A nice read
Historiographical exclusion: Marginalization of the North Eastern region could be seen in the trend of historical writings in India. Well known intellectuals of the academic world such as Peter Burke’s ‘popular culture’, Eric Wolf’s ‘people without history’, E.P Thompson’s ‘unsung voices of history’, Genovese’s ‘objects and subjects of history’, Hobsbawm’s ‘social banditry’, Ranajit Guha’s ‘subaltern’, Lacan’s ‘others’, Said’s ‘orientalism’ Barthes’ ‘structural analysis of narratives’, Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’, Michel Foucault’s ‘history of the historian’ Skaria’s ‘hybrid histories’ and many others question the existing orthodoxy of historical discourse. (Currie, 1997, Shreedharan, 2004). This is also true in the context of the North East as the regional specificity has been ignored by the academic community until the recent time. The greatest challenge to the Indian historians is to incorporate regional histories in the broader framework of Indian history. (Kumar, 1999) There has been consistent exclusion of North East from the history of India. A well known historian from the North east Sajal Nag pointed that “Such neglect prompted the historians of North East India to take up research on the area but they failed to communicate them to the rest of India.” As a result North East continues to suffer from historiographical exclusion. But unless the stories of North East are integrated with the history of the rest of the country, a true national history can never be achieved.” (Nag, 1998.p.6) This indifferent attitude towards the North East is evident in national curricula. Sirkka Ahonen rightly remarked in this context “the national curricula conveys narratives that are never inclusive of whole communities, and history curricula in particular need examination of their role as forms of ‘identity politics’. Minorities tend to be excluded from the master historical narratives”. (Ahonen, 2001) The cultural history of various communities of the North East has hardly found space in national curricula. Their heroes are forgotten and instead fed with the stories of kings and kingdoms of the rest of India that largely do not appeal to the people of the North East. The struggle of Khasis, Mizo Chiefs, Jaintias and Nagas against the British have no place at all in the history of India. This is not only sad but also extremely unfair. The question remains the same with when Gayatri Spivak asks ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’! (Spivak, 1988) The answer is still ‘No’ in Indian history unless a comprehensive change in the historical discourse of India takes place.
Factual Error in discourse: The colonial ethnographers and Christian missionaries were the earliest scholars who represented tribal culture with their European terms and pronunciations. Numerous literatures on tribal cultural history were produced by colonial ethnographers and Christian Missionaries like A.Z Makenzie, JH Hutton, J.Shakepear, N.E Parry, J.H Mills, J.M Lloyd, J.H Lorrain. Habitually, colonial and missionary’ terms/terminology were ethnocentric in nature. In recent period, some scholars (trained indigenous) feel the burden of these ethnocentric terms and various efforts have been made on the decolonization of these local names/ terminology. In case of Mizoram, colonial names have been changed - Lusei, instead of Lushai, Maras instead of Lakher and Aizawl instead of Aijal. However, in many of the recent discourses (including official discourse) made by non locals both at the national and international levels are extremely ignorant on local language/terminologies. The capital of Mizoram, Aizawl is misspelt as Aizwal in news papers, academic discourses and even at airports. There has been repeated failure to run a correction, even after being asked. This is also evident in the academic field. For instance, one of the most popular referee’s journals of Modern Asian Studies in 1987 writes “The Negroids, who came from south and south-west China, are the present Nagas of Nagaland.” (B. P. Singh; North-East India: Demography, Culture and Identity Crisis, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2. (1987), pp. 257-282.) Surprisingly, the editorial boards including this Indian professor has failed to notice that the Naga tribes belong to the mongoloid group of Tibeto-Burman. No correction was made even in the continuous issues. Such an ignorance has for a long time dominated the North East discourse scenario which damages image of the people and their culture. Naga Students’ Federation (not the insurgency groups) who had forbidden a non-Naga to write on Naga history without their prior approval clearly indicates how people contested against such academic imperialism. (Prabhakara, 2003).