Manipur

The elaborate song and dance sequences of early modern Indian cinema echoed the diverse performance cultures of a nation in transition. This essay focuses on
the brief screen presence that was enjoyed by the dances of Manipur beginning in the 1940s to the 1950s. Filmmakers, actresses and choreographers adapted, remade or extensively borrowed movement vocabulary from the repertory of Manipuri dances originally performed by indigenous communities in multiple locations across east India. Typically seen in films in Hindi and Bengali language, most ‘Manipuri’ dance sequences were choreographed for mythological, devotional, (quasi)-historical narratives, or social melodramas with dancing protagonists. This essay particularly concentrates on this significant yet neglected strand of transregional exchanges and influences; alongside it seeks to locate corporeal histories that stand for the labour of a few well-known and numerous unacknowledged bodies of dancers, excavate the interlinked stories of practices, legacies and networks that came to represent Manipuri dance in cinematic history. Bringing  together conversations on choreographic analysis, ethnographic work, interviews with film directors, cine performers, and Manipuri dancers, this essay also traces why these dances gradually disappeared from commercial Indian cinema.

Who were the agents of cultural change in pre-colonial Southeast Asia? Scholars have identified such diverse characters as Brahmins journeying from South Asia, European sea captains looking down at indigenous Asians from the decks of their sailing ships, local chiefs or monarchs seeking new accoutrements of status, monks on royally-sponsored missions, traders of all descriptions—all historical characters of status or privilege. But what if we see the agent of cultural hybridity as a lowly family of war captives, captured and transported to a new kingdom against its will? What happens when we see them as having the agency to mold something new out of the vestiges of their natal cultures, those of their captors, and those of their neighbors? Bryce Beemer’s dissertation takes theoretical inspiration from creolization theory, usually associated with scholarship on slaves in the Americas, to paint a vibrant and unruly picture of cultural rupture, exchange, and production in what he calls the “creole cities” of premodern Burma, Siam, and Manipur. He focuses especially on two groups of creole communities settled around the royal capitals of Upper Burma. The “Yodaya” were peasants, artisans, and experts taken captive from Ayutthaya (Siam) in 1767, and the “Kathe” were taken in raids against Manipur from the 1750s to the 1830s.

Even though Teresa Rehman has been called "a female combat journalist", her book, "Bulletproof: A Journalist's Notebook on Reporting Conflict", is more than just combat or conflict. It may even serve as a guide book for journalists working under difficult and hostile conditions.
This review was first published in print in National Herald On Sunday, dated 01-March-2020.
URL to the epaper: http://epaper.nationalheraldindia.com//imageview_1734_15222501_4_71_01-03-2020_i_1_sf.html
Online edition: https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/reviews-recommendations/bulletproof-more-than-a-memoir-of-an-exceptional-career?fbclid=IwAR0ByWCVN-SMW4QCGiKESc3ETraqa1xXSbOsGyEbL1t4viqUYWXlrBmBUaw

Reviewers comments:
• ‘This is a long needed, finely researched, and admirably presented work of scholarship. It is required reading not just for scholars and researchers, but also those with any interest in the changing, emergent, future Indian society.’ Arun Agrawal, Professor and Associate Dean for Research, School of Natural Resources & Environment, University of Michigan.

• ‘A very readable, succinct and excellent synthesis of the experiences of a number of organizations and advocacy movements. India’s dynamic and complex civil society is captured well and includes linkages at the local, national and global levels.’ Sushma Ganguly, Former Sector Manager, Agriculture and Rural Development, World Bank.

• ‘…the strengths of the book are its lucid exposition, its coverage of a number of contrasting case studies, and its clear and unromantic acknowledgment of the limitations and constraints on activist action.’ Prof David Gellner. Asian Studies Review, 37(1), pp. 112-113.

Manipur, one of the NorthEastern states in India has the advantage of the vast cultivated area, which has remained free of the contamination from chemicals, with very low or zero use of agrochemicals, can be instantly converted to organic farming. From the available records it is found that the conversion from conventional to organic farming is increasing over time in Manipur; although in a very slow rate. The activities of different organizations had influenced the farmers over large areas to convert as an organic cohort. The present study was undertaken tostudy the constraints faced by the farmers associated with organic farming. The study was conducted in four districts of Manipur (two each from hill viz. Ukhrul and Senapati, and valley viz. Imphal-West, Imphal-East), selected purposively because there was a tradition to cultivate crops organically. The study revealed that economic constraints were perceived highest followed by institutional andpolicy aspects, infrastructural and situational aspects, and managerial constraints. The lowest level of constraints faced on personal aspects. It is suggested that the government should establish organic input agencies, assured market for organic produce, setting up of policies to assure remunerative price to improve organic cultivation in Manipur.

