Landscape, Culture and Belonging: Writing the History of Northeast India

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Landscape, Culture, and Belonging
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I BORDERS AND BEYOND
	CHAPTER 1 India’s Spatial History in the Brahmaputra–Meghna River Basin
	CHAPTER 2 The Birth of the Ryot: Rethinking the Agrarian in British Assam
		Descent and Disjunction
		Finding the Paik
		Runaways, Resignations, and Villages without Trees
		Rates and Races
		Conclusion
	CHAPTER 3 Embracing or Challenging the ‘Tribe’?: Dilemmas in Reproducing Obligatory Pasts in Meghalaya
		Introduction: The Past of Non-Historians
		The Past in Four Steps
			Step One: Locating Meghalaya
			Step Two: Making Tribes
			Step Three: Shillong as Cosmopolis
			Step Four: Reclaiming the Hills
		Tribe, Ethnicity, Race, Migration
			Borderlands Studies
			Distant Cousins
			Intra-frontier Identities
			Space, Migration, Urbanization
		Conclusion
PART II SURVEYS AND EXPLORATIONS
	CHAPTER 4 Picturing a Region: A Geographical History of British Assam
		Introduction
		Objectifying the ‘Geo-body’ of British Assam
		Mapping Mughal Knowledge of the Northeast
		Ways of Seeing: Reorienting Local Cosmography
		British Survey: Producing Colonial Assam-on-the-Map
		Cartographic Curtain: Territoriality and Enclavement
		Conclusion
	CHAPTER 5 Geographical Exploration and Historical Investigation: John Peter Wade in Assam
		Bengal’s Unknown Eastern Frontier
		A Mission to Assam
		Investigating the Past: Encounter with Tradition
		From an Unknown Terrain to a Fabulous Geography
		Conclusion
PART III ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORY, AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION
	CHAPTER 6 Naga: Lineages of a Term
		The Naga Hill Tribes
		Ptolemy’s ‘Nanga’
		The ‘Naga’ of the Ahom
		The Naga and the British
		Etymological Presumptions
		Naga: New Identities beyond the Tribes
	CHAPTER 7 Representing the Nagas: Negotiating National Culture and Consumption
		Introduction
		Representing Naga National Culture in a World System
		Time Warp of Colonialism: Perception of the Nagas
		Imperialist Nostalgia: Preservation of Culture
		The Hornbill Festival
		Representation and Consumption of Festival and Culture
		National Branding: Aesthetics and History
		Conclusion
PART IV LAW, STATE, AND PRACTICES OF GOVERNANCE
	CHAPTER 8 Frontier Regime and Colonial Rule
		Beginning of the Frontier Discourse
		Interrogating Frontier Policy
		Displaying British Power
		One against Another
		Conclusion
	CHAPTER 9 The Law of Emptiness: Episodes from Lushai and Chin Hills (1890–98)
		Introduction
		How to Be Political: The Career of Bengal Regulation III of 1818 in the Lushai Hills
		The Shores of Law: Chittagong Hill Tracts the Last Buoy
		Where the Laws Fall Silent: Notes from the Chin Hills
	CHAPTER 10 The Colonial State and the ‘Illegal’ Arms Trade along the North-East Frontier of India, 1860s to 1900s
		Of Firearms and Legal Structures
		Trafficking Firearms
		Protectorate States, Strategic Alliances
		Surveillance and Evasion
		The World of Hafiz
		Firearms in a Changing Frontier
		Conclusion
PART V CULTURAL DIALOGUES
	CHAPTER 11 Appropriating the Ao Past in a Christian Present
		Understanding Ao Religion
		Tsungrem (God)
		Attributes of God in Ao Religion
			Lijaba
			Lungkitsungba
			Meyutsung
		Concept of Divinity in Ao Religion
		Concept of Spirits in Ao Religion
		God and Man: Their Original State and Separation
		Sacrifice in Ao Religion
			Tsungremong
			Mithun Sacrifice (Su Achiba)
		Sacrifice and Agricultural Seasons
		Sacrifice and Bargaining of Life
		On the Rationality of Ao religion
		Ao Religion: Foundation for Christianity
	CHAPTER 12 Why Do People Convert?: Understanding Conversions to Christianity in Mizoram
		Missions and Missionaries
		Christianity, Modernity, and the ‘Colonial Situation’
		Engagements and Responses
		Revivals and Indigenization
		Conclusion
	CHAPTER 13 From Sacred Rocks to Temples: Recasting Religion as Identity in Northeast India
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Notes on Contributors
Index