Hindutva futures

It is widely acknowledged that the presence and power of the Hindu-right are here to stay in contemporary India. Even in Northeast India, often viewed as a recalcitrant periphery from the gaze of the Indian state, the diffusion of the Hindu-right ideology has found fertile ground. Their activities are not only limited to party politics – with many of the Northeastern states now under the political orbit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – but their presence is also in cultural and social spheres, where once the distinctness of one’s identity was proudly asserted and now appears increasingly compromised. What are the implications and challenges and indeed what are Hindutva futures in this vastly complex and tempestuous region called the ‘Northeast’? This entry takes a programmatic approach to understanding the activities of the Hindu-right. In doing so, it explores how one might examine the overarching ideas of their ideology

'As our ancestors once lived':Representation, Performance and Constructing a National Culture amongst the Nagas of India

This paper focuses on how a national culture emerges by examining the Nagas of India. To appreciate this process, the confluence of British colonialism, the postcolonial situation, and contemporary performance of Naga identity (visible in the Hornbill Festival) must be analyzed. I will argue that the colonial era representation of ‘primitivism’ of the Nagas continues into postcolonial narratives of ‘imperialist nostalgia’ disseminated primarily through travel, popular media and museum exhibitions. I will argue that the Nagas are not simply passive onlookers, but active participants in this enterprise through the strategic articulation of a distinct Naga national image. I will demonstrate that the Nagas are using these colonial era images of ‘primitivism’ for certain purposes, while also promoting a revitalization of traditional culture. First, this process mimics the cumulative notions of primitivism through a reverse gaze. Second, revitalization acts as a vital force in claiming historical agency predicated on the ‘performance of identity’ and cultural hybridity. Finally, both of these processes help illuminate how the Nagas position themselves within the larger international discourse of indigeneity whereby images, once represented as primitive, now legitimize a distinct national culture

“Lines that speak”:The Gaidinliu notebooks as Language, Prophecy and Textuality

This article navigates my experience of returning copies of the “Gaidinliu notebooks” from the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) to the Zeme Nagas of Assam, India. The notebooks were confiscated in 1932 by the British administrators and donated to the museum. They are from a religious movement, the Heraka, and their prophetess, Gaidinliu (1915–1993). Returning the notebooks highlighted a number of theoretical issues in approaching texts, particularly since these were written in a language that is “untranslatable.” I argue that their textuality requires one to examine the notebooks in relation to the unfolding of the kingdom (Zeme: heguangram), using the notion of textuality (Uzendoski 2012) grounded in dreams, prophecy, songs, and visions. Second, to appreciate the value and purpose of the notebooks, one must pay attention to the sonority of sound that manifests the words of the notebooks in song. Finally, these issues point to significant ways in which we understand the relationships between history, language, and experience