Ten-year-old Rakovei watches the army convoy rushing daily past his house in Senapati town and dreams of the day when he too will be a soldier. It is only when tragedy strikes his family that he comes to see the truth behind the glamour of military uniforms…

Set in Manipur during the 1980s and 90s, this novel follows the shared destinies of Rakovei and his family and community. Life is peaceful in the Naga villages around Senapati, until the spring of 1987, when cadres of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) attack the Assam Rifles outpost at Oinam Hill, and brutal retaliation follows—codenamed Operation Bluebird. Village after village is occupied, and young Rakovei, visiting his native village of Phyamaichi, witnesses the horror—ordinary men and women tortured and executed; homes and shops ransacked and burnt down. Deep disillusionment sets in as Rakovei begins to understand how his people suffer, caught in the war between the Indian Army and the Naga underground. The only chance of even basic security seems to lie far away, in the ‘mainland’, but it comes with the dark shadows of prejudice and racism.

Waiting for the Dust to Settle provides a poignant, often searing, glimpse into the realities of life for ordinary Nagas in the turbulent final decades of the twentieth century, even as it chronicles with great sensitivity the resilience of these men and women caught between hope and despair.

Shumang Leela which means 'Courtyard performance' is a Manipuri theatrical art form considered to have developed in the 19 th and 20 th century. The paper discusses how the theatrical art form broke the monopoly of art as being accessible only by the upper caste, the so called elite sections of the society and began acting as a community development media having the role of entertaining, enlightening, instructing, educating and sensitizing the public on various issues relevant to the society within the cultural context and space of the Manipuris. Though secular in nature it has found its ritualistic space as the theatre form is integrated in different life cycles of a person in the Manipuri culture. It is a medium of development communication to spread social awareness to people through its meaningful themes and enactments which portray the socio-politico-economic issues of the people not only in Manipur but also globally. Shumang Leela is popular for its 'Nupi Shabis' who are actually male actors performing female roles. The paper further explores the important issue on Transgender identity of the performers known as 'Nupi Shabis', as the theatre form is their platform and community. Shumang Leela is a stage for cultural communication of the Manipuri society. It is also a model for development communication using traditional media, a communication system embedded in the cultural context. Even where mass media has penetrated, Shumang Leela has proved its validity to sensitize people's thinking to promote change.

This Article examines a controversial national security measure: the use of the armed forces within domestic borders. Military policing blurs the boundaries between crime and war, and tends to entail greater use of force against individuals. It has received relatively little academic attention but deserves to be better understood. No democratic state has relied on military policing for longer than India. And within India, no region has been subject to military policing for as long as the northeastern state of Manipur. I analyze how military policing in Manipur has fostered abuse by the armed forces, which in turn has prompted litigation and judicial innovation. Based on my analysis, I critique dominant theories about the state’s exceptional security powers. I advance two main claims. First, exceptional powers rarely remain exceptional; they eventually become the norm. Once deployed, these powers persist, and the license they provide seeps into broader habits of governance. Second, once normalized, exceptional powers become more vulnerable to judicial intervention. Judges become unwilling to accept the government’s argument that these powers are always and only used to fight pressing threats. These powers eventually become a routine subject of judicial review. Even once judicial review becomes routine, however, judges tend to be more willing to help victims of abuse than to punish abusers.

Two pes imprints of perissodactyl mammal constituting a single step of a trackway have recently been discovered in Oligocene Flysch deposits of the Barail Group in Manipur, India. The tridactyl, mesaxonic imprints (~7cm in length) show strong similarities to footprints known from the Paleogene of China and can be attributed to a tapiroid, rhinocerotoid or equoid trackmaker. This is the first record of perissodactyl footprints from the Lower Oligocene of India and the first evidence of mammals in the Barail Group of the age. Remarkable is the occurrence in a marginal marine setting, whereas other known perissodactyl footprints from the Eocene-Oligocene in particular from North America, Europe and China come from fluvio-lacustrine strata.

