1st Edition
Custom, Law and the Colonial State in Northeast India Dynamics and Challenges for the Postcolonial State
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction 1
1 Colonial State and Law and Customs in Northeast India 21
VIRGINIUS XAXA
2 The Colonial Legacy in Manipur 34
M. AMARJEET SINGH
3 From Lines to Belts: Immigration, Anxiety, and Community Relations in late Colonial and Post-colonial Assam 45
BINAYAK DUTTA
4 Colonial Legal Formation in Northeast India: An Introspective Gaze in the Contemporary Context 61
NANDINI BHATTACHARYYA PANDA
5 Customary Law and Gender in Northeast India 92
TANKA B. SUBBA
6 Power Relations in Matrilineal Khasi-Jaintia Society: Revisiting Traditional Political Institutions from Precolonial to Contemporary Times 100
CECILE A. MAWLONG
7 Turning to Stone: Transformations in Angami-Naga Patriarchy 121
THEYIESINUO KEDITSU
8 Creating World Heritage at the Margins of the State: Wildlife, Custom, and Culture 135
ERIK DE MAAKER
9 Legislating “Objectionable Content” in the British Indian Empire and the Case of Assam in Northeast India (1910–1950) 151
KAUSHIK THAKUR BHUYAN
Index 169
Biography
Nandini Bhattacharyya Panda is currently project Director in Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi, India. She is also the Distinguished Fellow of Asian Confluence, Meghalaya. A historian and Sanskritist, her book Appropriation and Invention of Tradition: The English East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal (2012) was a seminal contribution to modern Indian history. She has also lectured on Hindu Law, Northeast India, and other subjects in leading national and international universities, such as University of Cambridge, UK, Penn Law School at the University of Pennsylvania, Dhaka University, Bangladesh, among others. She has been working on the Eastern Himalayas including Nepal and Northeast India since 2006. She has published books, articles, and made a documentary film in 2016 on the Lepcha community of the Eastern Himalayas under the title: The Lepcha Community of the Darjeeling and Kalimpong Hills: Quest for the Roots.
