Fragmented Memories

Saikia Yasmin Saikia

Description

Fragmented Memories is a beautifully rendered exploration of how, during the 1990s, socially and economically marginalized people in the northeastern Indian state of Assam sought to produce a past on which to base a distinctive contemporary identity recognized within late-twentieth-century India. Yasmin Saikia describes how groups of Assamese identified themselves as Tai-Ahom-a people with a glorious past stretching back to the invasion of what is now Assam by Ahom warriors in the thirteenth century. In her account of the 1990s Tai-Ahom identity movement, Saikia considers the problem of competing identities in India, the significance of place and culture, and the outcome of the memory-building project of the Tai-Ahom.Assamese herself, Saikia lived in several different Tai-Ahom villages between 1994 and 1996. She spoke with political activists, intellectuals, militant leaders, shamans, and students and observed and participated in Tai-Ahom religious, social, and political events. She read Tai-Ahom sacred texts and did archival research-looking at colonial documents and government reports-in Calcutta, New Delhi, and London. In Fragmented Memories, Saikia reveals the different narratives relating to the Tai-Ahom as told by the postcolonial Indian government, British colonists, and various texts reaching back to the thirteenth century. She shows how Tai-Ahom identity is practiced in Assam and also in Thailand. Revealing how the "dead" history of Tai-Ahom has been transformed into living memory to demand rights of citizenship, Fragmented Memories is a landmark history told from the periphery of the Indian nation.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Biological anthropology
• History of Asia
• India

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 09 novembre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822386162
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

F R A G M E N T E D M E M O R I E S

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F R A G M E N T E D M E M O R I E S

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Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India

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YA S M I N S A I K I A

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Duke University Press

Durham & London

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2004

∫2004 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Monotype Garamond by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which provided a Scholarly Publications Grant toward the production of this book.

For my teachers

Irfan Habib and

Thongchai Winichakul

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Contents

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Acknowledgments ix Preface xi IntroductionLocating Tai-Ahom in Assam: The Place and People1

P A R T O N E Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Identity: Indian, Assamese, and Tai-Ahom 1. Identification in India37 2. Colonial Origins of Ahom77 3. The Memory of the Local: The Stories the Buranjis Tell113

P A R T T W O Tai-Ahom: A Language and Culture of Emotion 4. Rationalizing a History147 5. Performance and Politics of Tai-Ahom177 6. There Was No Plot in the People’s Struggle225

ConclusionThe Past and Present: Connecting Memory, History, and Identity251 Epilogue 267 Notes 269 References 301 Index 319

Acknowledgments

Writing this book has been a journey to many known and unknown places and to di√erent time periods, concepts of histories, memories, and pasts. Along the way I was fortunate to have the wonderful company of many friends, teachers, and family and community members. Our joint explora- tions and probings enabled me to conceptualize and write this volume, and I now want to thank everyone for their gracious generosity, kindness, assistance, encouragement, and humor in making it a memorable experi- ence. My readers will meet many of my companions along the path of the narrative, and thus to avoid repetitious explanations and acknowledg- ments I will acknowledge here only those who do not appear in the text, or who appear only peripherally. My parents, Jahanara and Anwar Saikia, have inspired and influenced me with their love for Assam. Their constant and critical engagement with issues and their deep concerns for the people and the place made me aware of the problems as well as wanting to learn more. Jyoti Prashad Agarwala’s music provided a portal to a poetic text of Assam’s history that became my entry point into the emotions and hopes of the people. I deeply thank my parents and the Assamese interlocutors, Agarwala and many others, who paved the way for me to pursue the study of Assam. Chad Haines, my partner and friend of many years, has been a constant source of support at each and every stage of writing this book. As I was finishing the book Chad asked me to teach him colloquial Assamese, and his interest allowed me to articulate and remember the language of my heart and, in turn, made writing about Assam more real and immediate. I would like to thank Margaret Weiner, Patricia Sawin, David Ludden, Cynthia Talbot, David Gilmartin, Sugata Bose, Sanjib Baruah, and the members of the Triangle South Asia Colloquium for their comments on various sections and chapters of the manuscript. I would especially like to