‘Duncan McDuie-Ra has not only written a thoroughly readable and well-researched ethnography on Northeast migrants in Delhi, in more general terms he has also produced an important contribution to what could be labelled ‘big city ethnographies’. Cities such as Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore not only feature prominently in a particular narrative on economic growth that infuses how the cities present themselves and how their inhabitants reflect on them, but they are coloured by the kind of diversity that is the result of large-scale internal migration. Understanding what all these people—not just north-easterners—are doing in the city in terms of work and lifestyle, and how they experience being in the city on the one hand and how they are part of the urban landscape in physical and mental terms on the other, is something that will hopefully be the focus of many other works of ethnography in the future. I have no doubt these will benefit greatly from McDuie-Ra’s insightful and carefully researched work.’ Dr. Michiel Baas. South Asia  37 (2), pp. 359-361.

The only pictorial book on insurgency in India.  Very few regions in the world have given birth to as many insurgent outfits as India's Northeast - a strategic frontier zone comprising eight states and sandwiched between China, Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh.  For the first time, Lens & The Guerrilla captures more than fifty of these groups in a wide range of photographs from the vintage to the present.

The ‘Northeast’ is a category constructed by the Indian state for the purposes
of controlling, governing and applying extraordinary legal provisions to its
rebellious eastern frontier. It homogenizes and depoliticizes the peoples and
territories claimed by the Indian state and subjects them to a perpetual process
of state-making characterized by violence and (mal)development. Yet the
peoples subject to the category – both the idea and the institutions that are
enabled by it – use it. They speak it, respond to it and identify with it. In part,
this is acquiescence to the national and local state that shapes everyday life
for people in the region; layers of public and private institutions that use the
category to describe everything from small business finance initiatives to trade
fairs. The category is also used throughout India by the media, in committees
formed to address ‘Northeast issues’, and ‘on the streets’, as it were, to refer
to people from the region and to misidentify others assumed to be from the
region (and vice-versa). Thus being a ‘North easterner’ or ‘from the Northeast’
ascribes a set of attributes to groups and individuals, whether they like it or
not. On the other hand, the category Northeast can also be an affirmation of
solidarity by people from the region. Not by all people, and not all the time,
but certainly the category is used enough by those subject to it to warrant some
consideration of its value for those seeking to claim it as a positive affirmation
of who they are and where they fit, or don’t, in the national picture.

Tribal peoples in Manipur have been maintaining their commons under customary law. Interacting with outsiders has always led to the contestation of their customs, traditions, and beliefs. Tribal societies continue to administer their villages under customary law on the tenet of equity. Their law has even resisted the policies of Manipuri kings and the British administration. In the present day, tribal customary law stands challenged by the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960.

Oral narratives are the earliest forms of storytelling as they exist in every culture as a part of religious rituals, folk music and songs. They include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation stories, songs, myths, spells, legends, proverbs, riddles, tongue twisters, word games, recitations and other narratives not recorded in writing. With the invention of writing, the ancient forms of oral narratives have undergone a lot of changes and have become valuable works of literature. However, the charm of oral narratives often told by improvisation and even gestures as a part of tradition cannot be transcribed into literature. As oral stories are brought down from generation to generation and are committed only to the memory, the various stages of the growth of such narratives give an account of the culture of the people. These are the sources of popular entertainment and are closely associated with festivals and religious ceremonies. At present, our society feels the need to safeguard and protect these indigenous forms of arts from the danger of extinction due to the impacts of globalisation and commercial entertainments. The exploration of the meanings and themes of ancient narratives, in a broader social context, and the significant role of the variant folklore genres in maintaining collective wisdom, national identity, solidarity and traditional moral values are points of great concern in this study.
Keywords:  Oral Folk Literature, Ancient Meiteis, Cultural Significance, Manipur, India

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency is a fine-grained critique of the Naga struggle for political redemption, the state’s response to it, and the social corollaries and carry-overs of protracted political conflict on everyday life. Offering an ethnographic underview, Jelle Wouters illustrates an ‘insurgency complex’ that reveals how embodied experiences of resistance and state aggression, violence and volatility, and struggle and suffering link together to shape social norms, animate local agitations, and complicate inter-personal and inter-tribal relations in expected and unexpected ways. It thus presses us to rethink our views on tribalism, conflict and ceasefire, development, corruption, and democratic politics

