1st Edition
Literatures from Northeast India Beyond the Centre–Periphery Debate
This book showcases the diverse literary traditions from India’s Northeast and their shared connections and lineages. It critically analyses a selection of literary works from authors and poets from this region and the hegemonies of language, ethnicity and politics that have framed these voices.
As a region with rich cultural and ethnolinguistic diversity, Northeast India’s literature is representative of varied histories, languages, socio-cultural and religious practices. The book highlights the distinct use of language, forms, cultural symbols and metaphors which articulates the unique experiences of conflict, beauty and culture in this area. Focussing on the translingual and transcultural aspects of these literary works it examines the dynamics between literature, language and their socio-cultural influences. The book pays attention to themes of representation, identity and power to showcase voices and perspectives of dissent, criticism and introspection. It explores contemporary critical approaches to literature from the Northeast, by re-examining the idea of the centre and the periphery and the position of subaltern literary voices.
This book will be of interest to students and researchers of literature, language, cultural studies, postcolonial studies and South Asian studies.
Introduction: Canon Formation and Literatures from India’s Northeast: Some Reflections
M ASADUDDIN
PART I: Literature from Northeast India
1 Love in the Conflict Zone: Negotiating Spaces in Davidson’s Gay Short Stories
HIMADRI ROY
2 From Legend to Fiction, the Politics of Representation: A Study of Indira Goswami’s Thengphakhri Tahsildarar Taamor Toruwal (2009) and Bidyasagar Narzary’s Birgwsrini Thungri (2004)
ANJALI DAIMARI
3 Writings from the ‘Periphery’: Folktales and Other Forms of Literature of the Paite Tribe of Manipur
MERCY VUNGTHIANMUANG GUITE
PART II: Peripheral Voices
4 Play and Performance in Twenty-First Century Assam: Narratives from the Margins
MRINAL JYOTI GOSWAMI
5 Subaltern Mentality and Literary Engagements: Positioning/Positionality, Identification/Identity in Select Poetic Voices from Northeast India
MANASH PRATIM BORAH
6 The Char and the City: Reading Miyah Poetry
SANJIB SAHOO
7 Pitting Irony against Aggression: Miyah Poetry as a Challenge to the Dominant Assamese Discourse
SHALIM M. HUSSAIN
8 The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Miyah Poetry and Politics of Othering in Assam
HARIS QADEER
PART III: Revisiting the Subaltern: Critical Approaches
9 Mythology, Contemporary Issues and Writers’ Response: The Manipuri Experience
M. RAMESHWOR SINGH
10 Narrativizing Aging and Dementia: Reading Anuradha Sarma Pujari’s Jalchabi through the Lens of Gendered Gerontology
NIZARA HAZARIKA
11 Literature from Northeast India: The Problems of Categorising
PRASENJIT DAS
PART IV: Literature as Socio-political Expression
12 The Subaltern Gandhian Discourse in Virendra Kumar Bhattacharya’s Mritunjaya
JAIWANTI DIMRI
13 The Road Not Taken: An Alternative Understanding of the Literature from Northeast India
JAYANTA M. TAMULY
14 From Apocryphal Orality to Textual Veracity: The Translation of the Subaltern Voice in Easterine Kire’s Writings
MOHAMMAD SAQUIB
Biography
K M Baharul Islam is the Professor and Chair of the Centre of Excellence in Public Policy and Government at the Indian Institute of Management, Kashipur, India. He is also the Chairperson of the Communications Area. He was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study during 2016–2018 and did his study on Translingual Literature from Assam. He is a Fellow at the US India Policy Institute in Washington, DC, and KAICIID Dialogue Centre in Vienna. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in March 2020.
