Orchid 2018

COVER COVER PHOTO: PHOTO: An An old old Tangkhul Tangkhul man man feeding feeding chickens chickens in at his his backyard, backyard, wearing wearing aa traditional traditional shawl shawl called called haora.

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By Jim Jim W. W. Kasom Kasom @jimkasom @jimkasom

ORCHID isis published published annually annually

for for the the staff staff and and students students of of St. St. Stephen’s Stephen’s College College under under the the North-East North-East Society Society of of the the college. college.

Editor-in-chief Jessica Jakoinao

Assistant Editor Bethamehi Joy Syiem

Editorial Team Aakriti Jaswant Repatemsu Jamir Vivienne Hrilrokim Diptarka Datta Anmol Tudu Robert L Hangzo Marvin Khailalven Simran Singh Olana Peters

Design Head Lisathung Patton

Design team:

Abhishek Chakraborty Mongamrong Tontang Tongtang

For submissions, contact:

nesocjournal.ststephens@gmail. com

Editor’s Word T

he St. Stephen’s North-East Society launched its first edition in April, 2016. The Society itself had just come into being in the last month of the odd semester of 2015. Working as the junior-most editor under the then editor-in-chief and Literary Head, S. Lina Poumai, I saw the dedication, time and effort that she and our seniors had put into making our Society an official one. Without losing any time, the newly created post of ‘Literary Head’ brought out a journal of about thirty three pages.

The experience of working with an editorial team and reading the entries while at the same time writing for the journal was such a pleasure that I decided to make this department of the Society my third home after coming to Delhi. The next year, I had the chance to work even more closely with the journal under the guidance and friendship of Ishwari Deka for its second edition. Strangely enough, the second edition had the same number of pages as the first. There have been no set themes and rules for the design or the budget which invariably decides the number of pages our department can afford.

Putting together a team of technologically skilled students and an editorial team; budgeting; traveling and scouting for the best articles, stories and printing deals while juggling academics and other Society obligations can be taxing but in the end is worth all the energy spent. A Society gives us that special space to learn, improve and grow together, building valuable interpersonal and intercultural relationships along the way.

It may be too early to comment but each edition, given the complete freedom of creativity and expression that it provides, reflects the psychological and emotional growth of our Society that can be seen in the articles, poetry and its other contents.

Two years back, we focused on the historical back grounding of the North-East, featuring research papers by the students of our College. The next year saw talks and lectures hosted by our Society which generated journalistic pieces and reports with guest entries from students of the neighbouring colleges. This edition picks up on it in continuation but has also consciously chosen to focus on the growing trends and popular culture of the youth in the North-East and outside.

On behalf of the Society, I would like to extend our gratitude to the Principal, our staff advisor, The St. Stephen’s Alumni: Mizoram Chapter, Mr. Jha of Brahmaputra Carbon Limited, and our families and friends for their constant support and encouragement. We would also like to thank the Music Society, Poetry Society, and Gender Studies Cell of the college for reaching out and collaborating with us for events both ours and theirs, making it a joint effort. Lastly and most importantly, I would like to thank the contributors, editors, and executive council members, who have made the publication of the journal possible.

Jessica Jakoinao

Contents

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An Interview with NAJ Photo by: Aviu kevin yhomes

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The Good Girl Show

Photo by: Team Dopamine

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North-East in Pictures

7 11 Blood Khasi Hills and the Partition 13 ofThe1947: A Subaltern Perspective 16 An Evening with Irom Sharmila An interview with a cosplayer 19 (Chentisangla Longkumer) Yhome Talks to Us About Her 20 Thej Manga Carnaby Black

The Dilemma of Linguistic Standardization-A Colonial Hangover

28 Photo by: Mansan Kharumnuid

1 Word from the President Literature in Perspective: A Conversation with Three Writers 2 North-Eastern

Conflict in the North-East: Human Stories behind Political Headlines

31 A Talk by Dr. Rakhee Bhattacharjee This Academic Year’s 33 Flashback: NESoc Events 37 Talk of Politics

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noted German intellectual, Hans-Georg Gadamer, wrote: “History does not belong to us; but we belong to it”. India has been bequeathed a profuse and variegated set of peoples who have traversed dissimilar historical paths, which converged only with the advent of colonial power. This divergence of historical experiences engenders differences - subtle or stark- among these peoples, be it in terms of culture, religion, or political set-up. The multicultural fact of our country cannot be gainsaid. While the idea of multiple cultures and lifestyles ‘flourishing’ alongside one another may be aesthetically appealing, that sentiment all too often fails to translate itself into the political realm: discomfort with dissimilitude in all its forms has been increasingly discernible in recent political discourses in our country - the resurgence of ‘nationalism’ and the assault on the legitimacy of ‘personal laws’ are immediate instances.

If diversity is a problem for India, then the country’s North-East poses one of its biggest challenges for the reason that its constituent cultural-traditions occupy the far-end of the divergence spectrum. This is manifestly demonstrated in the militant movements that have been long rampant in the region, in the allegations of racial discrimination by those ‘North-Easterners’ who reside in other parts of the country, or in the epistemic deficiencies that characterize the ‘mainland’ populace with regard to the North-East.

‘The St Stephen’s North-East Society’, so christened by the former Principal, Valson Thampu, was established precisely to tackle these issues. To that end we organize, among others, lectures, panel discussions, lunches, cultural fests, reading groups, and publish an annual journal, Orchid. Despite being just over two years old, the society has already set milestoneslike this journal, which is seeing its third issue- and has earned repute for its sterling work. Inclusiveness being one of our core values, we make extra efforts to facilitate and encourage the participation of people from regions besides the North-East. In this regard, our annual fest, Unicolour, is seeing a welcome increase in participation from people of, as it were, all stripes.

From The President Reuben Paulianding Naulak

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Ours is no easy task. An eminent political scientist, Samuel P. Huntington, warned in his celebrated essay, ‘’The Clash of Civilizations’’, that “cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political ones and economic ones’’.

Cultural difference is arguably at the root of the disconnection between the North-East and the other regions. Political differences, though consequential at some level, are negligible in the long run: state governments, being political chameleons, will easily acquire a saffron hue and shed it as rapidly, but that does little to address the cultural and social tensions that lie beyond the preserve of state processes. The solution is not straightforward, and perhaps not forthcoming. But it will not do to forcibly obliterate these differences, regardless of the slogans under which such attempts are made. And all too often, the North-East has been fashioned into a Potemkin village. The fact is that it is not scenic landscapes, rolling hills, exotic flora and fauna, meek and peace-loving communities all the way; the picture that is oft-times left out is one of underdevelopment, corruption, communal discord, and political marginality.

While clear-cut proposals are hard to make and harder still to implement, it does not mean measures that will serve to ameliorate these issues are nonexistent. Our Society, recognizing this, engages in the aforementioned activities to do its bit. Besides crying foul at the negligence of ‘mainland’ peoples towards the region, the people therein must also rise to the occasion and play their part. In times like these when the idea of ‘India’ is vehemently contested, the North-East cannot afford to fiddle. The American writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a momentous speech, remarked that “Each age must write its own books”. So too, one may suggest, each people must write and voice its own story. It is this task that we have taken upon ourselves. And these efforts, it is hoped, will not be lost on the country.

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North-East Literature in Perspective: A Conversation with Three Writers Orchid

On 30thOctober 2017, The St Stephen’s North-East Society organised an informal discussion on North-Eastern Literature. Janice Pariat, poet and author; Nitoo Das, poet, academic and photographer; Rakhee Kalita Moral, academic and former fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum; and Shelmi Sankhil, assistant professor at School of Letters, Ambedkar University, Delhi, arrived at 3 pm in the staff room of our college with an eager audience of students waiting to meet the authors. The discussion was moderated by Shelmi Sankhil. He opened the discussion by allowing the speakers to introduce themselves. He posed some questions to each of them and later opened the floor to the audience, or “aspiring writers and academicians” as he addressed them, for them to join in and interact with the writers to ask them about their breaks as well as their struggles. The discussion was such an engaging one that we shall share excerpts of the conversation with the help of a close transcription provided by Vivienne Hrilrokim, 2nd Year B.A History (Hons.), and Diptarka Datta, 1st Year B.A History (Hons.), to recreate that very ambience of that afternoon.

Shelmi Sankhil: My first question is to Nitoo. Your first collection of poetry (Boki) came out in 2008. This book was written while you were here in Delhi, isn’t it? Knowing that you are from Assam and you studied here in Delhi, tell us about the influence and inspiration behind it.

Nitoo Das: I came to Delhi for my higher studies in 1994 in JNU and decided to stay on here. To be really honest, my first book just happened. I was not planning on a book. I had been writing all my life but at one point I stopped writing due to some reasons. It was during my study leave, when I was doing my PhD that I got involved with multiple writing groups online.

After I completed my PhD, I started working on this research paper, “Poetry as Hypertext” (: A Study of MSN Communities). During that time, I started my own blog as a part of my research and I started writing regularly. I made a lot of online connections and one of them was Steven Schroeder, an academic, translator, poet and visual artist based in Chicago who had also taught in China. He also runs a very interesting collective (Virtual Artists Collective) that deals with music, poetry and the visual arts. He asked me whether I would like to publish with them. I was apprehensive at first but I thought it would be a nice new experience and I decided to give it a try. Also at the time I was dealing with some personal health issues and thought that one is mortal and ought to publish before one dies. It sounds funny now.

Shelmi Sankhil: Did you have to go through a revision? Since, publishers tend to have their own views.

Nitoo Das: Yes of Course. He asked me to send some poems that I wrote and thought were publication worthy. He has a collective so there’s a collective of editors. All of them read my manuscript. Some of them had suggestions. That’s the way it works. Even for my second book (Cyborg Proverbs, 2017), Poetrywala had an editorial team and all of them read the poems that I had submitted and they had suggestions and I made some changes, made some omissions. They’d picked on all the poems that I was unsure of. And I think that’s what good editors are supposed to do. An editing process is actually wonderful for a writer. I’m sure Janice will agree. If you have a good editor, it’s the best thing you can ask for.

Shelmi Sankhil: I would like to go to Janice now. Your first book (Boats on Land, 2012) had a huge impact. What was it like writing the book? For me reading the book took me back to the 90s. There was a sense of nostalgia as well. Was capturing that time one of the purposes behind writing it?

Janice Pariat: I grew up in the 90s. God, it sounds so far away! I grew up in Shillong and pockets of Assam and that is where all the stories are set. The stories of Boats on Land are rooted very much in these places. My father was working for a tea company and we were moving from here to there. We were travelling a lot from tea estate to tea estate; we were very peripatetic. Also the 90s was a time when there were a lot of changes occurring for me, personally as well as in the outside world. It was a time of great transformation as well. Towards the late 80s through the 90s, there was trouble in Shillong and in Assam…so all of that, in a way, feeds into the stories.

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Shelmi Sankhil: What was the reception and response of the publishing industry?

Janice Pariat: To Boats on Land, I think it was unusual because up until then people had always told me that short stories do not sell or that nobody publishes short stories. And here I was with a manuscript of short stories going from publisher to publisher saying, “You know, this is it. This is all I have.” And I was kind of surprised because publishers did pick it up and seemed very enthusiastic about it.

Shelmi Sankhil: So it wasn’t rejected the first time?

Janice Pariat: No...it wasn’t.

Shelmi Sankhil: You’re lucky then. We hear and read that great writers get rejected. Even Harry Potter got rejected. How many times was it?

Janice Pariat: Yes, twelve times. I wish I had that kind of story; it would have been much more romantic. But I think also, that sometimes it’s all about the timing. It was a time when the North-East was becoming very trendy. It was suddenly a place where there was great music, people just dressed differently, they were watching different things, reading different things, listening to different kinds of music and there was attention growing for an ‘interesting new literature’ coming out of there. It’s not as though people in this region only started writing in the 2000s, people have been writing since a very long time. But it depends on what the mainland sees as pertinent at a particular point. So, you know, it was about being trendy as well.

Shelmi Sankhil: Rakhee, from working on T.S Eliot you moved to a very different terrain all together. Tell us about your journey, your move from, let’s say, working on modernism to conflict issues, what’s the connection there?

What’s your story?

Rakhee Moral: It is not going to be as exciting as Nitoo or Janice’s story. I wish I was as creative as them. Well, Nitoo happens to be my ex-student. I taught her at Cotton College. So you can imagine while you were all talking about the 90s, I’m a child of the 70s. But I feel so honoured, privileged and happy to be with a young set of writers who have really done us proud. So, I’ll begin by acknowledging that and then come to my little more dry and boring world.

I kind of got trapped in the love of literature which unfortunately did not translate into me becoming very creative with literature. But, it set me on a different path and I taught for a number of years at Cotton College where I had really very bright sets of students year after year. I think, as Janice said and as Nitoo has also agreed, we all went through a certain period of transition and transformation back home in Northeast India. And while I was very busy looking into the literature that came out during those times in order to churn out an essay or to write a critical paper, I used to look at the literature coming out of the field as it were; people who were directly in conflict.

