North East Literature (MA 3rd)

Introduction

•Whenever a new culture comes in contact, there is a sense of cultural loss and recovery.

•This negotiation  with other cultures is seen to be a recurring feature of all North –eastern states

•Each small community or linguistic group responded  to these encounters through its oral and written communication.

•The majoritarian/mainstream cultures wrought significant changes, a cultural invasion in the literature of these region.

•The Bhakti movement, the reformists dispensations of 19th century, colonialism, Christian missionaries brought global culture to the region.

•Each encounter of the local cultures with the global culture brought it own sets of appropriations and resistance

•The clash of cultures was not an easy one and often led to loss of traditional forms and adoption of new cultural icons.

•Attempts to review and critique one’s own society and culture in the light of new ideas has been invading the regional cultures.

• Whenever the xenophobia of the outsider seized the community there is a tendency to retreat into cultural isolation.

•In Assam, Manipur and Tripura, this intermixing and cultural clash began long before colonialism.

•Colonialism superimposed a Eurocentric concept of modernity.

•With the coming of the Christian missionaries the print culture ushered and proliferated to

standardize the Assamese language.

•This standardization however, pushed the other spoken dialects into margins and further created a

difference between the spoken and the written form of the dialects.

•The standardization of Assamese as a language helped the colonizers cope with the mindboggling

heterogeneity of speech in the province of Assam.

•The initial attempts were made by the British to impose Bengali as a vernacular.

•It was met with a lot of resistance  by the Assamese literati  and eventually triumphed.

•This standardized Assamese is also called the Philologist’s paradise because of the heterogeneous

elements mobilized within its structure.

•Assamese served as the lingua-franca amongst most hill tribes especially in the neighboring

Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

•Assamese was the language for creative writings before identity politics acquired an importance in

different ethnic tribes or communities.  

•There has been a lot of discourse in the present times as whether the use of vernacular should be a

preferred over English by the diasporic writers. 

•Another aspect of this is the lack of first-rate translations of most Indian literature in vernacular

languages.

•This has been a challenge mentioned by most editors who have compiled anthologies of Indian

writings.

•Although most communities of North East pride themselves for possessing a vibrant storytelling

tradition.

•This culture of face to face communities is easily distinguished from the abstract nature of social

relationships in the modern world.

•The distinct feature of oral tradition has had a dominant influence on literary creations from the

region.

•After the introduction of print culture in the region during the colonial era, collecting, retelling and

printing the folklore of the different communities became an important part of the ethnographic

agenda of mapping  the region for effective administrative control.

•Collecting and printing the oral and written literature of one’s own community also became a part

of  the nationalist agenda of identity assertion.  

•Some history and civilization were pushed to the margins, if it did not confirm to the Eurocentric

concept of modernity.

•These people, re-created their past and re-invented tradition to represent the present stage.

•Temsula Ao’s writings, for example display the sensitive blending of the oral and written tradition.

•These new literatures rich in indigenous flavor are created by modern storytellers and poets from

the North-East region.

•This new found confidence attempts to erase the boundaries between the subaltern traditions and

‘Great traditions’ which in itself is an assertion of political awareness of the communities  living in

the peripheries or the enchanted spaces. 

•The North-east region did not draw much consciousness in the mainstream India.

•Assam was recognized, in the past as the centre of occult knowledge associated with tantric

worship, magic, and astrology and such constructs are still in the consciousness of the people as the

mysterious others.

•In fact due to unfair representation in the nationalistic discourse which impacted the emerging

literati.

•Post-Independence Assamese creative literature, shows more mature sensibility  focusing on

complex issue that has gripped the composite state of Assam following the independence.

•The new cultural identities, for example  brought about some crisis leading to re-drawing new

boundaries among the different communities living within Assam. 

•This in turn impacted the Assamese self-representation in many parts of the region which could be

seen in the works of fiction by the writers from the state.

•Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya’s Mrityunjay published in 1970, explores the theme of conflict.

•The unresolved issue of making a choice between the path of armed resistance and road to peace

through dialogue is recurring in the entire work.

•His work “Xeuji Pator Kahini”(1954) which he wrote under the pseudonym of Rasna Barua is a

sensitive portrayal of the relationship between the indigenous and the immigrant tea-plantation

labourers (whose status still remains uncertain).

•Other writers like Rong Bong Terang writes about the transformation brought about by the

‘modernization’ to a secluded Karbi village.

•In his other work, “Rongmilir Hanhi”(1981) he traces the process of social mobilization of the new

generation hill-people who articulate the demand for protection distinct identity  on the eve of

India’s Independence.

•Where Terang leaves off, it is picked up, Moushumi Kandali in her story “Lambada Machor

Seshot”(The Crossroads of Mukindon).

•Here she holds up a disturbing  portrait of the dilemma faced by younger generation Karbi’s poised

at the cross-junction of tradition and modern modernity.

•The modern culture that invades the local cultures lays a claim to progressiveness and compels the

local culture to be apologetic which has been the subject matter of much satire especially among

the 19th century satirists like Lombodar Bora and Lakshminath Bezbarao.

•Some of the stories by Wan Kharkrang. S. J. Duncan and Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih of Meghalaya

are also in the lines of comic satire exposing the social and academic pretensions of a newly

emerging urban middle class.

•The first generation fiction writers from Arunachal Pradesh like Lummer Dai, Yeshe Dorjee

Thongchi, wrote in Assamese as they received their education in the same language post

independence.

•After the shift in the Government policies to integrate the ethnic communities, Hindi slowly

inducted as a mediums in schools and higher secondary schools.

•Lummer Dai and Thongchi, brings into light, the uncomfortable discourse on traditions.

•The subtle questioning  of the values of traditional institutes which gives little space and voices to

the youth and women is an important theme in their fiction.  

•Their writings encountered the challenges posed by  the ideals of modernity and progress.

•Mamang Dai’s “The Legend of Pensam”(2006) is written in a lyrical prose and evokes the memories 

of an entire community of people.

•It represents the predicaments of the sensitive young minds in contemporary Arunachal Pradesh

who is also at the cross-road to come to the terms with tradition and modernity.

•Mamang Dai depicts the experiences of the new generation inhabiting what she calls the ‘in

between’ places of the mind.

•A sizeble number of the selected stories is about growing  awareness of the effect of the wanton

destruction of the forests and wildlife in the name of development.

•Yeshe Dorjee’s “The Forest Guard’ reveal this growing  awareness about the problem  of the

ecological  balance being disturbed in the states across the North-East.