POSTscriptJ U N E 1 0 , 2 0 1 2

SEVEN SISTERS

NELit review2

FIFTH WALLUDDIPANA GOSWAMI

Literary Editor

IN contemporary critical-theoreticaldebates, the term ‘margin’ hasassumed crucial importance setting

forth a string of questions: Who isthe marginal and what are the condi-tions of marginality? Who margin-alises whom and how? How doessilence come to speech and whatlinguistic register does it selectin providing depth and dimen-sion to the tone and tenor ofnarratives of marginality? Doesit seek a voice of its own in termsof difference alone, or is it al-ways a voice of protest? Is mar-ginality also a feature of litera-ture? If so, in what way(s)? Doesit underline the author’s loca-tion, his/her identity andsocio-cultural background, ordoes it connote a politicalconundrum identifying the relation-ship between the centre and its pe-riphery, or is it about other differenti-ated markers such as ethnic or linguisticidentities and the politics about them?In whatever way we look at marginal-ity, as a fact of life and living, margin-ality was, is and will always be with usin diverse forms. It is part of similarityas well as difference; in overcomingmarginality we create new marginalshence the process goes on.Issues of identity and difference are

key components of the discourse onmarginality. At a basic level, margin-ality, as a condition, is part of an in-dividual’s or a community’s experi-ence under different socio-politicaland economic regimes. Such a con-dition necessitates looking at the self,its location, and the structures of pow-er in which it is implicated. The Northeast, considered a mar-

ginal geographical space, is as diverseas India itself in terms of linguistic,cultural, and ethnic representation.The term ‘Northeast’ is both a tropeand a trap that requires a sustainedeffort to understand the diversity ofrepresentation of its people and theircultures. Identities in the Northeastare mostly constructed around eth-nicity and ethno-nationalism. Thepolitics of identity, therefore, cen-tralises difference as the most im-portant marker recognising cultural,racial and linguistic differences ofwhich an identity is a product. In search of a voice of its own, the

marginal resorts to many modesof articulation. Literature, as oneof the modes of articulation, recoversand reconstructs identities inthe context of the Northeast. Fordecades others have written about thepeople of Northeast, but now thereare local voices who write aboutthemselves and their cultures there-by marking their works with a deepsense of authenticity.The emerging authors from

the Northeast have articulated theirunique cultural experiences inmany voices, a plurality thatseeks to represent marginality as asocio-historical condition throughliterary representation.Although individualistic in their

narrative styles, the emerging writersalso collectively represent what couldbe called the ethos of the region thatunderscores their shared history andpolitical destiny. The land mass ofthe Northeast has existed for centuries

throughits leg-e n d s ,m y t h s ,s t o r i e s ,songs anddances, artsand crafts,and its conflict-ing history and moribundpolitics. This territory is an-cient and modern, mythic andcontemporary. As Temsula Aowrites in the epigraph to herwork Songs from the Other Life:

To allWho can stillSense the earthTouch the windTalk to the rainAnd embrace the sunIn every rainbow

Her words carry the indelible markof the people’s belief in natural ele-ments that order their lives. Naturebecomes the central trope, a life-giv-ing force in the tribal epistemologythat underscores the connectednessof the triad: the human, the natureand the divine. It is not a dedicationto humanity in general but to the peo-ple with whom she shares every bit ofher existence. Similarly, KynphamSing Nongkynrih ruminates:

This land is old, too oldand withered for life to be easy.(‘The Ancient Rocks of Cherra’)

And Esther Syiem echoes the senti-ments:

Mylliem of my ancestors,Need I affiliate to you all over again?As in your men and in your womenI find an answering callin the aroma of smoked earth in themand the unbeaten slant of a lifethat writes itself back into my present.(‘Mylliem’)

The past is defined in terms of thepresent mixing memory with mythand history in order to recover aparticular ethnic identity. In thereprocessing of cultural memory,

invocation toancestors makesthe land a place

of longing and belonging.The writers, who callthis territory home, definetheir uniqueness and writeabout the diversity of their

cultures, customs and socialpractices. In spite of the contra-dictions and ambivalences, thecreative force that energises con-temporary writing, primarilymoves in rewriting identity and

redefining marginality. Ao offersthe best example of this reinventedcultural identity:

STONE-PEOPLEThe worshippersOf unknown, unseenSpiritsOf trees and forests,Of stones and rivers,Believers of soulsAnd its varied forms,Its sojourn here and passage across thewaterInto the hereafter.