In Assam, from where I come, you actually had a prolific amount of writing in Assamese on the conflict and troubled years.

It was very exciting to see what kind of writing came out from these young people who were mostly always rebels or known as one. They were not your turned out chiseled writers who wrote in comfort. They wrote under tremendous pressure, perhaps even from prison camps or jungles. While I was looking at the literature, I realized that most of these writings came not from women but invariably from young men. And they all became heroes, believe it or not; becoming bestsellers overnight.

So I thought, where are the women? That was when I started my project as late as the mid-90s when the heydays of conflict were actually over. I decided to look for the women and I found this project and started looking at the lives of women inside the camps. This is how I moved away from teaching literature and poetry, and Elliot. And I shifted to academic writing. I became part of a very exciting, very troubling and transforming landscape in Assam and elsewhere and that brought me to Delhi as well for the Nehru Fellowship (NMML) which was a post-doctoral project on women in conflict.

Shelmi Sankhil: It is interesting that you brought up the subject of women writers. There is an absence or lack of women writers in Assamese literature. I think the same goes for Manipuri literature. Apart from Assamese or Manipuri literature, if you look at the emerging Naga and Mizo writers in English, you find out that majority of the authors are women; there are male writers in Mizoram but they all write in Mizo. There is this asymmetry where in the case of Manipuri and Assamese writers, there is a dearth of women writers while in other communities women are spearheading creative writing.

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Shelmi Sankhil: There is one thing that I’d like to bring up. A few months ago I was part of a meeting and I had a conversation with a senior sociologist. He was also from the North-East. And he raised the question, “What do you really teach in literature? What do you really teach about history or politics?” I did try to explain to him how we worked but he remained unconvinced that we had anything really important to say or things that mattered. He was wrong in generalizing our discipline and literature that way but the main question here is what can a literary scholar tell about people and their history as a historian or a sociologist would do? Can we use literary writings for empirical work?

Rakhee Moral: I am glad that you brought this up. A while ago we were talking about this. I remember you (Shelmi Sankhil) talked about your work at Ambedkar (University) and how history can be sourced from below, from the ordinary people. And Janice too was talking about important bodies of work from everywhere, from ordinary people who’ve witnessed troubled times. In continuation of what I spoke of earlier, I would like to reiterate that those were the times (80s and 90s) when terrible things were happening all over the North-East. So the question is, what does a writer look for in the writing? It is not just the beautifully crafted words or the language and good feeling it induces on reading while couched somewhere comfortably but how organically you may be witnessing your own time. As you write, you bring back those memories. When you write, you are retelling or writing the times. If Nitoo, for example writes something with a feminist consciousness, she also witnesses from her gender, her place and relationship with society. So it organically pours into her poetry. And to answer your (Shelmi Sankil) sociologist’s presumptuous question: you have to only open a literary work, any of the good literary works of a period to understand the people, and what happened to a society. For instance, when I first started my work in Assam I was looking not only at academic work and official records but was studiously culling this set of work that included essays, poetry, rebel pieces of writing, smatterings of anthologies of new poets who were writing about the times, novels and novellas that were written in their language as well as in English. And I strongly feel that literature is a very powerful source of alternative history. You learn so much about history from literature as it feeds every moment of the time-scape that you wish to put into the historical annals.

And if you are not consciously writing about the time, specific dates or chronological order, you might be using a circular manner, a sort of a-chronological time mode. You are essentially retelling history and the stories of your times. What has happened with many contemporary young writers is that they have so many models, role models in fact. You know, like Amitav Ghosh. If we were to look at his work, he completely makes seamless, the disciplines between history and autobiography and chronicles of people and fiction that are crafted so beautifully. For instance if you wanted to read about the Opium wars you might pick up the Ibis Trilogy and you might read not just a story of young people sailing on a boat between lands and nations but actually read some very important piece of history. A good scholar would very typically use these literary works in order to filter history into their understanding. So I would absolutely and violently disagree with your sociologist.

Shelmi Sankhil: Janice and Nitoo, would you like to comment on that?

Nitoo Das: Absolutely. I agree with Rakhee. We have to look at long dominant modes of narrative-ising ourselves, our histories, our cultures. We need to look at what’s being written from the margins and go beyond the written. We need to look at orality, the way words travel through folklores, rumours, word of mouth and the way speech-acts create a history of their own. Not a canonical kind of history but a marginal, non-dominant mode of history.

Janice Pariat: Just to extend on the whole idea of orality, the stories in Boats on Land are born from the spoken. Because I am from Meghalaya where the Khasi community had a largely oral culture till about the 1850s, these stories are sourced from the intangible.

They’ve been sourced from wedding gatherings and funeral gatherings, and conversations with friends and acquaintances at the tea shops and around the city, especially for the stories of the troubled times. There weren’t many written testimonies anyway within Khasi culture apart from theological works. I had to be a really good listener in order to be a writer. I had to gain peoples’ trust especially because these stories were really sensitive stories. And with the folk tales it is interesting how these various ‘realities’ still kind of co-mingle in large parts of the North-East. I wanted to put forward this idea that the reality of the folktales exists quite easily and candidly with sort of the more factual, more ordinary, more rational sort of realities. Sometimes the real can be as fantastical as the water fairies taking you away to the jungle. That story is as fantastical to me as the Bihari man being burnt in the market because he is an outsider. It was really important for me to put these pieces, these realities together to say that the real is as fantastic as the folk. They co-mingled; it was a mix of realities that I grew up with in the 90s.

Rakhee Moral: I would like to chip in a bit on what Janice said. If we are looking for examples happening now as to how history is being re-written. In Mizoram, when a lot of Mizo tribes, clans and villages were regrouped during the conflict years and immediately after, a lot of people lost their homes, heritages and cattle and were scattered. There is a project now on understanding those troubled years. I was talking to the Department of English in the Mizoram University that was doing this work on recovering the voices of those times. It’s not about the written but about ballads and the songs that they sang. It is about the little tales that they told their children and they cried because they remembered those lost years. It is about depicting stories that people told and the rumours. And sometimes rumours became more real than the truth. For instance, in the time of the ULFA in Assam, rumours sometime became reality. A whole lot of events turned on those rumours. That Project is about recovering the voices from those years. They went from village to village and noted the stories that the young and old shared. I think it is a wonderful example.

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Shelmi Sankhil: It is. We need to start somewhere even when we do not have a written culture. Therefore, philology or study of words is very important here where you try to understand the meaning of those words and through those words, you try to reconstruct history. Words and songs can be the starting point to understand points in history.

Q&A with the Audience

Student: Dr. Nitoo Das, you mentioned earlier that you have an interest in comics. The graphic novel form has now become part of literature studies and a lot of digital artists are coming out of the North-East. What do you make of that? And what kind of comics do you read?

Nitoo Das: I, myself draw; caricatures mostly. But I do not draw much nowadays. I do not really agree with the definition of a graphic novel because I think a graphic novel is primarily a comic book. It is just a marketing ploy to call it a graphic novel to imply it is superior to a comic book, as if to say it is intellectually inferior to a novel. I am personally interested in comic books that talk about history like Maus or Persepolis, for instance. In India, I find Amruta Patil’s work quite interesting, especially her first book, Kari which I found very interesting. Appupen’s work also. There is this huge underground movement, that is most of them don’t get published by mainstream publishers. There are a lot of local, underground magazines for instance, in a place like Hyderabad. You would not think it has such a wonderful comics community.

Personally speaking, I prefer brief, almost single panel drawings which are able to tell stories, almost like a poem being turned into an image. I call them “comic strip poems”. I like to turn words into visual images. I also feel it is perhaps easier to tell a visual story. I experimented with the form for four or five poems. There are more theoretical issues like how to use gutter space, the frames and create speech bubbles so that they kind of speak over into another frame, how to use sounds, onomatopoeia.

These are the theoretical and philosophical issues that concern me about the form of the comics.

Student: Dr. Rakhee Moral, how much would you say the idea of Zomia persists in the academic sphere among the sociologists, historians or anthropologists where one would think we’ve escaped noting our history in literature and hence we may not have much to say? Or that our literature lacks substance in some way?

Rakhee Moral: I have a different opinion on how the Zomia was or has been appropriated over the last decade since Scott (James C. Scott) wrote his wonderful work (The Art of Not Being Governed, 2009). My opinion on it seems to be sort of reconfirmed by the project I am currently working on how women mobilize in Nagaland (project with IIAS at Leiden University). It looks at such categories of people who have remained unchartered, not brought into mainstream analysis of whom we know very little, because most of their histories, as you say, anthropologies and sociological work is often thrust upon us, and we have a lot of ideologies and epistemologies that western academia gives us, to which we stick to and then build upon. So, the idea is to look at the Zomia as a category of people and there is a work actually going on parallel to the market economy that is unfolding in the borders of Nagaland, also being seen in, say, in a riverine island like Majuli in Assam and where you have these slightly up-lying regions which are also Zomia of a different kind. So they are trying to see how the Zomia itself is ‘un-Zomia-ising’ itself in the sense that the uplands and the people who have remained ungoverned are people who have strayed away from those grooved spaces and are now mingling with the rest of the ‘globalised world’—I don’t like this term though. That is the manner in which there is a breaking down of these barriers that if you go back to looking for a Zomia culture, literature, or vocabulary you might find it very difficult to bring it back.

And to answer your question of what do anthropologists and sociologists in contemporary times think of this Zomia community, who may like to, sort of, remain there: I do not think that it is any longer possible. We may have fetishized or privileged the term Zomia in certain parts of Nagaland and certain parts of Arunachal Pradesh. There is also a very big project on the borders around Nagaland and Myanmar, which is the ‘no man’s land’—actually the Konyak Community which spills over into Myanmar— remains unchartered. And that is the space today that has been tapped by anthropologists and sociologists who go in and work there.

I’m also involved in a project called ‘Humanities across Borders’ being sponsored by the Mellon Foundation at the International Institute for Asian Studies of Leiden. One of the projects I have undertaken is about Naga women`s mobilization in the face of challenges to their freedom, their political representations, and participation. So Zomia is a word that I think has spilled over its narrow confines and has moved on to other territories. I hope I could answer your question.

Shelmi Sankhil: When you look at the undergraduate, masters or higher syllabi, of say DU, you notice that North-East India often doesn’t find space. It’s like one chunk of area that receives a step motherly treatment. A tokenism is also practiced. And especially from the literary point of view, considering the linguistic diversity and stark heterogeneity of the region, 1-2 writers being included in a three year program reinforces a kind of view of homogeneity of the region among the readers and people.

What can we do as writers or academicians to change it? How do we make the rest of India take us seriously, or what kind of writing do we need to do to make them take note?

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Janice Pariat: I am actually thinking about what actually is considered representative of the North-East and what is not.

I’m troubled by this question.

Rakhee Moral: Actually I was quite grateful that we had Robin Ngangom in the DU syllabus along with Kamla Das, Nissim Ezekiel…and thought ‘Oh my God, Robin is here!’

Nitoo Das: For a brief while, I taught a text which had Mamang Dai’s prose. Even if it seems like tokenism, I think it comes down to how we are teaching the course or embedding certain ideas. It allowed me some space to negotiate into terrains which I or the students wouldn`t have otherwise gone into. Around the first time I taught Robin`s poetry, one of the NorthEast Societies invited Janice and the students were enthused. They were excited about reading poems and meeting a poet from the North East. It seems like tokenism but it was a good moment for me.

The speakers took in more questions concerning the inaccessibility of writings from the North-East due to the lack of translations (or good translations), the role of North-Eastern writers writing about things other than the North-East, North East Writers’ Forum and the definition of North-Eastern Literature.

All photos were taken by Sangchinhau Dousel, 2nd Year B.A. Economics (Hons.).

Sang Gangte Class of 2016, History Honours SSC Life in the 70s and 80s of Chiengkawn, Manipur, about which I’ve been aware of on multiple occasions, is something I wish I’d personally experienced. For a generation of young men and women, including my mother and father, brought up within the confines of this small town, nothing perhaps epitomized better the ‘YOLO’ nomenclature more than the aforementioned period within the annals of this old town. Heroin entered from neighbouring porous boundaries of Burma and spread like wildfire in the 70s. My father and his group of friends were the third batch of youngsters who’d succeeded the earliest group of heroin addicts. He survived three separate instances of OD during this time. Western rock glam bands had their pinnacle in the early 80s. Tape recorders were heard playing ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Don’t stop Believin’ at almost every roadside tea hotel. Amateur rock bands sprung up. Many Don Bosco going school kids took up guitar as a hobby. Rival gangs were commonplace of the early 90s. D. Phalien,Tongul Avenue and KKK Road were hotbeds of local skirmishes. Those were the days of sensible haircuts and blazers. Recklessness was at its peak. So was the moral decadence. It was the best of times, I think. It was the worst of times, I know.