Chakhao (Black rice; Oryza sativa L.) is one of the lesser known traditional rice varieties of Manipur which provides not only nutraceutical benefits, but also plays a significant role in socio-cultural practices of the local Meitei community. This paper describes indigenous agro-ecological knowledge and socio-cultural practices of Meitei farmers associated with black rice cultivation. A total of 72 knowledge holders were identified through chain referrals method in three representative villages in Imphal East district of Manipur. Semi-directive interview and group discussion methods were employed for documentation of their knowledge and socio-cultural practices. In all four black rice landraces (viz., Chakhao poireiton, Chakhao angouba, Chakhao amubi and Chakhao pungdol amubi) were recorded in the study area. About 57 % of the farmers in the study area cultivated black rice in < 10 % of their land holdings. According to the farmers all these landraces of black rice are relatively stress tolerant and disease resistant and require less care and energy inputs. Black rice is used in different religio-cultural feasts and rituals of Meiteis. Beside it is also used as a medicine for diabetic patients and traditionally given to pregnant women. Cultural practices of Meiteis help conserving the agro-biodiversity in the study area.

There are five theories available on the historical origin of the Nagas as appropriated from different sources located in the contemporary Naga society. There theories are (1) mythical origin, (2) originated from Mongolia, (3) originated from China, (4), Originally from Southeast Asia, (5) Present territory origin. The approaches of the study are oral-historical analysis and library works. It takes into consideration the numerous views offered by oral experts, scholars, intellectuals in Naga context. Moreover, the five theories presented are interconnected in several ways therefore to bestow a single theory as a conclusive one is inconceivable at the present stage as the debate on the subject-matter is an ongoing process.

This paper illustrates the course of Manipuri dance in post-independent India studied from an ethnographic perspective and by studying the life history of dancer Thiyam Suryamukhi Devi of Imphal, Manipur. The diachronic examination of her performing and non-performing life, aids in exploring the key moments when ritual-dances of the Meitei community came to be known as Manipuri in the landscape of performing arts in India and what did the dances entail. The core pedagogy of Manipuri dance was primarily developed with the help of dancers like her. Besides that, Thiyam's self-examination of identity, femininity, ideas of stage-choreography and ritual efficacy of movements is reflective of how dance histories journey beyond neat continuities; they are constructed despite ruptures, differences, ambiguities. What this paper does is trace the deep interdependencies of performer, performance, oral history, life narrative and ethnography to seek the formalised definitions of a dance. Alongside, this paper attempts to place these interdependencies and definitions within the context of oral-performative history of early modern Manipur.

This book explores the Kuki uprising against the British Empire during the First World War in Northeast frontier of India (then Assam-Burma frontier). It underlines how of the three-year war (1917–1919), spanning over 6000 square miles, is crucial to understanding present-day Northeast India. The essays in the volume examine several aspects of the war, which had far-reaching consequences for the indigenous population as well as for British attitudes and policy towards the region — including military strategy and tactics, violence, politics, identity, institutions, gender, culture, and the frontier dimensions of the First World War itself. The volume also looks at how the conflict affected the larger dynamics of the region within Asia, and its relevance in world politics beyond the Great War.

Drawing on archival sources, extensive fieldwork and oral histories, the volume will be a significant contribution to comprehending the complex geopolitics of the region. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South and Southeast Asian Studies, area studies, modern history, military and strategic studies, insurgency and counterinsurgency studies, tribal warfare and politics.

An analysis of internal perspective on women in Lamkaang  Naga tribe in Manipur, India.
Interviews of Church leaders, community elders, elderly widow and some spinsters, were conducted and their perspectives shared in this paper. Increased education among the Lamkaang have led to greater liberation for women,and women's stereotypical roles within the society.

AFSPA keeps apart ideas of law and justice; a separation that make the Nagas 'killable', as in Oting. The law incorporates them into the Indian nation-state as rights-deprived subjects — and, in the process, reveals the dark side of Indian democracy.

Nepal Himalayas have been known as a rich source for valuable medicinal plants since Vedic periods. Present work is the documentation of indigenous knowledge on plant utilization as natural remedy by the inhabitants of terai forest in Western Nepal.

