1st Edition
Playing with Nature History and Politics of Environment in North-East India
North East India is called nature’s gift to India. It is mountainous, thickly forested, nourished by massive rainfall, has massive rivers, has a diverse wildlife, inhabited a number of forest dwellers called tribes who cherished environmentalist ethos. The region has been experiencing environmental depletion which was a result of colonial policies, exploitation of its ecological and mineral resources, large scale trans-border immigration and settlement of people, establishment of the plantation industry through deforestation and the dependence of the dairy industry on grazing and other factors. This books depicts the precariousness of the environmental situation and traces the history and politics of such degeneration with a view to raise the consciousness of the people of the region towards their environment and save it from further aggravation.
Introduction
Sajal Nag
1. India’s North-East: An Enigmatic Absence in
History and Cartography
Rila Mukherjee
2. Marsh, Rice and Faith: Aspects of Environmental
and Religious Changes in the Early Medieval
Surma-Barak Valley
Birendra Nath Prasad
3. Man, Nature and State in Pre-Colonial Kachar
Bazlur Rahman Khan
4. Environment and War: Small Wars in
North-East India, 1845-1913
Kaushik Roy
5. The Coming of British Forestry in Assam in the
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century:
Initiatives and Problems
Srijani Bhattacharjee
6. The Ecological and Social Watershed:
Colonial Intervention and Forest Use in Assam
Rajib Handique
7. Forests, Fields and Pasture:
Environmental and Revenue Debates of
Land Usage in Colonial Assam in 1910-1920
Suryasikha Pathak
8. Colonialism and Deforestation in Naga Hills
S. Victor Babu
9. State-Science, Hegemony and Shifting the
Cultivator: Contesting the ‘Anti-modernity’
Discourse on Shifting Cultivation in South Asia
Debojyoti Das
10. Land Use/Land Cover Change and its Impact
on Climate in the Barak Valley, Assam
Bashabi Gupta
11. Rain, Rain, Come Again: History of Rainfall,
Deforestation and Water Scarcity in Cherrapunji,
the Rainiest Spot in the Globe
Sajal Nag
12. Challenging Times, Challenged Body: Decolonization,
Displacement and Disease among East Pakistani
Refugees in South Assam, 1947-1954
Binayak Dutta
13. The Empire as a World of Sport: Aspects of
Hunting in Colonial Assam, c. 1850-1900.
Bipul Chaudhury
14. Colonizing the Wild: British Policies towards
Wildlife in Assam, 1874-1947
Geetashree Singh
15. Encountering Floods: Colonial State and the
Flood of 1916 in the Surma-Barak Valley of Assam
Monisankar Misra
16. Environmental Impact of the Great Earthquakes
of 1897 and 1950 on North-East India
Shymananda Bhattacharjee
17. Mythology as a Protest Narrative: A Lepcha Tale
Kerry Little
Biography
Sajal Nag teaches Modern History at Assam Central University. Earlier he was associated with the North-Eastern Hill University and the Centre for Social Studies, Surat.
