डॉ. बी. आर. अम्बेडकर विश्‍वविद्यालय दिल्ली
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi
Established by The Government of NCT of Delhi

School: School of Human Studies                                                                 

Programme with title: MA Gender Studies                         

Semester to which offered: IV semester      

Course: Gendered World: Memory and Politics in Northeast India (GWNEI)

Credits: 4                                                                   

Course Code: SHS202842                                                   

Type of Course:  Elective     

Course Coordinator:  Dr Lovitoli Jimo        

Email of course coordinator: lovitoli@aud.ac.in

Pre-requisites: Any Post Graduate students/Pre-doctoral

 

Class Timings: Monday: 11:15 am & Thursday: 2 pm, Room no- 60/8 (SHS building)

 

Aim: The course will introduce students to India’s Northeast region through a gendered lens; the making of Northeast India during colonial period and, the making of Indian nation state in post-colonial context where India’s Northeast region became one of the binary ‘other’. The course intends to deconstruct the idea of one homogeneous Northeast in the popular imagination within Indian nation state. This will be done by foregrounding the contentious relationship between memory and history, culture and politics, and understanding how deeply gendered this history of homogenisation of Northeast has been. This will be done by looking at beliefs and practices, customary laws and tradition, labour and the emerging women’s movements in the region.

The aim of the course is to understand the region through a critical feminist lens to interrogate how memories, both individual and collective, become cultural artifacts put into the service of nation building or identity formation. The course thus attempts to unpack ‘Northeast’ as a ‘cultural category’ and at the same time critically engages with State policies and State making in the creation of the ‘Other’. The role of the political economy and the forces of market and developmental discourse of the post-colonial state in the construction of the region are important aspects to look at. One of the ways in which Northeast is looked at is through colonial texts and records and the language of state in post-colonial India as the region of conflict. Hence, the idea is to read the text against the grain with feminist sensitivity where people’s memory is used and evoked through different kinds of texts. Memory here is then used as a methodological and pedagogical tool rather than a conceptual category.

Objectives:

• To start a discussion and engage students on the discourse of Northeast India and the mainstream through historical, cultural, political and everyday context, and the gendered experiences making reference to colonial histories and the post- colonial Indian State discourses.
• To offer students the opportunity to engage with post-colonial scholarship from the region and on the region using feminist sensibilities and criticality and the emerging discourses around it.
• As this course is taught from a feminist perspective, it aims to discuss intersections between region, race, materiality of culture, gender, age, location, class, family and the State.

 

Section-1: Framing of India’s Northeast Region

This section will look at construction of India’s ‘Northeast region’. The complex histories and trajectories of the region through the concept of time, memory and history in history making are important aspects. Importantly, people’s memories are used both in the creation of the hegemony as well as in interrogating the state and its agencies. The intersection of race, ethnicity, culture, region and politics in identity formation is central to the discourse of the region. One of the central questions that the section will address is how the gendered history was/is missed out in the discourse of making or framing India’s Northeast region even. Hence, the challenge here as a feminist will be to use gender as an analytical category to theorise the region as political using people’s memory and history.

 

Section-2: Gendered Locations: Associated beliefs and tradition,  Customary laws and Practices

 

This section will look at memory, oral history, folklore, performance and representations to study the people and its complex cultural history and gendered identity formation, and in the process unpack the ‘cultural category.’ It will look at tradition and customs and its translation into customary practices and laws which is based on oral history and culture. The role of women within the customary practices and laws and the everyday; the trope of motherhood assigned to women through customary lens and role played by women in identity politics. Place between tradition and conflict situation, how women have to negotiate between the tradition and state power, where the private public divide is blurred through her role as home maker, the peace maker and also as a provider through fractured everyday experience and reality.

 

Section-3: Gendered Work and Labour

This section will look at the idea of work which is gendered considering the agrarian nature of the region and the centrality of women’s labour in the economy. It will look at labour history in the tea plantation during the colonial period and how it was translated in the post-colonial context in the unorganised form through customs and tradition. The division of labour, and the rights and equality enjoyed both by men and women based on age, gender, location, race, tribe etc will be interrogated along with the societal norms of governance.

 

Section-4: Politics, Resistance and Citizenship: ‘Women’s Movements’ and Participation

The last section will look at the issue of women as victims of different forms of violence played out both by the family and state. It is within this context and situation different women’s group in the region emerged with the language of peace and security. This will be interrogated through the nuanced understanding of the political economy of the region and the troubled history that led to the region becoming one of the most militarized parts of the country in the post-colonial India. Placed within customary and agency, it will critically engage with question of the voices of women in the politics of the region. The section will look at the politics played out and the resistance leading to the polarization of us and them within and outside. There is a need to engage, contextualize and theories the different agents and functionaries of patriarchies in the context of India’s Northeast Region which this course will consciously made an effort to.