STONE-PEOPLE,Savage and sageWho sprang out of LUNGTEROK,Was the birth adult when the stonebroke?Or are the Stone-People yet to come ofage? (‘Stone-People from Lungterok’)

Origin myths and belief systemscontinue to dominate even fictionalworks. Adi creation myths, ritualjourneys and shamans in MamangDai’s The Legends of Pensam comealive taking us to a world that oncewas. The stone-people certainly havecome of age to express themselves inwords. We know that a creative writeris a witness, one with the seeing eyeswho connects the past to the present.In the circulation of cultural energy,the poet self-fashions his/her poetryintersecting history, memory andidentity. Desmond Kharmawphalangsings of the past and connects it tothe present:

Long ago, the men went beyond theSurma

to trade, to bring home womento nurture their seed.

Later came the BritishWith gifts of bullets, blood moneyAnd religion.

A steady conquest to the sound ofGuns began.

Quite suddenly, the British left.There was peace, the sweetSmell of wet leaves again. (‘The Con-quest’)

In the absence of any authentic his-tory of most of the communities inthe Northeast, the creative writershave taken on themselves to be thecultural historians of their commu-nities. Their works provide us with re-sources for writing alternative histo-ries. Mamang Dai’s The Legends ofPensam is one such narrative. TheBritish are alluded to in many ways inwritings from the Northeast. But themost enduring feature of British colo-nialism is the spread of Christianityin the hills of the region, an impor-tant historical phase, as the mission-aries were instrumental in giving thehill tribes their script besides educat-ing them. If values of Christianity arevalorised in many a writings, its con-tribution is also questioned, for thefollowers of this religion have paid aprice. Ao writes:

Then came a tribe of strangersInto our primal territoriesArmed with only a Book andPromises of a land called Heaven.

Declaring that our Trees and Moun-tainsRocks and Rivers were no GodsAnd that our songs and storiesNothing but tedious primitive non-

sense.

We listened in confusionTo the new stories and too soonAllowed our knowledge of other daysTo be trivialised into taboo. (‘Blood

of Other Days’)

The hills have never remained thesame since the British left the region.Even Christian piety, honesty andcharity could not withstand the ef-fects of corruption that has eaten intothe very fabric of society. The lure ofeasy money in violence-ridden landshas promoted drug addiction and con-tributed to the spread of AIDS. Acrossthe genres, in the emerging literaturefrom the Northeast, there is an appealfor bonding in the shared experienceof pain and loss. While Kynpham SingNongkynrih writes of the impossibledream of an indigenous tribe,

...to fight the unbeatable foe,to bear with unbearable sorrow,to run where the brave dare not go…(‘Play of the Absurd’)

Echoing the motto of a hill tribe of onemillion, fearful of extinction, rising ininsurrection against a nation of onebillion; Robin Singh writes about thepain of that insurrection:

First came the scream of the dyingin a bad dream, then the radio report,and a newspaper: six shot dead,twenty-fivehouses razed, sixteen beheaded withhands tiedbehind their backs inside a churchAs the days crumbled, and the victorsAnd their victims grew in numbers,I hardened inside my thickening hide,until I lost my tenuous humanity.(‘Native Land’)

Writers such as Keisham Priyoku-mar try to figure out the sorrow ofinnocent people who are yet to makeany sense of the inter-group feuds inhis story, ‘One Night’. Conflicts of allkinds throw up heroes and villains,creating new community lores, leg-ends, and jokes. Most of Temsula Ao’sstories in her collection These HillsCalled Home deal with Naga insur-gency and its consequences. Storiessuch as ‘The Jungle Major’, ‘The Cur-few Man’ and ‘An Old Man Remem-bers’ tellingly throw light on differentshades of the conflict and how ordi-nary people have dealt with extraor-dinary situations. Ao maintains that“in such conflicts, there are no win-ners, only victims”. Bimal Singha askspoignantly in his story ‘Basan’s Grand-mother’: what is the colour of bloodin which the bodies of a tribal childand a non-tribal grandmother aresmeared? Is the colour of their blooddifferent? As violence breeds more vi-olence, it seems there is hardly anyescape from this.Besides the ethnocentric imagina-

tion and the politics of identity andmarginality, themes such as nation-hood, migration, exile and genderalso prominently figure in the writ-ings from the Northeast. As we moveahead, looking forward to a future,we need to pause and reflect on whatthat future is going to be like. I don’tsee a better way of visualising the future from the trauma andtragedy of the present than reposingmy faith in the words of Temsula Ao:“The inheritors of such a history havea tremendous responsibility to siftthough the collective experience and make sense of the impact by the struggle in their lives. Ourracial wisdom has always extolledthe virtue of human beings living at peace with themselves and in har-mony with nature and with ourneighbours.” �

