Warp of Colonialism: Perception of the Nagas Imperialist Nostalgia: Preservation of Culture The Hornbill Festival Representation and Consumption of Festival and Culture National Branding: Aesthetics and History Conclusion PART IV LAW, STATE, AND PRACTICES OF GOVERNANCE CHAPTER 8 Frontier Regime and Colonial Rule Beginning of the Frontier Discourse Interrogating Frontier Policy Displaying British Power One against Another Conclusion CHAPTER 9 The Law of Emptiness: Episodes from Lushai and Chin Hills (1890–98) Introduction How to Be Political: The Career of Bengal Regulation III of 1818 in the Lushai Hills The Shores of Law: Chittagong Hill Tracts the Last Buoy Where the Laws Fall Silent: Notes from the Chin Hills CHAPTER 10 The Colonial State and the ‘Illegal’ Arms Trade along the North-East Frontier of India, 1860s to 1900s Of Firearms and Legal Structures Trafficking Firearms Protectorate States, Strategic Alliances Surveillance and Evasion The World of Hafiz Firearms in a Changing Frontier Conclusion PART V CULTURAL DIALOGUES CHAPTER 11 Appropriating the Ao Past in a Christian Present Understanding Ao Religion Tsungrem (God) Attributes of God in Ao Religion Lijaba Lungkitsungba Meyutsung Concept of Divinity in Ao Religion Concept of Spirits in Ao Religion God and Man: Their Original State and Separation Sacrifice in Ao Religion Tsungremong Mithun Sacrifice (Su Achiba) Sacrifice and Agricultural Seasons Sacrifice and Bargaining of Life On the Rationality of Ao religion Ao Religion: Foundation for Christianity CHAPTER 12 Why Do People Convert?: Understanding Conversions to Christianity in Mizoram Missions and Missionaries Christianity, Modernity, and the ‘Colonial Situation’ Engagements and Responses Revivals and Indigenization Conclusion CHAPTER 13 From Sacred Rocks to Temples: Recasting Religion as Identity in Northeast India I II III IV V VI Notes on Contributors Index