 

Tentative assessment schedule and weightage

Assessment	Weightage
1	10%
2	40%
3	50%

 

Readings

• S.K. Chaube. 2012. Hill Politics in Northeast India, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2012, Introduction and Chapter-3: The fourth dimension of culture, pp. 1-10 & 49-63.
• Bodhisattva Kar. 2011. “Can the Postcolonial Begin?: Deprovincializing Assam,” in Saurabh Dube (ed.), Handbook of Modernity in South Asia: Modern Makeovers. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 43-58.
• Zote, Mona. 2005. “Heaven in Hell: A Paradox,” in India International Quarterly, Vol. 32, No.2/3, pp. 203-212.
• Sundar, Nandini. 2011. “Interning insurgent populations: The buried history of Indian democracy”, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVI, No.6, pp. 47-57.
• Baruah, Sanjib. 2020. “The Invention of Northeast India,” in In the name of the Nation: India and its Northeast. California: Stanford University Press (selected pages).
• Pachuau, L K Joy. 2014. “Framing the Margins: The politics of Representing India’s Northeast,” in Being Mizo: Identity and Belonging in Northeast India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, (selected pages).
• Kakoti, Sanjeeb. 2013. “Tree sans Roots? The story of the Khsai-Jaintia Borderlanders,” in Preeti Gill, (Ed.,), The Peripheral Centre: Voices from India’s Northeast. New Delhi: Zubaan, pp. 95- 108.
• Erik de Maaker, 2013. “Performing the Garo Nation? Garo Wangala Dancing between Faith and Folklore,” in Asian Ethnology, Volume 72, Number 2, pp. 221–239.
• Tiplut Nongbri, (1988). Gender and the Khasi Family Structure: Some Implications of the Meghalaya Succession to Self-Acquired Property Act, 1984. In Sociological Bulletin, 37 (1&2), pp. 71-82.
• Jayeeta Sharma. 2009. “Lazy Natives, Coolie Labour, and the Assam Tea Industry,” in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Nov., 2009), pp. 1287-1324. Cambridge University Press.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/40285014.
• McDuie-Ra, Duncan. 2012. “Leaving the Militarized Frontier: Migration and Tribal Masculinity in Delhi,” in Men and Masculinities, Vol.15, No. 2, pp. 112-131. http://jmm.sagepub.com
• Fernandes, Walter, Melville Pereira and Vizalenu Khatso. 2005. Tribal Customary Laws in North Eastern India, in Customary Laws in North East India: Impact on Women, Guwahati: North Eastern Social Research Centre, pp. 23-50.
• Nongbri, Tiplut. 2008. “Ethnicity and Gender: Identity Politics among the Khasi”, in Mary E. John (Ed.,), Women’s Studies in India: A Reader, New Delhi: Penguin Books, pp. 482-491.
• Shimray, U. A. (2002) Equality as Tradition: Women's Role in Naga Society, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37, No. 5, pp.
• Ao, Temsula. 2006 (2013). “The Night” in These hills called home: Stories from the war zone, New Delhi: Zubaan, pp. 44-56.
• Kikon, Dolly. 2015. Life and Dignity:  Women’s Testimonies of sexual Violence in Dimapur (Nagaland), Guwhati: North Eastern Social Research Centre, pp. 36-83.
• Deka, Meena. 2013. “Changing Patriarchy and Women’s Space in Politics”, in Women’s Agency and Social Change: Assam and Beyond, New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 123-147.
• Banerjee, Paula. 2007. “Between two armed Patriarchies: Women in Assam and Nagaland,” in Rita Manchanda, (Ed.)., Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency, New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 143-176
• Misra, Tilottoma. 2010 (2013). “Women Writing in Times of Violence”, in Preeti Gill (Ed.), The Peripheral Centre: Voices from India’s Northeast. New Delhi: Zubaan, pp. 307-334.
• Haripriya, Soibam. 2018. “From the shackles of tradition: Motherhood and Womens agitation of Manipur,” in Geographies of difference, (eds.,), Melanie Vandenhelsken et al., London: Routledge, pp. 215- 232.
• Bora, Papori (2010), “Between the Human, the Citizen and the Tribal: Reading Feminist Politics in India’s Northeast,” in International Feminist Journal of politics. Taylor and Francis, 12:3-4, pp. 341-360.