(The article is an abridged form ofthe keynote speech delivered by thewriter at the international seminaron “Narrativising the Margins: North-east India and Beyond” held at As-sam University, Diphu Campus, 4-6January 2012)

Narratives of marginalityFRONTIS PIECE

THIS issue of NELit review has been inthe pipeline for a long time now – eversince we raised certain thoughts re-garding ‘Writing the Northeast’ with

the second issue of our literary review in No-vember 2011. That was mostly a view fromoutside the region, with Preeti Gill, commis-sioning editor of Zubaan, telling our readerswhat the voices from the region mean to her.Zubaan was the first ‘mainland’ publisher ofnon-academic books to have a dedicated se-ries on Northeast writings – in academics,the distinction goes to SAGE perhaps. Oth-er publishers have followed suit, and how!The interest in ‘reading’ the Northeast is grow-ing and we have, of late, become quite therage, the fashion really. Between exploring diverse other themes,

we wanted to follow up that second issuewith selections from and overviews of writ-ings from all the states of the region. Withour 3 June focus on the literature of ArunachalPradesh, we have wrapped up the first seriesof our state-wise spotlight. But what we dis-covered in the course of doing this series isthat there seems to be a huge gap betweenthe considerable body of literature being pro-duced in the numerous local languages andtheir reach beyond a limited sphere, evenwithin their own states. Garo literature fromMeghalaya, for instance, has hardly any reachin the Khasi Hills. Even in Assam, how manyof us do keep track of developments in Bodoor Mising or Karbi literatures?Given the immense linguistic diversity, the

only way to ensure that these rich literaturesdo travel around is through translation – be-tween the various languages of the regionand into English. Some publishing houses –like Anwesha in Assam – have taken up thetask of translating between the Northeastlanguages, and many in the ‘mainland’ arenow showing keen interest in translating ouroral and written literatures into English. Butthey are likely to face the same problems thatwe did at NELit review: of finding Englishtranslators for so many of the languages ofthe Northeast. Thus, very few titles in lan-guages other than the ones dominant in theseven states have made it to their lists. On the one hand, this has promoted writ-

ers in English – from being treated as an in-significant minority within the region tillonly a few years back, they have now be-come the representative voices from the re-gion and are being read and widely heard.At the same time, it has also placed uponthem the heavy responsibility – whetherthey want it or not – of being embedded intheir roots. This issue of NELit review is alook at Northeast Indian writing from theirpoint of view, a view from within. It is in asense a foil to that second issue – the viewfrom without – but it is in no way a com-prehensive view. We would like to consid-er it as a significant pause, a thoughtfulplace from which to continue our assay intothe various questions dogging those whofall under/deal with this new rubric ofNortheast Indian Writing, for the present,in English. Two respected academics of theregion address our concerns here, whiletwo well-known writers from Assam takeus along on personal journeys. We hope togo travelling with writers from other partsof the region soon. �

A look within

EVERY time the word “writer”is qualified by another word,one that seeks to explain

what kind of writer is being re-ferred to, an intense reaction iselicited from writers, readers, ed-itors, publishers and everyoneelse remotely connected with theworld of the written word. Un-derstandably too, for a writer isjust a writer. A writer’s gender,age, religion, place of origin andthe place where the writer choos-es to write from should have nobearing on the quality of his orher work. While these parame-ters do not affect the quality of awriter’s work, what they do in-fluence is the writer’s voice: theissues a writer chooses to explore,the perspective he or she worksfrom, even the style of the writ-ing, the heart with which thewriter writes. All this definitelystems from the place, literally andotherwise, a writer comes from.It has been said that a womanwrites with more sensitivity, moreintuitively than a man and that isvery often true; a woman’s role,for so long, has been the nurtur-er, the care-giver, that her learnedexperience sensitises her to thesuffering and pain of others in away that is instinctive, not some-

thing that is acquired or taught.So, while, the term “womanwriter” is not one that is neces-sary, desirable or even fair – hergender does not make her an in-ferior writer as one eminent writerseems to think so – a woman will,perhaps, choose to write in a cer-tain way about certain things, thata man may not. In that sense,there may be commonalities inwomen’s writings – our concernsare similar, sometimes – thatshow up from time to time.In recent times, the term north-