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A Colonial Hangover The Dilemma of Linguistic Standardization (With reference to the Hmar language)

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he ‘St. Stephen’s North-East Society’ recently organized a Lecture Series and on the 2nd day, Dr. Sanghamitra Misra delivered a lecture on the topic ‘Ordering and Orienting Spaces: The Ecology of British Imperialism’. Towards the end of the session, there was a discussion between the students and Dr. Misra on how the British did not really set up permanent administrative and military blocks which the colonizers normally set up as bases in most of the North-East.

And the question- of whether or not the colonizers ever ‘conquered’ these lands- transpired from the discussion.

In most parts of the North-East frontier, the colonial rulers replicated what Dr. Misra calls the ‘Bhagalpur model’, first successfully implemented in Bhagalpur, a ‘hill/upland’ (in present day Bihar and erstwhile Bengal residency) which the administration first encountered.1 By late 19th century, Christian missionaries did make their presence felt in most parts of the North-East, particularly in the hill regions, while administration fetched the modern knowledge in the form of road construction, taxation, money economy, and so on.

Though the British took up direct military conquest of various kingdoms as of the Maharaja of Manipur, the hills and tribals were never really directly ruled and administered.2 Does this imply there was never a ‘conquest’ in these regions and of these people?

As Dr. Misra highlighted, this depends on how we define ‘conquest’. Is military conquest the only form of conquest? Are there other forms of conquest and of colonial rule? These are Edition 3

Khamrosang Buhril (Class of 2016, History Hons., SSC) Aashish Jindal (Class of 2016, English Hons., SSC)

some of the questions that have made us venture into the various aspects of colonial rule and have prompted us to write this article.

The Conquest

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n present day India, the Hmars constitute a community settled in various parts of Manipur, Assam and Mizoram while they are also scattered in other parts of the country. In colonial records and memory, they would fall under the category of ‘Kuki’ (also, Kookies, Cuci, Koong-ki, Lang-ra, and so on) - a general category used by the colonial ethnographers to classify the various communities of Kuki-ChinMizo group scattered in the erstwhile south-eastern Bengal, Chittagong hill tracts (including Tripura), the Lushai hills and the Chin hills.3 It is unclear as to how these tribes identified themselves politically in the pre-colonial times. However, one thing is clear: the sedentarisation policy as enforced by the colonial rulers led to the crystallization of identities based on territory.

In the pre-colonial times, sovereignty among these tribal communities was based on kinship (including those taken as ‘subjects’ by the Chief upon raiding another community). Practising jhum cultivation and regularly raiding neighboring settlements, these communities migrated frequently. Hence, the absence of sedentary cultivation led to a fluid nature of identity-formation.4 However this became a cause of concern for the British colonizers during their attempts to extend the south-east Bengal province.

To gain passage to Burma and 7

‘south –east Asia’ [the genesis of ‘Look-East’] , it was necessary to conquer and pass through the kingdoms, chiefs and communities of the Chittagong hills, the Naga hills, the Lushai hills, and also the Ahom and the Manipuri kingdoms. However, conquest did not take place by mere battles and wars. It was a much more intricate form of conquest than bloodshed. As in other parts of the sub-continent, ‘colonial knowledge’ apparatus was the backbone of the Empire.5 In spite of the colonial anxiety to formulate unanimous policies, various theories including the Aryan theory, that of the ‘dark ages’ (of medieval India), and civilizational discourse, gradually and successfully, legitimized colonial rule in most parts of the subcontinent.

Caste system and racial segregation was one useful apparatus for rule.6 In pre-colonial times, caste-system did not seem to have been as rigid as it became during the colonial period. However, the colonial rulers realized that the top-down segregation of people was a convenient tool to divide their subjects, freeze these identities and fix their spaces, literally and mentally. This ensured a seamless flow of revenue for the colonial government as it was able to identify certain castes and tribes that practise agriculture, others as agents of the government to collect revenue, some as ‘rebellious’ or ‘thugees’, and so on. However, caste-system was not applicable to the tribal communities scattered along the extension of south-east Bengal. Racial segregation and the civilization discourse were useful implements for conquest; but to

permanently and regularly extract revenue from these communities, this was not enough. Plough cultivation which ensured sedentary settlement was enforced upon these ‘jummas’.

Also, constant raids by these Kukis/ Koong-kis/ Lushais/ Lang-gas in areas where plough cultivation had already been introduced [like parts of the Chittagong hills] was another hindrance to a stable administration and revenue collection.7 Therefore, during the late 19th century various administrative apparatus like hill-valley demarcation and the inner-line policy were introduced to prevent mobility.8 However, the implementation of these policies was not as simple as it sounds.

It was carefully carried out at every level by appropriating existing institutions in these communities – Chiefs were made to acquire a sense of sovereignty based on fixed spatial territories and their people were fixed within these geo-political boundaries.9 This fixation was made possible by the creation of identities based on language among other categories.

This is not to say (spoken) Hmar or Paite or Thadou languages did not exist before. However, they were never spatialized. A Hmar speaker never identified himself/herself based on a certain fixed geographical space. And a non-Hmar speaker may as well become a Hmar speaker if s/he becomes a subject of a Hmar chief. Identities, though they might have existed, were fluid.10 Thus follows the initial confusion of colonial ethnographers in classifying these groups of tribes as observed in survey records; and eventually, simplistic classification within one category as ‘Kookies’.

‘European’ Standard for a ‘Tibeto-Burman’ Language: Hmar

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kin to the European nationalistic alignment along linguistic lines, this simplistic panoptical categorization of these fluid identities into one

single group worked well as a larger colonizing discursive tool. However, for more practical localized communicative governance, the complex linguistic fluidity posed a dilemma. Following orientalist methods of classification like those adopted by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, racial groups were divided based on language, culture and geography. Accordingly, the Chin-Kuki-Mizo groups of languages including the Hmar language were put under the general category of ‘Sino-Tibeto Burman’ group of languages. These tribal communities, among whom oral culture prevailed, developed complex phonologically determined spoken language varieties.

Thus, the linguistic evolution traced the tonal texture of the language, with much emphasis on the spoken word than the written.

During mid-19th century, Christian missionaries introduced the ‘civilizational light’ of a written script and standardized grammar in the orally sophisticated culture using European standards.11 This too invited problems as the modified version of Roman alphabets couldn’t complement the tonal nature peculiar to the ‘Sino-Tibeto Burman’ class of languages. Hence, today these tribal communities (Hmar, Paite, Thadou, Zou, Vaiphei, Gangte, Darlong, Duhlian-Lushai, etc) use a single script – the Roman alphabets.

Though modified to accommodate various tones and sounds, each according to its own variations, the standardized sketching of new alphabets and spellings was done on European linguistic slates.

Francis Buchanan, who wrote the first British colonial account in the form of a travel diary of the regional tribal communities during his journey to the Chittagong Hills in 1798 [from whose survey colonial administrators and missionaries first learnt about these tribes] included a comparative vocabulary table in his travelogue (see Table 1).12 This table is one of the earliest evidence we have that tells us 8

how the European colonizers tried to understand the tonal languages of these tribes by expressing them in the Roman script.

Colonial Hangover in Post-Colonial Hmar

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oday, we see the problems of such continued attempts of standardization (of scripts) based on the colonial understanding of these languages. Given the tonal nature of their languages, speakers could differentiate between homographs based on pronunciation, but not in the written form. This creates extreme confusion between pronunciation and transcription of a word, especially for the younger generations who are exposed both to Roman script of English language and inefficient alphabet system.

Hypothetically, for instance in Hmar, ‘ban’ of English would be written as ‘ben’ in Hmar as Hmar ‘e’ represents English sound ‘a’. One cannot guess the Hmar meaning word from its alphabetical transcription. The alphabets such as a, e, i, o, u represent different sounds in English language and in Hmar; and sounds like c, g, q, w, x, y, do not exist in Hmar sound and alphabet system. The written inclusion of the sound ‘j’ by the missionaries was also limited only for translation of biblical names like Joseph, Jacob, Joshua, etc. Even the word ‘Bible’ is spoken and written as ‘Baibul’. Since phonology gives meaning and is inadequately represented, the semantics too gets highly destabilized. For instance, ‘kha’ means ‘bitter’ (adjective) and ‘khah’ ‘that’ (pronoun); ‘Kut’ is hand and ‘Kût’ is festival. Along with the meaning, the parts of speech vary as well.

Another discrepancy the young speakers and Hmar linguists encounter is the presence of “Ṭ” but absence of “Ḥ”. The ‘tr’ sound is represented as ‘ṭ’; while ‘hr’ not as ‘ḥ’, but ‘hr’ only.

However, in the case of sub-clan noun ‘Buhril’, it should have been standardOrchid

Table 1 (‘Zou’ in this context refers to one of the tribes Buchanan encountered in the Chittagong Hills, which according to his record belongs to one of the Koong-ki tribes)

ized as ‘Buḥil’= ‘Bu’(meaning ‘rice’) +‘Ḥil’(meaning ‘to say’). However, ‘Buhril’ can now bifurcate into two options: Bu(‘Rice’)+Hril(‘to say’); and Buh(meaningless)+ril(meaning ‘deep’) which disturbs both the pronunciation and etymological meaning of the word as individual syllables can have independent meanings when separated.

Not only does it oppose ‘Ṭ’ rule, ‘Hr’ neither justifies spoken sound of ‘ḥ’, nor its semantic use. Interesting still is how the present users of the Hmar language take pride in the fact that their alphabets/ ‘script’ has the unique ‘ṭ’ which not many other written languages have; while the irony is, this so claimed ‘original’ characteristic of their written script was a ‘gift’ from the British colonizers.

Another recently standardized rule mandates to write the same parts of Edition 3

speech together and different parts separately. For instance, the noun ‘sinthawna’ (workplace) is: ‘sin’(work) + ‘thaw’(do) + suffix ‘na’. Either one writes ‘Delhi-ah sin ka thaw’(I do work in Delhi/ I work in Delhi) where sin and thaw function as separate parts of speech and are written separately; or ‘Ka sinthawna chu Delhi’ (My workplace is Delhi) where sinthawna functions as one part of speech and thus is written together. To write noun ‘sinthawna’ as ‘sin thaw na’ is ruled out, though the spoken variation is extremely minimal.

Another example, ‘fâkthei’ means ‘eatables’ when the syllables are written together. But the syllables can also be separated according to the sentence in which the two syllables assume different meanings. For example, ‘bu ka fak thei nawh’ (‘I cannot eat rice’). Here, 9

‘thei’ means ‘can’ and ‘nawh’ means ‘not’. This poses great confusion as the rules for standardization follows the English rules for grammar, wherein words belonging to different parts of speech are written separately. As a result, there is a great deal of confusion today even for the Hmar speakers themselves when it comes to writing.

Therefore, under the colonial shadow in an independent India, the Hmar alphabet system accounts for incomplete representation of Hmar sound system. Besides the problems discussed above,the picture gets complicated as generational evolution and demographic distribution of Hmar people have generated many varieties of Hmar language usage. The young Hmar speakers, exposed to English, sms/whatsapp language as well as non-standardized usage of Hmar, suffer

from confusion. Since the semantics of Hmar language is disrupted, an original standardized grammatical structure and an appropriate script needs to be discovered/invented- both to preserve the ancient oral spoken cultural heritage via a more advanced script, and to maintain the linguistic integrity between the written and spoken word, which is an essential characteristic of Hmar or any language.

Ruoivel Pangamte, Chairman of the Hmar Literature Society observes, “Hmar (spoken) language existed before Hmar grammar did”13[emphasis added]. The task that organizations like The Hmar Literature Society have right now is to rediscover and standardize the spoken mental grammar intuitively followed for centuries, while ruling out confusions and acknowledging exceptions. Then only, the present can channelize the pre-colonial past into the post-colonial future- to preserve Hmar language, rectifying colonial hangover.

(Khamrosang Buhril and Aashish Jindal both are currently pursuing the Final year of their Master’s degree in History and English Literature respectively at Delhi University.)

Notes: 1. See F.B. Bradley-Birt, ‘The Story of an Indian Upland’, London: Smith, Elder & co., 1905, Augustus Cleveland (Chapter IV)- a collector of Bhagalpur (now a district in Bihar), whom Bradley calls a ‘national hero’ of the Paharias on account of his successful administration of the area/district.

2. See, for instance, Lipokmar Dzuvichu, ‘Roads and the Raj: The politics of road building in colonial Naga Hills, 1860s–1910s’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 50, No.4 (2013): 473–494.

3. Willem van Schendel (ed), ‘Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798): His Journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Naokhali and Comilla’, The University Press Limited, Dhaka, 1992; Alexander Mackenzie, ‘The North-East Frontier of India’, New Delhi, (1884) 2007; et al.

