This book is an offering—of prose, poetry, musical lyrics, and visual art—by the women of Meghalaya in Northeast India. One of the smallest states in the country, but also, one of the most beautiful, Meghalaya is blessed with landscapes that mesmerize and inspire song and story. In the not-so-distant past, though, it has also seen political turbulence and civil unrest, and many of the works here capture that quiet unease—in homes and kitchens, in market-places and public taxis. Yet this anthology is also a celebration. Of wisdom and joy, of queerness and sisterhood, of mothers and feminine bodies, of home and hearths. Of voices new and established. Brought together in one volume by Janice Pariat, a novelist and poet from these hills. Here, we sit together around a fire, and sing, and weep, and dance, and tell stories. We dream of where we came from, the hills, the mist, and dream of what else we are still yet to discover.
The Routledge Companion to Northeast India is a trans-disciplinary and comprehensive compendium of a vital yet under-researched region in South Asia. It provides a unique guide to prevailing themes, theories, arguments, and history of Northeast India by discussing its life-forms – human and not – languages, landscapes, and lifeways in all its diversity and difference. The companion contains authoritative entries from leading specialists from and on the region and offers clear, concise, and illuminating explanations of key themes and ideas. A hands-on, practical, and comprehensive guide to Northeast India, this companion fills a significant gap in the literature and will be an invaluable teaching, learning, and research resource for scholars and students of Northeast India Studies, South Asian and Southeast Asian societies, culture, politics, humanities, and the social sciences in general.
The book is a comprehensive study of border-related issues arising from the 1947 Partition of India. It looks at various cases of border disputes and affrays such as disputes related to the incorporation of princely states like Kashmir and Jaunpur, the agitation for the creation of new political entities, post-partition reconstruction of Punjab and old pre-partition Punjabi leaders losing their relevance, the Kamtapuri movement, Khasi and Mizo and Chin dissatisfactions, as well as the secession of East Pakistan in 1971. An important contribution to the study of borders, the volume will be useful for students and researchers of modern Indian history, colonial India, Partition studies, borderland studies, refugee studies, minority studies, political science, film studies, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies.
We have grown up in a country where we were taught a distorted history, and some essential segments of our yesteryear have been obscured. Consequently, we were wronged, and we wronged others - unwittingly. Knowing our factual past is, therefore, vital to understanding the aberrations that make our present problematic. This book attempts to sensitise people on some crucial chapters of India, which have either been misrepresented or blurred. The Indian state of Assam has been distressed by several historical deceptions for over a century now, which have remained unaddressed. Thus, despite being one of the most fascinating territories inhabited by incredibly charming people, Assam is often in the national and international news, mostly for the wrong reasons. A case in point is a 1983 American magazine editorial in The New Republic that reportedly wrote, inter alia, “There are places - the Indian state of Assam is one – where the slaughter of children is a form of political expression.” The caustic comment was made in an apparent reference to the 1983 broad daylight Nellie massacre, killing countless newborns, toddlers, babies, infirm females, aged people and others indiscriminately in six hours of mayhem in the village on 18th February 1983. Dissemination of factual awareness about the disinformation spread earlier by British colonial rulers concerning the history of eastern India is, therefore, essential to end the present conflicts between the various communities and tribes of the region. With meticulous research backed by years of personal experience, septuagenarian author Subir wrote this book aiming to permeate ordinary peoples’ much-needed understanding of past realities and the prevalent circumstances that should help usher in peace and prosperity promptly in Assam.
The Partition of India left in its wake far-reaching consequences for the northeastern state of Assam. Appearing to be caught in a time warp, the region continues to grapple with questions that engaged the public mind more than seven decades ago, before and immediately after the Partition. Alarmingly, issues such as immigration, demographic change, language, and identity have not only retained their relevance but have also gained an extra edge today. In this volume, the author outlines the present contentious issues confronting the state. Explaining the roots of these disputes and how the challenge posed by Assam held serious consequences for the nation as a whole, this work examines the developments that occurred in the years preceding Independence and the Partition. These developments have etched their effect on the society, politics, and economy of Assam, along with the entire northeastern region, in an indelible manner. As the volume reveals, the burden of those momentous years still rests heavily on Assam’s contemporary political scenario.