Supplementary readings

• Achumi, Ilito H (2019), Perceived Illegality of the Body: Reclaiming the Space in Nagaland, in Sociological Bulletin, pp. 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038022919848263
• Ao, Temsula. 2006 (2013). “The last Song” in These hills called home: Stories from the war zone, New Delhi: Zubaan, pp. 23-33.
• Baruah, Manjeet. 2012. “Assamese Language, Narrative and the Making of the North East Frontier of India: Beyond Regional Indian Literary Studies,” in Modern Asian. Studies, pp. 1-31.
• Basumatary, Amrapali.  We have got things to say’: Beyond the nationalizing narrative of the Bodoland movement, in Northeast India: A Reader, (ed.,), Bhagat Oinam and Dhiren A. Sadokpam, London: Routledge, pp. 361-375.
• Borooah, Romy. 2000. “Transformations in Trade and the Constitution of Gender and Rank in Northeast India,” in American Ethnologist, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 371-399.
• Bhadra, Mita. 1985. Women Workers in Tea Plantations in Indian Anthropologist. Vol. 15, No. 2 (December 1985), pp. 93-114. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41919512
• Chakma, Suhas. 2018. Outsiders in their own lands, in Preeti Gill and Samrat, (Eds.,),  Insider outsider: Belonging and unbelonging in North-East India, New Delhi: Amaryllis, pp. 221-238.
• Chakravarti, Uma. 2007. “Archiving the Nation-state in Feminist Praxis: A South Asian Perspective,” New Delhi: Centre for Women’s Development Studies. Available  at http://www.cwds.ac.in/OCPaper/uma%20occasional%20paper.pdf. (Selected sections).
• Chatterjee, Piya, 2001. A Time for Tea: Women, Labor, and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation, Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 51-83 & 168-234.
• Chopy, Kanato. G. 2021. Exotic Natives No More, in Christianity and Politics in Tribal India: Baptist Missionaries and Naga Nationalism, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Private Ltd, pp. 212- 256.
• Debbarma, R.K. 2017. Celebrating a New ‘New Year’ in Tripura: Space, Place and Identity Politics, in Northeast India: A place of relations, (eds.,), Yasmin Saikia and Amit R Baishya. Pp. 201- 222.
• Dirks, Nicholas B. 1990. History as a Sign of the Modern, in Public Culture, Vol. 2, No. 2. pp. 25-23.
• Dzuvichu, Lipokmar. 2014. Empire on their Backs: Coolies in the Eastern Borderlands of the British Raj," International Review of Social History, Vol. 59, Special Issue (2014), pp. 89-112.
• Eaton, Richard. 1997. “Comparative History as World History: Religious Conversion in Modern India”, in Journal of World History, Vol. 8, No.2, pp. 243-271.
• Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. “The Reconstruction of the Past, and The Localization of Memories” in, On collective memory, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp.
• Hazarika, Sanjoy. 2010 (2013). “In times of conflict the real victim are women” in Preeti Gill (Ed.), The Peripheral Centre: Voices from India’s Northeast, (New Delhi: Zubaan, pp. 66-79.
• Healy, Chris. 1997. From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Karlsson, B G and Kikon, Dolly. 2019. Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India, New Delgi: Cambridge University Press (Selected Section).
• Katyal, Anjum. 2012. “Manipuri Theatre’s Sabitri Devi: Embodying protest,” in Kavita Punjabi and Paromita Chakravarti’s (eds.), Women contesting Culture: Changing frames of Gender Politics in India, -Kolkata: Stree, pp. 42-57.
• Krishna, Sumi. 2005. “Gendered Price of Rice in North-Eastern India,” in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40, No. 25, pp. 2555-2562.
• Manchananda, Rita. 2007. “Where are the women in South Asian Conflict?”, in Rita Manchanda, (Ed.)., Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency, New Delhi, Sage Publications, pp. 9-41.
• Minh-Ha, Trinh T. 2003. “No Master Territories,” in Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, Ed., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, London: Rutledge, pp. 215-218.
• Pachuau, L K Joy, 2014. “Death and locality in the creation of Mizo Identity,” in Being Mizo: Identity and Belonging in Northeast India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 183-225.
• Priyanka, Dutta. 2015. Locating the Historical Past of the Women Tea Workers of North Bengal, Bangalore: The Institute for Social and economic Change.
• Scott, James. 2011. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNkkEU7EoOk
• Stoler, Ann Laura and Strassler, Karen. 2000. “Castings for the Colonial: Memory Work in 'New Order' Java,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 42, No. 1. pp. 4-48, Cambridge University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2696632
• Syiem, Esther. 2010 (2013). “Khasi Matrilineal Society: The Paradox within,” in Preeti Gill (Ed.), in The Peripheral Centre: Voices from India’s Northeast, New Delhi: Zubaan, pp.133- 143.
• Thomas, John. 2016. Evangelising the Nation: Religion and the formation of Naga Identity. New Delhi: Routledge (Selected section).
• Vitso, Adino. 2003. Customary Law and Women. The Chakhesang Nagas. New Delhi: Regency Publications (Selected Section).