Papers by Bikash K. Bhattacharya
LGBTQ Nation , 2023
A feature story on 'meinmasha' nat kadaws (spirit wives) of Myanmar. Through interviews conducted... more A feature story on 'meinmasha' nat kadaws (spirit wives) of Myanmar. Through interviews conducted in Amarapura, a late Konbaung-era royal capital of Myanmar, and Taungbyone, a prominent nat worship site near Mandalay, the story sheds light on intersections of spirit worship, the cult of toungze khunna min, and gender and their representation, all that's lost (and gained) in translation. It's an attempt to translate anthropological scholarship into plain journalism with the aim of correcting the erroneous Western conflation of 'gay' individuals with nat kadaws in contemporary Myanmar.
NiCHE, 2023
This is a short piece on circulation of emotions vis-à-vis 'the tiger' in the British colonies of... more This is a short piece on circulation of emotions vis-à-vis 'the tiger' in the British colonies of Tasmania and India, and how these colonial entanglements impacted the fate of the thylacine, "the Tasmanian tiger".
The World of The Orient , 2023
This comparative work examines the intricacies of Brahmanical and Buddhist kingships of Ahom and ... more This comparative work examines the intricacies of Brahmanical and Buddhist kingships of Ahom and Konbaung kingdoms respectively through two nineteenth century texts.
YES! Mazagine, 2023
This is a magazine article that revisits the much misunderstood practice of voluntary euthanasia ... more This is a magazine article that revisits the much misunderstood practice of voluntary euthanasia among the relatively isolated Indigenous communities of Northeast India, such as 'misi-muh' once practiced among the Idu-Mishmi.
The Asia-Europe Foundation , 2023
This short article talks about a unique poetic tradition in the Theravada Shan communities of upp... more This short article talks about a unique poetic tradition in the Theravada Shan communities of upper Myanmar, northern Thailand and the Yunnan province of China, that serves as a primary means of transmitting Buddhist teachings. Known as lik long (great writing), this form of poetry is composed and recited by zares, who are predominantly lay Buddhists, in temples and houses on special occasions.
Borderless Journal, 2023
This is a translation of the narrative “Uehara” from Kamaleswar Barua’s Ei Ran Ei Jivan [1], a c... more This is a translation of the narrative “Uehara” from Kamaleswar Barua’s Ei Ran Ei Jivan [1], a collection of narratives published in Assamese in 1968 based on “true events and characters” the author had encountered while serving as a military engineer in the British Indian Army in the Second World War. “Uehara” is probably the only work in Assamese that depicts an actual historical encounter between an Assamese native serving the Raj and an Imperial Japanese Army soldier.
Satsori, 2016
The article, as is, a pre-publication draft, describes four different tellings of the origin and ... more The article, as is, a pre-publication draft, describes four different tellings of the origin and past of a 'shaskti-peetha' temple in western Assam and locate each telling in the social location/matrix of each narrator, thus looking at the relationship between identity and dispositions towards the past.
Aalap, 2017
The article provides a broad overview of the reception and the uses of the classical texts of Man... more The article provides a broad overview of the reception and the uses of the classical texts of Manu in nineteenth century Assamese literature by looking at three major Assamese writers representative of the emerging vernacular literary tradition of the time.