The paper deals with plant based folk practices used by the Meitei Community of Manipur used for the treatment of diabetes. Survey of locally available antidiabetic plants of Manipur was done for one year (January to December, 2009). Meiteis have been using herbal remedies as an alternative to modern medical facilities available in the state. Altogether 51 plant species were recorded. Proper documentation and preservation of these practices are essential.

This book chapter traces the latest developments in the 7 decade old movement for Naga self-determination. It takes stock of the various layers, actors, issues, and dynamics involved, including the reconciliation and indigenous peoples movements.

This introduction to the special issue begins by discussing the provisions of the
Act itself and the context in which it was legislated in the decade after Indian
independence. The sections that follow discuss the dimensions of exceptionalism
enforced by the AFSPA at the international, national, and local levels. At the
international level, the Act is primarily seen as a violation of basic human rights –
and international human rights organisations have pressured the Indian Government to repeal the Act, to which there has been little response beyond reiterating the
necessity of the Act to maintain the security of India. At the national level,
discussions of the Act are far more complex and multidimensional. The question of
how such an extraordinary law can exist for five decades in the world’s largest
democracy demands analysis of the ways the Northeast is constructed at the national
level and the ways the AFSPA has built upon these constructions and also
reproduces them, reinforcing the state of exception. At the local level the AFSPA is
part of everyday life. While generalising about the local context in the Northeast is
difficult, in much of the region the AFSPA generates a constant fear that seeps into
social relations on even the most basic level; visiting a relative, being introduced to a
stranger, visiting the market, travelling to college, or joining an association. Finally,
each of the four papers featured in the special issue will be introduced.

The article is an attempt to study the history of the Tedim Road, a 265 km transborder road connecting Imphal (the capital of Manipur in India) with Tedim in the Chin Hills (Chin State) in western Burma (Myanmar). It was constructed by the British solely for the purpose of facilitating military movements along the India–Burma frontier during the Second World War. Although it is yet to receive adequate scholarly attention, the historical significance of the Tedim Road as part of the larger Allied plan for the reconquest of Burma after it was lost to the Japanese in the early 1940s cannot be overlooked. The article attempts to analyse encounters between the Allied and the Japanese on this road. It argues that the historical events that occurred on the Tedim Road and the participation of the indigenous tribes of the India–Burma frontier in the war made a significant contribution to ensuring the withdrawal of the Japanese from the Indian frontier.

The law of universal gravitation came about, as the legend goes, from experiencing (or 'observing', as a variation on the theme) an apple fall. This was 1666 and the famous question that arose in the mind of one of the premier scientific minds of all times was: Why did the apple fall down (and not rise up)? From this initial puzzle, started much of the scientific ideas about the earth and the moon. In fact, we can take this to be the necessary condition for any scientific enquiry, namely, curiosity. Compare this questioning spirit with another question that was posed about 300 years later: Why does the word " can " appear at the beginning of the following sentence when it is clearly associated with the verb " swim " ?
(1) Can the eagles that fly swim?

If education is crucial for any civilization, will the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) improve India's education system in the future? Education in Northeast India (NEI) is unalike from India's rest due to several reasons such as geographical distinction, cultural diversity, religious pluralism, socio-cultural heterogeneity, and linguistic varieties. NEI is a mini world within the world. The multiplicity of life and nature in NEI is a boon for the world to cherish and learn. However, the region has become the most neglected area in the country. This trait has alienated the region's population from the rest of India; it also created a socio-cultural gap. In this given context, can the NEP 2020 improve the education of the people? The vision of NEP 2020, instead of uplifting the NEI from educational slumber, could create more hurdles if the socio-cultural milieu of the people is not taken into consideration. Therefore, an attempt to contextualize the existing education system in NEI and interrelate with NEP 2020 is vital in this paper.

