Northeast Indian Literature

What can be downloaded here is the Second edition. The first edition was published in India by the Tura Book Room. Reference: van Breugel, Seino. 2009. Atongmorot balgaba golpho. Tura: Tura Book Room.
Atongmorot Balgaba Golpho is a book of texts in Atong recorded during my fieldwork in India for my PhD. The stories are written in the Roman alphabet, which I adapted to write Atong. The book contains 37 texts on a variety of topics from Atong speakers.

At a conference in Delhi, Assamese writer Sanjib reimagines the enduring fable of Tejimola, the girl who sprouted leaves. But the English-language literati don’t understand why he doesn’t write about the insurgency.

With the very first story in this unusual and unapologetic collection, Aruni Kashyap sets the tone for an intimate exploration of a terrain that is both familiar and alien. In the spirit of modern post-colonial storytellers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Daniyal Mueenuddin, his stories press the silences of the village and the nascent city to reveal their secrets. The result is a frank appraisal of our hypocrisies and desires, hopes and defeats—the stuff of the stuff we carry within us. Through tales that root up love, violence, motherhood and sex, Kashyap appears to ask: what are the stories about a place that are told, which ones are worth telling, what do we really want to say?

“I Am Inspired, Not Influenced”
Easterine Kire is one of the very strong voices from Northeast India. Many of her books explore life in Nagaland and give a picture of the socio-cultural, political, and historical background of the region. Her writing supports a peaceful future for Nagaland. Her When the River Sleeps (2014) has won the prestigious ‘The Hindu Literary Prize 2015’. In the past she has written protest poetry on the atrocities and abuse of human rights committed by both the military as well as the National fighters in her state. For the Nagas the struggle has been for freedom against an occupying power, and they did not consider it as an act of secession. Be it in Mari (2010) or Bitter Wormwood(2011), she goes on to trace the root of the problem since the time of British India, reflects on the gruesome effect of the Second World War and provides the reasons for the birth of militants. Her famous work Terrible Matriarchy (2007) highlights the predicament of Northeast women very skilfully. She wrote many influential books starting with A Naga Village Remembered (2003) to The Dancing Village (2015). She has contributed a lot for preserving and reviving the Naga oral literature and folktales. Her publishing house Barkweaver is set for that mission. She has translated 200 oral poems from Tenyidie to English. She is currently settled in Norway. Here Babli Mallick is in an interview with Easterine Kire.

Literature is a consequential medium that refl ects human phenomena through artistic mode. It helps in recalling past traumatic experiences though more oft en in a masked form. Th e memories of the bellicose confl icts are recounted by the victims long aft er the harrowing events get safely buried in history and no longer accessible to the present. People conventionally forget the source of the trauma yet they recollect it through literary betokens like poems, musical compositions, plays, novels, stories, etc. Th e literary texts play a vital role in recalling and understanding a particular confl ict through the wounded psyche which no historical or any other narratives can reach as effi caciously. Th is is one of the main reasons why literary discourses rather than historical narratives are comparatively more effi cacious in portraying confl icts. Th is manuscript highlights what literature tells us about a particular confl ict that social science literature has missed on. It additionally accentuates how literary discourses of select women writers from Northeast India proved to be more reliable representations of confl icts because they endeavor to capture the unknowable and inexpressible far more effi caciously through tropes and images. Th e manuscript is unique in the sense that it attempts to establish a periscopic understanding of identity, confl ict, and trauma within literary prisms and for this, the manuscript

The paper presents an exploration of the literary and cultural contributions of a 16th century Odia saint poet who represented the oppressed communities of his time like cowherdmen, fishermen and other castes and worked for the socio-cultural upliftment of these communities through religious and socioeconomic activities. It is said that this saint wrote one lakh books, all devoted to glorify the great incarnation of God, Lord Krishna. A propagator of neo-Vaishnavism, he contributed profusely to the medieval Odia religious literature, where he has narrated his personal experience from yoga, sadhana and ponderance over religious thoughts/experiences and his practices as a karmayogi (crusader of action) and jnanayogi (crusader of knowledge). Describing himself through his own spiritual experience and vision as a companion of the Lord through the various ages, he had created several personal myths and had adopted a large number of disciples from various communities leaving behind a tradition of guru-shishya (preceptor-disciple) in the communities which have been following him so far and a religious sect of his own creating a community of worshippers who are called brahma-gopala who are adept in religio-cultural activities, etc. This poet-saint was the contemporary of Sri Chaitanya and had other four companions in Odisha who together were the five Vaishnava saints and poets, popularly called Panchasakha, i.e., five friends.

Women in third world countries like India have very different kind of historical experiences than those in the western countries. While understanding the nature of their contested spaces, the socio-cultural factors, and internal ideologies have to be taken into account. This is addressed by the concept of postcolonial feminism which developed as a reaction against the Eurocentric tendency of the mainstream western feminist movement. The cultural effects of colonization on identity, ethnicity, language and gender form the core of postcolonial or third-world feminism.
This paper particularizes the third-world women experience by studying it in the backdrop of the state of Assam with its own sets of societal concerns and multiple ethnicities as depicted in the novel of Mitra Phukan, namely, The Collector’s Wife (2005). The nature of marginality and dispossession faced by the women amidst the political and social unrest and personal upheavals reveals the exclusive nature of their struggle. It is not merely patriarchy which they need to combat but also an array of concomitant social and personal barriers in order to locate and preserve their identity. Elements of multilingualism also surface in the novels which reflect the cultural plurality of the region. Through the episodes of insurgency, students’ protests and ethnic clashes the identity crisis of the region is brought into the light.

