Author: editor

Artificial Intelligence and Endangered Languages

Commentary

By Thongkholal Haokip

The increasing use of virtual digital assistants and multilingual neural machine translation services, which use artificial intelligence to recognise and respond to voice commands or translate voice into text of another language, could increase language endangerment, particularly indigenous peoples who are in the category of critically endangered languages with few thousand, or even less, speakers around the world. The use of natural language processing technology is also unlikely to be extended in the preservation of such languages which has no market value, unless governments or philanthropic and nonprofit organizations intervene on this particular matter.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12747807

Decolonising ‘Christian Mission’ of the Tangkhul Nagas

Article

By Taimaya Ragui

The history of Christian mission among the Tangkhul Nagas in Northeast India (NEI) is mostly recorded from the viewpoint of the colonials, specifically American Baptist missionaries and British administrators and/or ethnographers. When researching Christian mission, historians, clergy, and theologians frequently turn to colonial sources, such as colonial findings, reports, letters, articles (journals), and monographs, if not exclusively. They disregard regional factors, including indigenous occurrences, which influenced not only Tangkhul Naga Christians but also other populations. Given this reality, I propose decolonisation, or decolonial thinking, of Christian mission among the Tangkhul Nagas, which would re-look and give locals’ roles and the effects of local events more importance than relying solely on colonial sources. To make the case for decolonisation is to reclaim the voices that have been marginalised (the micro voices) as a result of colonial hegemony during the colonial era and ongoing colonial captivity in the contemporary environment. This is meant to make the case for the necessity of recognising the tribal-indigenous historical details and occurrences that aided in the expansion and success of the Christian mission among the Tangkhul Nagas. This is also a proposal for a colonial difference: highlight the voices that were silenced because of colonial dominance and captivity i.e., offer an alternative history of Christian mission among the Tangkhul Nagas from the perspective of a vision that was given to the Tangkhuls (a vision akin to a dream) and the revival movement of 1923.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12788027

Gender in National Identity Formation: The case of Assamese Subnationalism

Article

By Manashi Misra

A rich body of scholarship exists on the Assamese identity question and the mass movements arising out of it. The gender aspect of this identity quest however has remained a curious omission in these scholarly debates. This omission is significant as women’s large- scale participation in all the democratic protest movements was considered to be one of their most legitimising factors. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap, while steering clear of reducing it to an additive study. Drawing from the Foucauldian notion of power, it is argued that the process of consolidation of Assamese identity was simultaneously a process of disciplining and liberating women. Through an analysis of the writings of the late 19th and early 20th century Assamese nationalist writers, it is argued that there was a conscious effort to draw a distinct identity for Assamese women in these writings, which in turn was used to demonstrate the uniqueness of the Assamese jati, primarily juxtaposing them with the Bengalis. In such a context, how were women themselves situated in formulation of identity? Did they chart out their own course of journey or did they choose to follow the path already decided for them?

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12788018

The Interplay of State and Religion in the Brahmaputra Valley from 16th to the 18th Centuries

Article

By Diplina Saharia

This paper intends to analyze the frequently changing relationships between the Ahom state and the Vaishnava Sattras. The Ahom state, throughout their rule, followed different policies of persecution, peace and patronage to deal with the Vaishnava Sattras keeping in mind the exigencies of the time. Sometimes the Vaishnava saints were persecuted by the Ahom kings and sometimes they were patronised. Sometimes a period of comparative peace prevailed. This paper draws upon what made the Ahom rulers to be in continuous rift with the Vaishnavas. It also looks at the Ahom state’s acceptance and patronization of the Brahminical religion and their persecution of the Vaishnava saints of few Sattras; the reason behind the persecution of the Vaishnava preceptors of some selective Sattras and how it affected the social structure and political scenario of the time.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12788004

Intersectionality and Resistance: A Sociological Study of Women Inmates in the Central Prisons of Assam

Article

By Dwijiri Ramchiary

According to the existing pieces of literature, the women inmates, because of their gender, are very vulnerable inside the Indian prisons. Women inmates are being portrayed as victims because their needs are not paid attention to compared to men inmates inside the prison. This research paper aims to understand the experience of women convicts of backward communities inside prison through “intersectional feminism” in their voices. This paper argues that women convicts of backward communities are subjected to discriminatory and authoritative treatment inside the prisons of an Indian state, Assam, despite India’s legal safeguards. Such treatment is based not just on gender but also on ethnicity, caste, class, religion, and nationality. The paper also argues that women convicts resist and express agency despite being inside a total institution wherein different power structures of gender, caste, ethnicity, religion, and nationality subjugate them by stigmatizing and discriminating against them. The research is conducted using the primary method of data collection. During the fieldwork, forty-one women convicts and five prison staff members inside the Central prisons of Assam were interviewed.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784605