This  article tries to depict spiritual intelligence is a process of analyzing , interpreting and trying to solve any deeply rooted conflictual situation with the help of one’s inner thinking with interacting to outer layer of the people. Here the author tries to give advice for any conflictual situation and how to cope with if you are very young or Zero power people. The observer gave the example of any conflictual situation and she divides the working atmosphere into power people (PP), Higher power people(HPP), less power people(LPP), zero power people(ZPP). She used Zero power people as a mechanism used by the power people. She again depicts that Zero power people never identify as a part of the other power people. She designated zero power people as a neutral position. But other power people may or may not get knowledge about zero power people who belonged to neutral position. In each power people or less power people also there may exist cluster groups. Sometimes the observer mentions that there exists bi-polar cluster groups for each groups. But here the investigator isolates one as a neutral person and he/she is kept under the effects of power people’s conflictual situation. In such cases the observer narrates such neutral person’s way of coping and can use as a generalized method for any similar situation.
Keywords:
Higher power people (HPP):  person who are power in the administration side;
Power people(PP): person who are more experienced in the teaching side and sometimes involve the administration side for a short term;
Less power people (LPP):  person who are only involve in teaching side but not mature experience;
Zero power people (ZPP): No experience at the initial stage.

This book explores the form and character of political and social life in Nagaland. Firmly grounded in the historical experiences and ethnographic specifics of Naga society, its eleven essays variously discuss the origins, evolution and convolutions of the Naga Movement for self-determination, the ways Naga villagers apply their agency and imagination to appropriate and rework India’s democracy process to their own uses and lifeworlds, kinship networks and the social formation of tribes, and the politics of place and identity. This book will be of interest both to students of contemporary Naga society and to those interested in Highland Asia, political anthropology, kinship and tribes, insurgency, and conceptual politics and sociology more widely.

The proscription of Bollywood in 2000 by the Revolutionary People‘s Front1 in the Northeast Indian state of Manipur has had remarkable effects on the local film industry. The industry has grown tremendously by mobilising audience, increasing demand and developing talent. However, the audiences‟ perception of Manipuri films has altered since then and the ban is often a subject of social ridicule. Observing responses offered by a sample of 50 individuals about their film consumption and using ideological frameworks such as cinema and nation-building, transnationalism, hybridity, „can the subaltern speak?‟ and the nation as an „imagined community‟ to understand them, this paper aims to uncover the void in the objectives of the ban, its impact and consequences, and public opinion about larger disputes surrounding neocolonisation and indianisation of indigenous identity.

"Section 1: Politics
1. T. Lunkim - Traditional System of Kuki Administration
2. P. Hangsing - Understanding the Politics of the Stateless Kukis: Was it by Choice?
3. Tongthang Touthang – The State of Kuki People in the Hills of Assam
4. Seikhogin Haokip – Genesis of Kuki Autonomy Movement in Northeast India
5. Seilen Haokip - What Price, Twenty Years of Peace in Mizoram (1986-2006): A Kuki Perspective
6. Nehkholun Kipgen - Why not Kukiland for Kukis
7. Letminlun Khongsai - A Study of the Birth of Kuki Students’ Organisation in Manipur
8. P. Gangte - Kuki Nation towards Political Unity and Consolidation
9. R. Sanga - Impact of Electoral Politics on Traditional Institutions
10. Peter Haokip – I Have a Dream: My Vision of a New Kuki Society

Section 2: Culture
11. Paokhohao Haokp - Reinculcating Traditional Values of the Kukis with Special Reference to Lom and Som
12. Nemminthang Lhouvum - Traditional Thadou-Kuki Religious Beliefs and Practices
13. Lalgin Chongloi - Impact of Christianity on the Thadou-Kuki Marriage
14. Hemkhochon Chongloi - Integrating Christian Faith and Kuki Khankho towards Cultural Renewal"

This article reviews the various essays on the Kuki-Naga conflict of the 1990s. More than a dozen essays have been written on the conflict by scholars from both the ethnic groups in conflict and also by other concerned persons from different perspectives. Recently two doctoral theses were published as books. The conflict which was mainly fought on land and identity resulted in uprooting hundreds of villages, with the loss of more than a thousand lives, destruction of valuable properties and internal displacement. The British colonial policy of governance in the Northeast frontier of India and the rise of ethnic nationalism among both the Kukis and Nagas in the post-independence period were the roots of the Kuki-Naga conflict.

Perhaps nowhere in India is contemporary politics and visions of 'the political' as diverse, animated, uncontainable, and poorly understood as in Northeast India. Vernacular Politics in Northeast India offers penetrating accounts into what guides and animates Northeast India's spirited political sphere, including the categories and values through which its peoples conceive of their 'political' lives. Fourteen essays by anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and geographers think their way afresh into the region's political life and sense. Collectively they show how different communities, instead of adjusting themselves to modern democratic ideals, adjust democracy to themselves, how ethnicity has become a politically pregnant expression of local identities, and how forms and politics of indigeneity assume a life of its own as it is taken on, articulated, reworked, and fought over by peoples.

