Against State, Against History
Freedom, Resistance, and Statelessness in Upland Northeast India
Price: 1095.00
ISBN:
9780199489411
Publication date:
06/12/2018
Hardback
364 pages
Price: 1095.00
ISBN:
9780199489411
Publication date:
06/12/2018
Hardback
364 pages
Jangkhomang Guite
This book is a radical reevaluation of the dominant civilizational narratives on the ‘tribes’ that normally demonize them as a ‘nuisance’ to the ‘civilized’ Northeast India.
Rights: World Rights
Jangkhomang Guite
Description
Life on the margins of the state is not a dark, static, and silent world. It is, in fact, a radiant world, involving multiple processes of reenactment of life, lifeways, and individual–community relations. This book is a radical re-evaluation of the dominant civilizational narratives on the ‘tribes’ that normally demonize them as a ‘nuisance’ to the ‘civilized’ Northeast India.
The book delves into the migration history and the conditions in Northeast India in which sections of the valley population escaped to the hills against the state. It explores how in this physical dispersion to the highland terrain, they choose an independent village polity, defended by trained warriors, fortressed at the top of hills, connected by repulsive pathways, following the jhum economy, and adopting pliable social, cultural, ethnic and gender formations. This condition of the society is understood as one of statelessness’ or ‘unstate’, the process involving disowning the state and becoming an egalitarian society where freedom of individuals is located at the core of their cultural collective.
About the Author
Jangkhomang Guite teaches modern Indian history at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Jangkhomang Guite
Table of contents
List of Figures and Table
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction: On Being Hillmen
1. An Enormous Dead Level: Daunting Geography, Rippling States
2. The Great Escape: Peopling the Blue Hills
3. Divided We Stand: Space, Settlement, and Population Distribution Pattern
4. Pathways, Citadels, and Sentinels of the Hills
5. A Pleasurable Toil: Food, Freedom, and Livelihood
6. Chiefs, Commoners, and the Babel of Tongues
7. Between the Worlds Upside Down: Summoning Folktales
8. Renouncer, Restorer, and Defender: Daughters of the Hills
9. Symbiotic Hill–Valley Relationship: Transactions of Space, Manpower, and Resources
Conclusion: Disowning State, Becoming Egalitarian
References
Index
About the Author
Jangkhomang Guite
Description
Life on the margins of the state is not a dark, static, and silent world. It is, in fact, a radiant world, involving multiple processes of reenactment of life, lifeways, and individual–community relations. This book is a radical re-evaluation of the dominant civilizational narratives on the ‘tribes’ that normally demonize them as a ‘nuisance’ to the ‘civilized’ Northeast India.
The book delves into the migration history and the conditions in Northeast India in which sections of the valley population escaped to the hills against the state. It explores how in this physical dispersion to the highland terrain, they choose an independent village polity, defended by trained warriors, fortressed at the top of hills, connected by repulsive pathways, following the jhum economy, and adopting pliable social, cultural, ethnic and gender formations. This condition of the society is understood as one of statelessness’ or ‘unstate’, the process involving disowning the state and becoming an egalitarian society where freedom of individuals is located at the core of their cultural collective.
About the Author
Jangkhomang Guite teaches modern Indian history at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Table of contents
List of Figures and Table
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction: On Being Hillmen
1. An Enormous Dead Level: Daunting Geography, Rippling States
2. The Great Escape: Peopling the Blue Hills
3. Divided We Stand: Space, Settlement, and Population Distribution Pattern
4. Pathways, Citadels, and Sentinels of the Hills
5. A Pleasurable Toil: Food, Freedom, and Livelihood
6. Chiefs, Commoners, and the Babel of Tongues
7. Between the Worlds Upside Down: Summoning Folktales
8. Renouncer, Restorer, and Defender: Daughters of the Hills
9. Symbiotic Hill–Valley Relationship: Transactions of Space, Manpower, and Resources
Conclusion: Disowning State, Becoming Egalitarian
References
Index
About the Author
Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence
Vinay Lal
The Thought of Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Robert E. Upton