U.Tirot Singh


Book Description

Biography of U. Tirot Singh who fought against British attempts to take over control of the Khasi Hills.




Encyclopaedia of North-East India


Book Description

This 5-Volume, Encyclopaedic Study Of India S North-East Is The Result Of The Author S 11 Years Of Service Extended Over Three Tenures In The Region, Followed By 6 Years Of Library Research After His Retirement. Being The First Of Its Kind, Given Its Contents And Sheer Size, Over 2,500 Pages, It Is A Unique Book.Writing On The North-East Is Not An Easy Exercise, Given Its Diversity (Ethnic, Racial, Religious And Linguistic), Size, History And Geography. If India Is Microcosmic World, The North-East Is Microcosmic India. Of The 5,653 Communities In India, 653 Are Tribal Of Which The 213 Are Indigenous To The North-East. Of The 213, 111 Are Found In Arunachal Pradesh Alone. Illumined By An Equally Amazing Linguistic Diversity, It Is Home To 325 Of The 1,652 Languages Spoken In India. Yet Again, North-East S Total Population Of 3,84,95,089 (2001) Constitutes 2.69 Per Cent Of India S 1,02,70,15,247, While Its Area Of 2,55,088 Sq Km Is 7.75 Per Cent Of India S 32,87,263 Sq Km.




Linguistic Situation in North-East India


Book Description

The Focus Is On The Linguistic Situation In North-East India With Particular Reference To The Problems Of Inter-Ethnic Communications, Linguistic Identity And The Growth Of Ethnic Consciousness Based On Linguistic Affiliation.




Under a Cloud


Book Description

As Midnight Approaches There Is An Aura Of Expectation In Cherrapunji . . . For A While Even The Pinpricks Of Light Scattered Here And There In The Village, Like Stars In A Constellation, Seem To Stop Flickering. And Then The Rains Begin. It Is Rain That Has Made Cherra Famous, And Binoo S Mission Is To Unravel The Mystery Behind The Curious Phenomenon Which Brings This Area As Much Rain In Three Months As The Rest Of The Country Might Not Get In A Whole Year. But As He Makes His Way Into Each Corner And Crevice Of Cherrapunji, He Discovers That It Is Much More Than The Wettest Place On Earth . After The Bustle And Tension Of Guwahati And Shillong He Finds In Cherrapunji A World Of Mesmerizing Beauty Peopled With Unusual Characters, From Uncooperative Bureaucrats And Friendly Auto Drivers To Women Who Run Their Own Enterprises And Forward-Looking Individuals Who Want To Bring The Sleepy Little Village From Under The Cloud Into The Modern World Of Telephones And Tourism. And He Takes A Quick And Curious Walk Down The Lanes Of Cherra S Chequered History-A Story Of Nineteenth-Century Evangelists And Proselytization, The Beginnings Of Education, The Fierce Earthquake Of 1897 Which Almost Obliterated The Town, And Battles Against The Colonizers. Ranging With Consummate Ease Over Topics As Varied As Religion, Cuisine And Meteorology, Under A Cloud Paints An Evocative Picture Of Life In One Of The Most Unusual Places In India.




Memory and Monument Wars in American Cities


Book Description

This book is about the ways U.S. cities have responded to some of the most pressing political, cultural, racial issues of our time as agentic, remembering actors. Our case studies include New York City’s securitized remembrances at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum; Charlottesville’s Confederate monument controversies in the wake of the 2017 Unite the Right Rally; and Montgomery’s “double consciousness” at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum. By tracing the genealogies that can be found across three contested cityscapes—New York, Charlottesville, and Montgomery—this book opens up new vistas for research for communication studies as it shows how cities are agentic actors that can wage “war” on urban landscapes as massive actor-networks struggling to remember (and forget). With the rise of sanctuary cities against nativistic immigration policies, “invasions” from white supremacists and neo-Nazis objecting to “the great replacement,” and rhizomic uprisings of Black Lives Matter protests in response to lethal police force against persons of color, this timely book speaks to the emergent realities of how cities have become battlegrounds in America’s continuing cultural wars.





Book Description




India's Indigenous Immigrants


Book Description

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.




100 Desi Stories Series


Book Description




Northeast India


Book Description

As India and the world are roiled by questions of nationalism and identity, this book journeys into the history of one of the world's newest and most fascinating regions: Northeast India. Having appeared with the stroke of a pen in 1947, as the British Raj was torn asunder and partitioned into India and Pakistan, this is a region of hills inhabited by myriad tribes. Until colonial rule, they had lived in their ancient ways largely unmolested by their neighbors, who were rather keen to avoid their traditions of head-hunting. Samrat Choudhury chronicles the processes by which these remote hill-tribes, and the diverse other peoples inhabiting the valley of the vast Brahmaputra River below, became parts of the 'imagined nation' that is India. Through the invention of the Northeast, he explores two other ideas of India that remain in daily competition: Bharat, the Hindu nationalist conception of the country, and Hindustan, the Persian-origin name by which India is still known as far west as Turkey. Taking a long view, this absorbing political history chronicles the separate pathways by which imperialism, Christianity and the British love of tea brought each of the contemporary region's constituent states, kicking and screaming, into modern India.




Welsh missionaries and British imperialism


Book Description

In 1841, the Welsh sent their first missionary, Thomas Jones, to evangelise the tribal peoples of the Khasi Hills of north-east India. This book follows Jones from rural Wales to Cherrapunji, the wettest place on earth and now one of the most Christianised parts of India. As colonised colonisers, the Welsh were to have a profound impact on the culture and beliefs of the Khasis. The book also foregrounds broader political, scientific, racial and military ideologies that mobilised the Khasi Hills into an interconnected network of imperial control. Its themes are universal: crises of authority, the loneliness of geographical isolation, sexual scandal, greed and exploitation, personal and institutional dogma, individual and group morality. Written by a direct descendant of Thomas Jones, it makes a significant contribution in orienting the scholarship of imperialism to a much-neglected corner of India, and will appeal to students of the British imperial experience more broadly.