4. Jangkhomang Guite, ‘Civilisation and its malcontents: The politics of Kuki raid in nineteenth century Northeast India’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2011 5. See Bernard S. Cohn, ‘Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India’, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1996, for “colonial knowledge”; including Forward by Nicholas B.Dirks 6. See Thomas R.Trautman, ‘Aryans and British India’; Herbert Risley, ‘People of India’; William Crooke, ‘The Native Races of the British Empire’; et al for ethnographical descriptions of races to understand “colonial anxiety on racial theories”. Also Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India’, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2001; et al for “caste…and racial segregation…as apparatus for rule”.

7. Guite, ‘Civilisation and its malcontents’, p.13; also see Willem van Schendel, “The invention of the ‘Jummas’: State Formation and Ethnicity in Southeastern Bangladesh”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1992, pp.95-128 8. H.K. Barpujari, ‘Problem of the Hill Tribes: Northeastern India, Inner Line to Macmohan Line’, pp. 70-84 9. Sanghamitra Misra, ‘The Nature of Colonial Intervention in the Naga Hills, 1840-80,’ Economic and Political Weekly, December 19, 1998; similar policies were followed throughout the hill ranges of the north-east; also see D.V. Zou and M.S. Kumar, ‘Mapping a Colonial Borderland: Objectifying the Geo-body of India’s Northeast’, Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 1 (2011): 141–70, for further understanding of ‘geo-political boundaries’ in the North-east.

10. Peter Robb, ‘The Colonial State and Constructions of Indian Identity: An Example on the Northeast Frontier in the 1880s’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31, May 1997; even though the author does not refer to the Hmar tribe directly, the work suggests a fluid nature of identity in these regions.

11. Lal Dena, ‘Ei Ṭawng Ziek Dan Hi’ (The written script of our language), inpui.com: Hmar Mizo News and Info, 2015, Stable URL: http://www.inpui.com/2015/02/ei-tawng-ziek-dan-hi.html 12. Schendel (ed), ‘Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798), p.94 13. L.Ruoivel Pangamte, ‘Hmar tawng hrietchieng le a hmathlir’ (Understanding Hmar and Its Prospects), Thuro: A quarterly literary journal of the Hmar Literature Society, Vol.XIII, No.02, Hmar Literature Society publications, Rengkai. August 2016

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Blood Bethamehi Joy Syiem 2nd Year, B.A. History (Hons.)

Tonight I look upon a full moon, red and bathed in blood I remember my native country Where were-tigers come to life In demonic trances of old medicine men.

My grandmother once told me Of foreign voices and men thirsty for blood Of a brave woman who withstood them all My great grandmother, of course.

“I remember the night I escaped From the grip of the supernatural The curse of the father of that house” She had said.

I remember the stories of wretched witches And a vindictive man cursing through her door.

She said, it was the blood that saved her Maybe that is why I bathe myself in blood too, Just as the moon does Every six months or so

I think that was what the preacher had said.

My father talked of flying saucers And old soul reapers Of bottomless pits And beautiful mirages.

My uncle said, “There are two kinds of angels.

The godly and the demonic.

You would not like the latter.

They pull men into sordid lakes Tempt them with river stones, Disguised as pieces of divine bread.”

He also said, “Those angels (or devils, I am not sure) They disguise themselves in forms of fish They fear the broom and not garlic, As you would expect.”

Photo By: Wungramkhan Horam Edition 3

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I was told by a friend That the forest in my ancestral village is sacred Someone else said it was cursed.

All I know is there have been men Who have had their bodies Turn backwards with their heads forward All for love of defying what the ancestors forbade.

I walked into the same forest That sacred grove.

I had no fear for I was marked with blood.

I met a man in there Amidst the thick of the brushwood He said he was a guide.

He showed us round stone tables Where he said, Girls like me, were sacrificed to spirits Of the earth and of the wood.

I think it was the blood That saved my life that day.

I learnt much later, He was a spirit.

No guide was known.

That man, with us With his unkempt beard and haunting yellow eyes Was never once seen before (or again) No one had known what the tables were for No one dared ask. The ancestors had some purpose there.

No one knew.

With the exception of the haunting image of that man.

He knew.

I still remember the way his eyes Seemed to penetrate through my spirit.

My friends screamed when he turned around As we neared the waterfalls His eyes seemed to burn with fire, A fire that seemed cold and dark Like no fire I had ever seen.

We ran till it rained.

And there he was At the edge of that forest Having outran us without us noticing.

Some cried, some panicked.

I prayed, Remembering the blood on my forehead.

Maybe that is why I was not sacrificed To those spirits of the earth and the wood.

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The Khasi Hills and the Partition of 1947 A Subaltern Perspective Mr. Sashi Teibor Laloo Class of 2012, B.A. History Hons.

St. Stephen’s College

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he beginnings of the Subaltern School of thought reached the shores of South East Asia, especially India around the 1980’s with the purpose of giving a voice to the voiceless and in setting up a platform for the common people in mainstream historical narratives. In the process, the Cambridge and the Nationalist historiography which had long dominated the style of history writing had been critiqued beacause of their biased and elitist approach to history. Interestingly, the Subaltern School also disagrees with the Marxist ideology as it regards that the beliefs and faiths of the common man play a crucial role in determining the activities of the people. Hence this pro-ordinary-people approach of writing history gives us a new dimension in analyzing and understanding the discourse of history whereby, substantial attempts are made at highlighting the history from ‘below’1. So far, the major drawback for this one-sided elite history may be understood in the words of Ranajit Guha who opines that, “The historiography of Indian nationalism has for a long time been dominated by elitism—colonialist elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elitism. Both originated as the ideological product of British rule in India,…”2 For instance, until the recent decades, the celebrations of independence or the role played by individuals prior and after 1947 were portrayed more than the miseries of the people, although it is the common people that are the ones mostly affected by drastic decisions and changes.

In the 1990’s, Ludden wrote, Subaltern Studies became a hot topic in academic circles on several continents; a weapon, magnet, target, lightning rod, hitching post, icon, gold mine, and fortress for scholars ranging across disciplines from history to political science, anthropology, sociology, literary criticism, and cultural studies.5

Turning the pages of time, subaltern perspectives can be traced back to its humble origin in a prison cell. An Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, one who stood in the forefront of peasant revolts against the Government post the First World War and the rise of Mussolini was eventually arrested in 1926. During his stay in prison, his ideologies began to crystallize after constant discussions among fellow inmates. The experiences brought forth the concept of ‘the subaltern’ which found place in his writings, Selections from Political Writings and Prison Notebooks, catering to the opinions, experiences and politics of the ‘people from below’. Gramsci referred to the term ‘subaltern’ mainly to address class, gender, race and culture.

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David Ludden3 traces the practical implication of subaltern studies beginning in England by the 1970s, where discussions by a group of English and Indian historians on subaltern themes gradually led to the launch of a new journal in India. Ranajit Guha, one of the pioneers in this field, edited a collection of articles and started the journal Subaltern Studies along with seven others in 1982, to “promote a systematic and informed discussion of subaltern themes in the field of South Asian studies.”4 The Subaltern Studies series published by Oxford University Press was enriched over time by contributions from Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gyan Prakash, Gyanendra Pandey, Shahid Amin, Gayatri Chakorboty Spivak and others who explored a slew of various themes.

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Coming to the topic under discussion, just as Gyanendra Pandey6 had highlighted the prominence of violence during and after the process of the Partition in 1947, this essay also seeks to narrate the story of violence and hardships faced in the Khasi Hills of modern day Meghalaya as a result of the Partition. Binayak Dutta addressing the issue states that “Assam and Sylhet cannot compete with Punjab and Bengal, which have always enjoyed considerably more attention (both scholarly and otherwise), and boast far more archival material to support study.”7 Hence, it’s important to bring into light or rather consider the northeast regions within the ambit of Partition and displacement studies.

Once again the significance of the Subaltern School of thought is in filling in the missing puzzle pieces. It is this context that I wish to bring in the Khasi Hills within the narratives of the Partition of 1947. When the Khasi-Jaintia community residing on the southern foothills bordering Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan) was partitioned, they were not prepared and were left economically shattered in 1947, due to their geographical dependence on trade and commerce with the plains for their livelihood right from pre-colonial times.8

nomination of three non tribals out of the six members to the District Council, on the 27th of June 1950. The day also marked the inauguration of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council by the Governor of Assam, Shri Jairamdas Daulatram in Dinam Hall at Jaiaw, Shillong.

The tragic events which occurred that day was vividly described in a vernacular paper Ka Step15 headlined as “Lah Pynjaw Snam ha ka 27th June 1952” (“Blood Was Shed on the 27th of June, 1952”) expressing its ire. The writing translates into:

Politics from ‘above’: Before venturing into the realities faced by the people in the Khasi Hills, one must begin with a larger background provided by those at the ‘top’. An extract from the Dawn9 in 1947, states: Mr. Bordoloi, Premiere of Assam, in a public meeting here yesterday declared that the present plan of the British government was a definite improvement on the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 16th last, and said it should be accepted and worked in the spirit in which it was offered…Referring to the great responsibilities which would devolve on the people resulting from the final transfer of power to Indian hands, Mr. Bordoloi said that there was no cause for sorrow about the division or Partition of India.

On the 27th of June 1952, bloodshed was experienced in this turmoil land, once again, there sparked the love for the land just like Tirot Sing did, in striving to break the shackles that hindered us through force and to do away with anything that bound us in slavery. Hundreds have given their lives as a sacrifice for the betterment of all. Women, children and even senior citizens were beaten and kicked by the police and there was no remorse what so ever. This is the so called free nation/government that Medhi and others talk about with pride.

David. R. Syiemlieh in his article “The Future of The Hills of North-East India 1928-1947: Some British Views” stated that Robert Neil Reid (the Governor of Assam) in his address to Welsh Mission Girls’ High School (Shillong) gathering on the 13th of November, 1941, said, “It may be no new thought, for it has been canvassed, in the press and often enough, that the destiny of the Hills and other areas in Assam will follow another course than that of being linked with those of India proper. It may be otherwise, but sooner or later the question is going to be canvassed and the decision will depend in great measure on public support”.10 However, this so called “public support” was not met in reality. Even worse, a majority of the people living on the borderlands heard of the ‘Partition’ as a rumor! Thus, it resulted, as David R. Syiemlieh puts it “their future was not decided by themselves, but by Delhi and Assam”11 which brought forth discontent and chaos in these areas.

Similar cases of violence, the hardships and internal displacements faced by the Khasi community have rarely surfaced. In connection to the lack of records and information regarding the event of the Partition of 1947 and the experiences of the hill communities in the North East region, Paul Thompson argues that history is recorded from the standpoint of authority, hence oral history gives a fair platform to the voiceless – the under classes, the underprivileged and the defeated. “In doing so, oral history has radical implication for the social message of history as a whole.”16 Sancimerely War17 , my paternal grandmother, remembers the pre-Partitioned days of the land where prosperity and community relations through trade and commerce flourished with the people of Sylhet.

However with the Partition in 1947, the border Haats were shut, their produce perished and the people were left to fend for themselves. My grandmother’s family decided to relocate to Shillong to make ends meet; her family was compelled to sell off her mother’s gold and silver ornaments worn during the special occasions and festivities. My grandmother and her mother left Wahlong, a village 11 kms from Sohra (also known as Cherrapunji, a colonial term). Her father stayed back to take care of our remaining land. A portion of our ancestral land lies on the other side of the new border (in northeastern Bangladesh) even today.

Realities from ‘below’: Gyanendra Pandey pointed out a major hole in the historiography of Partition where violence was sidelined to paint a sense of unity and brotherhood in a new independent India. Pandey also observes that “the violence recorded by the historian (as by the state) appears as part of the price necessary for transition. ‘Violence’ here attains the status of an unfortunate fall-out of the onward march of history”.12 Communalism and violence did occur in the Khasi Hills fueled by the increasing consciousness of the ‘other’ as a result of the Partition. For example, “during the riots of 1950, the Muslim businessmen of Sylhet who were conducting business at the markets in the hills and in the plains of Assam were tortured, robbed and driven back as ruined paupers to Pakistan.”13 Another example of communalism can be drawn from W. Kharkhrang’s article14 which recalled a protest staged against the Government’s

Through these instances of violence in the Khasi Hills, excerpts from newspaper reports, and a personal account of displacement, an attempt has been made to re-examine the discourse on the historiography of displacements, hardships and communal violence found addressing mostly to Punjab and Bengal, while other 14

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regions were presumed for a ‘Velvet Divorce’.18 The subaltern approach is a good alternative history of the North East region to contest the elitist approach. It complements the archival and documented sources to provide a more holistic understanding of society and events from both ‘above’ and ‘below’.

Notes and References Here ‘below’ signifies the history of the ordinary people as opposite to the history from ‘above’ which comprises of the elites and well to do who generally dominate history writing.

2 Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India”, in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies 1: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1982, p. 1.