Impact of Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 on Tribal Rights and Autonomy in Tripura

Article

By Pratyush Bibhakar

The consistent demand for autonomous tribal state in Tripura is rooted in the long history of accommodating and transforming large tribal area with Bengali speaking plainsmen and eventual uprooting of tribal dwellers towards the forests. Although effective decentralization combined with successful land reforms and systematic promotion of agriculture has contributed to a large extent in the overall development of the state, the tribal rights remain a significant problem in the region. The tribals in the region continue to struggle for getting access of their own agricultural lands, forests, etc. and they are being deprived of education, health and livelihood. The situation stiffens further with the New Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 as it leads to growing wave of resentment among the state’s tribal population. The paper looks at the root causes of such contentions as well as implications of the CAB in the region.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784587

Reading ‘Colonial’ and ‘Post-Colonial’ Methodologies on Land: Perspectives from the Hill Tribes of Manipur

Article

By Somingam PS

The historical experience of hill tribes1 in ‘post-colonial’ Manipur in relation to state laws and policies, administration and development process around the question of Land has invariably been the subject of much controversy over the decades. One such continuum is the recent contention between the hill tribals and state government – aided by valley settlers over land area identified in the construction of National Sports University (NSU) in the foothill of Manipur. In these lights the paper set forth that, such continuity illustrates about the intactness of colonial knowledge and power: predominantly of caste & western epistemological framework perpetuated in the existing state structures, coaxed with ethnic power relations (majoritarianism). In doing so, the author revisits the historical trajectories of colonial encounter; the basis of colonial epistemology, methodological issues that it manifests in post-colonial structures.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784575

Erik de Maaker and Meenal Tula (Eds.), Unequal Land Relations in North East India: Custom, Gender and the Market, Guwahati: NESRC, 2020.

Book Review

Reviewed by Bankerlang Kharmylliem

In Unequal Land Relations in North East India: Custom, Gender and the Market, editors Erik de Maaker and Meenal Tula presents a collection that provides insight into land issues of the tribal communities of the Northeastern states of India. The book, through its six chapters, explores land questions that are very unique to the tribal populace.

Land is a central theme for tribal ethnic peoples in North East India. It has been a driving force for culture, governance and politics. Increasing population has accelerated concerns related to land, more so in the rural areas. This volume critically analyses a number of issues at the fore related to land. The book reminds us of the giants of colonial rule and the modern state respectively being the past and present agents of undesirable land developments.

In the introductory chapter the editors framed a number of topics like the customary, gender and the rural monetisation and their association with land. According to the authors, land complications became more pronounced and severe ‘when the region became incorporated in the colonial state, from the early 19th century.’ As a scarce asset, land creates problems of inclusion, exclusion, power, ethnic movements besides others. This chapter sets a finer context for a better understanding of the chapters that follow.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784510

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Amalgamation Policy Revisited: Three British Proposals toward the Indo-Burma Frontier

Article

By Pum Khan Pau

The paper probes the trajectories of colonial policy towards the Indo-Burma frontier and to what extent they affected the local population. It focuses on the Zo people, or Chin, Kuki and Lushai people, with whom the British had a long history of relations in the Indo-Burma frontier. The paper basically focuses on three British proposals for “amalgamation” of Zo inhabited areas in the Indo-Burma frontier. It argues that colonial policy towards the Chin-Lushai hills largely hinges on its larger policy in Burma, Bengal and Assam respectively. Because colonial policy was driven by an underlying objective to fulfill “administrative convenience” and local interest found no place for consideration; thus, the net result achieved was fragmentation rather than amalgamation.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784545

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Developmentalism as Strategy: Interrogating Post-colonial Narratives on India’s North East, Rakhee Bhattacharya (Ed.), Sage Publications, 2019

Book Review

Reviewed by Yenshembam Chetan Singh

The book is an anthology which consists of articles written by different authors which are critical examinations of the development modules undertaken in India’s northeastern periphery. It is a strategical collection of twelve chapters which are comprehensive field work studies carved out in a form to depict the socio-economic conditions of the northeast India and how developmentalism would improve the conditions in the post-colonial era. The book attempts to reconstruct the narrative that the north-east India have been reduced to periphery and neglected in the national development strategy. With contestations between the national and local elites over the control of the region, it has become highly vulnerable to different market forces in the course of globalization process. Its resources, development and marketability has become a bone of contention among various global, national and local players. While keeping these considerations, the book critically examines the post-colonial developmental trajectory of the Indian State in the region. Besides the socio-economic conditions of the region, its unique historical geography has led to systematic marginalization and underdevelopment. India’s economic nationalism within the North East has been largely acted upon the context of resource appropriation and national security, and producing new arrangements of knowledge, power and practices. Within this context, this book attempts to understand the exceptions to India’s dominant development policies in the region by adopting a methodological approach of interdisciplinarity.

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12784427

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