Perhaps nowhere in India is contemporary politics and visions of 'the political' as diverse, animated, uncontainable, and poorly understood as in Northeast India. Vernacular Politics in Northeast India offers penetrating accounts into what guides and animates Northeast India's spirited political sphere, including the categories and values through which its peoples conceive of their 'political' lives. Fourteen essays and an Afterword by anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and geographers think their way afresh into the region's political life and sense. Collectively they show how different communities, instead of adjusting themselves to modern democratic ideals, adjust democracy to themselves, how ethnicity has become a politically pregnant expression of local identities, and how indigeneity assume a life of its own as it is taken on, articulated, reworked, and fought over by peoples.

In this article, I examine the relationship between state, ethnicity, territoriality and neoliberal capitalism in the tribal areas of highland Northeast India, where I focus in particular on the socioecological and socio-political corollaries of its rediscovery as a resource and capitalist frontier. In so doing, I apply (capitalist) ‘desire’ and (ethnic) ‘closure’ as key analytics to capture the contentiously unfolding history of the region’s present. This article shows how new resource and capital flows lead both to the production of capitalist ‘desires’ and socioecological destruction through the privatization, acquisition and depletion, mostly by ethnic tribal elites, of communal assets now embedded in newly capitalist relations, and to the intensification of a politics of exclusive ethnoterritorial belonging and rights. The latter comes in the form of volatile social processes of ethnic ‘closure’; an increasing preoccupation, that is, on part of tribal ethnic communities with the protecting, patrolling and legislating of ethno-territorial rights. The upshot of this is a dialectic between new neoliberal connectivities and ethnic ‘closure’, one that ensues in a frame of the specifics of governance and law in highland Northeast India.

The conflict about the proposed Manipur (Hill Areas) Autonomous District Councils Bill in Manipur is a manifestation of the deep divide between the hills and the valley, and the exercise of political hegemony over the hill areas of the state. Beyond the melee, a close examination of the bill reveals the patriarchal and non-inclusive proposal made by legislatures from the hills.

Perhaps nowhere in India is contemporary politics and visions of 'the political' as diverse, animated, uncontainable, and poorly understood as in Northeast India. Vernacular Politics in Northeast India offers penetrating accounts into what guides and animates Northeast India's spirited political sphere, including the categories and values through which its peoples conceive of their 'political' lives. Fourteen essays and an Afterword by anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and geographers think their way afresh into the region's political life and sense. Collectively they show how different communities, instead of adjusting themselves to modern democratic ideals, adjust democracy to themselves, how ethnicity has become a politically pregnant expression of local identities, and how indigeneity assume a life of its own as it is taken on, articulated, reworked, and fought over by peoples.

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 volume 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 book 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.

This essay traces the early beginnings of the Indo-Naga conflict, which erupts in the 1950s and continues into the present-day. It focuses on the period roughly between the Battle of Kohima in 1944, which ends Japanese expansionism in the east, and the enactment of Nagaland state in 1963 as an envisaged (but failed) political compromise to the demand by the Naga National Council (NNC) for complete Naga sovereignty. This essay uses hitherto scantily used tour and personal diaries, government reports, private correspondence, memoires, and recorded memories to interrogate the master-narrative of the Naga struggle that reconstructs a relatively straight and uncomplicated historical trajectory that sees the genuine awakening and NNC-led political mobilization of an upland community situated off the beaten track of both Indian civilization and colonial domination, and of Nagas’ collective resolve to take up arms to fight for a place on the table of nation-states. Alternatively, if the story is told from the vantage of the Indian state, the dominant narrative apportions blame to a ‘misguided’ Naga elite that seeks to undermine the territorial and national integrity of the Indian state. These prevailing views, attractive for their absence of complexity, however, ignore the anguished debates, interpersonal and intertribal differences, contingent histories and events, dissenting voices, political assassinations, and sharp divisions within the rank-and-file of the NNC, and whose inner dynamics and sentiments could as well have produced outcomes other than war.