3 David Ludden (ed.), Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested meaning and the Globalization of South Asia, Anthem Press, London, 2002, p. 1.

4 ibid., p. 100.

5 ibid., p. 1.

6 Gyanendra Pandey, “The Prose of Otherness”, in David Arnold and David Hardiman (ed.) Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2005.

7 Binayak Dutta ,, http://himalmag.com/recovering-sylhet/ , accessed on 10/12/2016, p. 2.

8 The term ‘pre-colonial’ as David Syiemlieh defines it, “while three phases of periodisation have been applied to the general histories of India, for the hill tribes of the region it has been compressed into just one concept. The material available and used is often too scanty to build up reasonable understanding of their history prior to the advent of their interaction of the British. This is clearly reflected in the histories of the Khasis.

9 Dawn dated 10/6/1947, File number: 52 – NEF/47, Miscellaneous Reports (Newspaper Cuttings) from Assam, External Affairs Department, National Archives of India.

10 David. R. Syiemlieh , “The Future of the Hills of North East India: Some British Views, in Reorganization of North East India Since 1947”, in B. Datta Ray and S. P. Agrawal (eds.), Reorganization of Northeast India since 1947, Concept Publishing House, New Delhi, 1996, p. 24.

11 ibid., p. 33.

12 Gyanendra Pandey, op.cit., p. 192.

13 S.N.H. Rizvi, East Pakistan District Gazetters: Sylhet, East Pakistan Government Press, Dacca, 1970, p. 251.

14 W.Kharkrang is the Secretary of the KHADC who wrote Down Memory Lane- (1952-2002), http://khadc. nic.in/down_memory_lane.htm.

15 Ka Step, Volume number 1, August 1952, http://khadc.nic.in/down_memory_lane.htm 16 Paul Thompson, The Voice Of The Past: Oral History, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 6-7.

17 An interview with Sancimerely War, my Paternal Grandmother (in the presence of her youngest son, Mr. Tawny War) at her residence on the 12th of December, 2016, at Pohkseh, Shillong at 4 pm. She was born in the year 1930 and was 17 years old at the time of the Partition, her narration consists of personal first hand experiences in her native village, Wahlong, in 1947.

18 ‘Velvet Divorce’ is a term given to one of the peaceful Partitions which divided Czechoslovakia in 1992, See Anita Inder Singh, The Partition of India, National Book Trust, New Delhi, 2006, p. 2.

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An Evening with Irom Sharmila Christina Malsawmkimi 2nd Year B.A. History (Hons) LH Everhring 2nd Year B.Sc. Mathematics (Hons)

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round seventy students gathered inside the staff room of our college for an interactive session with Irom Sharmila and her husband Desmond Coutinho, at 8 pm, on 17th January 2018, organized by The Informal Discussion Group of St. Stephen’s College.

The session lasted for a little over one hour during which Irom Sharmila spoke about her struggles during her fight against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA). She stressed on the vulnerability of people living under the Act in Northeast India and Kashmir. She began her fast in Malom on 5 November, after the ‘Malom Massacre’ demanding that the Indian government repeal AFSPA. Irom Sharmila spoke of how people forgot about the human side of her during her fast, and how she was perceived as a goddess. She was in fact human like any other who wanted to lead a simple life while fighting for what she believed in.

The highlight of the evening was that she spoke courageously about communalism, the violence instigated by governments, and state corruption. She later mentioned how people in Manipur have resented her due to the termination of her fast disregarding that the fight, including her own fight, against AFSPA will continue. She emphasised on the need for support of students and youth to fight against corruption. She emphasized on the need to continue fighting against AFSPA. This fight could be fought by putting up street plays and dramas, centered towards the threat imposed by the Act, in colleges and schools.

When asked what gave her the strength to fight when both her legs were tied, she responded by saying, “As long as what I feel is right, I don’t care what others say. I know God is with me, and I won’t give up. If it would be the will of God, let it be, let it happen.” It was her faith in God and herself that kept her going despite all the criticisms and oppositions.

After the session, we walked her and her partner back to Hindu College where they had been provided accommodation.

On the way, she mentioned her desire to visit the ‘heart-shaped’ lake near Mizoram and spoke about the importance of preserving wildlife and the hills.

It was moving to hear the ‘Iron Lady’ talk so passionately about the poignant times all the while being hopeful for the youth to carry on with the fight against AFSPA. This is a subtle reminder that iron is indeed malleable and Irom Sharmila, exposed to all that heat, has taken up new forms without losing herself and what she stands for.

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An Interview with

NAJ Nagaland Anime Junkies speaks to Repatemsu Jamir of 1st Year BA Economics (Hons.)

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agaland Anime Junkies, since their inception in 2011, has been growing popular in Nagaland. A group of otakus initially started it as a Facebook page and now it hosts one of the most anticipated events for thousands of youth in the state - The Annual Cosfest. It has garnered fans and participants from other states as well where they get to dress up as their favorite comic or anime character and parade the event with performance and enjoy their fantasy come to life. It also serves as a platform for many local musicians, comic artists and cosplayers to express their creativity through performance and the display of their art.

The response hasn’t always been in strokes of white but often grey, some apprehensive about the new culture while some fear it to become a distraction. However, nobody denies that NAJ and its events like the Cosplay have been a great opportunity for the creative artist and the youth to showcase their talents. One thing is certain- its prospectus is bright and thousands are looking forward to it.

Repa: Firstly, thank you for agreeing to do this. Can you please tell us about when and how the NAJ came into existence?

NAJ: Anime has always had a huge fan base in Nagaland, and it was in 2011 that the Nagaland Anime Junkies started as an anime fan page on Facebook, by Biebe Natso. The page took off from then, garnered a lot of fans from all over the state, and we found that there were many people that shared their common interests with us.

Repa: What were the objectives of NAJ when it began?

NAJ: NAJ was created to unite people that shared common passion. Our main objective has always been to promote art in all its different forms. We are hoping that one day we can create opportunities for young people to share their talents with the rest of the world by incorporating foreign culture with our rich Naga Culture and history. Anime and cosplay are not only a great source of entertainment, but also teach people about culture, tradition, art. They motivate and inspire us. Moreover, the art of creating a fictional character we love and admire is not only fun, but it also helps people to express themselves through different artistic means.

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“We put in a lot of hard work and effort in what we do and we love every moment of it.”

Repa: The annual Cosfest has been the most successful event of NAJ and has a great impact on the pop Culture in Nagaland, along with its neighboring states. Is it daunting to have such influence in the society, and the responsibility that comes with it?

NAJ: Well, we are not quite there yet, but thank you. We just do what we love, and we like to believe that we are somehow promoting self-expression and positive living. It may be daunting because we are working on improving ourselves, and also trying to set good examples as we go along, which is not just our responsibility but everybody else’s too.

Repa: Tell us about the members of NAJ. Are you guys doing it full time or along with your work and studies?

NAJ: There are 9 members in NAJ, and yes, some are working and some are pursuing their studies. The team is headed by Biebe. We put in a lot of hard work and effort in what we do and we love every moment of it. It has grown into one big happy family.

Repa: It is obvious for a body like NAJ to face criticism as well. How have the public responded to your work? Do you face any backlash for doing something unprecedented and fresh?

NAJ: There have been quite a few challenges along the way, to reach where we are today. Anime and cosplay have gained a lot of popularity only recently in Nagaland. Therefore, getting the older generation to understand anime, manga, cosplay, is difficult. The concept is not easy to grasp because of the generation gap.

The pop culture wasn’t a new wave then, a revolution which the people were not ready for; but young people needed to learn and create new opportunities to develop new skills and crafts and express themselves in their own unique way.

The positive response and the love and support from the fans motivate us to do better and work harder every year.

And all of this makes everything worthwhile.

Repa: Where do you see yourself in the future? Tell us about some of your upcoming events.

NAJ: The future is uncertain, but we hope we can share what we love with everyone. We are hoping to create opportunities for young artists of all genres in our society to share their talents with the rest of the world so that they can turn their hobby into a profession. We also hope to create a fun and a positive environment, where people can share love and passion for art, with each other.

We do have some pretty exciting events scheduled for the year 2018. We have The NAJ Spring Cosfest, The 6th edition of NAJ Annual Cosfest, NAJ Winter Wonderland, anime meets and interactive sessions among other events that the team is delighted to be a part of.

Special thanks to Kevin Yhome and Hopong Chang for providing photographs for this article. You can check out more of their work on Instagram and Facebook.

Kevin Yhome

Hopong Chang

gooseperspective_official

hopong_chang

Goose-Perspective

Hopong Chang Photography

Left: Photo by Aviu Kevin Yhomes

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“Cosplay as a form of art intrigued me, and I hoped that one day I’d also cosplay a character that I love.”

Repatemsu Jamir talks with Chentisangla Longkumer about her love for anime and subsequent foray into cosplay.

ORCHID Repa: Tell us about how you got into cosplay and your craze for anime.

Chenti: I’ve loved anime for as long as I can remember. But the first time that I was actually introduced to anime in its real sense, and not just some cartoon, was when my brother told me about Death Note. I was about 9 at that time and that’s how I got interested in anime. I would sit in front of the computer for hours on end, binge watching tons of anime.

I didn’t really know what cosplay was until a few years later. I thought it was just like Halloween, where people dress up in cheap-looking, flash-reflective costumes and wigs. I only learnt later about how much effort, dedication and perseverance it takes to make a cosplay costume. The first cosplayer I came to know about was Yuegene Fay, who hails from Thailand. He is an incredible cosplayer whom I still admire to this day.

Cosplay as a form of art intrigued me, and I hoped that one day I’d also cosplay a character that I love. I’d watch all these videos on YouTube of Cosplay Conventions all around the world, and promised myself that I’d attend one someday. Just a couple of years later, in 2013, the biggest anime community in Nagaland (The Nagaland Anime Junkies) came up with their own rendition of the CosplayCon, viz., the Cosfest, short for cosplay festival. I was beyond excited and even looked through some characters that I might like to cosplay, but in the end I didn’t, and only attended the cosfest.

Nevertheless, it was an amazing experience to finally see cosplayers in the flesh and not through a screen.

Chenti cosplaying as Nakigitsune from Touken Ranbu Photograph by Aviu Kevin Yhomes : gooseperspective_official

Repa: How do you view this art form progressing in your state, and what do you think its prospects are?

Chenti: The cosplay community in Nagaland is definitely growing. The number of cosplayers participating in the CosFest rises every year and the cosplays keep getting better. Cosplays are getting more mainstream and popular amongst the Nagas, and I believe that it is a very positive outlet for our creativity.

The Cosfest gives us a platform to showcase our talents, be it in the form of costume and prop-making, or makeup. Also, from an introvert’s point of view, it challenges us to come out of our comfort zones, and showcase a different and fun side of ourselves. We also get to meet new people and bond over common interests in anime and cosplay. Cosplay might not be the most lucrative hobby out there, but with passion, hard work and determination, it can take you to places, quite literally.

Repa: How was your experience with NAJ? Chenti: In 2016, I cosplayed at the 4th NAJ Cosfest for the very first time. Most people go with simple characters for their first cosplay, but I went all out on my first one, mostly because cosplay is an expensive hobby and I didn’t know when I’d be able to do it next. I wanted my debut to be memorable, and it surely was. I cosplayed Nakigitsune from the popular video game, Touken Ranbu. His costume was very difficult to make because it had a lot of intricate parts and I’d almost given up halfway because I was frustrated at how it wasn’t going the way I’d planned. But I persevered and I’m so glad I went through with it because the cosfest was a very enriching experience, one that’ll be etched in my memory forever. Throughout the process, my family was always there to encourage me, and my mother made sure that my costume was ready on time.

People appreciated my costume, makeup and the entire cosplay. The experience was humbling. I got to meet a lot of new people and I’ve made friends in the community, which was cool, given how awkward I am with people. Ever since then, I’ve cosplayed two more characters- Saeran Choi from Mystic Messenger and 9S from NieR: Automata.

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Thej Yhome TALKS TO US ABOUT HER MANGA, CARNABY BLACK

Photo by Kevin Yhome (@GoosePerspesctive_official)

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Thejakhrienuo Yhome at the NAJ CosFest holding

THEJAKHRIENUO YHOME, a.k.a. Thej Yhome, a splash page artwork from Carnaby Black. still in her early twenties, is a digital artist, freelance illustrator and comics artist from Kohima, Nagaland. Her bio on Bēhance describes her as a self-taught artist with a degree in animation and multimedia from India. Her art is influenced by both Western and Japanese comics and animated shows.

We discussed her art, her first manga, and the growing comics and anime culture in Nagaland through delightful exchanges over e-mail.

Tell us about your involvement with NAJ, especially with regard to the publishing of the first volume of CB. What has your experience been like with the anime and manga fans at these events?

