This book reflects the nascent sensibilities at work in literature emanating from Northeast India. It takes into account the generic diversity in works derived from the region and discusses fiction, poetry, drama, folk narratives, film adaptations as well as early missionary narratives. It covers a wide spectrum of themes such as landscape, partition, World War, history, nationalism, violence and territoriality, memory and identity. The book looks at works in English and vernacular from Northeast India states. It contextualizes developments within intellectual history and display aspects that relate to the continuing force in the ongoing study of the relationship between literature and culture studies, within a broader framework.
Covering almost 60 years (since early 1950s) of literary activity, this two-volume anthology includes fiction, poetry, and essays by some of the leading writers from North-East India, comprising the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. Offering a judicious selection of writers from three generations of the post-Independence era, the state-wise arrangement allows a comparative analysis of the development of literature in the region. Alongside established practitioners, the anthology includes pioneering works that show a new awareness about the emerging social and intellectual concerns in the region. This volume includes 32 pieces by 31 writers representing some of the best fiction writing from the region. Contemporary issues such as violence perpetrated by various militant outfits and in the form of counter-insurgency operations by the armed forces and human endurance in the light of these are some of the dominant themes of fiction writing included in this volume. Divided into seven sections, in this volume we come across some of the most celebrated practitioners of the genre. In Lummer Dai and Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi, we find the first generation of fiction writers from Arunachal Pradesh, who through their writings sensitively questioned the values represented by the traditional institutions that gave little space to the voices of the youth and the women. Alongside these master architects features Mamang Dai, a contemporary literary voice from the region. Including some new translations commissioned especially for the project, the volume comes with a comprehensive Introduction by Tilottoma Misra that traces the roots of the literature of the North-East.
"Re-Imagining Northeast Writings and Narratives: Language, Culture, and Border Identity" presents a collaborative effort to critically examine the concept of Northeast India, focusing on its linguistic, geographical, cultural, and social dimensions. Through a compilation of articles and essays, the volume delves into various aspects such as language, literature, culture, challenges, and the complexities of identity within the region. Each contribution offers detailed insights and findings, enhancing our understanding of Northeast India's diverse cultural landscape and the experiences of its people. By addressing themes of spatiality, movement, and responses to representations of the Northeast, the volume aims to deepen scholarly engagement with the region and stimulate discourse on its unique linguistic, cultural, and border dynamics. It serves as a valuable resource for researchers, scholars, and anyone interested in gaining a nuanced understanding of Northeast India and its intricate interplay of language, culture, and identity.
This book showcases the diverse literary traditions from India’s Northeast and their shared connections and lineages. It critically analyses a selection of literary works from authors and poets from this region and the hegemonies of language, ethnicity and politics that have framed these voices. As a region with rich cultural and ethnolinguistic diversity, Northeast India’s literature is representative of varied histories, languages, socio-cultural and religious practices. The book highlights the distinct use of language, forms, cultural symbols and metaphors which articulates the unique experiences of conflict, beauty and culture in this area. Focussing on the translingual and transcultural aspects of these literary works it examines the dynamics between literature, language and their socio-cultural influences. The book pays attention to themes of representation, identity and power to showcase voices and perspectives of dissent, criticism and introspection. It explores contemporary critical approaches to literature from the Northeast, by re-examining the idea of the centre and the periphery and the position of subaltern literary voices. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of literature, language, cultural studies, postcolonial studies and South Asian studies.
This book provides an in-depth analysis and critical examination of the representation of ethnic, sexual, cultural, and individual identities in selected literary works by contemporary writers from Northeast India. The book explores the complex dynamics of identity construction, sexuality, marginalisation, ethnicity, and belonging in the context of Meghalaya and Northeast India as a whole. The author analyses poetry and prose by Janice Pariat, Anjum Hasan, Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih, and other Khasi writers. These works candidly portray the turmoil afflicting contemporary Meghalaya – from insurgency and ethnic tensions to ecological threats and loss of roots as well as reconciliation, integration, and mutual understanding. Using postmodern and postcolonial literary strategies, the book depicts fluid, heterogeneous, and multifaceted notions of identity in Northeast India. An exploration of ethnicity, belonging, and unbelonging in the Northeastern context, this book presents marginalised voices and liminal spaces. It will be of interest to academics focusing on Indian English literature, postcolonial literature, and South Asian Studies.
