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SCSNEI organises a talk by Jangkhomang Guite

SCSNEI organises a talk by Jangkhomang Guite

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SCSNEI organises a talk by Jangkhomang Guite
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SPECIAL CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF NORTH EAST INDIA

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES – BUILDING I

 

Against State, Against History: Freedom, Resistance, and Statelessness in Upland Northeast India

 

Jangkhomang Guite

Centre for Historical Studies, JNU

 

Life on the margins of the state is a dynamic and vibrant world, involving multiple processes of reenactment of life, lifeways and relationships. Surrounded on all sides by states as the sea encircle the peninsula, the Northeast India massif has been, instead of being a wild and isolated fringe, a zone of interstitial frontier, producing infinite numbers of frameworks and constraints that suggest a miniscule world ‘out of time’. Yet a world of meaning and pattern unfold once we take the field, feel their sensibilities, take a passage through the oral chords and codes, and brood over their practices, all in the long view and from a counter-perspective of the margin. The unfolding pattern of the tribal universe was in no way a match to what the dominant civilizational narrative has talked about, let alone what we wrote about them. Thus, the history of Northeast Indian highland, in the long view, registers the history of ‘a deliberate and reactive statelessness’. It informs how the hillmen/human had migrated from the surrounding valley spaces against the state-building projects, which their legends ascribed variously as the ‘great’ – flood, fire, darkness – powerful enemy, bad king, and so on. While they continue to maintain a symbiotic and interdependent relationship with the valley societies, they chose to physical dispersion of their population and settlements, fortressed at the top of hills, connected by repulsive pathways, governed by an independent village polity, and defended by the trained warriors at the morung. They also broadly followed the jhum economy and adopted a pliable social, cultural, ethnic and gender formations. All these practices inform and register a form of resistance inbuilt within the cultural collective, a system I called the counter-cultural collective which manifest at all levels not only to prevent oppressive control at the first place but repulsed effectively when it appears. This condition of society is understood as one of ‘statelessness’ or ‘unstate’, the process involving disowning the state and becoming an egalitarian society, the point at which their oral traditions stand witnessed, and where freedom of individuals is located at the core of their cultural collective.

 

DATE:           April 26, Friday, 2019

TIME:           3:00 pm to 5:00 pm

VENUE:       Room no.324, 3rd Floor, SSS-I, JNU

 

All Are Invited

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.