The life of tribal groups in the Northeast India abounds with the tradition of folklore, myth, superstition and a strong belief in the co-existence with the supernatural world. Writing in English has offered a global ground for the Northeast writers to express their rich culture, beliefs and knowledge, which in the past was limited to the community. The act of writing also serves another purpose as well, to preserve them. In the wake of mass conversion and political tension, certain beliefs and rituals of the oral past are perishing and in some parts of the region, lost. Therefore, the writers of this region are representing the fading tradition of their respective tribes prior to conversion to Christianity and the arrival of the script. This paper is an attempt to show the transition and, at the same time, to revisit and understand the important bearings of that oral past through their works.

Literature is a consequential medium that refl ects human phenomena through artistic mode. It helps in recalling past traumatic experiences though more oft en in a masked form. Th e memories of the bellicose confl icts are recounted by the victims long aft er the harrowing events get safely buried in history and no longer accessible to the present. People conventionally forget the source of the trauma yet they recollect it through literary betokens like poems, musical compositions, plays, novels, stories, etc. Th e literary texts play a vital role in recalling and understanding a particular confl ict through the wounded psyche which no historical or any other narratives can reach as effi caciously. Th is is one of the main reasons why literary discourses rather than historical narratives are comparatively more effi cacious in portraying confl icts. Th is manuscript highlights what literature tells us about a particular confl ict that social science literature has missed on. It additionally accentuates how literary discourses of select women writers from Northeast India proved to be more reliable representations of confl icts because they endeavor to capture the unknowable and inexpressible far more effi caciously through tropes and images. Th e manuscript is unique in the sense that it attempts to establish a periscopic understanding of identity, confl ict, and trauma within literary prisms and for this, the manuscript

The insistence on rejecting a meta narrative ushers in the multiple existing truths in a Postmodern novel. It puts perspectival truth or say, a viewpoint based on personal experience on the platter. A Postmodern fiction is about ‘writing fiction.’ It is self reflexive. The interplay of various narratives in such fiction itself establishes the idea of construction, which a fiction is and not aiming at representing a universal truth. The aim of this paper is to highlight this aspect of Postmodern fiction which disclaims to offer a universal reality or truth and how any reality portrayed is perspectival, which may be considered real but not encompassing, further explaining the need for multiple perspectives.  The text chosen for this purpose is Janice Pariat’s The Nine Chambered Hearts. The text has nine narrators narrating their relationship with the same girl. Though not necessarily unifying or blending, their narrations about the girl cannot be called disturbing but can be seen as contributing in understanding the character. This paper also attempts to examine the style in which this text is written, further discussing its Postmodern elements.

Northeast Indian women have a significant social role as compared to the women of the other parts of the country. Since ages evil practices like Sati, dowry and female foeticide is absent in this region and in the post-Independence, this region has seen many political and social upheavals, where women have entered the public space. But a region shaken by insurgency and decades of unrest has shown a devastating effect on the psyche of the people, especially women. The media has failed to provide a wide national coverage. Nevertheless, considerable writers in English and other regional languages have centred their works on these issues. This paper will focus on the lives, role and struggle of Northeast Indian women during the insurgency period with select texts from a few writers of the region. The paper will present a background of the status of women in Northeast Indian society and at the same time, the vulnerability posed by insurgency.

A dexterous author, a fearless journalist and a passionate Researcher, Uddipana Goswami from Assam has marked her place in the field of literature. Starting her career as a journalist with tehelka.com and India Today, she has worked in diverse fields including sociological research and teaching. Her noted works starting from We Called the River Red: Poetry from a Violent Homeland (2009), Green Tin Trunk (2014), Conflict and Reconciliation: The Politics of Ethnicity in Assam (2013) to Where We Come from, Where We Go: Tales from the Seven Sisters (2015) make her stand as writer with a distinct authority. Here Babli Mallick is in conversation with Uddipana Goswami. • Babli : Tell us what inspired you to come to the literary field?

This paper is a gendered analysis of structures and cultures of violence that characterize both public political and private domestic spaces in Northeast India, one of the most sustained conflict zones in South Asia. It links the violence at home with the political violence generated by the idea of ethnic homelands. While illustrating how domestic and political violences intersect, the paper questions the very idea of home as safe haven, or refuge from the outside world. It also parallelly raises reservations about the ethno-nationalist demand for territorial homelands as the solution to political conflicts between communities. The paper does this by juxtaposing the specters of fear and manifestations of violence in both the public and private domains as depicted in the fiction of Anglophone writer Jahnavi Barua. It analyzes Barua’s characters who are at the center of this violence to understand her depiction of home and homeland. It then relates text to context by drawing on media ...

