Landscape, Culture and Belonging: Writing the History of Northeast India

Cover; Landscape, Culture, and Belonging; Title; Copyright; Contents; Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction; PART I BORDERS AND BEYOND; CHAPTER 1 India's Spatial History in the Brahmaputra-Meghna River Basin; CHAPTER 2 The Birth of the Ryot: Rethinking the Agrarian in British Assam; Descent and Disjunction; Finding the Paik; Runaways, Resignations, and Villages without Trees; Rates and Races; Conclusion; CHAPTER 3 Embracing or Challenging the 'Tribe'?: Dilemmas in Reproducing Obligatory Pasts in Meghalaya; Introduction: The Past of Non-Historians; The Past in Four Steps Step One: Locating MeghalayaStep Two: Making Tribes; Step Three: Shillong as Cosmopolis; Step Four: Reclaiming the Hills; Tribe, Ethnicity, Race, Migration; Borderlands Studies; Distant Cousins; Intra-frontier Identities; Space, Migration, Urbanization; Conclusion; PART II SURVEYS AND EXPLORATIONS; CHAPTER 4 Picturing a Region: A Geographical History of British Assam; Introduction; Objectifying the 'Geo-body' of British Assam; Mapping Mughal Knowledge of the Northeast; Ways of Seeing: Reorienting Local Cosmography; British Survey: Producing Colonial Assam-on-the-Map Cartographic Curtain: Territoriality and EnclavementConclusion; CHAPTER 5 Geographical Exploration and Historical Investigation: John Peter Wade in Assam; Bengal's Unknown Eastern Frontier; A Mission to Assam; Investigating the Past: Encounter with Tradition; From an Unknown Terrain to a Fabulous Geography; Conclusion; PART III ETHNOGRAPHY, HISTORY, AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION; CHAPTER 6 Naga: Lineages of a Term; The Naga Hill Tribes; Ptolemy's 'Nanga'; The 'Naga' of the Ahom; The Naga and the British; Etymological Presumptions; Naga: New Identities beyond the Tribes CHAPTER 7 Representing the Nagas: Negotiating National Culture and ConsumptionIntroduction; Representing Naga National Culture in a World System; Time Warp of Colonialism: Perception of the Nagas; Imperialist Nostalgia: Preservation of Culture; The Hornbill Festival; Representation and Consumption of Festival and Culture; National Branding: Aesthetics and History; Conclusion; PART IV LAW, STATE, AND PRACTICES OF GOVERNANCE; CHAPTER 8 Frontier Regime and Colonial Rule; Beginning of the Frontier Discourse; Interrogating Frontier Policy; Displaying British Power; One against Another; Conclusion CHAPTER 9 The Law of Emptiness: Episodes from Lushai and Chin Hills (1890-98)Introduction; How to Be Political: The Career of Bengal Regulation III of 1818 in the Lushai Hills; The Shores of Law: Chittagong Hill Tracts the Last Buoy; Where the Laws Fall Silent: Notes from the Chin Hills; CHAPTER 10 The Colonial State and the 'Illegal' Arms Trade along the North-East Frontier of India, 1860s to 1900s; Of Firearms and Legal Structures; Trafficking Firearms; Protectorate States, Strategic Alliances; Surveillance and Evasion; The World of Hafiz; Firearms in a Changing Frontier; Conclusion