eastern writer or writing from theNortheast, has been cropping upfrequently in the world of fiction,especially in that of English writ-ing. Under this sweeping term,

all writers (in English and ver-nacular languages) from all theseven states of the Northeast areincluded, rather peremptorily.Again, an unfair and inaccuratecategorisation, for every state inthis ethnically disparate region isdifferent from the other; indeed,sometimes contiguous valleys areethnically, linguistically differentfrom each other. Yet, when pon-dering the usage of this term, es-pecially from the physical van-tage point of a city in the middleof the so-called mainland of thecountry, certain points becomeclear. Even though people of thenortheastern states differ fromeach other, they do have someshared history and many com-

mon cultural linkages. It is alsoclear that there is a certain man-ner, a set of values, that the peo-ple here possess that come intosharp focus as one arrives fromthe mainland as a visitor. Thequestion that arises then is thateven if this is true – that the peo-ple here are different from oth-ers farther away in the sub-con-tinent and similar to each other– does it justify the labelling of allits fiction as northeastern? Thepeople of regions in the mainlandalso differ from each other, yet

there are no such entities as NorthIndian or South Indian writing.On further reflection, another as-pect reveals itself and an answer,of sorts, is found. For someonegazing at the northeastern cor-ner of the country from its mid-dle, the region is sometimes in-comprehensible, so far away is it,in every sense – not just distance,which is the least of it – from themainstream. The differences be-tween this region and the rest ofthe country are so sharp, so muchmore than the differences be-tween others on the mainland thatthe entire region has been put intothe “other” category. Thus, it is notdifficult to understand – one maynot agree with it, but it can be un-derstood – why the term North-east writing or writer has come into

common usage. The fiction thatarises from this different place is,naturally, different from fictionfrom elsewhere in the concerns itaddresses and the manner in whichit does so. Sometimes, the con-cerns are universal – issues of fam-ily, relationships, nature, the en-vironment are written about –buteven that is informed by the placethe writer comes from. After this moment of realisation,

where one had reflexively chafedat the term Northeast writer in thebeginning, one slowly acquiresa more pragmatic – perhaps notthe most popular – view. In recentyears, there has been an astonish-ing number of books published,written by writers from the statesof the Northeast; books bothwritten in English and transla-tions from the vernacular intoEnglish. The publishing world andthe reading public have had morefiction from the region to choosefrom than ever before. Thisfiction is, perhaps, not what theyhave seen or read in the past,something they are unusedto, and this new stream ofwriting has been called north-eastern to distinguish it from whatalready exists. As long as the term is not used

to denigrate the writing, to eversay it is inferior, one can live withit for a while. In fact, there is evena tiny, tiny advantage to be hadfrom all this; there is a heightenedinterest in fiction from the regionand that can only help to disperse

it farther. Of course, any cate-gorisation runs an inherent riskof ghettoisation, one is aware ofthat and hopes that this labellingwill die a natural death. Once writ-ers from the seven states becomewidely known, more familiar andloved – once the whole region be-comes familiar through its fiction– one hopes and believes they willno longer have to be known aswriters from anywhere; they willsimply be writers. This day will soon come judg-

ing from the very favourable re-action readers outside the regionhave accorded this writer. One’spersonal experience has been thatof unexpected and gratifying ac-ceptance by both fellow writersand readers; one has been ac-cepted first as a writer and thenthe Northeast connection re-marked upon, very positively. Fic-tion will become the bridge thatjoins the margins to the centre; itwill make the unfamiliar famil-iar, and dispel the fear and anxi-ety the periphery now elicits. It isthus, perhaps, only a question oftime; writers from the Northeastwill become writers and addi-tional identities will not have tobe assumed. What has to be as-sumed now – along with thenortheastern identity – is the re-sponsibility of building that bridgeto the centre of things. �

Assuming identities: the writer from the Northeast��������

ONCE writers from theseven states becomewidely known, morefamiliar and loved –once the whole regionbecomes familiarthrough its fiction – onehopes and believes theywill no longer have to beknown as writers fromanywhere; they willsimply be writers

Jahnavi Barua’s novel Rebirth hasbeen nominated for the Com-monwealth Book Prize 2012.

iNKPOTJAHNAVI BARUA

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ACROSS the genres, in the emergingliterature from the Northeast, there isan appeal for bonding in the shared

experience of pain and loss

The creative force driving contemporarywriting redefines identity andmarginality, writes Kailash C Baral