Journal of Global Indigeneity, Vol.5, Issue.2, 2021
On 30 July 2018, the Final Draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was updated in A... more On 30 July 2018, the Final Draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was updated in Assam, a state in Northeast India, for the first time since 1950, was released. The NRC was a popular demand of the Indigenous and ethnic Assamese people since the mid 1980s. However, the Indian national media industry went into an overdrive in covering this political and historical event in the state, with many publications terming the Indigenous peoples of Assam as 'xenophobic' and 'ethnofascist' for demanding the updating of the NRC. In this paper, we look at how the release of the NRC, the final draft in July 2018 and the final NRC in August 2019, was covered in various media outlets by focusing on certain tropes regarding the Indigenous and ethnic Assamese peoples, which were amplified in both traditional and social media. We also take a look at the Twitter archival data which we accessed through Twitter's application programming interface (API) and examine the inter-connectedness between the content that was produced in traditional media on the Indigenous and ethnic Assamese peoples and how that content was amplified on Twitter. This paper brings together both digital and traditional humanities to deconstruct these current tropes, which we trace to
Border Criminologies (University of Oxford Law School Blog) , 2021
South Asia Journal, 2020
This paper makes a few observations regarding two widely circulated media articles that invoke ‘w... more This paper makes a few observations regarding two widely circulated media articles that invoke ‘wasteland’, a colonial category for land, in speaking about state-sponsored notions of citizenship in Assam, a frontier state in northeast India. The category ‘wasteland’—and its variants “dead,” “idle,” “vacant,” “fallow,” “unutilized” land—facilitated state seizures of public commons for colonial capitalist exploitation in British India and Malay, Dutch East Indies, and imperial central Vietnam. Scholars such as Michael Dove (1998), Jane Ferguson (2014) and Ian G Baird (2014), and Jayshree Vencatesan (2006) have explored how notions of “degraded,” “underutilized,” “derelict,” or “waste” land have been used to legitimize and justify the power to exclude and control access to land across contemporary Southeast and South Asia. The rhetoric used to legitimize contemporary real estate development projects in Ho Chi Minh City resonates with French colonial concepts of ‘wasteland’ in Vietnam, as has been explored by anthropologist Erik Harms (2014). The two articles I discuss here can be located, broadly, in two different discourses of resistance vis-à-vis dominant narratives of citizenship in the state: the first in an identitarian discourse of protest forged by Miya writers and other voices from within the Miya community, and the second, a liberal post-nationalist critique of the citizenship regime
- See more at: http://southasiajournal.net/india-the-idea-of-wasteland-and-two-media-narratives-of-citizenship-in-assam/
Raiot, 2020
Recently, three incidents have rocked Assam: a coal mining concession in a part of Dehing-Patkai ... more Recently, three incidents have rocked Assam: a coal mining concession in a part of Dehing-Patkai Elephant Reserve, an oil blowout in Baghjaan, and the extra-judicial killing of an Assamese youth in Jorhat by security forces and police. While the state narrative regarding Jayanta Bora, the deceased youth, seems to connect him with the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) without any conclusive proof, multiple local media outlets have reported a different version of his death. This version states that Bora was seen taking photographs of trucks carrying illegal coal from the adjacent Naga hills, which might have had a role in his death. Meanwhile, different narratives have emerged from Baghjaan oil blowout as well. While one calls for a relook at the extractive economy and its power relations in Assam vis-a-vis the Indian state, another emphasize on reading it as an industrial disaster. In an interview with The Wire a few years ago economic commentator Swaminathan Ankalesaria Aiyar said, “Assamese chauvinism has long come in the way of oil exploration. The government must dismiss it for the narrow-minded silliness that it is,” suggesting how the Baghjaan oil blowout can be plotted in extractive relations of competing groups and nationalist aspirations. This essay seeks to reflect on the extractive economy, the historical and the contemporary, that has been at the centre of the development narrative in Assam.
The News Lens, 2018
Article link: https://www.thenewslens.com/article/98652
Matamata politik, 2018
Article link:https://www.matamatapolitik.com/pahlawan-ham-munir-dalam-kenangan-di-timor-leste/
The NewsLens International, 2019
https://international.thenewslens.com/article/111821
Mongabay-India; The Wire, 2019
https://india.mongabay.com/2019/08/tigers-are-vanishing-outside-protected-areas-in-the-northeast/
The NewsLens International, 2018
https://international.thenewslens.com/article/101874
The Diplomat Magazine, 2017
https://thediplomat.com/2017/12/the-brokpa-yaks-a-dying-breed/
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Papers by Bikash K. Bhattacharya
- See more at: http://southasiajournal.net/india-the-idea-of-wasteland-and-two-media-narratives-of-citizenship-in-assam/
- See more at: http://southasiajournal.net/india-the-idea-of-wasteland-and-two-media-narratives-of-citizenship-in-assam/