NAJ proposed the idea of an original manga that we could exclusively sell at the NAJ Cosfest. They had me send in some drafts of stories that we could publish and chose Carnaby Black. I wasn’t expecting the sort of support I got for this comic; I neither had the means nor the manpower to continue with the series nor thought it would sell well.

The physical copies sold well enough and when I put it up online I got a bigger following than I was ever expecting.

Your manga, Carnaby Black, hosted by Tapas is labeled as ‘fantasy’ with over 63K views (and counting) from across the globe. How do you respond to the proposed alternate terms such as international manga, original-English language manga, global manga or manga-influenced comic for manga created by non-Japanese authors?

I’m perfectly fine with calling Carnaby Black a comic or manga. Maybe one day India will have enough graphic artists to make our own category of comics and give it a name like the South Koreans and their manhwa. Till then, trying to separate comics by ‘where it was drawn’ or ‘what the art style looks like/is influenced by’ is, I feel, unnecessarily complicated. Technically, even the term ‘manga’ in Japan is just the equivalent of saying ‘comics’.

Meeting readers is always a surreal experience. I personally know my comic is lacking in a lot of aspects. Part of it has to do with the fact that I had no idea that I was even supposed to plan out the story and pacing. It’s a pitfall of being self-taught. You usually have to learn about what you’re supposed to be learning about. So, when meeting people who like it as it is, I feel simultaneously ecstatic and guilty; I regret giving my characters such strange names and how badly paced the entire first chapter is. Every once in a while I’ll have someone ask me when the second chapter will be out and I feel like I’ve run over a dog. I wish I had the energy and time to churn out 80+ pages in under two months like I did for the first chapter but I just don’t have it in me anymore. I’m still going to try though, this comic

“Media, no matter the medium, highly influences how people think and behave.”

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has opened up so many avenues for me, gotten me so many commissions and offers. I feel like I owe it to the people who supported the comic to complete it; no matter how long that might take.

life and art have been by works and people who were not Naga and it shows in not just my art but the person I am.

That isn’t to say I’m not proud of my heritage or culture.

It’s just that when I pick up a pencil, that 80% usually tends to crowd out everything else.

“Our people need to learn that if we want our art to prosper, we’re going to have to be willing to invest monetarily in our artists.”

B. A lot of my supporters are not Naga and around 90% of my commissions and jobs so far have been from people in other parts of India or America. I don’t think that would have happened if I’d stuck to making solely Naga influenced art. I’ve seen Naga mythology graphic novels come and go without any fanfare. Restricting your readership to a certain demographic is very harmful when you’re starting out, to be completely honest.

Many Naga artists contemporary to you draw inspiration for their artwork and stories from their own culture, traditions, and folklores. CB and “Superhero!” have little to no trace of the North-East. Some would see it as a deliberate distancing or kind of ‘escapism’.

How do you respond to that? Or, put differently, your artwork titled ‘Naga’ (on Cupick) is perhaps one of the few works on display with distinct cultural markers of your Naga tribal identity. Have you considered writing/drawing a comic with characters identifying as North-Eastern or set in the North-East?

C. There’s no easy way to say this but Nagas are kind of bad at financially supporting local artists, especially graphic artists.

Our people need to learn that if we want our art to prosper, we’re going to have to be willing to invest monetarily in our artists. I’ve had people tell me I charge too much and that I should give them discounts or that I should work for free because they’re “also Naga”; I get people telling me that I should make comics or animated movies depicting our culture but the moment I mention the amount of time, money and man-power I would need for their ideas to be feasible, they show no signs of ever financially supporting the cause.

All of this, including the restrictive demographic I mentioned, is a recipe for disaster for the artist.

There are several reasons for this. I’ll try to list the relevant ones.

A. My family is a bit of an outcast in our community because we’re all introverts (which in our society is the equivalent of ‘deviants’), so, growing up I had a hard time making friends. I grew up distanced from a lot of our Naga community culture because I grew up distanced from the people around me. My parents tried their best to make sure we knew everything we needed to know about our traditions and state but my siblings and I have spent our childhoods learning how to live from TV shows, comics, movies, and books. Therefore, the “distancing” you mention in my works is subconscious. Close to 80% of the influence in my

CB brings ALS to light while “Superhero!” does ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). What drew you to highlighting them? Is there a special reason behind it?

Humanity and our universe is a source of endless fascination to me. I love studying people and how they work. As an artist I have to. Illnesses and diseases are a huge aspect of what makes people, people. So I have an, unhealthy, obsession with what can go wrong with the human body and mind “Naga” By Thejakhrienuo Yhome

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but, more importantly, how people overcome, live or deal with it. Again, it was mostly a subconscious decision.

What’s the story behind the title ‘Carnaby Black’?

Spoilers! No comment.

With the growing popularity of comics and web-comics, do you see it as a narrative form that can greatly shape the ‘millennials’ or ‘post-millennials’ with a greater role in pedagogy? (Treating it as a multi-modal text that will play a crucial role in literacy in the age of electronic literature) It already is. It’s always been. Media, no matter the medium, highly influences how people think and behave. People tend to believe what they see and a lot of people consciously or subconsciously learn through visual media, even if that representation is inaccurate, biased or prejudiced. Web-comics are no exception.

Carnaby Black by Thej Yhome

You can read more about Thej Yhome and her collaboration works in a July 24, 2017 article by The Morung Express titled, “I Draw the Stuff I Want to Live”

Thej’s Scrap-book

Karnivil_Doodles

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https://tapas.io/episode/39319

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https://karnivil.deviantart.com/

The North-East in Pictures

Khadarshnong, Meghalaya Submitted by: Mansan Kharumnuid B.Com(Hons.) Shri Ram College of Commerce

The Single Decker living root Bridge, Meghalaya Submitted By: Martina PrakaSh

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Thanlon, Manipur Thanlon is a subdivisional headquarters in the Indian state of Manipur.

Submitted by : Khupkhanson Samte Shivaji College, BBE, 2nd Year

Submitted by: Rosy Saji

Submitted by: Rosy Saji

Naga Heritage Village, Kisama, Nagaland

Mary Help for Christians Cathedral, Nagaland

The Kisama Village is situated on the outskirts of Kohima. Kisama Heritage Village is where the annual hornbill festival of Nagaland is held. The nomenclature of Kisama is derived from two villages namely Kigwema (KI) and Phesama (SA) and MA, which means village. This village seeks to promote the culture and traditions of the Naga people.

The Cathedral of Kohima, located in the Aradura Hills, is the church of the bishops of the diocese of Kohima, Nagaland. The church is noted for its architecture. Its facade resembles that of a Naga house.

Submitted by: Martina Prakash

Umngot River, Meghalaya Umngot flows through Dawki, a small but busy town in the East Jaintia Hills district near the Indo-Bangladesh border. The town itself is a mere 95 km from Shillong.

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he Good Girl Show, produced by Dopamine Media is one of the few original online-only web-series that depicts a Northeast Indian character with a genuine and informed characterization.

The show is self-described as being about “Four young girls from DU, staying in Arora's PG, come together to make Delhi their home - one adventure, one mistake, and one learning at a time”. We had the opportunity to interview the director and writer, Anu Singh Choudhary through e-mail. We’ve been mindful of not letting out spoilers for those who’ve not seen it yet. If you haven’t, go discover for yourselves!

Talking Web-series,

The Good Girl Show

Certain scenes from the end episodes of The Good Girl Show may remind Bollywood film viewers of Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai and Chak De! India; and Hollywood film viewers of Sex and the City. And the generally aware public would be reminded of the 'Rohtak sisters viral video controversy'. Was it a conscious rewriting of the films that almost broke the glass ceiling but fell short and a re-imagination of incidents that brought up hopes but only to disappoint in the end?

and the North-East with Anu Singh Choudhary ORCHID

I wish I were as film-educated as you are! I actually didn’t even have all these references in my mind while writing The Good Girl Show. I wanted to tell a simple story of these four girls who come of age, and learn to deal with themselves, each other, and the city that they live in, as they go along. I am not sure what you mean by “re-imagination of incidents”, but violence against women, rape in particular, is not an easy story subject. A storyteller is grappling with several expectations all at once. Your content has to entertain, and yet never digress from the message that you also want to put forward. I can’t speak for others, but I do know that The Good Girl Show didn’t disappoint the audience. It is probably the only web-series that has been adapted into a play, has been staged in more than 20 cities across Youth Festivals and Theatre Competitions (as Antardwand: The Conflict Within), and is now being adapted into a Hindi novel (Bhali Ladkiyaan, Buri Ladkiyaan), which also has one central character from St. Stephen’s College by the way.

That makes me believe that this story has brought hope, and hasn’t disappointed.

As a journal under the North-East Society of the college, we are particularly interested in the character of Meghna Simtey, born to Manipuri parents. What were you trying to convey when you wrote her character?

That she exists, and she is one of us. That she has a mind, and a voice of her own. And if you have seen the web-series, you will realize that this Manipuri girl's voice is the most rational, and sanest of all.

It is refreshing to find the character of a Northeast Indian as one of the main characters sharing equal screen-time in TGGS, considering the ways in which Northeastern actors/people are represented or given roles in mainstream media. They remain on the sidelines or play the role of a Chinese, Japanese or other foreign character. What do you think are the reasons behind this?

Northeastern actors or characters do not get equal screen-time. There are so many more stories to tell, there are so many more myths to be shattered. The rest of India knows very little about the North East, which in itself is so diverse and eclectic. We conveniently choose to dismiss what we do not know much about and what is not suitable to our own notions about people, communities, languages and societies.

Northeastern actors haven’t been given many roles in mainstream media because we haven’t told many of their stories yet.

Photo by Natasha Badhwar

Anu Singh Choudhary is the Co-Founder (alongside Prashant Raj) and Chief Creative Director at Dopamine Media and Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. She is a documentary filmmaker, freelance journalist and has authored two books, Neela Scarf and Mamma ki Diary.

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It is unfair on our part to criticize misrepresentation or lack of representation when parts of North-East have banned/boycotted Bollywood films and songs (for various reasons including

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Anu Singh Choudhary with cast members of TGGS Image courtesy: Team Dopamine

protection of local film industries). YouTube and websites that host web-series are however far more accessible. What potential do you see for such webisodes in bridging social and cultural differences among people of various ethnicity and backgrounds? What does Dopamine Media stand for in this regard?

All of us were first-timers, and in fact all four girls hadn’t even faced the camera before. To be honest, I had never been behind the camera to call the shots before. We all made mistakes and we all learnt a great deal. By far, the making of TGGS has been one of the best creative, and magical, experiences of my life, and I long to live that magic again.

I belong to the generation of those hopelessly optimistic content creators who believe that digital medium will not only change the way we tell and consume stories, but will also change the way we perceive the world. This format is far more egalitarian, far more democratic, and far more uninhibited. Dopamine Media also wishes to stand honest to the format. We have only started, and TGGS is our first piece of content. We have a journey of at least thirty years ahead of us. At this stage, I can only reiterate our commitment to develop and work on stories of people from various ethnicities and diverse backgrounds.

We heard you were at this year's Brahmaputra Literary Festival at Guwahati held from 9th to 11th February. What did you take away from your experience there?

Astounding, and it was such a revelation. I had the good fortune of meeting and listening to several authors from all over the North East: Prajwal Parajuly from Sikkim, Monalisa Saikia from Assam, Taro Sindik for Arunachal Pradesh and Easterine Kire from Nagaland were some of them. Easterine has been documenting the oral narratives of Nagaland while Taro is a young poet writing in Hindi. Monalisa writes the instability and angst of young Assamese generation while Prajwal captures the lives of Nepalese diaspora, bringing in his international sensibilities and global experiences into his stories. And their writings are only a miniscule percentage of what is being written from, and about, the North East. Clearly, there is no dearth of stories, and there is no dearth of talented storytellers. And yet, if there is a huge gap here between literature from the North East and what you call ‘mainstream media’, it is because we still consider these stories to be highly local and relevant only to a particular region and space. We definitely need to expand our horizons and understanding of diversity. And only stories can help us do that, in whatever form they are told.

Other web-series such as Chinese Bhasad and Untag on Voot, although guilty of casting North-East Indian actors as Chinese or one of Chinese-Indian descent as North-East Indian, deal positively with racism, identity, gender, sexuality and body-image among other issues through humour and wit. These works are also largely bi-lingual, featuring dialects. We see a greater equality of characters in the new media works. Is it something that the web-series genre especially allows?

Web-series genre allows fresh perspectives, because it doesn’t carry the burden of formulaic successes. It is a new format – still in its nascent phase – and therefore there is a lot of scope for experiments. Also, the content creators for this medium are fairly young. A lot of millennials are writing for this medium. They are willing to take risks, and are keen to fearlessly bring in their own life experiences into these stories. Can it get any better, or any more honest, than that?

