Taamul

In review:  Empire’s Garden: Assam And The Making Of India •by Jayeeta Sharma • Permanent Black • Rs 695 Renaissance, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution ushered in the modern era in Europe and ultimately to the entire globe, notably through the institutions of capitalism and colonialism. Colonial and capitalist induced transformations as well as the resistances offered against such changes initiated complex processes whereby many modern nations and nationalities were formed. India is but the result of such processes. Although there is a considerable volume of scholarship on the origin of the idea of India, the respective histories of its numerous divergent constituent nations are often washed out and obliterated in the process of creating a grand assimilative history. Also missed out are the subaltern perspectives of nationhood from lesser known ethnic societies. For Assam and the northeast in general, who have been purportedly over-marginalized in the popular and acade...

An edited version of this article was published in Down To Earth, April 30, 2013 At one point in his memoir, A Writer’s People, V S Naipul notes, “All my life I have had to think about ways of looking and how they alter the configurations of the world.” The celebrated writer's method holds true for not only a novel but also an academic work, especially when it is set in a politically volatile and culturally diverse region. Seen this way, Bengt G Karlsson’s ' Unruly Hills-Nature and Nation in India’s Northeast' is an honest attempt to document the land, its people, its economy and socio-cultural textures through the disciplines of ethnography and political ecology. It begins with the story of the destruction of a sacred grove in Meghalaya, Law Kyntang of Lum Shyllong. The episode sets up the book's aim: tracing changes that have led the worshipers to desecrate their “sacred” icons. Community forests encroached by a limestone mine in Meghalaya     ...

Can you uproot the uprooted? Strong limbs, s ubmissive lives,  Bruised palms, egos , souls  untroubled  Abstracted friends,  love  forlorn,  Ghost families Burnt faces,  tireless  dreams. Undeserved,  even of punctuations? In the ditties of growth Where did paan,  bidi,  or gutkha pitch-in to   make-over,  build, develop? Unacknowledged martyrs, uncelebrated piety Killed, burnt, maimed Uprooting the uprooted fulfilling convenient whims, Of unbeknownst nations,  obtuse destinies. Wiped from imaginations Subtracted from reality. Quietly born and raised To mop, pull, push, drag civilizations'  humdrum burdens  Underneath the ordinary  where , high heaven Is the dusty earth. yet why the head  droops down and down?