The essays gathered here alternately adjust the focal length of the critical lens brought to bear upon texts and contexts in the area of Indian writing in English. They bring into view both intense engagements with major voices in this literary scene and the wider socio-historical perspectives in which they have thrived. Three clearly defined sections on the genres of poetry, prose, and drama are augmented by three incisive interviews with the diasporic Indian English poet Bashabi Fraser, the renowned Indian English fiction writer Kunal Basu, and the premier Indian English playwright Mahesh Dattani. The volume will appeal to students and teachers of postcolonial and comparative literatures. It raises crucial and timely questions about the state of culture in India and the world, the crisis of intolerance, and the loss of memory and diversity. It hones a post-millennial perspective on literature written in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Routledge Readings on Northeastern India: Colonial Encounters, Customary Practices, Gender, Livelihoods presents some of the finest essays on a region that stretches across the Northeastern Himalaya, eight Indian States and many tribal and non-tribal peoples. With a lucid new Introduction, it covers a vast range of issues and offers a compelling guide to understanding the northeastern India, from colonial and missionary encounter to contemporary security and developmental issues in South Asia. The book covers several critical themes and unravels the complexities fraught by the unique biogeography and socio-political history of the region. The fifteen chapters in the volume, divided into three sections, examine gender, community: customary law and practices, land, agriculture, livelihoods, work, health, and education. This multi-disciplinary volume interweaves geography and history, culture and politics; the contested construction of identities, communities and nationalities; the political interplay of ethnicities and resource appropriation in a modernizing, globalizing economy; conflicts and violence in highly-militarized spaces. It includes engaged and insightful perspectives from major authors who have contributed to the academic and/or policy discourse of the subject. Routledge Readings on Northeastern India brings together a cluster of key readings to capture important research directions, policy suggestions, current trends, and aspects of history and future trajectories in the humanities and social sciences. It will serve as essential reading for students, scholars, policymakers, practitioners and the general reader interested in a nuanced understanding of India’s northeastern region, and especially those in South Asian studies, Northeast India studies, area studies, history, politics and international relations, labour studies, conflict and peace studies, gender studies, sociology and social anthropology. It will also appeal to those interested in public administration, development studies, environmental studies, law and human rights, regional literature, cultural studies, population studies, geography, and economics.
The book is a study of literature in India in the context of recent discussions on modernity and its theoretical extensions such as the everyday and the social imaginary. It is a critique of the aesthetics and politics of modernity as they are embodied in Indian bhasha literature of the past two centuries. The primary objective of the book is to explore the trajectory of modernity after Indian literature encountered colonialism in the early 19th century. The intricate ways in which the bhasha imagination negotiated questions around concepts such as colonialism, aesthetics, the literary, the historical, and the social, have received focused attention in the analysis. Although the study acknowledges the European provenance of modernity as a historical idea, it also recognizes the inherent complexity of the concept and its equivocal connotations when used with reference to the polyphonic bhasha communities in India. Theoretical issues debated in relation to modernity such as its conceptual affinities with the western enlightenment project, its ideological investment in European aesthetics, and its implication for the evolution of what might be called the hermetic aesthetic are significant to this study. The work also examines the regional strengths of the social imaginary that render a conventionally conceived modernity inadequate in explaining the uniquely modern strengths of the Indian bhasha imagination.
How do videos, movies and documentaries dedicated to indigenous communities transform the media landscape of South Asia? Based on extensive original research, this book examines how in South Asia popular music videos, activist political clips, movies and documentaries about, by and for indigenous communities take on radically new significances. Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia shows how in the portrayal of indigenous groups by both ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ imaginations of indigeneity and nation become increasingly interlinked. Indigenous groups, typically marginal to the nation, are at the same time part of mainstream polities and cultures. Drawing on perspectives from media studies and visual anthropology, this book compares and contrasts the situation in South Asia with indigeneity globally. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND) 4.0 license.
This illuminating study delves into the cultural identity and traditions of the Borok tribe, an indigenous community in Tripura, India, through an in-depth examination of selected Kokborok folktales and contemporary poetry and fiction. The author sheds light on how these writers draw on their cultural myths, folklore, and everyday experiences to challenge mainstream literature’s stereotypes and reclaim their cultural heritage. By analysing these works, the book uncovers the Borok tribe’s historical context, which has been shaped by cultural domination and military struggles for identity preservation. Through a focus on themes of rootedness, cultural loss, and oral tradition, the author offers an insightful analysis of the tribe’s little-known narratives, bringing attention to the continuous suffering of its people amidst socio-economic and political problems. This work offers a significant contribution to understanding the cultural traditions and identity of the Borok tribe in Tripura.