This book explores Sino-Indian tensions from the angle of state-building, showing how they stem from their competition for the Himalayan people's allegiance.
A study of the history and politics of colonial and post-colonial northeast India. In India, the eight states that border Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Tibetan areas of China are often referred to as just “the Northeast.” In the Name of the Nation offers a critical and historical account of the country’s troubled relations with this borderland region. Its modern history is shaped by the dynamics of a “frontier” in its multiple references: migration and settlement, resource extraction, and regional geopolitics. Partly because of this, the political trajectory of the region has been different from the rest of the country. Ethnic militias and armed groups have flourished for decades, but they coexist comfortably with functioning electoral institutions. The region has some of India’s highest voter turnout rates, but special security laws produce significant democracy deficits that are now almost as old as the Republic. That these policies have been enforced to foment national unity while multiple alternative conceptions of the “nation” animate politics in the region forces us to reflect on the very foundations of the nation form. Sanjib Baruah offers a nuanced account of this impossibly complicated story, asking how democracy can be sustained, and deepened, in these conditions. Praise for In the Name of the Nation “In this book, Sanjib Baruah provides scholars and students up-to-date facts, new revelations, astute analysis, and basic background for understanding history and politics in northeast India. This is also essential reading for anyone concerned with the quality of sovereignty in India, where national state territorialism is rife with contradictions, ambiguities, militarism, and conflicting allegiances.” —David Ludden, New York University “This survey of [northeastern India] is an excellent guide to its diversity and complexity and is characterized by a heartfelt criticism of the actions of the Indian government, guided by Baruah’s scholarly authority and personal experiences. Highly recommended.” —R. D. Long, CHOICE “A powerful overview of the overlapping mechanisms that have made Northeast India “an exceptional example of the shortcomings and failures of the territorially circumscribed post-colonial nation-state.” —Berenice Guyot-Rechard, H-Asia
In 1846, the British created the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) - popularly called "Kashmir" - and then quickly sold this prized region to the wily and powerful Raja, Gulab Singh. Intriguingly, had they retained it, the India-Pakistan dispute over possession of the state may never have arisen, but Britain's concerns lay elsewhere -- expansionist Russia, beguiling Tibet and unstable China "circling" J&K -- and their agents played the 'Great Game' in Afghanistan and 'Turkistan'. Snedden contextualizes the geo-strategic and historical circumstances surrounding the British decision to relinquish prestigious 'Kashmir', and explains how they and four Dogra maharajas consolidated and controlled J&K subsequently. He details what comprised this diverse princely state with distant borders and disunified peoples and explains the Maharaja of J&K's controversial accession to India on 26 October 1947 - and its unintended consequences. Snedden weaves a compelling narrative that frames the Kashmir dispute, explains why it continues, and assesses what it means politically and administratively for the divided peoples of J&K and their undecided futures.
This book revisits the aftermath of the partition of 1947, and the war of 1971, to examine some of the longer-term consequences of the redrawing of borders across South Asia. From the eastern frontier of Assam to the westernmost reaches of Gujarat and Sindh, the chapters in this volume study the “minority question” and show how it has manifested in different regional contexts. The authors ask how minorities have sought to belong, and trace how their sense of belonging has shifted with time. Working with “intercepted letters, pamphlets, and poetry”, novels and ethnographic fieldwork, each of these articles foreground the voices of the “refugee” and the “minority”. Taken together, the essays argue that a deep dive into how people have been affected by border-making and remaking in each of these frontier regions is integral to understanding the “big picture” that is South Asia. By drawing upon current research in history, memory studies and literature, this book will interest students, researchers and scholars of modern Indian history, Partition studies, colonial history, postcolonial studies, politics, and South Asian studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Asian Affairs.