You may watch The Good Girl Show on: http://www.dopaminemedia.com/

What has the casting experience been like and how have the viewers responded to The Good Girl Show? Did it turn out the way you had initially planned and imagined it?

https://youtu.be/V_Swydp0W7Y (link to the first episode)

When I first wrote the script, my co-creator and producer Prashant Raj asked me if I was sure I would find my Meghna Simtey. It wasn’t an easy character – not because of the ethnic identity, but because of this character’s spontaneity and naturalness. Carolyne Mate was just that – spontaneous, fun, and a natural. In hindsight, I feel that I would not be able to find a better cast for this story. We were all novices here.

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And show further support and appreciation at: https://www.facebook.com/Mediadopamine/

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Conflict in the North-East: Human Stories behind Political Headlines

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ods; and the conflicts eventually tend to escalate into prolonged wars of attrition.Violence in the region is also caused by the failure of the State administration to provide security. This has led to the creation of alternative forces of ethnic militia for provision of security. From the perspective of its ethnic constituency, a private ethnic militia is considered a more reliable provider of security when it is threatened by another ethnic group that is armed with its own militia. This is usually the context in an ethnically polarised situation in which the State administration fails to provide security and the actions of the Army are seen as partisan.3

s I sit down to write the introduction to this series, I am taken back to several conversations over many years with friends, family and even strangers. It is these simple conversations, stories usually lost in casual chatter that prompted the beginning of this series. As the title indicates, the stories are about conflict in North-Eastern India- a subject many have broached upon, a topic not new to discussion. So why are we writing on this again?

In compiling these short accounts, I hope to start conversations that highlight stories from real life experiences of students from our college itself and through that, give insight into a reality that is unknown and misunderstood by many. The stories that are included are not about who is at fault or whose side is right or wrong. This is not a historical account of the emergence of conflict in the region. This is not even about the headlines that make it to national media; be it insurgency, ‘sponsored terrorism’, ethnic violence or sub-regional conflicts involving influx of migrants. This series is as simple as the conversations that inspired it. It is about humanity and the human cost behind all the headlines. Put together, in Easterine Kire’s words, “Because the conflict is not more important than the people that are its victims.1 ”

In exploring human narratives of conflict, I believe that it is only right to end the series with poetry, an art that remains one of man’s greatest mediums of expression. In taking a look at poetry from the North East, we find that these poets as chroniclers of their own realities, mindscapes and multi-layered complexities of human relationships have effectively been able express what Tariq Ali calls a “literature of real conflict.”4 While all contemporary North Eastern poetry cannot be typified into the neat label of ‘conflict literature’, it certainly reflects the ugliness of their times and the power of “felt thought.”

Thus, the series is completed with a poignant poem by one of North East’s most renowned poets. Robin Ngangom’s My Invented Land5 is a fitting piece, a final accompaniment to the courage of those that agreed to write of their experiences and more importantly, a tribute to the human cost behind the political headlines.

However, before you read on and delve into the reality of the narratives that are to follow, I would like to shed light on a crisp and apt observation that will help an unfamiliar reader understand a little about the complexities of conflict in the North East. Archana Upadhyay, a writer and Professor at JNU2 , writes: The conflicts in the North East have some peculiar characteristics: they are asymmetrical; they are ambiguous, making it difficult to differentiate a friend from an enemy; they are fought in unconventional modes, deploying political and psychological means and meth1

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Bethamehi Joy Syiem 2nd Year B.A. History (Hons)

P.S. - I would like to thank the contributors to this series who took the brave step of writing about their experiences. Without the co-operation, courage and spirit of each contributor, this series would not have been possible.

Kire, Easterine (2013). Bitter Wormwood. Zubaan Jawaharlal Nehru University Upadhyay, Archana (02 Dec, 2006). Terrorism in the North East. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 41, Issue No. 48.

Retrieved from http://www.epw.in/journal/2006/48/special-articles/terrorism-north-east.html Nongkynrih, Kynpham Sing (2005). The Poet as Chronicler: An Overview of Contemporary Poetry in Northeast India, Poetry International Web. [Retrieved from http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/cou_article/item/2695/The-Poet-as-Chronicler-An-Overview-of-Contemporary-Poetry-in-Northeast-India/en] Printed with permission from Robin Ngangom

A Common Uncommon Story

Playing With Fire

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y story was not unlike anyone else’s. Perhaps, it was too common that no one realized its oddity. I was born at the time of the Kuki-Paite conflict in Manipur. Here, it is one thing to see violence break out, but it’s another when two ethnic communities engage in an unending atrocity. Lives were lost and houses were burnt.

The place had turned into a complete mayhem in all its animosity and relentless fighting. If there was a way to signify a hideously pumped up futility, the conflict was it. But fortunately for us, rationality took over, half-baked calculations were realized and positive relationships cornered hostility.

As an infant, I couldn’t have felt the same way or have, in any way, been able to relate to the kind of trauma that people had to go through then.

However, I do know that my childhood was, and still is, over-laced with strikes, weekly school shut-downs, sounds of gunshots and not so covert underground activities. Here in Delhi, if you hear a terse popping sound at night, you will think “Oh, firecrackers!” and you are likely right about it. But that wasn’t the case for us.

Certain inalienable rights or “unalienable rights” in the words of former US President George W. Bush are also brazenly denied to the people. I can also tell you that there are groups of ruthless individuals who have

any years ago, the army had camped at the community hall of our neighborhood as part of its innumerable campaigns against local militant groups. Adjacent to the hall was the town playfield, and besides that- the residence of my relatives. One fine afternoon, my cousin and I, little kids then, were playing in the field when suddenly the tranquility of the setting was disrupted by the ear-splitting crackle of gunfire: a troop of militants had laid siege to the army camp. Young and inexperienced as we were, we dismissed it as the sound of people playing with crackers, despite noticing the other few people around us fleeing the spot. Only when my cousin’s mother, crouching yet wildly running towards us, dragged us to the safety of their house did we realize the gravity of the situation.

Such skirmishes between militants and the army/police were a commonplace back then. I recall one occasion when one of these encounters took place at night: watching cautiously from our balcony, we could see fiery red bullets whizzing past our house against the backdrop of the pitch-darkness that had enveloped the vicinity (electricity was, and in many areas still is, irregularly supplied).

Reuben Paulianding, 3rd Year B.A. Philosophy(Hons.)

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been granted, by the constitution, the right to shoot protesters at sight in the garb of law and order. The situation is even more tangled and complex than one might think. But despite all the negativity and setbacks, there is a silver lining. And as much as I want to end in a different way, I really can’t do it otherwise, so here’s a little something: “What doesn’t kill you does really make you stronger”. And it’s Nietzsche (sorry, Clarkson fans!).

I Still Remember

-Thangs (Name Changed)

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Ayatai: A Chilling Encounter December 27, 1994 Mokokchung, Nagaland

I

was in the market place when it happened. The Indian Army launched a violent confrontation with the Naga underground army and engaged in several rounds of gunfire. Once the members of the underground army escaped, the Indian Army turned to the people in the market. The soldiers rounded up bystanders and made them lie face down on the ground – they didn’t even spare pregnant women. A lot of people were hiding inside shops, which the Army personnel set fire to.

When they emerged, soldiers began to fire mercilessly at them. Many people died on the spot while still many more were left injured; some were even consumed in the flames.

I was among those who had been made to lie down, but luckily, I managed to escape. When I reached home, I learnt that my husband (a shopkeeper at the market) had not returned. When several hours had passed and there was still no sign of my husband, I went out in search of him. Though a curfew had been imposed, I travelled to a spot where dead bodies had been deposited, and with the help of a policeman, I rummaged through the bodies; none of them belonged to my husband.

I returned home that day with a heavy heart – I had resigned myself to the fact that my husband had been killed and that his body was missing. Neighbours and family members gathered at home and expressed their condolences. In the midst of this, my husband staggered in. He had bruises over his body, the result of a severe assault by soldiers’ rifle butts. Though he was injured, my husband was safe, and I was immensely grateful.

We were later told that on that day, eighty-nine shops, forty-eight houses, seventeen vehicles and seven two-wheelers had been destroyed by the fire. Seven civilians had been fatally shot and five, including a young child, had been burned alive. Women were raped and several others had gone missing. The memory of this incident, haunting as it was, has left its impact on the people of Nagaland and is remembered to this day as Ayatai.

still remember stories of killings that were so rampant that there was no place to bury the bodies. My father used to tell me of a time of ethnic violence when my mother was pregnant with my eldest sister and my parents stayed at my father’s native village. There, they dug a big hole where everyone in the village would climb in to hide from the other side. As they hid, they covered the hole with soil so no one would be seen. It was in that conflict when my father’s younger brother, my own uncle lost his life. It is hard for me to imagine losing a sibling like that. I do not know if I would ever be able to be normal again if that happened to my family.

I also remember a ceasefire when I was about three or four. My mother had taken my elder sister to the market and in the midst of it all, there was suddenly open fire between the underground militant outfits and the Indian army. My sister came running and she told us that she was almost killed. She survived only because the gun that was pointed at her ran out of bullets.

I also remember a time of unprecedented violence that came as a response to a controversial incident in the state. The members of one community took offense at another and it became dangerous for people from my tribe who stayed at the capital, Imphal. Groups of men would go around looking to target and beat up innocent people whose only crime would be to belong to a particular tribe.

I was in Imphal during this time when I realized then that I could not go back to my hometown because of bandhs, strikes and violence.

People were stopped and checked. During that time, my uncle arranged a bus for some of us to head somewhere safe and as we rode in the bus, we closed all the curtains so that no one would see us. I peeped out of the window and there, I saw young and old people standing with sticks waiting for people like me, people from my native place, just to beat us up. I was afraid for my life.

- Mrs Chubala (An oral account in Ao, translated by Repatemsu Jamir, 1st Economics)

A Narrow Escape

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The last incident that I remember is sadly one that was quite common.

While I was in the 12th grade, there were protests going on regarding political and social issues. In an unfortunate incident, a young teenager lost his life after being met with tear gas and rubber bullets at one such protest. In response to that, the schools were shut down for two months.

couple of years ago, the underground group, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K), attacked the Kohima-based army camp of the Assam Rifles. This attack, which resulted in the death of an army jawan, was both a sign of the NSCNK’s resentment for the Indian Army as well as a demonstration of its demand for the ‘freedom of Nagas.’

In the days that followed, soldiers of the Assam Rifles Army were on high alert and marched across Kohima in search of the offenders. They arrested many civilians (particularly young men) and detained them as suspects. During the period of their detention, these men were subjected to ruthless beating and torture. Strangely enough, they were later found to be innocent.

One evening, my friends and I were on our way home after a game of football when we were stopped by a group of army jawans. The jawans frisked us and asked for proof of identification; they also probed us, asking us where we came from and where we were headed. After a long round of interrogation, they released us and told us not to engage in badmashikam.

My friends and I realised that had we not been lucky enough to escape, we would’ve been tortured in camp. In fact, the incident had such an impact on me that from that day onwards I barely ventured outside my home until the situation finally normalised.

This severely affected our academic life and our principal decided to hold secret private tuitions for the students who stayed at the school hostel. One day, we were studying and some of the protesters heard that there were classes going on in our school. They came to our school and pelted stones at the glass widows of the school building. We hid in the classroom and closed the doors as I told my classmates to stay calm so that they did not find us. It was painful to realize that here, an educational institution and its students were being attacked because another student died. Where was the justice in that? After that, we went back home and waited for two months till the school reopened.

Bandhs, strikes, curfews and food blockades were common for us. The incidents enumerated are the ones that startled me the most. These were the conflicts that affected us the worst.

- LH Everhring, 2nd Year B.Sc. Mathematics (Hons)

- Akumerren Imchen, 2nd Year B.A. History (Hons)

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The Day the Skies Grew Dark

My Invented Land

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rowing up in Assam where insurgency groups had their stronghold surely left some indelible memories in my mind.

We had become accustomed to having days off from school whenever there was a ‘bandh’. But life was as it went, quiet and wonted, only punctuated by isolated events of insurgency in remote locations.

This was so until one fateful day when violence shook the entire state.

As I comb back through my memories, this one still sends chills down my spine.

It was the 30th of October, 2008. I packed my bag and left for school.

Noon came, and there was an interruption. The teacher left us and came back to tell us that there had been several bomb blasts across the city of Guwahati. There was word that a lot of people had lost their lives. I was more dumbfounded by it than I was scared. Naive as I was at the time, I couldn’t comprehend the gravity of the situation. What would otherwise have been a regular school-day had turned into a day the biggest act of terror in the state occurred; a day that has gone down in history as ‘black day’.Telephone lines were shut down and we were unable to contact our family members. The school kept us in late into the evening to keep us safe. Eventually, after a long wait, the school bus took us home.

That day, the streets were eerily quiet. The city turned into a ghost town as curfew loomed large over the city.With a lot of lives lost and many injured, life in Guwahati was not the same anymore.For me, this tragedy was like a bedlam that woke me up from my slumber; complacency turning into cognizance.

