Northeast India
A Place of Relations

Explores the possibility of a new search enabling a 'discovery' of Northeast India from within.

Yasmin Saikia (Edited by), Amit R. Baishya (Edited by)

9781107191297, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 April 2017

232 pages
23.7 x 16 x 2.4 cm, 0.56 kg

Northeast India: A Place of Relations focuses on encounters and experiences between people and cultures, the human and the non-human world, allowing for building of new relationships of friendship and amity in the region. The twelve essays in this volume explore the possibility of a new search enabling a 'discovery' of the lived and the loved world of Northeast India from within. The volume employs a variety of perspectives and methodological approaches - literary, historical, anthropological, interpretative politics, and an analytical study of contemporary issues, engaging the people, cultures, and histories in the Northeast with a new outlook. In the study, the region emerges as a place of new happenings in which there is the possibility of continuous expansion of the horizon of history and issues of current relevance facilitating new voices and narratives that circulate and create bonding in the borderland of South, East, and Southeast Asia.

List of tables
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction Yasmin Saikia and Amit Baishya
Part I. Contemporary Politics and Issues of Definition: 1. Solidarity, visibility, and vulnerability: 'Northeast' as a racial category in India Duncan McDuie-Ra
2. India and its Northeast: another big push without a take-off? Sanjib Baruah
3. (Un)natural disasters and the role of the state in the Brahmaputra Valley Assam Mitul Baruah
Part II. Creating Presence: 4. Bonnie guest house: fieldwork and friendship across borders Bengt G. Karlsson
5. The Muslims of Assam: present/absent history Yasmin Saikia
6. Ichthyonomics, or fish and humans in the time of floods: rethinking speciation in Assam Sean Dowdy
Part III. Knowing through Experience: 7. Dismembered lives: narrating history's footnotes in Aulingar Jui Amit R. Baishya
8. Freedom and frustrated hopes: assessing the Jadonang movement, 1917–32 Arkotong Longkumer
9. Celebrating a new 'New Year' in Tripura: space, place and identity politics R. K. Debbarma
Part IV. Rethinking Politics: 10. Difficult loves: purity and hardship Dolly Kikon
11. Politics of difference in the Northeast: a feminist reflection Papori Bora
12. Robes, rivers and ruptured spaces: hydro-power projects in west Arunachal Pradesh Swargajyoti Gohain
Glossary.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Asian history [HBJF]