ABSTRACT The life of tribal groups in the Northeast India abounds with the tradition of folklore, myth, superstition and a strong belief in the co-existence with the supernatural world. Writing in English has offered a global ground for the Northeast writers to express their rich culture, beliefs and knowledge, which in the past was limited to the community. The act of writing also serves another purpose as well, to preserve them. In the wake of mass conversion and political tension, certain beliefs and rituals of the oral past are perishing and in some parts of the region, lost. Therefore, the writers of this region are representing the fading tradition of their respective tribes prior to conversion to Christianity and the arrival of the script. This paper is an attempt to show the transition and, at the same time, to revisit and understand the important bearings of that oral past through their works.

This paper is a gendered analysis of structures and cultures of violence that characterize both public political and private domestic spaces in Northeast India, one of the most sustained conflict zones in South Asia. It links the violence at home with the political violence generated by the idea of ethnic homelands. While illustrating how domestic and political violences intersect, the paper questions the very idea of home as safe haven, or refuge from the outside world. It also parallelly raises reservations about the ethno-nationalist demand for territorial homelands as the solution to political conflicts between communities. The paper does this by juxtaposing the specters of fear and manifestations of violence in both the public and private domains as depicted in the fiction of Anglophone writer Jahnavi Barua. It analyzes Barua’s characters who are at the center of this violence to understand her depiction of home and homeland. It then relates text to context by drawing on media reports, policy documents, domestic violence handbooks and manuals, field reports and reports of fact-finding missions among other primary sources. The sociology of conflict literature and an attempt to illustrate the value of the witness fiction writers bear to violent conflicts underpins the analysis.

The eight states of North East namely Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim are always surrounded by the superficial promises of the Government, exploitation of natural resources ,underdevelopment and unemployment leading the birth of militants, rings of force and foul play. It is in such state of Sturm und Drang, the women appear to be the mostly affected both mentally and physically. They struggle a great deal  to overcome their subaltern state and participate equally in the same platform to make their voice heard. But sadly they are refused each time to have the equal bite of the same pie. It is when all language of protest failed, the Naga mothers (group of meira paibis) on 15th July, 2004 marched to Kangla Gate in Imphal and stripped naked in front of the Assam Rifles Headquarters to register their protest against the alleged rape and killing of Manorama Devi by army personnel, shouting to rape and murder them at the same time. As we can see it was not a very simple way of protest which makes the mothers discard their shyness or meekness to face the ruthless authority while exposing the so called custodian’s shameful activity in the name of protection. It shows the utter helplessness, desperation and disappointment in the era of women empowerment when they are even deprived of their freedom to live. This language of protest was vibrated through the minds of every wife, sister or daughters who not only protested against the ill treatment to their fellows but also the torture inflicted on their motherland and themselves. This critical study of the women of North East at the time of violence, peace process or the politics of power will illuminate their role in contributing to the building of a new nation by deconstructing the all powerful nuances of patriarchal authority.

A quest is a metaphorical or a literal journey undertaken by a person or a group ofpeople in pursuit of something. It is defined by Oxford Dictionayy as "a long or arduous search for something.
Quests have been the subject of literature throughout ages. It gained popularity in the romances of the
Middle Ages, especially through the stories encircling Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, to name afew. Quest stories have been an integralpart ofthefolklores of many cultures as reflected in the works ofthe Nigerian writer, Amos Tutola, who integrated the elements and tales of Yorubafolklore in his fiction. His most famous work, The Palm Wine Drinkard is a quest story, where the protagonist has fantastic adventures in search of his dead tapster . Quests may also result in a failure but the importance is placed on the experiences and self-knowledge which shapes the quester/s. The present research paper attempts to study fostering a quest hero in Easterine Kire 's When the River Sleeps.

In and around Nagaland University, in northeast India, there are people who comment wryly on the importance of the Naga peoples in nurturing European anthropology in the early twentieth century, while they themselves are only now able to set up their own department in the subject. 1 They point to colonial government offi cials, missionaries, scholars and other travellers who wrote extensive ethnographies, with one, Hutton, becoming professor of social anthropology at Cambridge University, another, von-Fürer-Haimendorf, establishing the subject at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and others known for their publications and association with academic institutions, including Elwin, Mills, Balfour and Kauffmann. Political unrest and Indian Government restrictions on movement in the region thereafter reduced the possibilities for research, and a long lull ensued with few scholars able to enter the area, although some research theses in Britain were based on secondary sources (Needham

As the deferral nature of history denies one monolithic objective truth, it is through “cultural memory” that one weaves together various fragments of a singular moment called “past”, which is again reinterpreted and represented through various mediums. Contemporary Naga literature in English traces the trajectory of Naga history, both of the colonial and the postcolonial period, in association with the Naga knowledge system and lived-through experiences of the ordinary indigenous people. Easterine Kire’s novels Mari (2010) and A Respectable Woman (2019) are such accounts where the historical event of the Battle of Kohima (1944) is reconstructed through the memories of the people surviving through the war. This essay would call these novels “memory novels”, which strategically localize the cultural past for Naga posterity and resist the nation’s stereotypical contesting memories.