Ethnic Life-Worlds in North-East India Ethnic Life-Worlds in North-East India An Analysis PRASENJIT BISWAS CHANDAN SUKLABAIDYA SAGE STUDIES ON INDIA’S NORTH EAST Copyright©Prasenjit Biswas and Chandan Suklabaidya, 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2008 by SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320, USA SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP, United Kingdom SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763 Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, typeset in 10.5/12.5 Times New Roman by Inosoft Systems, Delhi and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Biswas, Prasenjit 1969– Ethnic life-worlds in north-east India: an analysis/ Prasenjit Biswas, Chandan Suklabaidya. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ethnology—India, Northeastern. 2. Community life—India, Northeastern. 3. Politics and culture—India, Northeastern. 4. Ethnic conflict—India, North- eastern. 5. India, Northeastern—Politics and government. 6. India, Northeast- ern—Ethnic relations. 7. India, Northeastern—Social conditions. I. Suklabaidya, Chandan, 1966– II. Title. GN635.I4B593 305.800954'1—dc22 2007 2007045917 ISBN: 978-0-7619-3613-8 (HB) 978-81-7829-777-4 (India-HB) The SAGE Team: Sugata Ghosh, Neha Kohli, Vijaya Ramachandran and Trinankur Banerjee To Father Rawlson, Alfred Schutz and Nations-From-Below whose presence is emancipatory Contents Acknowledgements 9 Preface 11 1. Reconceptualizing an Ethnic Life-World 17 2. Return of the Native 51 3. The Native and the Nation: Jawaharlal Nehru-Verrier 109 Elwin’s Philosophical Anthropology 4. Insurgency as Counter-Hegemonic Struggle in 153 North-East India 5. Shades of ‘Colonialism’: Contextualizing United 212 Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) 6. Nations-From-Below: An Interpretation of Life 231 and Politics 7. Rethinking India’s North-East: Within and Beyond 256 Life-Worlds Conclusion 291 References 296 Index 303 About the Authors 312 Acknowledgements I n the course of writing this book, the work of which began in 1992, we were in the midst of the after-effects of our learning of anthropology and philosophy bringing back to our minds all our teachers at Dibrugarh University and North Eastern Hill Uni- versity respectively. The major part of the work, in a sense, was completed in 1998 as we were able to collate the anthropological observations with our search for an alternative way of philosophiz- ing, guided by a polyphonic insurgency of voices and meeting of critics of such insurgency from the state and the bureaucracy. We owe a lot to them. The course of writing such a book had a fusion of horizons that happened only after a lived experience of dialogue with a number of partners. We have special words of thanks and appreciation for Sushila and Guddu, who are not only partners in the dialogue but who bind us in gratitude by caring for us in the midst of difficulty. We owe our thanks and gratitude to T. Mapu Jamir, Fr. Rawlson, Suma Trite, Pu Vanlalanghak and others whom we have met during the course of field-work and study, for an enriching experience and their unreserved hospitality of ideas. Our friend Jishnu is an invaluable gift of ideas and information. A rich source of knowledge with an encyclopaediac knowledge of history, he showed us the way to reach quite a few conclusions pregnant with historical and political correctness. Both of us owe an immeasurable debt to Ashok Acharya, B.S. Butola, M.M. Agrawal, N.B. Biswas, Sarat Chandra Sarma and others who contributed to our growth and enrichment of ideas. The intellectual influence of Hiren Gohain and Mrinal Miri, in the course of our writing is far from being appropriated, rather we express our inability to comprehend and fully grapple with these figures of twentieth and twenty-first century North-East. We also owe special thanks to Sugata Ghosh and his team at SAGE India