Communities, Institutions and Histories of India’s Northeast


Book Description

People from India’s Northeast have crafted distinct as well as diverse cultural cryptograms, discernments and personality which is frequently at loggerheads with the power politics from outside the region. Thus, attention is often on the societies of the Northeast India as they putter with transforming institutions and more intensive resource consumption in the wake of modernization and development activities. This volume is an examination into questions of who exercises control, who constructs knowledge/ideas about the region and how far such discourses are people-centric. It inspects how India’s Northeast have been understood in colonial and post-colonial contexts through the contributions from research scholars and faculties from different academic spaces. These contributions are both from within the region as well as from neighbourhood. Thus, presenting a cross-dimensional gaze on social, political, economic as well as issues related to space-relation. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.




The Routledge Companion to Northeast India


Book Description

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.




Geographies of Difference


Book Description

This book rethinks Northeast India as a lived space, a centre of interconnections and unfolding histories, instead of an isolated periphery. Questioning dominant tropes and assumptions around the Northeast, it examines socio-political and historical processes, border issues, the role of the state, displacement and development, debates over natural resources, violence, notions of body and belonging, movements, tensions and relations, and strategies, struggles and narratives that frame discussions on the region. Drawing on current and emerging research in Northeast India studies, this work will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, human geography, sociology and social anthropology, history, cultural studies, media studies and South Asian studies.




Oral Traditions, Continuities and Transformations in Northeast India and Beyond


Book Description

Northeast India is home to many distinct communities and is an area of incredible ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity. This book explores the shared cultural heritage among the highland and river valley communities of Northeast India and mainland South East Asia, including South China, through oral traditions. It looks at these shared cultural traditions and suggests new ways of understanding and interpreting the heritage of Northeast India. Oral traditions often bring forward an unexpected twist in understanding historical and cultural links, and this volume explores this using local knowledge and innovative engagements with oral traditions in multiple ways, from folklore and language to performative traditions. The essays in this volume examine how communities build new meanings from old traditions, often as a recognition of the tension between conservation and creation, between individual interpretation and social consensus. They offer interesting parallels on how oral traditions behave in different socio-economic contexts, and also examine how oral traditions and memory interact with the digital world’s penetration in the remote areas. This volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of Northeast India, sociology, sociology of culture, cultural studies, ethnic studies, anthropology, folkloristics, and political sociology.




Northeast Migrants in Delhi


Book Description

The Northeast border region of India is a crossroads of Southeast Asia, where India meets China and the Himalayas, and home to many ethnic minorities from across the continent. The area is also the birthplace of a number of secessionist and insurgent movements and a hotbed of political fervor and violent instability. In this trailblazing new study, Duncan McDuie-Ra observes the everyday lives of the thousands of men and women who leave the region every year to work, study, and find refuge in Delhi. He examines how new migrants navigate the rampant racism, harassment, and even violence they face upon their arrival in Delhi. But McDuie-Ra does not paint them simply as victims of the city, but also as contributors to Delhi's vibrant community and increasing cosmopolitanism. India's embrace of globalization has created employment opportunities for Northeast migrants in many capitalistic enterprises: shopping malls, restaurants, and call centers. They have been able to create their own “map” of Delhi and their own communities within the larger and often unfriendly one of the metropolis.




Troubled Periphery


Book Description

This book maps the evolution of India′s North East into a constituent region of the republic and analyses the perpetual crisis in the region since Independence. It highlights how land, language and leadership issues have been the seed of contention in the North East and how factors like ethnicity, ideology and religion have shaped the conflicts. It also throws light on the major insurgencies, internal displacements, protest movements and the regional drug and weapons trade in the region. It examines ′the crisis of development′ and the evolution of the polity before offering a policy framework to combat the crises. The book includes a large body of original data, documentation and field interviews with major players as well as stakeholders. It is an important reference resource for students of politics and international relations, especially for those involved in South Asian studies and conflict studies. It is also an informative read for decision-makers, bureaucrats dealing with the North East and those involved in counter-insurgency operations in the area.




Strangers Of The Mist


Book Description

This book would have been completed earlier but for events that disrupted millions of lives across India, including those of journalists : the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya, by a Hindu mob on 6 December 1992 and the communal riots that followed across the country. In January 1993, the selective massacres of Muslims at Bombay and the devastating revenge bomb blasts there two months later led to extensive travelling and reporting for the New York Times. In addition, there was 'normal reporting' : the Punjab, environmental, economic and political issues such as the billion dollar scam.




Unruly Hills


Book Description

The questions that inspired this study are central to contemporary research within environmental anthropology, political ecology, and environmental history: How does the introduction of a modern, capitalist, resource regime affect the livelihood of indigenous peoples? Can sustainable resource management be achieved in a situation of radical commodification> of land and other aspects of nature? Focusing on conflicts relating to forest management, mining, and land rights, the author offers an insightful account of present-day challenges for indigenous people to accommodate aspirations for ethnic sovereignty and development.







Northeast India


Book Description

Northeast India is a multifaceted and dynamic region that is constantly in focus because of its fragile political landscape characterized by endemic violence and conflicts. One of the first of its kind, this reader on Northeast India examines myriad aspects of the region – its people and its linguistic and cultural diversity. The chapters here highlight the key issues confronted by the Northeast in recent times: its history, politics, economy, gender equations, migration, ethnicity, literature and traditional performative practices. The book presents interlinkages between a range of socio-cultural issues and armed political violence while covering topics such as federalism, nationality, population, migration and social change. It discusses debates on development with a view to comprehensive policies and state intervention. With its a nuanced and wide-ranging overview, this volume makes new contributions to understanding a region that is critical to the future of South Asian geopolitics. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of contemporary Northeast India as well as history, political science, area studies, international relations, sociology and social anthropology. It will also appeal to those interested in public administration, regional literature, cultural studies, population studies, development studies and economics. Chapter 31 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.