Robin Ngangom My native soil was created from tiny sparks that clung to grandmother’s earthen pot which conjured savoury dishes I’ve been looking for all my life in vain.

My homeland has no boundaries.

At cockcrow one day it found itself inside a country to its west, (on rainy days it dreams looking East when its seditionists fight to liberate it from truth.)

My people have disinterred their alphabet, burnt down decrepit libraries in a last puff of nationalism even as a hairstyle of native women

-Vivienne Hrilrokim, 2nd Year B.A. History (Hons)

have been allowed to become extinct.

Unsettled Evenings: A Reminiscence

My native place has not been christened yet my homeland, a travelogue without end, a plate that will always be greedy

I

(but got rice mixed with stones)

still remember the small cottage that stood in the middle of a large patch of land. This is over a decade ago in the small town of Churachandpur, Manipur. We had just moved from a different part of town, and I am 8 or 9 years old. I remember the corn that grew on one side of the house, and the old pomegranate tree that must have been there for generations.

I also remember the sound of gunshots when I listen. I can hear the sound of my mom’s voice warning us to take cover. At twilight, the whole town would grow quiet, almost seeming tranquil in that silence, a silence only to be broken by bullets being fired shortly after. There were nights when it was worse. One of these nights is especially evocative to me. The cottage we lived in was mostly made of wood, except the bathroom. One evening, like clockwork, gunshots were fired. But it was more frequent and longer than usual, and sounded as though a house could have been riddled immediately. The shooting must have gone on nearly until daybreak. The whole family ended up taking refuge in the bathroom that night.

As a young boy, I never did understand the complexities, or how convoluted all of this was. It was a part of my life at that time, and everyone was a part of the same narrative. In the end, for me, life remained simple, and these incidents ended up merely as adventures that I went through, mostly because of my family’s light-hearted story-telling sessions of an otherwise tumultuous affair. I don’t think I have grown quite past this façade, nor have I fully understood why tender lives had to get entwined with something as futile, and corrupt as conflict.

My home has young people who found their dreams in a white substance and the old that transplanted their eyes, it has leaders who have disappeared into their caricatures.

My home is a gun pressed against both temples a knock on a night that has not ended a torch lit long after the theft a sonnet about body counts undoubtedly raped definitely abandoned in a tryst with destiny.

-Marvin Khailalven, 2nd Philosophy

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Photo by Sangchinhau Dousel 2nd Year, B.A. Economics (Hons.)

A TALK BY

Dr. Rakhee Bhattacharjee Role of Developmental States and Transition in the Economy of North-East India Report By Robert Lianzathang Hangzo 1st Year, B.A History (Hons.)

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s part of the Lecture Series organized by the St. Stephen’s North-East Society, Dr. Rakhee Bhattacharjee, an associate professor at the North East India Studies Programme at JNU, spoke on the topic “Role of Developmental States and Transition in the Economy of North-East India” on 22nd February, in our college. Students from various courses came together for the lecture in the Senior Common Room (SCR) at 3 pm.

Setting the tone for the lecture, Dr. Bhattacharjee stated that “The Economy of North-East India is not a very popular domain in the North-East Abyss.” This statement of hers put the picture in perspective about the fraught political and economic conditions and its ramifications in the region.

Organizing her lecture around the identity of the space, the contested politics and the changing narratives of economic development in the North-Eastern region, Dr. Bhattacharjee built up her lecture from the colonial times up till now to understand the concept of the ‘North-East’.

The North-East to Dr. Bhattacharjee is a constructed geography of the colonial capitalist state. The victory of 1826 in the Anglo-Burma war and the signing of the Yandabo Peace Treaty brought the colonialists to the region, carving a North-East frontier from Bengal. The region’s reservoir of valuable resources served the exploitative colonialist trading needs. The economy was monetized, disrupting the indigenous and egalitarian systems of subsistence economy of the region. This also took away the natural transactions between the region and its neighbours like Burma, Tibet and Bhutan.

Focusing on the post-1947 politics of the Indian state, Dr.

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Bhattacharjee spoke about how the continuous colonialist redrawing of boundaries for profit (ruining neighbour-relations) was reinforced by the Indian state without much thought. Therefore, despite having a diverse set of communities and customs, a colonialist idea of the North-East still continued into the post-colonial times. Situated near international borders, this ‘contiguous’ space became a subject of state, security and geo-politics. The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 led to the loss of a traditional connectivity, the Siliguri Corridor. As traditional connections were sealed, North-East was framed in a new narrative of isolationism.

Quipping on this, she gave an interesting example of how the distance between the North-Eastern towns and the nearest city Kolkata became 4458 kilometers; more than the length of the India-Bangladesh boundary.

North-East remained a poor performing economy. State instruments like the 6th Schedule, NEC and other fund dispersing mechanisms became channels of corruption, creating a rich elitist class who enjoyed the benefits while the rest remained poor and marginalized. Above all, she stated that these economic policies failed at the actual economic front due to issues like militancy and insurgency.

Speaking about the economic policy adopted in the region in the 70’s, she outlined that the North-Eastern region was seen as being dependent on the rest of India. The economic policy therefore became one of state rule, protection and subversion. India’s plan for economic development was based on industrialization through state support, yet for ‘peripheries’ like the North-East, an ad-hoc plan was adopted.

Ironically, creation of industrial cores was made with large scale resource extraction from the North-East. A constitutional safeguard through the Sixth Schedule was made to support this plan of protectionism but this approach created such imbalances that the North-East was struck with issues of high regional disparities without any accessibility to economic opportunities. To deal with this, the state made a departure from the idea of regional planning and a North-Eastern Council (NEC) was created in 1971 to break the stereotypes of isolation and backwardness through connectivity and infrastructure.

She then focused on the economic reforms of 1991, when a structural shift towards neo-liberalism was initiated. As India aimed economic engagement with the rising economies of the East and South-East Asia, a new debate for the North-East became important because of its geographical proximity, creating new hopes for a viable economy in the region. She named some of the new initiatives launched by the State - a Central Resource Pool (you may look into The Non-Lapsable Central Pool of Resources (NLCPR)), the first industrial policy with incentives for private investment and industries and the Special Accelerated Road Development program to create massive connectivity infrastructure.

She stated at this point that agriculture continued to be the dominant economic activity in the region albeit in poor conditions; the region still faces a very high poverty ratio.

“The state role in the economy of North-East remains a debated and contested issue in the post-colonial times.”

Elaborating on this she spoke about how the large scale transfers of fund or a ‘politics of care’ failed to create a viable economy. Despite having immense resources, the

Talking about recent developments, in 2014, India began a new economic chapter by dismantling the planned model and creating more space for private players. Policies like ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ are all driven towards this revised need for a free market economy. She spoke of how there is a new frenzy among the policy makers and global investors to ‘explore North-East’. This fresh agenda of the state has made North-East a ‘transnational theatre for integration and liberal market expansion’. Posing questions, Dr. Bhattacharjee asked, “How is this state agenda going to benefit North-East and its people? Will it create any sustainable economy within the region or is it going to be an instructive one like the earlier state regimes?” She stated that the solution lay in continuously engaging with the spaces of debate, seminars and dialogues.

Dr. Bhattacharjee concluded by discussing the intense economic activity in the region and its potential. A Global Investment Summit had taken place in Assam which held promise. Yet she cautioned, that the need of the hour is to understand the politics of these policies and not fall into the trap of a new capitalist exploitative mechanism. Giving alternatives, she stated that the traditional systems that preach egalitarianism need to be explored. Above all, for successful economic gains, a participatory and inclusive economic trade model was absolutely essential.

Taking questions at the end of her talk, she answered a range of concerns and queries on the issues of the failure of dam projects, consultative history of economic projects between the states and the government, concept of the ‘core’ and ‘peripheries,’ private industries and entrepreneurial ventures by the state governments and local populations of the North-East.

Enthralling and captivating from the start, Dr. Bhattacharjee’s talk was both interesting and informative.

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Echoes of the Eight,

a musical collaboration between the North-East Society and the Music Society was an open event held on the 16th of February in the College Hall as a celebration of culture through music. It was concluded by a combined group song in English, “Song of the Hornbill,” performed by members of the Music Society and the North-East Society (uploaded as “Group Performance”). The video recordings were taken by Sara Haungaihching Simte, 3rd Year B.A. History (Hons.).

All performances are available online.

Find us on YouTube or follow the link https://www.youtube. com/channel/UCjWZqnkaF25uJJ4j8LiQzCg

Do ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ and ‘subscribe’!

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MESS HALL September 22nd 2017

With the purview of giving the college fraternity a taste of the flavours and food habits of the region, The St. Stephen’s North-East Society organizes an annual Lunch. This time, each state from the North-East was given representation on the plate with starters, a main course, sides and desert.

Photos by Vardhan Aditya, 2nd Year B.A. Sanskrit (Hons.)

Tauh (Mizoram), Utti (Manipur) and Rusup Un (Nagaland) were the common dishes.

The non veg. coupon holders were served Shaphaley (Sikkim), Maasor Tenga (Assam), Doh Syiar Kylla (Meghalaya), Ambin (Arunachal Pradesh) and Hmanta Deng (Tripura).

The veg. coupon holders were served Phaley (Sikkim), Aloo Pitika (Assam), Muli Khleh (Meghalaya), Bora (Manipur), Iyup (Arunachal Pradesh) and Payokh (Assam).

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College Hall 31st August 2017.

Students gathered at the hall for the Panel Discussion on the topic, “Identity, Conflict, and Politico-Economic Challenges of the New Global Order:Reflections on India’s North-East.”

(Left to Right) Dr. A. Bimol Akoijam, Mr. Prakash Singh, Prof. Mrinal Miri, Ms. Patricia Mukhim and Dr.Papori Bora.

Photo by Rohit Raj, 1st Year B.A English (Hons.)

College Hall

Staff Room (Arts)

Poster for the collaborative event with The Poetry Society.

North-Eastern students composed poems in their native language and self translated them into English. Both versions were performed.

As part of their annual festival of the North East, Cultures of Peace, Zubaan and the Heinrich Boell Foundation invited students to a panel on “Queer Identities in the North-East”, organized in collaboration with the Gender Cell and the North-East Society at our College.

21st Sept 2017

7 Feb 2018 th

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Bamboo dance of Mizoram.

Photo by ORCHID

Manipuri medley of “Chawnlam Hla” (Hmar) and “Zogam Aw” (Paite).

Photo by ORCHID

UNICOLOUR 2018 Mess Lawns

Ao Naga Group dance Photo by ORCHID.

Guest performance at Miranda College 28th March

Guest performance at SRCC 17th March

Guest performance at JMC 21st February.

Konyak War dance group pose with their Unicolour Coordinator.

Manipuri medley of “Chawnlam Hla” (Hmar) and “Zogam Aw” (Paite).

An Ao Gospel song “Kristanem dang Agutsudi,” blending folk and contemporary elements.

Photo by Ciinsianzo

Photo by Mansan Kharumnuid, SRCC

Photo by NESoc of JMC

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Talk of Politics Daiyairi Muivah 3rd Year, B.A. English (Hons.)

There is talk of politics, Silent whispers reach a crescendo.

Resentment hangs in the air like a thick cloud, Anxiety chokes my very breath.

Voices are loud but words unclear.

The darkness of the room compresses me Till I feel like a worm, And the black night my cocoon.

The hot and heavy air Wraps around me like a heavy blanket Till the colour behind my eyes turn red.

I can already feel on my back the darting red eyes of the rats.

A sea of blank faces deciding whether I should have set my right foot first or left.

Who is right, who is wrong ?

Is it wrong that I chose a side ?

Or is it my fault I was born to a side ?

Who placed the gavel in your hand ?

Who placed you above the altar?

Who are you to decide how many breaths We can take, before we stop?

You have decided that the very air We breathe, is yours to give.

You have decided for us that Safety, is just a word.

You who have chosen To paint us in yellow and black, branded with a skull.

I hope that you know that the colours You gave, are the colours you chose.

Not us. Never us. Never I. For I just want to sleep in white.

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Photo By: Wungramkhan Horam

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Dear Reader,

@c._.sailo

A set of postcards have been released to mark the journal’s publication.

And we’re giving away one with every copy!

@rida209

@c._.sailo

@jimkasom

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To, the Reader, Wherever you may be.

EXECUTIVE COUNCIL 2017-18 Staff Advisor Prof. Amrita Tulika President Reuben Paulianding Vice President Daiyairi Muivah General Secretary Lisathung Patton Literary Head Jessica Jakoinao Treasurer LH Everhring Cultural Coordinators Angeline Chawngthu, Sasanbha Lytan Unicolor Coordinators Vivienne Hrilrokim Sielhnam, Christina Malsawmkimi Talks and Workshops Coordinators Akummeren Imchen, Lalawmpuia Hauzel Publicity Coordinator Sangchinhau Dousel, Udayvir Guha Sircar Journal Coordinator Bethamehi Joy Syiem

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